Summary of Term 1 2021 in Te Whanau Tutakitanga

 Our adventure as a new Whanau with two permanent teachers, started on Tuesday 2nd February 2021. Whaea Naomi Smith became our new Team Leader on this day, after the whole school welcomed her, and all the children who were starting their first day at Otahuhu Primary School. Whaea Tania gave a karanga which Whaea Naomi responded to. Whaea Meritiana led the school in a rousing haka powhiri. Mr Swann gave a welcome speech, which was reciprocated by a Tongan father who had brought his son on his first day at school. To whakanoa this occasion we all piled into the library room where we had kai with our new whanau, Whaea Naomi and our Senior Leadership team of Mr Swann, Mrs Patel and Whaea Meritiana.

Everyday, we have been lining up at the doors of the wharenui; junior girls in one line, senior and Year 3 girls in another, junior boys in another, and the senior and Year 3 boys in the back. We have been walking into the whare, to sit in our lines before beginning with a karakia, ‘He Honore, He Kororia, Maungarongo ki te mata o te whenua. He whakaaro pai ki nga tangata katoa. Hanga e te Atua, he ngakau hou ki roto ki tena, ki tena o matou. Whakatongia tou wairua tapu; hei awhina, hei tohutohu ki a matou ki roto ki tenei akomanga. Ake, ake, ake. Amine’. Various tamariki have led this karakia before they have led their classmates in the himene ‘Te Aroha and Ka Waiata’. 

We have been learning how to use whakatauki in our everyday lives, as lessons in how to practise our H.E.A.R.T. values. Examples of whakatauki that we have been hearing and saying regularly this term are:

He waka eke noa- referring to us as a whole group striving for the same goals and going together in the same direction, towards achieving great success.

Te ihu o te waka- refers to the person who leads the rest of the group, with a steadfast focus on what lays ahead. This is the person who does not let anything or anyone distract them from their end goal.

Our reading programme has involved the identity of letters and letter sounds; the identity of parts of a book (front cover, title, author, illustrator, spine. We have been reading poems daily. This has allowed us to enjoy repetitive text as well as rhyming words. We have looked for and identified full-stops, speech (talking) marks, commas and question marks. We have also discussed the use of bold type and the way words have been typed for added effect. Whaea Tania has also read us a big book during morning snack eating times. We have so far read ‘The Snake Cake’, ‘A Quilt for Kiri’

Our writing programme has focussed on the recount genre. Room 17 has been writing daily diaries each for 10 minutes. Room 16 has focussed on writing simple sentences, then adding words like ‘and’ and ‘because’. We have written about who our family members are; what our family members like doing with us, how old we are.

Maths learning has involved the use of statistics to find out information about our lives as part of a family and as a class. We have been learning about how to gather data; how to keep a tally chart; then how to record that data in a bar graph. We’ve asked each other who’s the eldest, youngest, only child in their family. We’ve asked each other, who has a birthday in the same month. We’ve also kept a tally about our responses during roll call.

Our Te Reo Maori programme has involved some reading of Maori texts. Then we’ve also been saying our karakia at the beginning and end of each school day. We are also learning to say the school pepeha;and to find our own personal pepeha. We’ve been learning how to say hello to one, two, three or more people; and asking and answering questions about how we are feeling. We have been learning how to talk about who is in our family and who the eldest, youngest, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc children are, in our family.

This past week, we have been practising asking and answering questions about where the egg [Easter] is. We’ve said that the egg is on, under, behind, in front, in, out of the box/table/cup.

We have been creative too. We started by cutting and pasting collages of iconic images and patterns from our cultural and ethnic backgrounds. With paint, we have explored the seven colours of the rainbow and how we can create reflective images of our painting, by painting on one half of our paper then folding the paper to get the mirror image. Next term this activity will be useful in exploring images of a half.

A number of us have had some fun mixing paint colours to come up with completely new and interesting colours.

Most of us have chosen to be in the Maori Cultural Group for the school’s upcoming cultural festival performance. We were asked to come up with hand actions for the song ‘Whiti te Marama’ by Hirini Melbourne. We have also enjoyed creating our own movements, using tititorea and ti rakau. We helped Whaea Naomi cover existing poi with various coloured crepe paper, to represent the colours of the rainbow. We attached coloured feathers to the poi. We’re enjoying sharing our own actions and movements. It is a challenge coordinating our poi so that all the different colours can be seen. Especially since we are all different heights and some of us are still learning how to twirl the poi.

Our few hours before the Easter break have been spent making Easter marshmallow chocolate eggs. Whaea Tania made the marshmallow part by firstly soaking gelatin powder in cold water; then boiling caster sugar in a pot of cold water. Once the caster sugar and water had boiled for a while, the gelatin was added to the pot then left to cool down. Egg moulds were made by pressing the back of a tablespoon into a tray of white flour. The caster sugar and gelatin mix was then spooned into each mould and left to cool and set for one hour. Some of us then spread some melted caramel chocolate onto one marshmallow, before another marshmallow was put on top. This made one egg. We then got a spoon and poured some of the melted Whittaker’s Dark Ghana chocolate over the marshmallow egg and …. VOILA!!! There were some little marshmallows already made, so we took turns to dip these in the chocolate. Some of us licked the last bits of chocolate off the baking paper.

Whaea Tania is looking forward to finding out how the easter eggs tasted.