Owairoa is a MITEY school. The Mitey programme helps children build the necessary and age-appropriate skills, knowledge and understanding they need to nurture their own emotional wellbeing and those of others.
Mitey is woven into everyday teaching to spark and stimulate new learning. The Junior school has enjoyed exploring Mitey concepts through Reading (identifying the character’s feelings and how we can relate), Art (creating collages, emotion masks or mood boards), Drama (role playing and creating emotion freeze frames to express strong feelings) and Writing (perspective writing, personal narratives and diary entries).
Last term, the Year 1s explored and shared ideas about relationships with friends. Room 8 thoroughly enjoyed reading The Woolly Bear Caterpillar. In this story, the dull woolly bear caterpillar feels hurt and sad when the bright and colourful sycamore and vapourer caterpillars boast about their own beauty. At the end, the plain woolly bear caterpillar becomes a gorgeous tiger moth while the other caterpillars become plain moths. Some important discussions around kindness and friendship stemmed from this story. The children discussed synonyms for ‘sad’ such as ‘glum, disheartened and heartbroken’ and explored how the main character’s feelings changed from the beginning to the end of the story.
It has been lovely watching our students develop their emotional literacy and show kindness, empathy and respect towards their peers.
