Every day at MindPlus is different, but each one is carefully planned by our specialist teachers to allow our students to explore:
big thinking (conceptual development)
their own strengths (talent development) and
the executive functioning, social & emotional, and self-advocacy skills they need to thrive (skills development).
Check out the world of MindPlus
It can be fast and furious - but also focused and reflective. Our MindPlus students and teachers work hard to make the most of every day. Have a look at some different MindPlus days from around our units.
Maths is in everything!
We had lots of fun with Jackie learning how to sign about weather this morning.
She taught us lots of interesting words and phrases that we can keep practicing. Once again, Jackie was amazed at how many words, and the kinds of words, our ākonga wanted to sign. Each week, no matter the topic we are learning about, she has expressed how quick and how deep the minds are in this group of youngsters.
We had another quick session with Bobbie in the cafetaria next to our classroom, where she showed us how much science and maths in involved in making coffee. Bobbie was really impressed with how quickly our ākonga understood that if there is too much coffee coming through, the beans were ground too coarsely and need to be finer, and if not enough coffee comes through, it is too fine and needs to be coarser. There was much interest in this little test, and debate about whether it is wasteful because the tested extractions are poured out, or whether it is worth it to waste a few shots to make sure the coffee is good for the rest of the day. At one stage I asked the ākonga if they knew there was so much maths involved in making coffee, and Nathan immediately said, "Well I'm not surprised, because maths is in everything! It's all around us!"
Personal development
One of the favourite activities today was based on a discussion about what we would be in charge of if we each had a "remote control for life". After the discussion about all the useful and fun things we could control, I wrote some of the things they wanted to control on paper and spread them around the room. Ākonga then moved around the room talking and thinking about ways we can actually have some control over these issues, writing their thoughts on post it notes and attaching them to the posters.
This led to some quite deep discussions, for example for the idea "have more friends" we talked about how much we could or should change about ourselves in order to make new friends.
Fizz Buzz and cryptics
We welcomed a cool new member of our happy band, Josh, who has learned so much about us very quickly. That's the joy of our like minds!
We began our day with Fizz, Buzz, Bang our maths game ( which secretly also helps us to work on our concentration skills) and our cryptic crossword clues:
Today was homophones...try this one Take bites noisily (6).
Can you find a word that means 'take' which sounds like a word that means 'bites'?
Our Like-Minded work today was a huge success. We had four possible activities to help us identify like-minded people. We worked on quizzes, flow charts and invented a new game that other 'dungeons and dragoners' would enjoy ( called caverns and taverns). The Kahoots that emerged caused lots of laughter and just a few arguments on the 'best' Star Wars movie, Marvel heroes and whether seals are better than penguins ( they aren't)
Talent development today saw the questers continuing on their adventure with their amazing Dungeon master.
They are learning so much about communication, critical thinking and working collaboratively. The rest of the class worked on their coding, maths badge and some incredible drawing.
We finished up the day with a discussion about sleep patterns and how they fit into our rules about patterns.
Decent sleep patterns promote survivability and strength, they can be natural ( animals) or influenced by man (humans) and they are predictable. We discussed what influences these patterns- our environment, our state of mind, our eating habits, and device use close to bedtime. And we came up with some choices we might make to alter these patterns for those of us who struggle.
A regular bedtime, limiting devices, even removing devices from the bedroom (Cass was none too happy about that one), and using an eye mask. Quieting the mind by reading a less stimulating book, or listening to an audiobook might help. We even talked about trying to reduce our stresses, and the things weighing on our minds by talking about them. Hopefully, they will try to put some of these into practice over the next week.
Who's coming to dinner?
After two weeks out of the classroom due to a trip and public holiday, we got stuck back into our proper programme. The two-week break was enough for some of us to forget just how much thinking goes on at MindPlus and by the end of the day some of us had ' tired brains.'
In Personal Development we continued to investigate like minds.
Today we had fun planning a like-minded dinner party. Each of us selected one guest to invite to dinner. We didn't really finalise our seating plan, but the intense and robust discussion was respectful and kind and provided an authentic way to discuss like minds.
In Concept Development we continued our work on cultural patterns in visual art.
We ' zoomed in' ( looked at in-depth) on a variety of different patterns and came up with rules for each of the patterns. We then had a go at creating some patterns of our own. We focussed on Kowhaiwhai patterns, using these to tell a personal story. Some chose to tell their life story using Kowhaiwhai while others selected a key event from their lives and used kowhaiwhai patterns to symbolise this. The level of focus was impressive and I am looking forward to next week when we complete our artworks by adding colour.
In Talent Development everyone was once again busy working on their personal projects.
Shout out today to Jacob who penned the lyrics for a piece of digital music that he has created, to James and Molly for intense focus on their photography and to Will for furthering his study on the Stock Market. I am impressed every week by how much passion the students have for their chosen topics. Keep it up team!
Finally I'd like to share two questions for you to ponder. These really got us going today!
Is the hole in the donut part of the donut?
If you swapped brains with someone...Are YOU where your body is, or where your brain is?
The Power of Influence.. And Finishing Well
We began with exploring the marriage of music and art. Does this union increase the power to influence or do the partners distract from each other? We looked at how AI creates music to represent artwork using a couple of Art and Culture games from Google and we looked briefly at videos of the work of Kandinsky set to music.
In our work on Executive Functioning we considered 'finishing well' and 'continuing the momentum into the next task.' For once we are able to trick our brain by finishing something, no matter how small, for a quick burst of the feel good chemical dopamine. For some it could be completing Wordle, emptying the dishwasher or completing a quick maze with the non dominant hand. Crossing a small thing off the top of the to do list can give you the boost you need to keep going to the next thing.
In our work on Emotions we revisited an earlier activity where we paired big emotions with colours, shapes and animals. By exploring the language of the discipline , in this case a A-Z of complex emotions, paired with matching animals, we can deepen our understanding of how we feel and therefore have more tools to communicate. I have asked the students to try to create a poem in the style of the Emotional Menagerie, to identify, describe, explain their chosen emotion, and then to discuss how they can effectively 'flip it' or 'use it' to their advantage. AS a crescendo to this particular area of study I am so looking forward to seeing the results.
Stickability
The Tuesday Crew notched up a successful MindPlus day today. The group has really gelled and are very respectful of one another.
For Learning Processes we continued with our unit of learning on Executive functioning. This week we focussed on energy; in particular Stickability. We discussed what stickability meant to us and it was great to see everyone feeling comfortable enough to share some personal examples. We followed this up with a couple of fun activities that required us to demonstrate stickability in order to see them through.
In Personal Development we continued with our unit of learning on Emotions. Today we moved on to investigating what happens when we get emotions wrong. Those times when our brains allow us to think in a way that results in unneeded/ unwanted emotions. Ask your child to discuss the thinking errors that we can all be guilty of, with you.
In Concept Development we dug deeper into our unit based around the idea that ‘ with great power comes great responsibility’ . We continued to work on our activity based around inventing a powerful tool or system that needs rules and understandings put in place in order to ensure that great power is harnessed and used appropriately. It is great to see everyone being able to identify links between power and responsibility as well as being able to connect their own thinking to some of our big ideas about power.
We finished our day with Talent Development with everyone spending time on their personal talent projects. A calm and focussed session.