Matariki Art Overload!

One of the things I've missed doing in the last three years before I began my current position, was learning about Matariki with my very own class.  Last year and the year before I got to do a bit with classes I was relieving in.

I've blogged previously about Matariki.

• Matariki - an overview of a unit of work from 2012 when I had a Year 5-8 class.
• Matariki Art from 2016 when I was relieving in a couple of Year 5/6 classes.
• A touch of Matariki for 2017 when I relieved in a Y3/4 last year, which I recently published.

The school I now work at has a dedicated Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori in Week 9 of Term 2, designed to coincide with Matariki.  On the Wednesday we had Matariki workshops.  Our children were put into vertically mixed aged groups (Y1-8) to go around classes to do:

• te reo Maori 
• making rakau
• learning rakau games and songs
• waiata
• making a decorative Matariki karearea kite
• weaving paper Matariki fish.
• those paper plates with wool stars
• a colaborative Matariki mural

But before that day, a whole week before, I started my Matariki art.  Many students from Year 3-8 were off at a sports day, so the remains of two senior classes were distributed between the five junior classes.  So for the afternoon I decided to do art.

My motivation was this photo:

And you can see another variation at this blog post: Matariki Whetu - Stars for Matariki on the blog Nat Gets Nifty.

I simply put some A3 cartridge in a small pile and cut long triangles.  I then demonstrated how to use chalk to draw the initial design and how to use the pastels to get the students motivated.  Then I let them loose.

My next Matariki idea was a gluing activity.  This activity from Room 8 Pinehill School's Matariki Art Work blog post was my inspiration.

So off to David's Emporium I went and I purchased five sheets of different coloured sparkling paper.  I cut these into triangles of various size and put each colour in a different bag.  On the Friday we did this activity, I drew enough stars on black paper with chalk and roughly cut them out.  I emptied each bag into its own tray (thank you Chinese takeaways) and I have some PVA glue ready to go in the smallest deli containers from New World.  I demonstrated how to do this, stipulating that they shouldn't touch the chalk with the sparkly triangles and the sparkly triangles shouldn't touch each other.  My top tip was to start at each of the five tips of the stars before gluing back towards the middle.

Then came Matariki workshop day.  My motivation was Matariki kites and the karearea (aka the New Zealand falcon as seen on the $20 note.

  

I needed to make the activity something that children from NE to Year 8 could do.  Thank you Twinkl for having feather templates!!!  I downloaded those and allowed the students to choose the feathers they wanted to colour in.  I had a lot of colouring pencils which I put out on the trays from the Chinese takeaways and let the kids go for it.  For good measure I put on Hirini Melbourne's classic album He Waiata ma te Katoa as a background.

I was privileged to have two parents come into help me.  They had the job of cutting out the feathers.  And I had the job of gluing the feathers onto the template, which was a very crude bird outline on black A2 paper.  We ended up making two karearea.

I then found two circular Maori themed mandala designs for my a couple of students in my class to colour in for the head.  And then we added a coloured beak.  Alas I forgot to take a photo of this completed in the end.

When my class came back to me after lunch, I got them to explain what they had done in the other classes.  Inspired by what the other teachers had done, I decided I wanted to do some activities again with my own class for our display.  I was sure I could figure out the paper plate activity, but the fish paper weaving required me to get a tutorial from one of my colleagues.

So our first step was to paint the paper for our paper weaving (a great way to use up the paint in my New World deli containers before the term break).  I also gave them bits of sponge to splodge other colours on with and I sprinkled glitter over them.  The idea is to cut them into strips.  I've used the width of a medium width $2 Shop ruler to get a consistent size.

The paper plates are for the stars.  The children coloured them in with crayons and then painted over them with black paint.  Once they were very dry (several days later) we scratched pictures into the paint and I cut seven slits in around the edges of each plates.

I tied the wool on and the kids weave the wool through the slits to get the star shape.  Obviously, they have to do a wee bit of problem solving.  When the first colour ends I tie on another colour.  Our stars are just that little bit different to what they did in the other classes on purpose.

All those painted A3s up above were destined to be our Matariki fish.  I cut out each strip of paper after ruling them all up to the 2.5cm width of a ruler.

Each person needs six strips - three of one colour, three of another colour - as above.  In the pictures below, you will see that we folded each strip in half.

Then the weaving begins.

When we got to this point, I staped the fish.  The teacher I learned this from was using glue sticks, but I found it didn't work and went for the stapler for expediency.

Then I showed the children how to use draw fishy fin shapes on the flappy bits of the weaving and cut it out to get a fishier looking fish.

Eventually I got around to putting up the display....

I forgot to take a photo after I added the fish,  But it looked absolutely awesome - I may be a bit biased though.

ULearn18: Breakout One - Press play with OMGTech!

After a break from ULearn last year, I am back. Welcome to the first blog post for the 2018 ULearn from me!

This workshop is led by Vivian Chandra, aka @vivster81 ("Tech strategist with a feminism angle" according to her Twitter Bio) from OMG Tech, who you can find out more about at https://omgtech.co.nz/

At the 2016 ULearn I went to another Breakout by OMG Tech, which you can read about here: ULearn16: Breakout Five - Hands on science workshop with NanoGirl and OMGTech!

