Week 6: Assembly on Winter Warmers Friday

This week it was Manukau's turn to host our school assembly. It is a great chance for us to share all the cool things that we have been learning about with our school community. It is also the time where we get to work on our clear speaking and strong voices for our audience. This skill is especially important as we want to share our ideas clearly with audiences of different sizes. Here is the slideshow of the different things we shared. Manukau did a super job.



It was an extra special assembly because it was also a mufti day at school where we all dressed up in our warm winter clothes. The mufti day donations will contribute to our winter warmer hampers this year. Another great example of the citizenship of the Waikowhai students and school community, helping out where we can.  Below you can see us in action in during Jump Jam in our winter warm clothes.

We would love any feedback you have.  Please feel free to leave a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment, maybe ask us more about what we shared in assembly.

Week 5 - Tiritiri Matangi

It has been a very busy week this week.  We were lucky enough to visit the Island of Tiritiri Matangi as part of Inquiry learning this term.  As a syndicate, we have been focusing on animals, curiosity, and how we can make a difference in our own area.  Tiritiri Matangi is pest free and we were really careful to make sure we kept it that way.


Our day at school started extra early (we were there by 7:30 am) to make sure we made it to the ferry.  We then had an hour and a half boat trip before we got to the island.  Once we were there, the volunteer guides took us along the wattle track and we saw heaps of different wildlife, particularly New Zealand birds.  Some of us were even lucky enough to see the endangered Takahe, we saw 3 of them, which is approximately 1% of the world population.



After that we spent time exploring the lighthouse and visitors centre area. Then we had a look at the rockpools before our ferry trip home. It was a great day, answering lots of our questions but sparking many more, the true spirit of curiosity.




To find out more from the perspective of the students please check out our individual blogs on the side of the page.  We also have lots more photos available on our senior syndicate site gallery if you would like to see more.

Week 5: Student led toolkits

Twenty four students from across the three spaces in Te Waka Ako attended the annual Ako Hiko student led toolkits. This year we were luck to be hosted  by Christ the King school.

The student led toolkits is a great day where we get the chance to connect with kids from other schools like us that also use chromebooks for Learning, Creating and Sharing. A toolkits is a session where  children present and learn from each other.  We had two groups of presenters this year. Oscar and Abby showed how we use spheros at school for problem solving and robotics challenges. Anuk and Toby demonstrated how google slides can be used to create animations that are fun and also show our learning.  If you are interested, both of the presentations are displayed below.


It was another really successful day. The students who attended are also going to share the rest of their learning with the syndicate. We have also included a video of photo highlights from the day in the video.

Week 4 Tagul wordclouds

This week we worked on some bullyfree activities to support our learning after the pink shirt mufti day that we had last Friday.

We talked about different emotions we might feel and we watched some videos that talk about how we can deal with bullying situations. One thing that we talked about as a class was that it is really important to be able to share how we are feeling (good or bad) because it means we can reach out for help if we need it.

The learn part of our challenge was to individually come up with at least one emotion for each letter of the alphabet. We listed these in an a-z activity in our language books so they were handed when we started to create.  The a-z is also available here on our syndicate site.  Then, to create we made word clouds in the shapes of emojis to present these emotions.  The site is really easy to use and you can access it here - www.tagul.com.

Below are some examples of our creations, to find out more please check out our individual blogs where people share their own understanding behind the wordclouds.

Week 3 - Visiting Author

This morning Waikowhai Primary was lucky enough to have a visiting author join us for some presentations and workshops. We were privileged to spend time with Des Hunt, an author of 'kiwi stories for kiwi kids' that interweave action, science, and the natural world.

The entire senior school enjoyed the knowledge that Des shared with us.  He started by sharing his background, making a connection with us. Des then cleverly used science concepts, specifically chemistry and physics ideas to illustrate the challenges and successes that he has faced during his writing career.  The way that he approached this problem solving was inspiring and you will see the impact this had on some of us as authors by reading our thoughts on our individual blogs.

Following this, 20 of our senior syndicate students participated in a 90 minute workshop with Des Hunt.  We look forward to the impact that this has on their own writing and the sharing of the learning that they can do with the rest of Te Waka Ako.


We would like to thank Des and his wife Lynne for coming to visit and also Mrs Law and Ms Sands for organising the day. We also have a hot dog sale coming up later in the term that you can support that helps us to get more of these exciting opportunities in school.
Ka kite.