Getting into the Flow: Growing Our Creativity

What??????

Our Arts Celebration is a highlight of the year, a time where many of our students shine in their own unique ways. We are pulling together many threads for this year's event, our study of the city and what makes a good one, poetry; exploring deep feelings and ideas in quite off beat ways and, thinking about the future. It's very broad. While much of the it is still 'in progress' we are very excited about the body of work emerging. Poetry books with incredible titles, introducing these wonderfully personal reflections on the lives of eight, nine and ten year olds. Some examples below.

Over the term we have been talking about the Character Strength of Creativity, that it's not confined to The Arts but is present in Maths and Science, day to day problem solving and even in how we relate to each other, including using humour. Flexibility, and fluency of thinking are two of the elements but the one we can perhaps most celebrate is originality. The paintings, collages, sculpture and poetry have this in bucket loads.

We are looking forward to hosting you all next week to celebrate our kids and their remarkable creative endeavours.

Emotion Charades and Emotion Pictionary

This week the Seniors have been playing Emotion Charades and Pictionary, acting out and drawing different emotions for their Survivor team mates to guess. It might sound like a game, but there's lots of science behind it. When children practice recognising and naming emotions, they're strengthening the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which helps with empathy, self-control, and decision-making. By tuning into facial expressions, tone, and body language, students learn to read social cues more effectively which is a skill that supports friendships, teamwork, and problem-solving. Acting out or drawing emotions also gets kids moving, laughing, and connecting, which boosts the release of dopamine. We recommend using the 'How do I feel' cards which were produced by the author (Rebekah Lipp) and illustrator (Craig Phillips) of the picture book of the same name.

A quick snapshot here of our learning celebrations, a real highlight of the year for us. It's great to see Students so confidently sharing their learning and parents leaning in, fully immersed in their child's work. The kids shared a mixture of samples; poems, stories, reports and artefacts from their Maths learning and from our Inquiry, all things which they are proud of. Ava said, "I felt well prepared. I am getting better at it.." Finley said, "My dad liked my writing. He said my writing is going through the roof!" We asked parents to consider questions which they might want to ask at our upcoming Literacy Afternoon. Having this sort of experience is definitely food for thought. We hope that we have triggered your curiosity and will be keen to engage with our conversations about what Literacy looks like in the Māhutonga Matariki spaces. See you on the afternoon of the 28th of August!

City Trip:

On Tuesday we went into the CBD to learn more about how cities, and our city are planned and constructed. It was an extremely cold day but that didn't dappen our endeavour. We are curious and full of questions and had the opportunity to ask many of them.

We participated in the 'Critical Signals' Exhibition, offering ideas about what our city's assets are, how we connect to each other, what community looks like in a big city and exploring the question of how we can build resilience in difficult times. We left our portraits in the exhibition space to help others develop their own ideas about what might happen in the future in Wellington. A map of the city adorned the wall and we were invited to plot the significant features we know about. maps again!

The brilliant Exhibition at Bowen Galleries, All At Sea, paintings by Neil Frazer, really took our breath away. These stunning works realised in thick slabs of paint gave the sense of being, actually in the ocean. The curator of the show sent a text to the artist to pass on that one of our students said that the work, 'anchored him'. This gallery is one which wants to encourage young people to interact with art. We are happy to oblige!

We visited Studio of Pacific Architecture where we had a crash course in what architects do and how they go about it. Of course we recognised some of the same thinking we have been applying in our city design project but Stephen was able to 'nutshell' the process for us. Also explaining that the process is not quick. In fact Tākina took 9 years from conceptualisation to completion, the same time many of our group have been on the planet. There were many connections: thinking about design for better living, sustainability, community resilience and connection, ideas we have been discussing.

Next, at The Regional Council we met our friend Yadana Saw and councillor Mātua Ken Laban as well as Enviroschool's Chris Montgomery. We met Jane one of their city planners. She was very interested in our ideas for the future of Wellington, free transport for kids, dogs on buses and of course a mini Marine reserve/Blue Belt at Worser Bay.

In between appointments we did our best to sketch these interesting, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly urban spaces. These drawings will be the basis of an upcoming painting project for our Arts Celebration. Back at school and we will be going on with our city design, assembling the pieces and using all we have learned on today's trip.

The sound of music

In the classroom this week, we have been exploring the connection between rhythm, language, and music. We are experimenting with simple musical notation as we created our own beats to accompany poetry and spoken word. As well, we have been practising our listening and responding skills by concentrating on isolating the complex layers of sound from one piece of music. An example of this is the artwork below. These drawings are collaborative responses to the Mission Impossible theme song. What do you think? Can you see the music in the pictures?

Teacher Reading: Enriching Student's Vocabulary.

An important element in our daily programme is reading aloud to kids. This is a special, quiet time (although the above photo suggests otherwise) and one which also leads to rich conversation. It's an opportunity for us to extend our students through their experiences of literature. For this reason we choose books to read to students which they would otherwise not choose, so no Diaries of any Whimpy whatevers. We have dippped into work by esteemed authors; Philip Reeve (No Such Thing as Dragons, Mortal Engines), Michael Morpurgo (Kensuke's Kingdom), David Almond (Skellig) and many others. These great writers model fantastic use of English for students. Currently we are reading a beautiful book by Kate De Camillo, Ferris. The main protaganists are often stopping in their tracks to review new words which their teacher has introduced to them. We are taking the lead and doing the same with each of these. Ignoble, ludicrous, thrummed, brereft, baffled, pragmatist are just some of the wrods on our emerging list. Unpacking the meaning of words, how they are made up (morphology) and where they come from (entymology) are factors which help to build word power and lead to our kids being more convincing, more nuanced writers, readers and speakers. Having conversations about characters in books, how they feel and what motivates them also leads to greater understanding of real human relationships and builds empathy. You will see in this week's newsletter an invitation to an afternoon presentation expaining all of the pieces of our literacy programme. We wouold like to illustrate that we can all be invloved in the process of encouraging students to particiapte and build a rich literary culture at home and in the classroom; one which they can take on with them when they head off to their next learning challenges and one which will enrich their lives as adults. Keep an eye out for futher details inupcoming weeks.