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.
