Very Dramatic!

 In preparation for our Joke night, we've been writing scripts, stand up comedy and jokes.  In our scripts we've been learning about setting a scene, choosing a point of concentration, and developing characters.  

We've also been playing drama games and having a go at performing for our class before we take the stage for our families. 

Writing and fine tuning our scripts

Practising on our own and for the teachers and getting some feedback

Having a go on a "stage" in front of the class

It takes a lot of zest, bravery and creativity to come up with some original ideas and then act it out in front of a group of people.  We're certainly honing in on these character strengths and working towards a great performance at our senior joke's night!

Worser Bay Arts Celebration Drama Sketches

Our Arts Celebration sketches movies are ready! 

We focussed on using a big voice, thinking where our feet will be, making big movements and thinking about where the audience's attention should be. 

A big thank you to Anita Rossbach for making this possible!

What does it feel like to lose your place?

This week in Matariki/Māhutonga we took our 'Where we dance' inquiry to the next stage. After starting off the year thinking about what places are special to us, we have now turned our attention to situations where people might be forced to leave their place or share their places with outsiders.

Bobs in front, Bibs in back

Using a mixture of adventure based learning and drama, we placed our learners in a type of social experiment. For the session there were two distinct groups. The Bibs (named for their additional clothing) were a smaller group who controlled the area under the playground and the "money" (flat cones). The more populous group of Bobs resided in middle court where they controlled the all-important resource - water.

The first phase of the game involved trade. As the Bobs were struggling with the logistical nightmare of transporting water downhill in not-so-fit-for-purpose containers, Bibs were doing the sums and calculating the price they were willing to pay for it. While some Bobs felt they weren't getting a fair deal, most were able to make some profit and felt quite content.

First trade contact

"We had so much water, we didn't know what to do with it" - Cruz

"I traded a whole bucket of water and got nothing!" - Matthias

Unfortunately for the Bobs, all good things come to an end. A sudden drought meant the taps went off and the trading arrangements literally dried up. Drought eventually led to destruction, and the Bobs found themselves detained in a small fraction of the space they had before. Bobs had a chance to buy passage to a safer land - Bibland - but there was no guarantee that they or their whānau would successfully make this treacherous journey over and around the playground. Bobs that were unable to negotiate passage were left with no place and no rights.

Bob detainment camp

"When we were detained I knew we had to get out quickly" - Chris

"They had more money AND water than us, but they still didn't let us in!" - Raffy

"If we were real refugees, would they have been so mean to us?" - Greta

The dangerous journey to.... freedom?

"I felt awful when we didn't have enough money to take our whole family. We lost our identity. Next time I'd save some of the water" - Megan

"It was a fun game but I wish we could play again so I could play a less selfish character" - Gina

"What if that was real life? Now I know we should think carefully about how we treat refugees" - Pippa

"I was a Bib but when we weren't letting them in I felt bad because I realised this is what happens in real life" - Mae A

As this was happening, the Bibs were being faced with another dilemma altogether. How did they feel about Bobs coming to inhabit their special place? What role could Bobs fulfil in Bibland? Were there even enough resources to go around?

"Holding on to the rope was hard! I was confused about my job when I got to Bibland" - Taiga

In carrying out this social experiment game, we were able to start weaving together the threads of what we've looked at in inquiry so far this year - special places, places to dream, tūrangawaewae - with real-life situations faced by people around the world. What does it feel like to lose your place? How can we help those who have lost their place? What attitudes do we have towards sharing our places with outsiders?

What similarities can you see between our game and real-life?

Red and Black Warriors: Arts Celebration

We are very proud of our students. The whole show was student led. They wrote all of the songs and raps. They made the music, danced, sang, and all worked hard to put this together. They also added a movie using Green Screen and Garage band. What an amazing show!

Our performance on Thursday night: 

 

Photos from Wednesday night: 

This is our music video we played during the show. 

Red and Black Warriors Movie Trailer

Come and see our music performance tonight and tomorrow evening. The shows kick off at 5.45! 

Drama Detective

Today in drama lesson with Therese, our goal was to be in role as detectives and find out as much as we could about a missing person. We were developing our questioning skills so that we could solve the mystery.

Christmas Talent Competition

Molly, Mia, Nell and Isabel were the judges. We saw each act by act. We judged them on how much courage they had, teamwork, their ideas, their costumes and their performance. All of the performances were awesome. We could only choose one winner from each space.

