It’s always great hearing stories about how teachers are using and adapting Sparklers activities for the classroom – we’re great believers that teachers know better than anyone what works best in their class.
An example that we love of this approach in action comes from Meg Fisher, a teacher at Te Akau Ki Pāpāmoa in Tauranga.
Meg focuses on an individual Sparklers activity across a whole week, breaking it down into small, teachable chunks.
For instance, she devoted a week to the theme of ‘compliments' based around Compliment Tag and Compliment Posters.
"On the first day we introduced what compliments were and practiced giving them. The next day we went outside for Compliment Tag and the following day started on Compliment Posters - where they wrote a compliment to themselves and on the final day they wrote compliments on each other’s posters.”
Other weekly themes Meg has focused on include Breathing, Te Whare Tapa Wha and Pink Shirt Day.
“The kids get really excited about doing a theme across the week, which has been really beautiful.”
Meg says that using multiple activities that relate to a theme over a weeklong period is also a great way to get whānau involved.
“It’s a really cool way to share with whānau – often on a Monday we’ll say ‘make sure you go home and tell your parents that we’re staring a conversation about compliments this week' - things can flow on to whānau if you have a theme throughout the week.”
Meg plans to continue using this approach within her classroom and is looking forward to putting this approach into practice this Matariki.
“I imagine we will try to get outside quite a bit and do some of our nature walks, looking at the sky and exploring the environment around us.”