I choose to come to this workshop because of the new Digital Technology Curriculum and needing some inspiration for how to do this with juniors and not a lot of technical/digital equipment.

The Abstract says:
Plato said “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”. We wholeheartedly agree, which is why we're asking you to press play on an exciting afternoon of interactive hands on fun activities. We will show you the digital technologies curriculum for years 0-4, using colourful characters, easy to follow games and fun stories.

Forget stuffy computer science theory, teaching digital technologies can be as easy as making a vegemite sandwich, and as fun as creating pictures. We'll show you how so you can prepare your class for the future.

First take: teaching digital tech is not teaching kids how to type. And it doesn't necessarily mean being online. It is about fostering creativity.

The first activity involved six people negotiating a maze of arrow with a card each.  They each started sitting in a chair at one end of the room with cards with numbers on them.  When they stood, they followed the arrow in front of them to get to a cross.  At each cross they compared the number on their card with the person they met and then followed the appropriate arrow. At the other end was a chair for each person. When they sat down the numbers were in order, smallest to largest.

Making a sandwich is an example of doing tech offline.

The children give instructions to the teacher  - each instruction is a "code" and the teacher can not do anything unless the "code" is "programmed" by the students.  See this video below for an example:

Off to Mars! was the next activity. Also an offline activity, it involved a chessboard and three objects (in this case a miniture Eiffel Tower, a martian and Jabba the Hutt) and arrow cards to manouvre the objects around the chess board.

Hour of Code is an introduction to coding. It is an hour of coding time, not necessarily with devices, where children are exploring computer science. It does not necessarily involve reading. Scratch Junior is available on i-Pads and Android tablets and can be used on the most up-to-date touch screen Chromebooks

Hello Ruby - books by Linda Liukas and her website: https://www.helloruby.com/play

This is not about giving teachers 15 unit plans that they need to know off heart. It is about learning and exploring with our learners.

OMG Tech! will come to your school to do PLD with teachers and to work with children.  You can find out more about that via their website (link at the top of the page).  Viv also talked about the government paying for PLD for the Digital Technology Curriculum in 2018 and 2019 that schools can apply for.

Invitation to Create - a new addition to my Reading Tumble

This year is my first full year teaching juniors with having a Year 2/3 class.  It has meant I've had to adjust and modify my programmes to cater for the fact these children are so much younger than I've had previously.

One idea that could my eye on Pinterest is "invitation to create" and the Reggio Emilio activity "loose parts play" and "tinker trays".  See these screen shots from Pinterest below to see some of the inspiration.

So I decided to combine these ideas into my version of Invitation to Create for my Reading Tumble.  The purpose was for the students to be creative and challenged.  To learn more about how the Reading Tumble works, click here to go to the post where I explicitly explain how it works.

The next fun part of collecting items that can be reused for different projects and mixed and matched.  And every teacher knows that your first port of call are $2 shops.... and I am trawling through them all!

I already had straws and coloured ice block sticks and match sticks and colourful buttons, but I went hunting for more buttons, coloured glass beads and stones and bottle lids.

The first challenge I set my students was for Anzac Day, to make poppies.

On the lid I stuck these instructions.  The children are also challenged to post their creations on Seesaw (which our school has gone all out on this year) so there is a record of their creations.  Below are some examples of the photos posted on Seesaw by the children with their interpretation of an Anzac poppy.

I've also decided this can be used for my Maths Tumble.  So the first challenge is to create algebraic patterns.  I'll blog about the maths aspect in another blog later in the year.

To give them a space to create within, I went to The Warehouse and purchased A4 photo frames at $2 each.  I removed the glass and replaced it with stiff black paper to be the backdrop.

Then I had to sell it to the students.  It was not a hard sell.  The children love this activity and the parents have responded with lovely comments on the Seesaw posts to their creativity.

After six days of doing the Reading Tumble rotations I did decide to change the challenge though.  Sticking to the Anzac theme, I asked them to do soldier medals.... but many are confused with medals from the Commonwealth Games... so we've had a few interesting pictures.

I also changed some of the materials in there.... but this is what it looks like when children don't put things back in an orderly fashion!!

And here are their interpretations of an Anzac medal....

As we moved into our Matariki theme, I changed the challenge to a planet.

And here are the children's interpretations of their own planet....

And then it changed to a constellation of stars.  And this was their interpretations of their own invented constellations and them copying one off the wall....

What I really love about this activity is that I can change materials in and out, the materials can be used in a variety of ways, they can create many new masterpieces but the materials can be repeatedly used and it unlocks their creativity.  I've also learned to not have it too often, otherwise the novelty wears off, so it is one of fifteen slots in my Tumble and I need to change the theme after they have all had two attempts at the challenge.

For this term (and maybe into the next) I have already brainstormed some Invitation To Create activities as you can see below:

And here is one I am planning for maths to incorporate our Lego into learning.

I will blog about how these challenges have gone later in the year to evaluate the whole of Invitation To Create in my Reading Tumble.