Autahi

1st place: Zane
2nd place: Charlie
3rd place: Eva

Tautoru

1st place: Coco
2nd place: Marnie, Greta, Rosa and Jasmine
3rd place: Zach, Cooper, Nye and Evan

Mahutonga/ Matariki

1st place: Jessie
2nd place: Edward
3rd place: Ruby

What a great show.

By Nell and Isabel

What a great show!

Celebrating Diwali through drama and designing rangoli patterns

It's the Indian festival of Diwali at the moment. To celebrate, we've been learning about the story behind Diwali, and Rama and Sita's exile from their kingdom and then their return with the help of Hanuman, king of the monkeys. We acted it out and also wrote about some of the main characters in the legend...

           Ravana

His ten heads swinging and snapping, his twenty arms flailing wildly, the demon king launched himself into the battle!  Ten of his twenty glowing red eyes searching for Rama. I need to kill that man he thought. He kept moving though because he knew that if he stopped the monkey army would sooner or later find his weakness.  Suddenly he saw Rama.  He sprinted towards him and started slashing at him with ten sharp swords! Rama responded immediately and with the battle raging around them they fought their own battle.  Ravana fought like, a demon.

By Hugo M

We've also been designing rangoli art to celebrate Diwali. We had to show how we could transform 2D shapes by doing some tessellation, rotation, reflection and translation.


Some of us made videos to show this maths learning instead of art.

The nature of water

We've started conducting some experiments and looking at the nature of matter. Today Gabrielle's base group looked at what the universe is made of - solids, liquids and gases. We focused on water, the only thing that can be all of these and looked at how adding energy, or heat, changes the nature of ice to water to steam.

We talked about how water is made up to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Then, in groups of three, we made ourselves into water molecules and acted out being in a dense solid state (ice), a fluid liquid state (water) and energetic steam. Can you tell which we are in each picture?


The wind was pushing the gas/steam around a lot today!

Anti-bullying week - our actions

Last week we spent a lot of time engaged in thinking about anti-bullying, and did activities to help us develop a better understanding of bullying and what we could do to help others. We particularly focused on how a bystander joining forces with the bullied person can make a huge difference to bullying behaviour - helping the bullied person feel supported and making the bully think twice about their choices.

One of our activities was doing role plays of bullying in small groups and resolving the bullying within the drama. We used a freeze frame and performed our plays to our base group. We also did some action work around being rock (standing strong/kia kaha) and water (going with the flow) and some visual art work about bullying.

This week we have also been doing report writing about bullying using our knowledge from last week. We've been working on using paragraphs where we make a statement, explain our ideas and give an example. Here is some shared writing from Luca, Ollie, Nick, Alex G, Yasmin, Molly and Jessie about some things you can do if you're being bullied:

What to do ?   

There are so many ways you can stop bullying. One strategy you can use is to ask for help. Tell someone like a teacher, an adult, a friend or someone older than you. You could also ignore the bully and walk away to a group of people. You could go with the bullying, have a laugh, and they might stop bullying you.

Maori Rotations - A full day of it

Today we explored Maori cooking, art, dance, singing and drama. Have a look at what we did! 

Maori Fun day from Matariki on Vimeo.

Nicola's Literacy class has been busy!!

This week in Nicola's literacy class we have been super busy! One group has done a play about animals. For spelling we have made silly sentences and drawn our words on the chalkboard.

Some of our sentences: (By Oto and Charlie)

I stoked the bright red fire when we went to the dark forest.

A tall bloke walked past me and shouted, "hi, I like pie".

A have green eggs on toast for my breakfast, what a great start to the day.

A train killed me last Monday morning on the way to school. I was brought back to life by Arthur.

A play about animals from Matariki on Vimeo.

We are learning about dialogue

maori conversations 1

Maori conversations 1 from Matariki on Vimeo.

Queen's Birthday!

Queens Birthday (1) from Matariki on Vimeo.

The Spooky House of Shady Lane

The Spooky House of Shady Lane from Matariki on Vimeo.

The Real Easter Bunny

The real Easter bunny from Nic on Vimeo.

Fabulous New Library Trailer! 2014

Library 2014 from Matariki on Vimeo.

Gullible

Gullible from Matariki on Vimeo.

Blood Thirsty Vampire

Blood Thirsty Vampires from Nicola Stevenson on Vimeo.