Pasifika Language Week

What an amazing time we had last week celebrating Pasifika Language Week at Bromley School!

Charles kicked it all off for us by bringing in his tupenu that he wears to Church and on special occasions to share with us!  

On Tuesday, a group of Pītau 1 children made sapa suey (chop suey) which everyone enjoyed sampling!  There was even enough left over for some of our brothers and sisters to try too.

Faafetai lava to our very talented Mrs Tongiaso, who came in to teach us the Samoan alphabet.  Click on the link below to see how we did!

Learning the Samoan Alphabet with Mrs Tongiaso

Throughout the week, other children brought in some of their taonga that was special to their culture...

Mālō 'aupito to Tolini (Charles' mum) who popped in one morning to teach us how to say the days of the week correctly in Tongan as well as a couple of phrases!

Some of our Pasifika children were fortunate enough to go on a wee trip to Te Waka Unua School on Thursday to celebrate alongside some other schools from our area.  We were very proud of Sonny who put in a huge amount of passion when was chosen to help lead Mili!

Finally on Friday we ended the week with a Pasifika themed mufti day which was a lot of fun.  

Faafetai lava to Leonie (Leonie's Nanna) who came in to teach us lots of Samoan words, phrases, songs and even brought some ula fala for the teine as well as koko laisa for everyone to try!!

A huge Thank You to Mrs Tongiaso for all of her help, effort and resources that she shared with us!  Thank you for making this such a hugely successful and enjoyable week!

We are excited to continue on our journey to discover more about the Pacific languages and cultures as well as practising the new words and phrases that we have learnt on a regular basis.  

Thinking about Compliments

After our discussion around emotions, we decided to get our thinking caps on around compliments.

So, what is a compliment?

Ieni - It's something nice you would say to others to make them happy.

Levi - You can say I like your clothes or your glasses.

Nevaeh - I like how you’ve done your hair today.

Brady - Their accessories they’re wearing.

Riley - Lipstick.

Yoyo - Nice things you can say about people’s bodies and that.

Aria - I like how you’re showing kindness to other people

Jemma - I like your house

Adham - I like how you swim.

Josiah - Compliments mean say sorry and say thank you.

How does it make you feel when someone gives you a compliment?

Jyuvana  - Feels like they’ve made your day.

Nehemiah - Amazing.

Kaiya - Makes your happy bucket filled up.

Sonny - Proud.

Leonie - Grateful.

Blake - Great.

Josiah - Excited and happy.

Jaydi - Grateful and surprised.

Nevaeh - Thoughtful (the person who gave the compliment).

Aria - Leaving a big smile on your face.

We spent some time practising giving others compliments...

What were some compliments that others gave you?

Rocky said he likes how I am kind to people - Adham

Manaia said she loves the way I show caring on the outside and inside. - Jaydi

Adham filled up my bucket by saying i like how you let people join in what you’re saying. - Rocky

Alex said he liked my shoes - Blake

Kaiya said to me and Ocie that she liked our hair - Nevaeh

We discovered that some of us found this task easy and others found it tricky...

I wonder why some people found it easy?

I had people that listened to me and I got ideas from other people. - Devyn

I just looked at them and found out what I should say to them. - Anarah

Compliments are just so nice, I just can’t stop saying them! - Jaydi

Why did some people find it tricky?

Yohannas - Cos like you can’t think of anything about them like what they’re good at and stuff.

Adham - I was so busy listening to them and lost my idea.

Riley - Maybe you’re tired.

Jem - You might not know much about them.

Next we had a game of compliments tag in the sunshine. In order to be freed when you have been tagged, a buddy has to come and give you a compliment. Once you have thanked and high-fived the compliment giver, you are back in the game!

The New Pītau 1

Although we've only been back at school for just over a week we have managed to pack a lot in already! 

As we have moved into a new room this year we first had to spend some time becoming familiar with our new environment. We completed a scavenger hunt to find out where everything was, and learn a little about our new learning spaces. 

Next we began the planning stages of our self portraits which we are hoping to make out of clay and fire them in the kiln. We used mirrors and photos our ourselves and tried to draw accurate sketches. 

We watched a video about revisiting and improving on sketches. So we made multiple attempts to improve on our sketches. 

The video also discussed how peer feedback can help you improve on your work. We got into pairs and gave constructive feedback to our buddies. 

