Our Te Waka Dancers Perform at the Cultural Festival

On Friday night our Te Waka Unua Dancers performed as guest groups.

First the Kererū dancers did their Viennese waltz, followed by 'On Fleek' doing their hip-hop routine.

Bird Houses

Bird Houses

Kia ora, in the following bird house “blog post” I will be informing you about how Pīwakawaka Purple & Kererū made these amazing bird houses. The group of children who designed these pictures were Pīwakawaka Purple and Kererū students. In the photos above it shows the teamwork, bonding and hard work it took to make these outstanding creations and personally, I want one! Down below we have some paper scale models that the team made, during the week. Many Te Waka Unua children had a great experience learning and teaching each other. Especially the Seniors who got to be responsible, reliable and most importantly a role model to the younger children. Our school expectations were Right Place, Right Time, Right Thing and with those expectations you will definitely get far in life!

By Joshua K

Right Place, Right Time, Right Thing

Right place, Right time, Right thing.

Last week many students participated in an arts intensive week. Most classes took place in the rap battle which took place on Friday 29th of August just outside of the staffroom. All of the raps were outstanding. The results were drawn on Tuesday the 1st of September; the winning groups are… T2 & Piwakawaka Blue, R5 and some Toroa students and finally Kererū. I would like to congratulate all classes who won the competition and put a huge effort into their work :)
By Kahumiria

On Fleek

The recently formed Te Waka Unua Hip-hop group, 'On Fleek', performed for the first time on Saturday and gained first place in the competition which will give them a place in the finals in Wellington.
Here is their first public performance.

William Pike Challenge

WPC

The William Pike Challenge is on Wednesday 17th June! It will be held at Adrenaline Forest! Make sure you bring a warm jacket, a big lunch and a water bottle. All students are to arrive in appropriate mufti (remember you will be climbing).

Te Waka Unua School Blogging Protocols

Goal: For each team to have a Team Blog where students can post their work to provide the opportunity for authentic audience and purpose for sharing their learning. This will also provide an opportunity for students to have pride in their work.

Blogging Licence: Students will be taught the protocols of blogging and when they have achieved the success criteria they will be awarded their Blogger’s Licence. This will earn them the right to use the Te Waka Unua blogging process to post their work to the team blog.

Team Toroa will design a special Blogging Licence sticker that will attach to their individual Chromebook so it will be easy to see which students have the right to post to the Team blog.

Blogging Ninjas: Each team will identify a group of Blogging Ninjas who are able to support their peers with the blogging process and check that the criteria for posting to the Team blog have been met.

Blogging Protocols:

• Posts do not have to be perfect, but they do need to meet the criteria set out in the rubric
• Posts may be part of a diary of events or a process, not necessarily a completed project or piece of work.
• Language needs to be appropriate for the school setting, ie. would you be happy for MIss Reid to read your post.
• Copyright must not be breached, i.e. all written work must be original, not copied and pasted and images must not be copyright.
• The established success criteria for the piece of work must be met and checked off before it is posted. The success criteria will have been established with the students prior to the learning.
• Images used

- these must not be copyright protected. Students will be encouraged to use images from Creative Commons for images to use from the web.

- If students take photos of other students they must ensure they have the permission of the students in the image/video.

- Before posting students must consider who they would be happy to show the image to. Would Miss Reid, the Principal, be happy to view this image?

- Students must ensure the mana of their peers is protected.

• Students who do not have permission to have their images shared online are to take responsibility for ensuring they are not part of group photos, etc.

Blog Comments:

Students will be taught how to give constructive feedback through blog comments. All comments on blog posts need to meet the following criteria:

• appropriate language must be used, i.e. no put downs, it is posted as a personal response (“I” statement) and the comment is justified, e.g. “I think you have presented your point of view well because …” rather than “Awesome work”.
• Comments must be structured in the following ways:

• “I like the way you … because …”
• It would be interesting to …”
• What would happen if …”
• I agree/disagree because …”
• “I think next time perhaps … because ...”
• “Next time would you consider …”

• students may only post their first name and last initial. No surnames are to be used to protect student identity.

Blogs:

All Team and student blogs must be owned by the school

• Not the child because they are under the legal age
• Not the teacher because after a year the child moves to another teacher

• Students can only post to the blog using their Google Apps login (created by Hapara)
• Under no circumstances may a teacher or student set up a student individual email address using any other email address

Blog Posts:

• In an eLearning session - all students will have been logged on by the teacher and this will be a closely supervised session. The teacher must ensure all are logged out again before leaving
• Using the Data Projector in the classroom - if the teacher sets the blog up on the big screen in the classroom, then everyone is able to keep an eye on what is happening
• A rubric will be created that must be checked by at least one Blogging Ninja before work can be posted.