(Term 1 2017) Camp: Engaging with our Community

This year our senior classes took our classes to have an authentic two night camp on a local marae.  

Students were part of the pōwhiri and welcome onto the marae.  The only other context many of our students had was on the school welcoming groups to special assemblies.   These would often involve the kapa haka group taking the lead with the remainder of the school left to follow along.

To support the children (and me too) to make the most of this fantastic opportunity, in class we learned the vocabulary, completed puzzles to help students remember the order of events.  The team leading the camp were very supportive of schools coming with a low base of marae based learning.

There were teamwork activities involving paddling a waka down rapids in Kawerau, making poi, using a taiaha.  There were games played and links to local history through the carvings in the whare.

My class loved playing Ki-o-rahi.  It was new and fun...and I promised we would play it at school.  So I looked up the rules. Then used a few School Journal articles and had the class figure out how to play at school.  Later we used an opportunity during a persuasive writing unit to write letters to the principal asking him to find some money to fund buying a full kit from online.  And it worked. It was great on a number of levels. The kids valued the experience and made links to their own lives. For kids who had played before they saw that it was cool  - a small yet very direct link to valuing themselves as maori in our class and in our school.

So now this is what I try to do.  Find things that are authentic, great opportunities to create learning.  This is how I try to build cultural competence in my classroom and within the school..