Te Reo Māori

There's a saying in Te Reo Māori which goes: Ko taku reo taku ohooho, ko taku reo taku mapihi mauria. It means "My language is my awakening, my language is the window to my soul." At WBS we want to make sure that staff and students alike are able to learn and grow in their understanding of Māori language and culture. 

Many of us dream of a future where te reo is used more widely in the lives of all Kiwis. We are working towards that future now, with regular Te Reo Māori lessons as part of our programme. 

Here is a recap of some of our learning so far this year:

We can describe giving and receiving objects

We can express how we are feeling

We can express likes/dislikes

We have adopted kīwaha/sayings

We can have short, informal conversations

We can recite our pepeha

This is a mere snapshot of all our reo. All the while we have also been performing kapa haka, learning about Māori history, celebrating Matariki and carrying out tikanga Māori such as pōwhiri, karakia and kōrero paki (storytelling). Mīharo!

Stay tuned as our Te Reo Māori learning for Term 3 kicks in next week. With Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori coming up, it's going to be a big one. Kia kaha te reo Māori. Korero Māori mai!

Global Play Day

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ~ Plato

We celebrated Global Play Day on Friday 9th February. 388, 493 participants took part across the world. Our students enjoyed playing games with each other. It was interesting to see how they used their imaginations to invent new games.

Before we started our students set 2 goals. One was linked to manaakitanga and the other was about creativity.

We also spent time playing with other students across the school.

Find out more: http://www.globalschoolplayday.com/

Basketball

 

 The Trap

 

Nicky Hager's Visit

Nicky Hager's Visit By Gretel

On Wednesday we had Nicky Hager come in and talk to us about what he does as a job and a living. He told us two examples of what he did and then one of what we could do to help.

The first one was about how he helped stop Nuclear Weapons coming in to New Zealand from over in Great Britain and America. Nicky and his friends took little boats out from Worser Bay to try to stop massive warships, as high as a three story building coming into the harbour. This attracted attention from the Newspapers and soon everybody had an opinion on the issue.

His second example was to help save New Zealand's Native forests from getting chopped down. This is also related to the guy who climbed up the Kauri and stayed up there for three days to stop it from being cut down. The whole idea was to get attention so more people would know about it and it would be in the News on the Radio or wherever they would get attention.  This is how ordinary people can bring about change.

He also told us about his work as a writer in which he has to be an ‘Information Detective’, searching for clues in documents in the Parliamentary Library, as much looking for what has been written as for what has been left out.

He suggested that if we felt something was unfair we could take some action too.  That might just involve helping people out, like when we did the baking for the church or just asking good questions which make people think about what is fair.  It’s another type of Manaakitanga.

By Gretel

Nicky Hager from Matariki on Vimeo.

Manaakitanga

We have been learning about Manaakitanga. 

Manaakitanga is derived from two principal words ‘mana’ meaning prestige, status, reputation, self esteem, and aki – shorten version of ‘akiaki’ meaning to lift up, build upon, strengthen. Manaaki is about acknowledging the reputation or status of another or others.

We have been learning about how this links to Matariki.

Created with Padlet

We have also been learning how to say food names in Maori. 

Maori Food from Nicola Stevenson on Vimeo.