Our Place: Examining the Evidence

We’ve tracked the history of Our Place from its earliest discovery by Māori, through its past as a pā site and kāinga, and also as part of a farm. This week, our Inquiry arrived at the most recent 125 years. With more families making Worser Bay their homes, it was decided in 1897 that a school should be created. Our school began life in the church hall on what is now Marine Parade, moving up the hill to its current site a year later.

The first intake of children was just 16, with one, industrious female teacher. This made the whole of school quite a lot smaller than Autahi is now. The original school building started off with just two rooms, but more were added as the school grew. By November 1902, the roll had reached 77. It's interesting to note that, when the role reached 80, the school board decided that a married, male principal was required.

The original school building (pictured above) was still in use until 1979, when it was demolished and rebuilt to the current 'child-friendly' (and award-winning) design.

Throughout this Inquiry, we've been trying to keep in mind the role of evidence. How do we know what we think we know? Where does our information come from and what form does it take? Our evidence has included legends, photos, newspaper reports and other written accounts as well as exploring our physical environment.

This week, we've been able to make use of the archive of photos and written memories that we hold at school. Looking at the photos has been particularly rewarding. Could we recognise our school and the places we know? What are the children and teachers wearing? What's the same - and what's different?

We have also welcomed a past Worser Bay student to share his memories - another form of evidence. Jack, our visitor, was at Worser Bay 20 years ago and was here for the school's 100th anniversary.

Autahi and Tautoru teamed up, in small groups, to chat with Jack. We had plenty of questions for him about what the school looked like, what games he played, his teachers, his lunch ... Luckily, Jack was happy to answer them all. Here are some cool tidbits that we learnt from our interviews with Jack.

There were no veggie gardens or outdoor classroom in Jack's day, and the fences were less tall, which made them easier to climb over! There was a wormery, though. "We played outside a lot. We played football (but there was no Discovery Time)... We had rain bells and if it rained, we were herded inside. We were a bit crazy at wet playtime [because there weren't any toys to play with]."

Some people wanted to know if there was a school pet. "There were no pets but a couple of the neighbourhood cats used to come by." This sounds familiar!

Back court was a swimming pool! "The pool was very cold. We went in twice a week in Summer. It didn't have a roof and felt as cold as an iceberg. The pool was filled up with a hose."

Bottom court looked a lot the same. "There was no rock climbing wall. People brought in ramps to skateboard on - but they weren't supposed to!"

Big Kids' and Little Kids' Playgrounds were pretty much the same, too. "Stuff looked older - there's more painted stuff now. It's had a paint job."

Jack was impressed that some of our Junior students can do the monkey bars in Big Kids' playground. "We weren't allowed in Big Kids' Playground until you were in year 4." Jack remembered the fig trees very well - and playing games with the figs. "Our teachers hated it when we threw figs!"

Jack remembered sitting on the mat in Tautoru. At the time, Autahi wasn't a classroom so Tautoru was home to years 1 and 2 together and years 3 and 4. "Our Principal was called Murray. He had a big beard and was the best recorder player. He taught us all the recorder."

Our current crop of Road Patrollers will be interested to know that, "After Road Patrol, in the Winter, you got hot chocolate."

And those questions about lunch? "I didn't have chocolate milk in my lunch, no. I used to have an apple because I didn't like bananas. I think I had two blue lunch boxes and a red one. I often broke them by falling over with them in my bag, which made my Mum cross!"

We hope that Jack enjoyed walking down memory lane with us. We're very grateful for his time and the way he generously shared his memories of our school. It's so fascinating to reflect on what is different - and also, how much hasn't changed at all.

Local Wellington History and Art at the City Gallery

 This week we spent a wonderful time learning about the local history of the sculptures around the waterfront. Claire from the City Art Gallery told us about how artists use shapes to illustrate ideas.

Our first stop was looking at the ferns and shapes of the sphere above the courtyard.

Then we looked at the story behind the maunga and awa on the bridge and the sculptures of the legend of Ngake and Whataitai.

We then went into the gallery to to create our own sculpture using different shapes. 

Next time you go to the city, we can share with you what we've learned.

Learning about Science and our History

We have been behaving like scientists and learning about our past and about how magnets work. Scientists ask questions and collect information, so we have been using different concepts to help us practice these skills.

Science: How do magnets work?

We collected information about what we knew about magnets and generated questions to find out more:

Ximena explained about how magnets work by creating a magnetic current that attracts electrons pointing the same way or repels electrons pointing in the opposite way. We were curious about how different a materials would behave with magnets so carried out experiments and tested different materials.

This is what we found out:

History: Our Place

In addition to our learning about Te Whetūkairangi Pa site, we have been inquiring into what happened to Aotearoa, specifically our schools site after British arrival. We looked at a range of historical sources which showed us that a man named James Worser Hebley lived in what is now Worser Bay, and named the area after himself! 

You can see the historical property he lived in from the look out by our school. Here's a picture of us having a look.

  

The farm that occupied our schools site was called Watt's Farm. We created images of what we thought this farm would have looked like. 

Positive Purpose: Doing Good to Feel Good and Manaakitanga

Positive Purpose is part of our Positive Education curriculum, and Tautoru year threes have been dialling up their Leadership while learning how to "do good to feel good". Science research (Froh et al., 2010 and Post, 2005) shows that altruism and doing acts of kindness benefits our physical and emotional wellbeing, as well as teaches us to contribute to our community in positive ways. 

As part of showing Manaakitanga and Positive Purpose, Year 3s in Tautoru have been teaching playtime games to year twos and ones so that they can join in games, too. They've taught games like The Floor is Lava, Fruit Salad, Fishy Swim, Lava Monster, and Duck, Duck, Goose.

Now everyone can join in different games! We are very proud of how kind and supportive our year threes have been to their younger peers by showing so much Manaakitanga. They have also now chosen different Positive Purpose projects to finish their time in Tautoru with strong Leadership skills. Ka rawe koutou!

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.

Forest Explorers- Science learning outdoors

On Monday we walked to Centennial Reserve to enjoy some learning in the outdoors. We used a lot of Resilience and Perseverance to get there!

At the reserve we practised our scientific skills by using our senses. We did careful observations of what we noticed in the bush. Scientists can tell how healthy the bush is by observing the environment. We listened to the birds to find out if there are lots of birds. Most of us could hear four different bird calls and even some cicadas. Scientists can tell the different types of birds that live in the forest by listening, too.

We built nests with materials and tested them to see if they would work. This was lots of fun and we enjoyed learning about what things birds might be looking for when they try to build their nests.

At school, we wrote about our experiences. Here are a couple of our stories:

I hiked to Centennial Reserve with Tautoru and Autahi. We passed some houses with Halloween decorations and rain started to dribble. When we got there, we put out the tarps and put our bags on them. We said karakia and the ate morning tea. We made some nests out of sticks. I was so excited and happy. It was much quicker to come back. It was still spitting when we were hiking back to Tautoru. We passed more houses with Halloween decorations. By Callum.

On the walk, we saw a bird's nest in a tree. We saw the mummy bird sitting on the tree looking after the eggs. We enjoyed looking at the wetā hotels. Also, there was another bird's nest with no bird and no eggs. When we were walking I felt tired, hot and my feet hurt. We heard the birds chirping as crunched through the leaves. I really liked the walk because we got to go to the forest and get out and about. When we got there, we split into groups and I went with Jess and Hayley. First we built nests out of twigs, leaves and mud. Then we tested them with toy birds.  By Ava-Jean.