We also created some art around something we had done in the holidays. We shared our work with the group using visual talking prompts. Some of us then constructed some writing about these which you can find on seesaw. 

Keep checking back to find out more about Pītau 1's learning! 

Caring

A few weeks ago, we began our journey around what it means to be Caring.

Caring is one of our Bromley School Values, and is an area that Miss Gardner and Mrs Smith noticed needed some thinking around.

We began by noticing tamariki that were showing Caring in different ways. We celebrated how they were showing this value and began to note them down on Post It notes.

This then turned into the children nominating their peers for being caught Caring throughout the school day.

We talked about 4 main areas within which we could show Caring at school - People, Work, Class and Environment.

One afternoon we split into small teams and brainstormed as many ideas as we could for how we might show our value of Caring within each of the main areas...

During one of our Kiwi Can sessions we looked at goal setting.  This gave the teachers an idea...what if we thought about setting our very own Caring goals?

Whilst brainstorming possible ideas for our goals, we needed to be quite reflective about ourselves and think about an area that suited our individual needs.

Check out what we've decided on...

Pītau 1 had a sneaky peek at how Koru 1 display their goals and saw that they used a continuum to monitor how they are going towards achieving their goals.

We have set up our own continuum and are starting to reflect upon how we are tracking with our goals.

“My goal is to move away when I’m getting distracted.  I put myself on number 3 ‘cos I’m doing it sometimes.”  Jyuvana

“My goal is to put my reading folder in the basket every day.  I’ve put myself on number 3 because I’ve been doing it lots.”  Manaia

“My goal is to use my manners.  I’ve put myself on number 3 because I’ve been showing manners wherever I go.”  Leo

“My goal is to pick up rubbish in the classroom.  I’ve put myself on number 2 because I’m doing it sometimes.”  Kahu

“My goal is to put my reading folder in the right place.  I’ve put myself on 2 because I’m still learning how to do it and sometimes I forget and sometimes I can’t find it.”  Jaydi

“My goal is to move away when someone is annoying me.  I’m still on number 2 because I’ve done it sometimes.  I did some today as well.”  Alex

“My goal is to move away when I’m getting distracted and I’m on 1 because I’m starting to do it.”  Serena

“My goal is to put sheets in my book correctly.  I’m on 3 because I always do it.”  Xavier

Where to next?

We will continue to monitor our goals on a weekly basis - thinking about how we can improve.

We will look into how this value links with some Key Competencies set out in our National Curriculum.

We are looking into 'what makes the perfect friend'.

Exploring Tynker

This week we had a play around with the Tynker app. 

We had to work together we a buddy to complete a number of tasks. It started simple with only one command 'walk' but as we worked through the levels we began to string together more commands to make more complex algorithms. 

This led to us finding a lot of bugs! We needed to work together to figure out where in our algorithm we had made a mistake and debug it. 

Here's what we thought of the new app: 

Bryan - I like how you could long jump and super jump and normal jump to collect the crystals.

Jaydi- The boogie flip and disco was so fun.

Brady - It was challenging not like other games. 

Seb - It was hard because if one wrong move you can get it wrong. 

Oscar - I found it challenging because to try and debug your code and stuff and to get the bugs out was hard. 

Isaac AR - I like the bit with the dancing and i like the quality of it. 

Kaiya - It could be a bit hard with the words and I thought I had it right but I actually had it wrong!

Devyn - I found it easy because you didn’t have to do that much. 

Seb - I like it cos there’s levels and it gets harder as you go along.

Connecting With Our Environment

This week we have had lots of fun connecting our garden inquiry with our reading, writing and mathematics learning. 

Pītau 1 have been very passionate about picking up rubbish around the school. Every morning tea and lunch time there is always a group of children out there collecting rubbish. We decided we have a rubbish problem at Bromley school! 

During Maths this week we took some of this rubbish and began sorting and grouping it. 

Check our our seesaw journals to learn what we discovered! Each group found different ways to sort and we began making statements about the data we had collected. 

An Ideas Mission!

This week we went for a wander down the the Smith Street Community Gardens. As we are looking to redesign our own school garden we were on a mission to discover some great ideas we might be able to reproduce back at school. 

When we arrived we met Willie who looks after things down here. He gave us a tour. 

Click Read more to check out what we saw: