Voyage and Discovery: Learn Week 4 Term 2

Friday 28th

We are learning to identify the authors purpose, audience and the point-of-view portrayed by of the text. 

This week we have been reading more texts from Mrs Broadwith Google site on this topic, learning about European's arrival in New Zealand. Two of our texts are non-fiction and provide information on how Captain Cook voyaged around New Zealand, charting the coastline and making contact with Māori. The other is about the same event, but tells us more about the important work Tupaia - Captain Cook's navigator played in the discovery, particularly recording events through pictures and being the  translator with Māori on their arrival.

We also read two fictional narratives. One was called 'Te Taki" and was told from the point of view of a Māori boy seeing Europeans for the first time (and preparing to challenge them), and the second a complementary account of a Scottish boy called John McLay who travelled on the ship Mooltan in 1862 from Scotland to Otago. We found it interesting to think about how different people may have experienced these events.

After reading the texts were were asked to record our understanding of who we thought  the texts were aimed at, what the purpose was, and whose point of view was being represented. 

We completed a synthesis chart to record information. This is Chaucer Groups digital copy:

We have started creating our own timelines and narrating our own stories of our ancestors journeys to New Zealand. Some people like to use paper. Some people prefer to go digital and use google slides. These are examples of Summer's and James's paper timeline, and Paora's digital timeline.

We are really enjoying finding out about who we are and where we come from! Even Mrs B has been researching her family tree.

Voyage and Navigation Inquiry: Learn Week 3 Term 2

Following on from our amazing visit to Waitangi last week, Tui Whanau have been reading more about how people voyaged to New Zealand from different parts of the world.  

Mrs Broadwith create a Google site on this topic for us to access so we can access information about this topic easily.

We read about how many people - both men and women - travelled in large double- hulled waka from places like Polynesia and Micronesia, across oceans to come thousands of kilometres to get here. One of our texts told us about the type of wood these waka were carved from. Another talked about the way the explorers used the ocean currents to navigate their way towards the land. Did you know that the ocean currents change the closer to land they get? They also use the stars in the night sky to navigate their way and stay on course. 

We were learning to identify keywords on the topic and summarise these texts. 

Here is Liam's reading response. Mrs B said this is a good example of a response because he has summarised the text using the keywords and put in enough detail to explain it well, but not so much to make it too long. 

We created word art and word puzzles using the keywords. This is an example of Brooke's Word Art and Jordy's Criss-Cross Puzzle

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We learnt you have to save puzzle maker puzzles carefully or they disappear on you!