Week 6 - A-Z Thinker's Keys and Inquiry Work

Hi everyone,

This term, we have focused our learning on Hauora and healthy communities.  We have been busy thinking about what a community is, what places are important for us in our community and who we see.

Last week we watched a video which helped us learn a bit more about what a community could be.  We then used SOLO hexagons to organise our thinking.   This week, during our big class discussion, Mr Riceman challenged us to come up with a place or person in our community that begins with each letter of the alphabet.  The ideas were flowing and we made it, the most challenging letters were Y (yoga studio), X (X-Ray) and Z (we included the Zoo in our wider Auckland community). We have included a picture of all of our thinking below.

Next, Mr Riceman asked us each to create  something to show each of these letter.  Some of us chose to use our new google drawing skills to create this, while others preferred pen and paper.  These are coming together nicely and there are a few of these below for you to look at.
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Finally, we are using this blog post to share  this learning with you.  Please have a look at our ideas then think, are there any other places that you could add?  What is special to the community you are a part of?

Thanks for reading, we would love some positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback.

Week 6 - Film Making Scripts

This year we are participating in the Ako Hiko Film Festival.  It is the first time that it has happened and we have been having fun starting out the film making process.  We spent some time learning about different film shots and angles and how movie makers use these.
 We then had a go at creating a short film to tell a joke as a way to work on some of these skills.  You can see one of these below.  We still have quite a bit of work to do to perfect our movie making skills.


Our current challenge is to create a script for our movie about change as a group.  We have collaborated on google docs to describe characters, lines, setting and camera shots to help create a successful film.  Here is one example of our scripts.


Check back later to see our finished films.

Week 9 - Our own student led toolkits

On Friday, all of our senior school students were involved in student led toolkits.  Earlier in the term, 24 students from Te Waka Ako attended the cluster toolkits, you can read about these in this post.

Our aim was to bring the learning back from the cluster day and share it with all of the other Year 5s and 6s at our school.  This meant that from 9:15-12:45 students ran and participated in lots of different workshops that help us to use and create in interesting ways.  You can see all of the presentations and the things that the students were involved in on our Toolkits page on our Syndicate Site. We had a great time, found out heaps, made connections with others in our classes and even had the chance to present the learning to our Principal Mrs Peterson too!

Our next step is to share further and wider and we are looking forward to sharing this learning with our families. It is also important for us to think of ways to use these new tools to create digitally with our learning.

If you would like to find out more, or you have any questions about our presentations or our day, please leave a comment.  You could also make connections with the presenters and their blogs too. We would love to hear from you!

Book Week Extravaganza - Week 3

What a busy book week we had last week! Once again our annual book week was a success.  Te Waka Ako went away from our usual programme to immerse ourselves in all things literacy.  It was a special week for us.

Judi Bilcliff (who runs the site rainbow poetry), a visiting author and drama teacher entertained us with a fabulous combined session on Thursday. Lots of us got up, involved and enjoyed listening to her share her hilarious poems with us.


Friday was our dress up day.  The theme was our favourite book character.  From the photos you will see what an awesome bunch we are with most of us getting really dressed up.  Congratulations to Lily from Manukau who was awarded one of the three dress up prizes for senior students in her Mad Hatter costume.


We also had our in class poetry recital competition on Wednesday and the finals on Thursday.  Lily, Amie, Sebastian and Oscar all represented Manukau in the Te Waka Ako (syndicate finals).  The standard of presentations was so high and the seven judges had real difficulty choosing the winners because the quality was so high.  Congratulations to Oscar who came 4th equal to receive a prize, an awesome effort!

Finally, we have created our own rhyming poems, remember to check out our individual blogs for published and illustrated versions of these poems over the next couple of days.  If you would like to find out any more about bookweek please drop us a comment or question below.  We would love to hear from you.