Today we had a tuakana teina day as the junior school teachers were all taking part in some learning in the whare. A tuakana class teamed up with a teina class and we had a lot of fun supporting each other and learning in different environements throughout the day. Click on the link to check out some of the learning that took place on the day.
Te Manga have been learning about persuasive writing and speeches for the past 5 weeks. Each student has presented a speech to the class which will be posted on their individuals blogs. Today our speech finalists had the opportunity to present their speeches to Sir, Mrs Windleborn, whānau and friends.
Speech Topics
Te Reinga – NZ should be pest free
Shaylyn – What I would do with a billion dollars
Pranshi – My Dream School
Nova – Kids should be allowed to play video games
Indi – I should be Prime Minister
Nathanael – If I was Sir
The speech topics were varied and interesting. Each student presented their speech with enthusiasm, confidence and passion! Sir and Mrs Windleborn had a very difficult decision to make.
1st Place went to Te Reinga, congratulations!
A huge congratulations to all of our speakers today and to all our Te Manga students who worked so hard. We are very proud of all of you!
Click on this link to go to our individual blog links. Each student will have their speech on theor blog by the end of term.
We enjoy Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori is every week in Te Manga. Whaea Jade has been teaching the class the waiata ‘E Minaka Ana’, a beautiful waiata about speaking Te Reo Māori. The class have learnt so quickly, they are learning the actions too. Check out Whaea Jade’s videos of the students learning the waiata.
Every Tuesday, Arlen, Whaea Kiran and two other lovely Te Manga students cook or bake. This term the students have had a chance to make shortbread, popcorn, chocolate cake, nachos, gingerbread men, mince savouries, chocolate crackles, pizzas, muffins and cheese scones. Everyone loves Tuesday’s thanks to Arlen and Whaea Kiran. Thank you to both of you!
Today we went to Lake Gem to plant trees as part of the Dune Lake Restoration Project. This kaupapa aligns with our school values of Porihanga (Community and Partnership) and Kaitiakitanga (Caring for the Environment) as well as our local community curriculum focus.
It was a fabulous effort with 100 students and 20+ whanau helping. We managed to plant 1700 plants and go for a big hikoi around the lake, all before lunch! Our students were marvellous and represented Paparore School beautifully. We have been planting at the lake for years and it was lovely to have one of our former students there as part of the planting crew. We look forward to the next planting opportunity.
Karen Lucich (Summit Forests)
Dune Lakes are threatened habitats and Summit Forest has identified this site as having high conservation and recreation values. Summit aims to plant 1000 eco-source seedlings annually around Arbor Day. Seed is collected and grown by Bushland Trust at Kaitaia Intermediate School. Many schools including Pompallier, Awanui and Oruaiti have been involved over the 12 years this project has been running but Paparore School are kaitiakitanga of this area.
With everyone’s support, this wetland area has made a momentous transition from totally degraded to its now pristine state, providing habitat for threatened birds and plants and feeding clean water into Lake Ngatu. Last year Summit’s paddock to the south of Lake Gem was planted with 700 Pohutukawa seedlings expanding the project by 3 hectares.
Recently Summit Forest has installed new mountain bike access gates. Kaitaia College students are marking out a new recreational loop track to join the existing Lake Gem track through Te Hiku Forest to Te Oneroa-a-Tōhē and to the Lake Ngatu track. We were spoilt by a sunny day for planting on Friday when 1000 seedlings, mostly Kanuka (with some Karaka, Houpara, Manuka, Harakeke, Tī kōuka and Kohekohe) plus an additional 500 Pohutukawa seedlings were planted.
This is a great community effort we can all enjoy, including the birds and fish for many years to come. Thanks for your support to make this happen.
Ruud Kleinpaste is known as The Bugman. He is an expert in environmental education, championing biodiversity and biosecurity and citizen science. Ruud visited our school 10 years ago and wowed the students with all sorts of bug knowledge as well as introducing some very special creepy crawlies. He did exactly the same during our visit today.
We were enthralled to learn how every living thing is important and all living organisms have a job to do. Ruud talked to the students about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, the fact that our everyday garden snails in NZ can be eaten (as in France) and being able to recognise when a weta is giving you a warning! An absolute highlight was meeting Dorothy the Auckland Weta. We all had the pleasure of allowing Dorothy to walk across our hands and what a wonderful feeling it was.
In the afternoon, our class was able to start work with Ruud on a bioblitz of Paparore School. We are looking at the biodiversity within our school grounds using an app called iNaturalist which is free and fun to learn with. Stay tuned to find out what we have and don’t have within our school boundary. We are already looking forward to learning more about biodiversity and the creepy crawlies that are our neighbours at school!
Today was all about PORIHANGA or Community and Partnership.
Our class had a fantastic trip to Mrs Davan’s vegie garden and greenhouse. We learn’t all about germination and propagation. Mrs Davan talked to us about some of her plants that had interesting names such as, ‘Donkey’s Tail, Spider, String of Bananas and Dragon’s Tail.’ She talked to us about how to grow plants from the nodes on plants and variegation (which is when plants have a mutation and the leaves are a different colour). The students asked so many fabulous questions and everyone learnt so much.
Then we went for an adventure on Bostin’s farm with Bostin and his mum Dana as our tour guides. We met all his animals. We started off at the calves while they were having a feed with Bostin’s dad, then we saw some little pigs. After that we went to see the chickens and the noisy rooster before meeting ‘Maverick’, Bostin’s mum’s BIG pet pig. Next on our tour was ‘Rum’ – the Guinea Pig and a beautiful little blue budgie. Everyone was able to have a cuddle with Bostin’s gorgeous guinea pig before we had a look at Bostin’s vegie garden that he has planted and is looking after. The puppies were on our way out so of course we had a closer look!
Lastly we headed up to Sir and Mrs Windleborn’s garden with Julia as our guide. It was so lovely to walk around such a beautiful space and we look forward to visiting their wetland next time.
Thank you so much to Mrs Davan, Bostin and his mum and dad and Sir for allowing us to visit. We all had such a great time. Also a huge thanks to Whaea Kiran, Margy, Jamie and Dylin for supporting us with transport and supervision. We really appreciated it and we hope you come with us again on our next trip. Nga mihi nui!
