Otatara Pa

The whole senior school walked down to River Side Park where we visited the pou and ate lunch. Otatara Pa was where the Maori used to fight. Hoani our te reo, teacher took us on a guided walk around the pa. We saw the palisades, and kumara pits.  We learnt lots of information about the pa and Taradale on the way, such as Feint, which when Taraia made some of his mean go down to attack Otatara while his good men went in from the top and captured Hikurangi, the chief.

By Kimberley & Shirley

 

Our Pou / Tutaekuri river

On our walk to Otatara Pa we stopped to eat by our Pou. We learnt that the river Tutaekuri was named the Tutaekuri because a chief who spotted a group of people who looked thin and hungry. He slaughtered their dogs to make food for them to eat.  After they ate they threw the guts of the dogs into the river and from then on it was called Tutaekuri river. We learnt that Tutaekuri means dog guts in Maori.  We looked at the Pau and discovered that the blue and brown on the Pau meant water and land. We also found out that Teari’s mum painted the Pau.

By Isabelle, Humo and Kayla

Bryant House

Last week on Monday we went for a walk to Bryant House, retirement home, to interview them with our questions. We got partnered up with the residents of Bryant House. We asked them our questions some people got lots of answers and some people didn’t get as many. The reason we went was to try and learn more about people living in the Taradale community. When we got back to school we compared the answers to the questions, because we had answered the same questions.

Some examples of the questions and answers are…

Q. What has been your proudest moment and why?

A. Getting married because all of my family was with me.

Q. What changes have you noticed in the world?

A. There was no electricity, telephones and fridges, unlike now.

Near the door there was a box full of chocolate eggs, they have a competition where they have to count them and guess the number of eggs there are. The nearest person who guesses the number of eggs gets all of the eggs. We wished we could enter.  When we left we were given a cold drink of juice.

By Tommy and Pasa

Cotton Ball Catapults

On Monday for maths we made some catapults because we don’t swap on Mondays for maths because we want to work with our class mates and do problem solving together. We used Popsicle sticks, paper clips, rubber bands, plastic cutlery, sellotape and cotton balls. We did a test fire outside room 14 and then it was time to fire. 1^st place was Te-Ahu, Seth and Kairon 2^nd place was Caleb and Ethan and 3^rd was Tahlia, Chloe and Samantha.  On Tuesday we fired it inside we used the same catapult 1^st place was Nick and Justis 2^nd was Caleb and Ethan and 3^rd was Tahlia, Chloe and Samantha. Next week we are starting the focus on problem solving and will rotate around the 4 classes.

By Tommy, Isabel and Isabelle.