Kotahitanga

This term we started off by looking at the value 'Kotahitanga'. We came up with ideas about what it meant and how we could use Kotahitanga at home and at school.

We looked at two whakatauki too. The first one was 'Ma pango, ma whero, ka oti te mahi' and the other was the one in the picture.

This picture is a representation of our class using Kotahitanga to get something completed. We each had to colour in a square of the picture and we had to look carefully at the original picture to make sure that we had similar colours. If we had have tried to colour this each by ourselves it would have taken us a long time. 

Kotahitanga is great for getting anything done quicker!

Māori Language Week

For Māori Language Week 2017 we watched the video 'Say it Tika' made by Voadafone and starring Temuera Morrison. It was to highlight the fact that Google Maps often say our Māori place names incorrectly. We also notice that the place names around our West Coast are regularly said incorrectly so we have created a slideshow showing how to say them correctly. 

We are going to screencastify it at a later date so people can hear the correct pronunciation.

Are the place names in your area pronounced correctly?

Matariki Banners

For our Matariki celebrations this year each class made a Matariki banner. Each class had to choose one of the 9 stars of Matariki to represent on their banner.

We used heavy calico and fabric paints to create them.

They are now hanging up outside at school so everyone can enjoy them. 

Enjoy having a look at them.

Cassidy @ GMS: Awesome Writing

Cassidy @ GMS: Awesome Writing



Check out this Awesome writing from Cassidy! He played the Game of Awesome and used the card he got to make a story. Cassidy also created is own character pictures.



Have a listen to his story!

Property Patrol

It was our to last week to show Kaitiakitanga (Guardianship/caring for our place) by doing Property Patrol.

After morning tea and lunchtime it was our job to pick up any rubbish that had been dropped or had fallen out of people's pockets.

We each got a different area of the school to pick up rubbish in.

This is a picture of the teina who did property patrol all by themselves on Friday while the seniors were at assembly.

Look at all the rubbish we collected after morning tea!

Visit to Scenicland Preschool

On Thursday 1st June, Te Hiringa and some of the other tamariki from the Kapahaka group went to visit the tamariki at Scenicland Preschool.

We sang some waiata (songs) to them and then we sang a waiata with them.

Performing Utaina

Waiting to perform the next waiata

Singing and dancing with the tamariki from the preschool.

School Cross Country

Yesterday we had our school cross country. For our cross country we use the rugby field next to our school and the street around our school as our track.

Our class all participated and this photo shows the people who received placings and made it through to the West Coast Cross Country event!

We are so proud of them!

Book Week Mural

For Book Week we had to choose a story to turn into a mural. We used the legend of the separation of Papatuanuku (Earth Mother) and Ranginui (Sky Father).

We chose three main parts from the story to illustrate.

Book week!

Last week was Book week at our kura. Mrs Costello and her team came up with some awesome activities to do throughout the week.

There were things like guessing how many bookworms were in the jar, bookmark making, a guess who and logo quiz and to finish the week off we had our book character assembly on Friday morning.

Our outfits for Bok Character assembly - Can you guess our characters/books?

PJ with his awesome 'I Spy' book oufit!

Writing without writing!!

Today we visited our whare pukapuka (Library) to do our writing lesson. It was a different writing lesson than usual as we didn't have to write a thing!

We created something called Book Spine Poetry. We chose about 4 or 5 picture books and used their titles to make a poem. It was so easy and a lot of fun. Some of us made 4 or 5 Book Spine poems.

Once we had created them our teacher took a photo of the poem/stack of and emailed it to us.

Searching for books

Royal's Book Spine poem

Joseph and Tearu's Book Spine Poem

Our Schoolkit

We got a Schoolkit set from Warehouse Stationery to complete and send to a class at Balmoral school in Auckland. We had to complete 32 postcards with metaphors about ourselves and we put some poetry on that we had written. We also had to complete a poster about our class/school and community.

We got a set of postcards and a poster back from Balmoral school and we got to read about them.

Writing our metaphors on our cards

Writing the metaphors on the cards

Our completed cards

Reading the cards from the classes at Balmoral School

Reading the cards from the classes at Balmoral School

Maths games - Tuakana/Teina

Today the tuakana buddied up with their teina to play 'Poaka', similar to the maths game Bankrupt. We had to keep track of our dice rolls by recording them on our sheets. The tuakana helped the teina to add their scores up. We got to choose the goal, most of us chose first to 50 or first to 100. If we rolled a 1 we lost all our points for that round!

Interchange

Every week on a Tuesday afternoon, Whaea Katie takes a te reo Maori interchange for other classes in the school. This term she is working with the Totara Hub (Yr 7 and 8) and the topic they are learning about is kai. It means the tamariki in Te Hiringa go to other classes for the afternoon and join in with their peers.

Here are some of the tamariki from our class enjoying discovery time in Rata 2.

Life Education

We have been lucky enough to visit Harold the Giraffe in the Life Education truck this week.

The tuakana have learnt about making decisions and choices and about peer pressure and how people can use tricks to get us to do what they want. We learnt that peer pressure can be good as well as bad and that all our actions have consequences some positive, some negative.

Te Hiringa 2017

Kia ora koutou,

Here is a slideshow introducing our class for the year. The tuakana not only have introduced themselves but also their teina that they have been buddied up with. Our teina are Yr 1-4 tamariki and don't have digital devices.

We are looking forward to an awesome year with heaps of great learning opportunities!