Orange Day Parade 2015

Today we wore orange and went into town for our annual orange day, road patrol parade.  We marched from the beehive to the town hall. People in offices stared and waved wondering, "what are those strange orange creatures?" It was very orange! 

Orange Day 2015 official movie from Matariki on Vimeo.

Questioning for our research

As part of our inquiry, "who is in our community?" we have been learning about what kind of questions to ask and the need to come back to some of our big inquiry questions:

• Who are the people living in my backyard?  Who is in my community? Where is my community?
• What is community?
• How do I affect my backyard/environment?
• What can I contribute to my backyard/environment/community?

We have learnt the importance of asking green light questions:

Red light questions can be important too: 

We looked at some of the students' trips and did a PMI on how well they linked their interview questions to our big inquiry questions.

We came up with success criteria for asking questions on a trip:

• I have good questions
• I can keep the interviewee talking by asking relevant questions
• My questions are connected (flow)
• I was well organised

Visit to St Aidan's Church: Who is in our community?

Today we went to St Aidan's Church in Miramar and met Rev Tim McKenzie. We found out about how they support their community. We brought along some baking for them to share with the community at the Friday Cafe: 
http://mssanglican.org.nz/wp/friday-cafe/ 

See the movie below:

St Aidan's Church from Matariki on Vimeo.

@kidsedchatnz debate about flags

Today we took part in an education twitter chat. We are learning about debating and how people have different opinions. We also shared some of our own flag designs that we made during the art exhibition. To see the questions that were asked go to the @kidsedchatnz website: 
http://kidsedchatnz.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/w3-nz-flag.html

different opinions.
Kidsedchatnz Flags from Matariki on Vimeo.

We shared our flag designs during the chat

We designed flags during the Art Exhibition

Walking to the church

On Thursday this week  Matariki and Mahutonga  are walking to the St Aidan"s Church.

We are going there to help us investigate our big Inquiry questions.  They are

• What is a community?
• Who are the people/groups in our community that need/support help?
• 

  Whose role is it to care for people in need in our community?

We are looking forward to going to the church so that we can begin to find out about our community and what the church does to help people. We want to take something with us to contribute so we thought that taking some baking for their Friday Cafe would be cool. Somebody else suggested we could take flowers, all good if you have flowers.

Who will bring the nicest cake? Who will cook the champion scones?

We are leaving at 11:40.  Look out for our next report on our visit.

Lala: Film maker- Who is in our community?

Our inquiry is about, “Who is in our community.” We are learning about different people and their stories. Yesterday, Lala came in to talk about her work as a film director for documentaries and told us some stories.

She showed us part of 2 films/ documentaries that she has made. We thought they were very cool and interesting.

Then she told us a story that she and John made when they were young. It was a silly story about how he lost his finger. It made us all chuckle.

Lala told us how she got her interesting name. She was in a big family of 6 siblings. She was the 5th of 6 girls. Her mum did not know what to call her as she had run out of girl’s names. A fijian high chief in the village where she was born suggested that she would name the 6th child if it was a girl. The baby was a girl, she was called Lala after Adi Lala. We asked Lala a bit more about the high chief in an email. Here is her response:

“The chief was Adi Lady Lala Mara - a high chief of the Rewa province. Adi is pounced Andi (with the and i in the Maori pronunciation way) and Adi is the Fijian word for high born chiefly women. And the British gave her the title 'Lady' too. In Fiji if you name someone your name they become your yaca,(pronounced ya-the). Which means namesake but it also becomes special bond like a godparent. So she was my yaca and also officially became my godmother. And in Fiji when I was  kid I was very skinny and white and Fijian people used think it was hilarious to call me Adi Lala because I looked so different from her. So Fijian woman when I was  little and sitting on the bus with Eme my nanny used to squeeze my cheeks and say, "Isa Adi Lala"  and laugh their heads off...Tell everyone to go to Fiji for the holidays it's a pretty cool place.”

After she told us about when she found drawings in a cave on the west coast of New Zealand. They were drawn from  Taipei, the man who stopped the first fight between Maori and captain cook.

She told us we can help her fundraise for her documentaries to go on TV, which would be very cool. We would have to write to NZ on air to convince them to fund the show so that we can watch it on Maori TV. Her new documentary is about writers in New Zealand and will include the writer’s walk.

By Burton and Isaac

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori: Whakapapa

Last week was “Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week)” This also connects with our inquiry, "Who is in our backyard?"

We have been exploring our Whakapapa (genealogy) and learning about their tipuna (ancestors).

Where we come from is important to who we are. 

If you haven't done so please bring these back to school by Tuesday morning.