Getting to Know Our Cultures

Getting to Know Our Cultures

The beginning of the year is always good for getting to know each other and developing positive relationships.  This year for the first four weeks we worked in home base classes to develop routines, expectations and to get to know each other more.
We then pulled all of this together and had a Cultural Sharing Day.  Students were able to learn about our different cultures and learn more about their classmates.

Students in Whakamanawa worked on a Cultural Sharing slide and then presented these on the big screen to the class.  The engagement and encouragement from students were really lovely to witness.  All students were really focused and full of positive comments and questions during the sharing sessions.  

This is an example of one of the student's slide:

We had a class shared lunch and an afternoon of performances.

We are looking forward to sharing and strengthening our cultural knowledge and understanding throughout the year.

Cool Schools Programme

Training Our Peer Mediators

This year we have joined the Cool Schools Peer Mediators Programme.  We had Tracey from the Peace Foundation come in and train our Years 5 and 6 students who thought they might be interested in being part of this.  

Peer mediators are trained to support other students through conflict.  We are hoping to have our team in action starting in term two and think this will give students empowerment and skills to use in all areas of life.

Sharing Our Cultures

Multicultural Sharing Day 2020

To celebrate the first four weeks of school and getting to know each other, we had a Cultural Sharing Day.  In Whakamanawa, we started the day finishing off some slides that we have been creating.  We then had a sharing session where a few people presented their slides.  This was a really interesting and fun activity.  The food slides made us hungry and the music was engaging and inspiring.

After morning tea, we started to create our own flags to fly at our school parade in the afternoon.  We then started to prepare for our shared lunch.  We started to learn a karakia for kai and talked about the different types of food we had.

Lunchtime was fantastic and we all loved sharing kai and chats together.

After lunch, we got sorted for our school parade and ready to watch students from across the school perform.  The wind was pretty terrible and the Wifi wasn't much help either but when students were performing, they had the audience captivated.

Whakamanawa Expectations

So what do we expect?

This week we looked at and talked about our expectations for how we should act and be within our spaces.  We discussed our school-wide behaviour expectations from 2019 and then worked in groups to determine what we thought was needed for all of us to feel safe, focused, ready to learn and happy here at school.

These are the sheets where we collated our ideas in groups.  

In groups, we shared our ideas.  These were then collated and we created a slide which we later shared with our whole hub.

Our next step is to ensure that we show these expectations and find constructive ways to deal with situations where these expectations have been forgotten.

Chalk Pastel Fun

Our First Fun Friday for 2020

As part of our values programme, we have Fun Friday each week.  Students earn Fish! tickets throughout the week by showing our values of Be There, Make Someone's Day, Play and Choose Your Attitude.

This week, we had our first afternoon of fun activities.

Some students chose to do Chalk Pastel Art with Miss Waho.  Here are some photos of their creations.

We also shared our first pieces of work on our Wall of Frame.

Device Use

Being Device Responsible

Next week we will start using our devices for some parts of our learning.  Today we worked collaboratively to create agreed-upon ways that we need to treat our devices.  We looked at our school-wide expectations doc and discussed each point.  We then went into groups, pairs or worked individually to come up with a set of expectations for our class.

Our expectations chart from 2019

Examples of how we shared ideas

We then created a Google Drawing to create a poster for display in our learning space.

Our next step is to ensure that we all follow these guidelines.

Meeting Margot

Baby Boyd Pays Us A Visit

Last year we said see you soon to Miss Johnstone as she headed off to prepare for the arrival of Baby Boyd.  Lovely little Margot was born on our last day of school in 2019 and this week, we had a lovely surprise.  Miss Johnstone brought Margot in to meet us.  Here are a couple of photos of Whakamanawa, Miss Johnstone and little Margot.