Matua Rihara

Turning Room 9 into a Native School

We've turned Room 9 into Tahiti. We built whare from wood, that we chopped ourselves, searched for and grew our own food. It was getting crowded in Tahiti so we built a waka and sailed to Aotearoa. Aniket was the chief, Ahmed was the priest and navigator. There were also warriors, gardeners and babysitters and babies and lots of rowers. 

We made it to New Zealand and set up a new village. Then more people came to New Zealand and set up the Native Department. They said we have to speak English. And we said we don't want to but they forced us to. We had to give up some of our land  to build our school.

Then we had a very special visitor to our class. His name was Matua Rihara and he taught us for the morning block. Because we really know how to speak English Matua Rihara only spoke in Maori. This was so that we could feel what it was like to not understand what the teacher was saying. Aniket, Zahaad and Micheele remember what it was like to be at school and not understand the teacher.

 

This is us waiting for Matua Rihara. We had to line up in three straight lines. He used a big ruler to get us to move.

He put five lines of seats and we had to say a long karakia and repeat what he was saying a lot

Matua Rihara made us say a poem about a dog and a person. He was scary, and he looked like Harry Potter with the cloak and glasses he had on. 

What we learnt from Matua Rihara's visit:
More te reo- a poem, how to count in Maori
That speaking Maori is hard
Native school was not good, because it was very hard

How we felt when we were at Native School:
Sad because you could only do what you were told, which is boring
Controlled because we had to give upo our land

Matua Rihara was also funny because he was so different from our teachers.

We are learning to think critically by looking into NZ history and thinking about both sides of the story.