Over the past 3 weeks we have had a learning focus around different cultures. First we had Matariki. We celebrated by incorporating making Matariki stars and Matariki kites into our weekly programme through writing and maths. We made the stars and kites and then wrote up instructions of what materials we needed and how to make the stars and kites.
This week it was Cook Island Maōri Language week. We were kindly shared slides from the RTLB cluster 8 with lots of great clips, images and slides on different aspects of the cook islands from their history of the flag, to cultural dances, food, greetings, colours, numbers and much more. we used these slides to learn more over the week and then each student shared what it was that they had found interesting or had wanted to learn to the class. After the sharing the students made slides to put on their personal blogs of what they had enjoyed.
We also had a group of 8 students who wanted to begin their own dance group, after viewing the cook island dances. They are still practising and are hoping to share the dance with the class in the next few weeks, which I will video and add to this post. Once they have perfected their dance they wish to teach the whole class the dance in our 10 minute dance breaks at reading time.
I feel this was a great learning outcome for all students. they had an awesome time learning about the culture of the Cook Islands. Here is the link to all our individual and class blogs.
