Some photos from camp!

Growth Mindset Messages in Maths

If students have a Growth Mindset in Maths it grows their Maths brains. Growth Mindset messages need to be reinforced at home and at school!

Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University says that when students are in a fixed mindset they see that effort means that they are dumb. When students are in a Growth Mindset they understand that the effort and difficulty will help them to get smarter. This is when their brains grow as they are making new connections and they are "really, really learning."

She says that praising student intelligence and talent is harmful. This puts them in a fixed mindset. It makes them afraid of challenge and less resilient when they make mistakes. If they have a fixed mindset, they only care about looking smart.

It is very important that parents and teachers praise the effort, the strategies that students use and the persistence that they show. This gives students a Growth Mindset. This helps students to overcome obstacles and stick with challenges when they are struggling.

We need to make sure that we are all using Growth Mindset messages in Maths (and also in other areas of the curriculum too).

These last few weeks, we have been really proud of our students who stuck with the challenge of designing their own "Greener Worser Bay School."

These students designed a bird feeder- this is their prototype

We have also been excited to see students celebrating mistakes in Number Talks. Some of them have even started to do a mistake dance when they get things wrong. It is great to see many of our students taking risks and having a go.

Skyping with Auroa School

Yesterday, we Skyped our friends at Auroa School in South Taranaki. We talked about the year and what we have been doing recently. They have been doing athletics and lots of other work. They have something called Harold the giraffe http://www.lifeeducation.org.nz/ . They are learning about a Growth Mindset and we are too. They have had a good start to the year and we are looking forward to Skyping with them more and learning together.

By Yasmin

Pedal Ready - learning to cycle safely

Many of our year 5 and 6 students have had the opportunity to take part in Pedal Ready this week (one group have been rained out).  It's all about getting our tamariki safe and confident on their bikes and is a fun and engaging programme provided by the Greater Wellington Regional Council. Many thanks to the instructors.

Pedal ready

Today we had a great time with pedal ready. Pedal ready is a biking company that come to schools all over  NZ to make the children more confident on their bikes. We have learnt some new skills like:

Signaling

The stop sign

Using our gears

Looking behind us

Checking our helmet

Checking our bike

By Nell and Isabel

Today we did pedal ready which is program for kids to get more confident biking we did level 1 we learnt how to, signal, bike and helmet check, tight turns, brace, what the important features are and the safety of the bike .

Orla

Into the Bush at Centennial Reserve

Forest Protectors 

We spent an AMAZING day in the bush at Centennial Reserve on Monday.



Nest building for the fat Kereru.

Joakim and Sophie set up a series of activities for us including Find the Pest, Sketching, Nest Building, Identifying Species and a good Discovery Walk.

We were really impressed with the amount of work which has already been done by the Motu Kairangi group who have planted thousands of plants there in the last 5 or 6 years. The good work is paying off with many invertebrates in evidence and for much of the day we were accompanied by a very friendly Piwaiwaka or Fantail.



Kids noticed all the details including this formidable looking Weta and a sketch of a fern.

To finish the day off we scattered Tawa seed deep in the bush. In 50 years time we hope to see a Tawa forest there with numerous Kereru hanging from the branches.

We are looking forward to following this visit up with our own projects.

Moving March Walking Bus

The Walking Bus!

Leaving the Depot!

Our Moving March Walking Bus is under way.  Many kids are already making there way to school on the
Waewae Express but we are encouraging more people to, literally and figuratively ‘get on board’.

Whether you are walking like these guys or choose to be Pedal Ready and ride your bike, they are all
good initiatives.  We are serious about sustainability and this is an important part of the Big Picture.
And, what’s good for the health of the planet is also good for us!

If you would like to know more about this initiative please contact either Scott or John
(our Enviroschools Coordinators) or simply add you name to the google form.

Happy walking everyone!

Why our school needs a bird feeder!

In our Literacy and Inquiry time we have been looking into the possibility of developing area of the school to make it more 'green'. Dylan and Adam are thinking about getting a bird feeder for our school. Check out their idea!

Why our school needs this bird feeder.

This is our idea for a bird feeder. We think it will work really well on a big tree on bottom grass as it has
a really big branch so the bird feeder can hang off it.

The bird feeder will be made out of PVC pipe, wood, metal rods and gardening string. We have
chosen these materials because we think it will hold well together. We are going to use recycled timber
so that is is good for the environment. We were also thinking about using materials that are from our
recycling bins to make bird feeders - we could use nutella jars, milk bottles or any other plastic things
that could fit. We are going to develop this thought more. We aren’t sure whether we want to paint it or
not because we are worried the birds might scrape the paint off, and eat the paint and it could poison
them.

The bird feeder will help to attract more birds. On our bush walk, Joakim told us it is better to
have a bird feeder rather than a bird house. He said that birds choose where their nest will be so if you
have a bird feeder, they are likely to choose to put their nest near the bird feeder. Attracting more birds,
will help make the area better. At school we love to look at birds and hear birds so then we can do even
more research about them. We would love to have native birds in our school because they are really
important. They are important because they only exist in New Zealand. It would be so cool if we had so
many native birds that they even flew to other countries.

How will it help ecosystem? By having more birds, this will help there to be more trees. This is because
birds poop out the seeds of trees and drop the seeds in new areas. By doing this, we could spread more
ecosystems. If we want more native trees on the peninsula, we will need more birds because they need to
be balanced. By having more birds, we will naturally have more trees because they attract each other.

Our next steps is to think about what types of seeds specific types of birds like. We would want to get
seeds that attract native and uncommon birds. We don't want to attract pigeons and seagulls but rather
kereru and tui and other types of birds. Even if we attract birds that aren't native, we just want to attract
uncommon birds. So we will need to know what seed attracts them.

By Dylan and Adam, typed by Anna