Our Inquiry - Who are We?

 Welcome to 2023 Tautoru whānau! 

We've loved getting to know our new Tautoru students, and creating a kind, caring whānau environment in the classroom. Over the last week we've introduced our Term 1 Inquiry focus: Who are we? With the support of our incredible whānau community we've been learning about the History of our names and what makes our families special and unique. Our tamariki bring such rich cultures and histories and we have learnt so much from each other. Our learnings have ranged from Chinese New Year celebrations, family maple syrup farms to Slovakian traditional dress and dolls. 

Over the next week we will shift our attention to the world map, finding out where we all come from, and how we came together to the beautiful Miramar Peninsula. This learning fits nicely to the New Zealand History Curriculum, particularly the Culture and Identity focus on how "people in our area have come from a variety of places and some retain connections to these places." If you want to know more about our new History Curriculum, check out this link.

Please enjoy these photos from our learnings this week.

Te Whetūkairangi Pā

With it being the 125th (Wow!) Anniversary of Worser Bay School this year, we thought it the perfect time to dive into the history of our place. Knowing the history of the land we stand on is crucial for our tamariki, promoting the idea of something bigger than themselves. To begin this inquiry we created a timeline of what we already know about Aotearoa’s history. Our kids knew a lot more than we thought! They documented influential people and events such as “Mr Cook” and “people fought for more land.” We’re going to be building on this timeline as we progress in our inquiry.

This week, we focused on Te Whetūkairangi Pā, which occupied our school's land from 12-1300 up to the early days of colonisation. Te Whetūkairangi was the principal Pā on the Miramar peninsular, due to its view vantage points and access to resources. We have been investigating what Te Whetūkairangi Pā would have looked like, imagining our school site with plenty of whare, food storage areas, blockades and a large range of natural resources. After exploring our environment and imagining a different time, we have been creating pictures of what Te Whetūkairangi looks like to us.

This inquiry has been a necessary first step in implementing the new, New Zealand Histories Curriculum. We have been focusing on the Understand themes of Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand and Colonisation and settlement have been crucial to Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories for the last 200 years. If you’d like to check out more about the New Zealand Histories curriculum, have a look here.