Our roller board prints. They were a challenge! But the children loved doing them. Another simple way to easily integrate Te Reo Maori into the classroom..using 'na' instead of 'by'

My daughter Sophia LOVES hearing our Kapa Haka group sing. It probably reminds her of when she was in my tumtum! She had fun eating her kai with them before practise one day. 

Maths problem solving

The children loved doing this problem solving activity. The 3 little mittens lost their kittens. Mother Kitten needs 2 balls of wool to make mittens for each kitten, how many balls does she needs altogether? 

How much money will she need if each ball of wool costs $1? $2?

Sarah, who I job share with took it another step further and said the kittens now lost their buttons, and they had more fun with this.

My Learningville photo's

This was a really cool way to show the diverse cultural heritages we had in our classroom. Saying 'look how far these Learningville Citizens have traveled to learn in our classroom!' made the children laugh.

One of our fun days, riding bikes down to Olympic park. These days are so important to build those deep quality relationships we need with our students!

This is by far my favourite unit I have taught. I think this is because I learnt so much through 'teaching' this unit. It was a technology inquiry unit and once we got our ideas flowing, they took over! This newpaper backed document showed our plan for the whole technological process from the problem to our solution. So much fun and the kids and I were so inspired throughout the whole journey!

I was very lucky to be invited to the lovely New Market Primary school last week to continue our planning mission and our course facilitator Michele joined us for a few hours. Wow, so much information she gave us! I can't wait to take this knowledge and put it into action at my beautiful school. The kids LOVE learning the reo, and it is so important!

They are great girls to work with :)

I have had the privilege of working with the inspirational Michele Coxhead over the past month, over three sessions at Kohia, and then some time at New Market Primary school on building a Te Reo Maori programme in schools. It is an amazing journey we are all on, it was so good to meet other teachers and principals who are as passionate as I am about it.

 I am excited about the next part and have been researching and making resources like crazy! Love it.

My certificates ;)

Te Reo

My biggest passion in education, well, one of my biggest passions, is Te Reo/Tikanga Maori, so there will be lot's of that on my blog.

 Our heritage, our history, and it should be our future too.

On that note, here are some pictures I found on facebook. Pretty useful!

  Right from when I was 13 years old I felt drawn to it the culture and the language. I even arranged a meeting with my school Principal as a 3rd former, and took him my notes on why I should be allowed to study Te Reo Maori through the correspondence school.  

He let me and I loved it.

 I don't know as much as I want to, but I am always learning and REALLY hope to inspire other people, especially our tamariki, to gain a love for it too. I am so lucky that I am at a school which has allowed me to deepen my knowledge and work with the children in this area. I have big hopes for more to come.