Mahuri Term 4 Newsletter

Kia ora parents, caregivers and children,

Term 4’s looking like our best yet: Rongoā Māori workshops with Enviroschools Rongoā expert Arihia Latham, Athletics day, the school fair, kids-as-experts-workshops, visiting William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time at the City Gallery (for the Y4s) and creating a shadow pageant, swimming (for the Y3s), a student-led Amazing Race, walks to identify local native plants for Rongoā Māori, Zoo sleepovers, democratic classrooms, making kawakawa balm, walk to Red Rocks, hackschooling, school picnic, percussion jams…!

U-Learn conference

Last week Shanon and Amy A travelled to Rotorua with six other teachers from school for the U-Learn conference. We heard some fantastic international academics and New Zealand practitioners who gave us lots of food for thought that has inspired us to keep developing our teaching and learning practice. In M13 we are looking at how our classroom can be more democratic, handing over as much power as possible to children. Check out the hackschooling TED talk, posted below...

Inquiry: Rongoā Māori

Through the context of Rongoā Māori, we will explore the physical and chemical changes that occur to substances when they are mixed, heated and cooled. We’ll get hands-on, identifying and classifying local native plants, learning about their medicinal uses, and creating our own balms and other kinds of Rongoā Māori medicine. Enviroschools Rongoā expert Arihia Latham will come and run workshops with us in the Learning hub to teach us about Rongoā practices. Our reading and writing programmes will integrate with our Inquiry learning.

Our maths focus areas this term are Number, Problem Solving, Basic Facts, Algebra, and Statistics – probability. In physical education we will focus on athletics.

Music: percussion

We are running a music rotation this term – each class will spend 2 sessions with each teacher in the team, across the term. From rākau to sāsā to Stomp beats, we’ll be drumming and exploring different elements of rhythm, beat, and percussion.

Parent help

If you can support our class programme with either regular or one-off parent help, we’d love to hear from you. Spelling testing and reading with children are particularly useful ways to help. We always welcome parents visiting to read a favourite book or share some knowledge or expertise; even if you’ve already read to the class, we’d love you to come back again!

Home learning

A reminder to return home learning folders to school on Mondays. Each Monday children will bring home a new list of ten spelling words, an updated Reading log (if needed) and basic facts to be learned off by heart during the week.

Dates this term

Tuesday 21 October                         Rongoā Māori workshops in the Learning Hub

Wednesday 22 October                   Whole School Athletics Day at Wakefield Park

Thursday 23 October                       postponement day for Athletics Day
Friday 24 October                            Whole School powhiri, 9.15am

Monday 27 October                          Labour Day

Saturday 1 November                      School Fair

Tuesday 4 November                       M13’s trip to the City Gallery

Wednesday 5 November                 M12’s trip to the City Gallery

Thursday 6 November                     M14’s trip to the City Gallery

Tuesday 11 November                     Southern Zones Athletics

Tuesday 2 December                       Mahuri inquiry exhibition, 9am – 10.30am

Thursday 4 December                     Day walk to Red Rocks

Monday 8 December                       Amazing Race

Wednesday 10 December               M12 & M13’s zoo sleepover

Thursday 11 December                   M11 & M14’s zoo sleepover

Monday 15 December                      Whole School picnic

Tuesday 16 December                     Portfolios come home

Thursday 18 December                   Poroporoaki, last day of school

Thank you for your ongoing support. As always, if there is anything you would like to discuss regarding your child’s learning, please get in touch to make a time to talk.

Ngā mihi,

Shanon, Adele, Ximena and Amy

Hackschooling

a democratic classroom

Created with Padlet

What would you like to learn and practise in maths this term?

To add ideas, double click on the wall and write a question or idea...

Created with Padlet

IBTV #3

Commonwealth Games day - Wednesday 24th September

Dear parents and caregivers,

Next Wednesday we are a having a school Commonwealth Games afternoon from 1.00pm - 3.00pm. We will move around different activity stations across the school together with our buddy class. Each class has been given a different country to represent, and M13’s is SOUTH AFRICA.

Children are encouraged to come dressed in costume, in their country’s colours. We’re really looking forward to a great afternoon!

Nga mihi,

Amy and Megan

Anna Jackson - Island Bay poet

A few weeks ago we read Tuatara by Anna Jackson for our Poem of the Week. 

Tuatara

Anna Jackson

In a country with ridges

up and down its back

lives the tuatara

wearing mountains like the land

moving so slowly

it hardly seems to move at all.

The sun goes whirling

round the world

and winds blow west

and winds blow north

and grasses grow

and trees grow higher

and people come

and they admire

the tuatara sitting still.

It hardly seems to move at all. 

