Te Ara Angitu is a group of Year 5 and 6 students at Ara Tū Whakatā Gilberthorpe School in Hei Hei, Ōtautahi, Aotearoa. Welcome to our blog where we share our learning throughout 2022.
You can also see sharing from Rimu and Whakamanawa students from previous years.
To celebrate Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori, for Fun Friday, Miss Cabral and Miss Waho did a Māori Art and Fried Bread activity. Penny had to help Miss Waho out to make the fried bread throughout the day because she's got the skills.
Here are a few photos from the afternoon:
Have you tried fried bread before? If you haven't, you should.
This year to celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, our whole school took part in the Māori Language Moment. This was when we all stopped what we were doing and did something that involved any of the following: ako-learn, whakarongo-listen, kōrero-speak, tākaro-play, pānui-read, waiata-sing.
In Te Ara Takitini, we were in our Numeracy classes so our MLM was done with Numeracy teachers for 15 minutes. In Miss Waho's class, we ended up enjoying it so much that we were able to do something for all areas of focus.
We started by listening and watching the lyric version of Six60's song Pepeha. We talked about what the different kupu mean and made connections with our own pepeha learning.
We then went over how we ask someone how they are and selected three different responses that we could give. We connected with three different people and had a kōrero to see how we were feeling.
Kei te hia kau ahau.
Once we were all warmed up, it was time for us to read. We got out a selection of pukapuka and sat in an oval to have a browse and a read. We have such a good selection so it was great to see what words we recognised and read some texts in Te Reo Māori.
When we were tidying up our books, we learned how to say pass the book and to reply with here is the book. Homai te pukapuka. Anei te pukapuka.
When it was time to tākaro, we had a go at a warm-up from Māori Movement. This was new for us but we loved this and are looking forward to trying out more of these sessions. We can see and feel how good this is for our taha tinana.
For our waiata time, we looked through our waiata anthems slide and akonga chose to sing Aotearoa by Stan Walker, Troy Kingi, Maisey Rika and Ria Hall. This waiata is one of our bell songs at the moment and one of our favourites.
Our whole school participated in the Māori Language Moment this year and have shared our moments in a slide. Check out what else happened around the school:
Today's activities really made us realise that we need more of these moments. It has given us more motivation to be creating opportunities for us all to refresh, learn and grow.
This term we are really lucky to have Miss Cabral from the University of Canterbury. Whakamanawa is always keen to learn new languages and because Miss Cabral is from Brazil, she has started teaching us Portuguese.
Before lockdown, we started learning how to say hello and ask how people are. We also started learning how to respond by saying I am good thank you.
Lockdown has meant that we now need to learn in a different way to when we are at school so Miss Cabral has created a slide to help our language learning.
For week 4, Mrs Ngaata and Miss Waho were continuing with some creativity from Cook Islands Language Week. Students loved making Cook Island ei so we ran this option for Fun Friday again.
To celebrate Cook Islands Language Week, two of our Fun Friday options were based on Cook Islands tivaevae and ei. Miss Waho used paper and stencils to create patterns similar t those used in tivaevae and Mrs Ngaata used straws and crepe paper to create ei.
We enjoyed these activities so much that we are going to have them as a Fun Friday option again.
In term two, for our Visual Art unit, we worked on a Pasifika pattern collaborative artwork. Each of the classes in our learning hub created one that used specific colours that show the colours of that learning space.
We chose green and purple because our two spaces have a splash of those colours on our walls.
We used pastels and had a section of the artwork to colour.
This term, our visual arts focus was on Pasifika designs and the process of making tapa or siapo. Click on the link to our hub Arts page to see what we learned. Takitini Arts Page
We used a template to develop our designs before working with brown paper, black marker and dye. To get inspiration and ideas, we used the resources and displays in our learning space, out Visual Arts unit and the internet.
When we had an idea of what we would do, we started drafting designs on brown paper. We then went over the pencil lines changing the thickness to give different effects. Once we were happy with our designs, we started using yellow and brown dye to colour. We then scrunched up our paper to create a textured cloth look.
Once we had done one design each, we put them together to create a mat. This is now proudly displayed in our learning space.
Our final piece of art displayed in our class.
Our next step: We have created more than one piece each so that we had more opportunities to develop and explore ideas. Our next step is to mount these individually and display so we can have an artwork that we can take home.
This week we had our first session back with Kapa Haka. We decided to have Matua Anton, our Kapa Haka tutor, working with each area of the school to learn and rehearse our class and hub waiata.
Te Ara Takitini got together and we talked about what the waiata means for us as a group of many working collaboratively together.
Here goes a video of where we are at with our waiata at the moment.
In Whakamanawa, we have a great selection of books that teach us about different cultures from around the world. Many of these are about children and tell stories of what life is like for them.
In our Reading Alone time, we had a selection of books laid out for sharing and children could choose to read them.
Here are a few of our students engaged with the books they have chosen.
Our aim is to grow our collection and have regular cultural reading as part of our classroom programme.
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.
