Exploring the Story of Aoraki and our Kāhui Resource
This resource, and our others, were developed to support school, Kāhui, Ministry and wider aims for honoring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This article reflects on how well elements of the resource were woven through the curriculum in my teaching.
Karakia - to start with one of the most important parts of being in a Catholic school, here's how we used karakia from the resource. We used the ‘make a prayer’ style template in the resource every morning for a couple of prayers of petition and students got really familiar with saying the prayers. The next step is getting all students to easily understand each possible prayer that could be made and to really think about making relevant prayers to what is happening in their world.
Science - We have explored geology and the formation of mountains using great GNS science lessons, the Connected series of books, and lots more. We also looked at the important areas around the South Island for mahinga kai. This helped students grow knowledge of what is actually on Te Waka o Aoraki and connect that to relevant kaupapa Māori, kaitiakitanga, and the living world science strand. (read another article about our mahinga kai focus here)
Te Reo - This term we have looked more at translating each simple sentence of the te reo version 1 text from the resource. My Yr 3-5s know the story well, confidence with pronunciation and sentence structure is also improving. St Anne's also had a school wide 'Manu Kōrero' competition to retell stories in Te Reo or English. Next we’ll look at more opportunities to make their own similar sentences with the ‘Ka …’ sentence structure.
Art - Room 5 looked at what landscapes are found in Te Waka o Aoraki. We used the waka template from the resource to make a landscape in the shape of a waka. We would love to partner with a high school art department in the future to access more sophisticated facilities for mediums like printmaking.
The connections seemed endless when we started looking into elements of the story.