Anna Jackson is a local Island Bay poet, and Paula Green from Poetry Box, a poetry blog for kiwi kids, connected us with Anna so we could interview her by email. She's going to come and visit us at school next term.

Here are our questions and her answers:

Tuatara questions ~ Anna Jackson’s answers

• What's your favourite part of Tuatara?

I think what I like is the way most of it is one long sentence all about the rest of the world moving, then when you get to the tuatara again, the sentence stops.  Then there is just one still sentence at the end, a sentence the same as one before.  This seems like a good way of capturing the stillness of the tuatara, compared to the rest of the world.

• When you were writing it, what was the first image that popped in to your mind?

I think the back of the tuatara looking like mountains. 

• What inspired you to write about a tuatara? Why did you write the Tuatara poem?

I was writing about New Zealand animals and birds.  I have poems about moa, kokako, huia and takahe as well.  I think I like the takahe one best of the bird poems.

• Were you observing hills when you wrote Tuatara?

No, I just thought about them.

• What do you think is the best word you used in Tuatara?

I don’t think any of the words are very special, apart from the word tuatara!  It isn’t about the words, the words are just doing word-work, making us think about the things they refer to. 

• How long does it take to write one poem?

It depends a lot.  Sometimes just a little while, ten minutes maybe?  But often a lot longer, because I keep working away at it and changing the words.  Sometimes I will come back to a bit of poem I started months ago, and turn it into a new poem. 

• What's the most recent poem you've written?

It was one about Susan Sontag, who is an essayist I saw a film about.  She was very frightened of dying and so I wrote about that fear and all the ways we have to not be frightened.  And I thought about my hens and how good they are at just being happy every day and not thinking ahead, so I wrote about them in the poem as well. 

• How long have you been a poet for?  

Since I bought a typewriter when I was twenty-something, so more than twenty years!

• Are your poems/stories sometimes sad?

Yes, sometimes they are sad and sometimes they are about being sad.  One is about being so sad, when the person tries to talk an ocean pours out of her mouth – like crying from your mouth.   One poem I wrote made me cry when I wrote it.  It can be consoling to write a poem when you are sad though.  You might still be sad, but you can still be happy about having written a poem.

• What is the first image that you can think up in your mind? 

I can always think of my hens!  But do you mean a metaphor, or something imagined?  I can imagine the construction cranes I see out of my window nodding their heads up and down and walking across the harbour.

• When did you start writing? What age were you when you started poetry? 

I think when I was at primary school I mostly wrote stories.  But they were short, so you could call them poems.  Some of the poems I write now are like little short stories. 

• Where do you get ideas from? What sort of things inspire your writing?

From talking to people.   I think of things to say, and then some of the things I say in a conversation I turn into a poem.  A lot of people say really clever, funny things all the time, but they don’t write them down to make poems out of them.  Sometimes they turn them into facebook posts instead. 

• Do you edit your work? How many times?

Sometimes a poem comes out right the first time, but sometimes I edit it over and over.

• Where do you live? (I heard that your next-door neighbour is Lucinda!)

We live in Jackson street Island Bay and we are very lucky because we have Isaac and Lucinda for neighbours.  We have an orchard that we share and Lucinda helped plant the trees.  In the weekends when I sit out in the garden, the hens come running up to be with me, and so do Lucinda’s cats, Storm and Cedric.  Then there is a lot of drama, because the cats love chasing the hens, and the hens hate being chased, but they keep coming back because they hope I will feed them, and the cats keep hanging round because they like to be stroked. 

• What do you usually write about: animals, plants and land? 

I more often write about people and the things people say.  One poem is about being an envelope and wondering where I’ll be sent.  One is about walking past a dog and the dog’s sleeping owner, and thinking about how the dog won’t be able to tell the owner about me when I’ve gone.  Some are about going to films, some are about having parties.

• What is your strategy to write such nice and easy poems?

I think anyone can write a nice and easy poem!   One poet I like is Frank O’Hara.  He used to write about things he saw in his lunch breaks.  People said it was too easy so why did he bother?  But his poems are so sweet and funny, all the things he saw and what he thought about them. 

• What makes you happy?

Playing with Lucinda’s  cats and finding bugs for my hens.  Having dinner with my family – my son Johnny is twenty and was living in Auckland but now he has come home and lives with us.  That makes me happy. 

• Do you like writing for children or adults?

I like it when children like the poems I wrote for adults.  I was pleased when I heard about children reading the Pastoral Kitchen book, which is one with a lot of animal poems in.  And I wrote a book called “Catullus for Children” which adults and children read.  It is about primary-school age children.   I don’t write many poems just for children. 

• Do you do anything other than write poems? Are you just a poet or do you have another job?

I do have another job.  I work at the university, writing about books and giving lectures about books. 

• Do you think you will always be a poet? 

Yes!