As part of "Kō Wai Tātou" in Social Studies, Year 9 students at Nayland College have been learning how to be good Kaitiaki for our environment.

Students selected from a range of activities including blender bikes, bird spotting with DOC, Lego windfarm city, “Go Fish” native fish card games, aerial and underwater drones, displays of local action – pest control, recycling, plastics etc.

The Kaitiakitanga activities were used as a tool to hook students into learning and thinking about Matauranga Māori concepts and lead onto further learning about Whakapapa and Whanaungatanga - beginning to embed the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum and helping students to build connections to people and place.

Taea Staples, a lead student from Nayland’s Tautīnei (sustinability group), talked to the Year 9 students about further opportunities to get involved in at school – building connections between senior and junior students and looking after our natural environment.

In class students are learning about: Tā moko and its connections with Whanaungatanga and Whakapapa – recording the past and sustaining culture; whakairo (carving) designs and how these record mana and history; tukutuku panels, how they are made and what they represent - the stories they tell. Students researched different tukutuku panels from around New Zealand’s different iwi. They identified common symbols and designs that were repeated across iwi and drew from these designs to create their own mini tukutuku panel. Students continue to see these as symbols of their place and belonging in their classroom and the visual representations create a talking point for other students using this space. 

Seizing this opportunity, the Koha Kai module students also used the blender bikes to create fruit smoothies as part of their learning about food sustainability and carbon footprint.

Students understood they were working hard to do “better for the environment... giving trees pats on the back!” and that by generating their own electricity they could also save power and money. 

A special thanks to Rick Field from Enviroschools for organising the resources. Thanks to Oaklands milk for providing the milk and Connings Food Market for supplying the berries and bananas for the smoothies.