A Day in the Trenches - Anzac Day in the classroom

Little did the students know when they arrived at school on Wednesday, that they were about to be brought to their knees...literally. 

We teachers had transformed Te Waka Ako (our learning space) into an 'Under the Wires' no man's land. We had strung 34 wires (coloured wool) in an interwoven web about 1m off the ground. Each wire was wound around furniture and over obstacles. 

Students were asked to crawl under the wires holding only their Art book, a pen, ruler and a pencil. The day in the trenches had begun. While gunfire and mortar shells were played over a UE Boom, they started their day heads bent, trying to complete a basic facts test....with mixed results!

The teachers were dressed in black with army face paint and armed with nerf guns. Students were warned that if they poked their heads above the wires...they would be shot! This helped to get the creative juices flowing for some very descriptive writing. Fruit break was held under the wires, as was our fitness time...very restrictive planks and stretches.

Throughout the rest of the day the soldiers were released for swimming time (in torrential rain...appropriate) and then a lunch break, where they could stretch their legs. They returned to the trenches for a Gallipoli timeline picture dictation activity and each teacher read an ANZAC story out loud. 

At the end of the day the students crawled into pairs. One student was blindfolded and handed the end of one wire on a popsicle stick. The other partner was then given the task of leading their wounded comrade out of the trenches by following the wire to the end.

After a fantastic day of Anzac activities the students were very happy to get to their feet again (as were the teachers). Please visit their blogs to get their perspective of the day, read some incredible descriptive writing, about their thoughts and feelings of their day in the trenches.

  

Movement Art

 For one of our Visual Art activities we decided to mix together our learning about colour and physical activity. In our colour learning we looked at Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colour wheels. Then we looked at warm and cool colours and created landscapes with the land in warm colours and the sky in cool colours. In our Inquiry we have been looking at Taha Tinana - Physical Wellbeing. This term we focused on different sports and activities that include movement. So we are creating drawings of movement with colour radiating out from hot to really cool. 

First we took photos of people making different movements. Then we drew them in our art books. We had to choose one figure and draw it as a silhouette on a sheet of paper, then draw 8-10 lines around the figure until we reached the end of the page. The figure we are filling in black with vivid, the radiating lines are colour pencil from yellow out to black again. This process is not finished. More photos will be added next week as we complete our art pieces. 

Let's talk politics!

 Last Friday we had a visit from our local MP the Hon Michael Wood. He came to talk to us about New Zealand's government and how it all works. We learnt about the history of the Beehive and Parliament House. Mr Wood showed us a picture of the House of Representatives and where he sat in relation to the other members. He then showed us how many seats each party held and what that means for each party. We learned how new laws were made and why it is so important to have a democracy.

There were lots of questions (including 'does the whip actually have a real whip?') We had our own mock elections last year so we were pretty well informed about how and why New Zealanders should vote. We are fairly certain that in 8-9 years, all of Te Waka Ako will make sure they have their say, on voting day.

A huge thanks to Mr Wood for taking the time to come and visit us.

Family Fun Day

 On Friday the 19th march we had our annual Family Fun Day. This is a fantastic day of water, wheels and FUUUUUNNNN. 

We enjoyed a rotation of 4 activities, which we did in our Houses - Kea (red), Tui (Yellow), Ruru (blue) and Pukeko (green). Everybody dressed in their house colours which made for a very colourful day. 

The rotations were: 

Inflatable obstacle course

Wheels (bikes, scooters, skates and the funbox)

Inflatable waterslide and Pirate Ship

Pool and slip n slide.

Lots of family came and enjoyed watching all of the fun, we even managed to get some adults on the obstacle course. The sun was shining and man it was hot! What a great day. Here is a (quite long) slideshow of the fun we had.

 

WEEK FIVE LOCKDOWN

Instructions for the week. 

 Our 4th Auckland lockdown week ended with our awesome Te Waka Ako Freaky or Fancy google meet, amidst Earthquake and Tsunami warning alarms, as previously shared. It was a very fun meet and start to a more tumultuous day for many others. 

Prior to this our students worked hard to complete four tasks a day and log them onto a slideshow with links to their work. This way teachers and other school staff could mark the different components completed daily. For every completed, or sufficiently attempted task, students gained a house point. Our school is divided into 4 whanau based house groups that are named after NZ birds, are associated with colours and have students from all ages within the school in them. Pride in House Groups is strong so interest in how the groups were tracking was high. 

Students completed the Lockdown Creations slideshow and Lockdown Diary slideshow as depicted in this image. Work was loaded into choice boards and on pages in the Syndicate Site. The slideshows included sections to  reflect and share their experiences.

Our students will be sharing their slideshows on their blogs in Week 6.  Remember these can be accessed on the lefthand side of this blog. Check them out. 

Freaky or Fancy Friday Syndicate Meet

 We have had a very busy week with lots of Lockdown Learning going on. There has been outstanding creativity coming from our students, which has been a pleasure for the teachers to mark. Our class meetings have had the highest attendance we have ever had. Well done Te Waka Ako!

Please visit our students blogs for examples of their fantastic learning - art, science, fitness plans, video tutorials, read alouds, musical items, puppet shows, stop motion to name a few. We are very proud of our learners and the way in which they have kept up their learning and with such enthusiasm.

This morning we had a syndicate meeting where the students could come fancy or freaky. Here are some of our costumes.

2021 Here we go!

 Welcome back to Te Waka Ako's syndicate blog. We are all very happy to be back at school and leaping into a new year of learning. 

We had a lot of fun with bubbles. We had to design a game that would be played using two bubble wands. We then taught our game to another team and vice versa. It was a lot of fun...although the wind had a lot of fun too.

We have hit the ground running with learning all about the Te Tiriti o Waitangi - The Treaty of Waitangi while we work towards developing our own syndicate treaty. Did you know that not all the Rangitira (chiefs) of the iwi across Aotearoa signed the treaty? Some didn't even see it! There are some very important differences between the two versions (English and Te Reo) of the treaty too. Possibly because Henry Williams and his son Edward translated it in just one night! The other reason is because some words like 'Sovereignty' didn't have a direct translation into Te Reo, the closest they could come up with was Kawangatanga, which didn't exactly mean the same thing. In the English text, Māori leaders gave the Queen 'all rights and powers of 'sovereignty' over their land. In the Te Reo text, Māori leaders gave the Queen 'te kawanatanga katoa' the complete government over their land.

It has been very interesting learning about one of the most important events in Aotearoa's history and why is is still so important today.  We can't wait to share with you our finished treaty.