Empathy

We will be looking at empathy this week. In the past few weeks we have touched on individuality and having differing opinions - learning to accept others for who they are and to understand that people may feel differently to us and that's ok. 
This week we will look at what empathy is - understanding feelings from another person's perspective. We touched on that a little when looking at opinions previously. Children were asked, in groups, to imagine they were someone else and to try to put themselves in that person's shoes to imagine what they would be feeling.

I like this definition of empathy:
"Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the "heart" of another."

I think if we can encourage empathy then children will be more able to understand ideas / feelings from others' points of view - and wouldn't that make the world a better place if everyone can be a little more understanding of each other!

They will also have the chance to carry on with their chosen inquiry project looking at the effect changes over time has on people and communities. 

Inquiry

We are delving more into a class inquiry this week - looking at statistics with the bike track, and

how/if this change has affected people in our community.

Inquiry learning is child-centred. Children will learn to ask questions and find answers. A good start for an inquiry is a good question - open-ended (has no right or wrong answer) and higher-order (requires critical thinking, problem-solving and/or transfer of learning).

We have a class inquiry that we are looking at to reinforce the basic skills needed - formulating good questions, researching using reputable sources, recording information /ideas, and finally sharing our findings. This will take us several weeks. Some children may choose to branch off into their own inquiry.

This type of learning is fantastic for our gifted children as it gives them ownership over their learning. Some however will and do struggle with the amount of choice - their minds will see endless possibilities and not know where to start, or they may start and then overthink and doubt their choice of topic.  Some will start one thing and rush it to get on to their next idea. I want to help children to take their time to have more depth to their learning, to push themselves 'beyond the known'. So that is why I am guiding this more at the moment, to build up skills and confidence for those who need it, so that in time they will feel able to make their own choices, and to encourage those fast learners to slow down and delve deeper so that they will learn more and challenge themselves along the way.

PARENT NIGHT:
On Wednesday 5th April 7-8.30pm in the staffroom I will be talking about intensities/ sensitivities/ over-excitabilities in gifted people. I gave this same talk about three-four  years ago so some of you may have heard it before - apologies. It seems like there is a need to understand more about these intensities that so many of our children (and some of us too!) experience. No charge - a chance to come and mingle and chat with other parents as well if you want to stay afterwards.

Changes over time

This week we will be looking at changes to our community over time - how has this and will this affect the people who live in our community?
Children will be asked to predict what changes may happen in the future for a chance to use their imagination.
We will start by looking at the bike track - how has this impacted on people in our community?

If any parents / grandparents have information / photos about our community 50 years ago we would love to hear from you!

Different opinions

This week we are looking at differences of opinions in communities. We will look at ideas from other people's point of view to help us understand others more and hopefully learn some tolerance and acceptance of others.

The year 1&2 group are looking at similarities and differences  with each other, and talking about feelings to try to help them be more understanding of others.

A few lucky year 5&6 children went to the Nanogirl Science Show on Monday - well worth going to if you ever get a chance. Apparently they are hoping to bring a show to the North Shore later in the year. There is a free video of her 2016 show on youtube if anyone is interested  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkInHz4UoFc

Our Community

Our Community - What's important to us

We have started to think about what a community means to us - it is just the people, or the places, activities or a combination? There was a lot of good discussion as children debated various ideas. We began thinking out what is important to us in our school community - what kind of people, places , activities make our school community special for us? What do we value?

This week we will continue this and expand our thinking to our wider community. The aim is for all Quest groups to collaborate to create a video that shows what matters to us in our community.

We will then expand further to look at communities around the world - are they all the same? What are the similarities and differences to our community? This will give students some good lines of inquiry if they wish to look in detail at a part of our community, or further afield and research communities in different countries. Over the coming weeks we will also look at changes over time and see how changes affect our relationships with each other and with our environment in our communities.

Names

For our first week of Quest we thought a bit about ourselves - things that we like, things that are unique about us and things we have in common with others.
We discussed names - where do they come from, what do they mean, how important are they? Some children wrote their names backwards and described that person with an opposite personality to themselves. Some researched name meanings, definitions of name-related words such as nom de plume, pseudonym etc, some created fictitious creatures using their imagination and an unusual name.

On Wednesday we had the excitement of seeing the cycle track being completed outside our window. Adam had the idea to make a time-lapse of the work, so he set up an ipod in the window - thanks for thinking of that Adam! This track was started by a group of year 6 students back in 2013. They started an inquiry into how to improve our school and after much brainstorming, research, surveys and discussions, decided that a cycle track would give children more to do at lunchtimes, as well as encourage road safety and healthy activities. They planned the track over several months with the advice of an engineer from Fulton Hogan who volunteered his time to work with them - thanks Kacha :)

Next week we will be starting to think about what makes a community.

'Introducing' myself

I have known many of you for several years, some I am just getting to know, and some I have yet to meet. As we are focussing on 'connecting' I just wanted to tell you a little about myself so that children and families get to know me a little more.

My name is Debbie Thompson. I have been teaching the gifted and talented enrichment groups since 2010 at Whangaparaoa Primary. I also used to work for the Gifted Education Centre and taught One Day School for 5 years.

I spent my pre-school years in Whangaparaoa, and then my family moved up to Point Wells (near Matakana). I went to Matakana Primary School, and Mahurangi College. I grew up on a market garden next to the sea and have many happy memories of my time there - building huts in the hedges, making wooden contraptions in the shed, helping out picking watermelon, rockmelon, pumpkins, courgettes, tomatoes, strawberries, grapefruit, tangelos etc etc
I lived with my parents and two younger sisters. Mum was a primary school teacher too, and Dad was a quantity surveyor before he decided to give market gardening a go.

I spent many happy holidays at my grandparents' place at Manly Beach. My grandad  was a big part of this community - he started 'peninsula players' theatre group (I helped him when he was working on building the clubrooms at the back of Whangaparaoa Hall - now used by artlab). He was also a councillor, and helped get the leisure centre for our community. He was very involved in Manly sailing club too. My Nana was the practical one who made all his big ideas work!

I first started teaching in 1990! I took a break from teaching after a few years to travel to London, where I lived, worked and travelled around for 6 years with my husband.

I have been married to my lovely husband for 25 years - we met at school! We have two children who are both at Whangaparaoa College, and who both came to Whangaparaoa Primary School. They are teenagers, and are both taller than me! We also have a crazy little dog, two cats, and a turtle.

The things I love most are to read, travel, play board games, walk, spend time with my family.

I really enjoy teaching and love the challenge of trying to encourage curiosity and support interests. I am so lucky because I love to learn, and teaching is a job where you are constantly learning! I am looking forward to another year working with the Quest groups, and getting to know you all a little more.

Please forgive me if I forget names sometimes - it is not a strong point, and something I need to work on, but with so many names and faces from various groups I can sometimes have a momentary memory lapse! I will do my best to work on this :)