On Tuesday this week, our kopa had a visit to Owae Marae. We were there to learn all about the live and great deeds of a very important man to New Zealand and especially to us in Waitara: Tā Māui Pōmare. He had great matauranga Māori and then went to become a Dr in the United States. He brought that knowledge back to help everyone here. He became a Member of Parliament.

We got a tour of the marae from Whaene Tiri. She told us all about the different whare at the marae and some of the carvings on the wharenui. The tamariki asked some very thoughtful questions of Whaene Tiri and really listened to the history of the place some had never been to before.

Here are some photos of what we saw and did:

We read a book about an architect – Puffin the Architect. He designs houses.  We thought about our house and what we would design. Then we wrote little stories.

What would you like in your house and why?

Everyday we start maths with a warm-up. Todays warmup asks ‘How Many ?’  Click here  and here

We are practicing to make equal groups, then adding is easier and quicker.

Look at some of our work above. How would you do it? Please share your ideas.

Today, we had the Waimanaaki food truck come and give us a korero about what they do. They also talked to us about staying healthy. We

played games to keep our bodies moving. We learnt about the Whare Tapa Wha and the four pillars of keeping ourselves healthy. Taha Whānau, Taha Tinana, Taha Hinengaro, Taha Wairua. We finished our visit by visiting the food truck, and we had a blueberry and chocolate muffin, watermelon, rock melon and a juice.

Waimanaaki is at our kura every Tuesday from 10-11, offering free kai to our whānau.  Nau mai haere mai e te whānau.



We had such a fantastic trip to Lake Rotokare! Our tamariki have returned to school buzzing and ready to continue their trapping journey. Sharing this experience was incredibly special, and we hope it has ignited a lifelong spark to help preserve our native wildlife and manage pests for years to come.

We hope that you enjoy reading our writing. If you haven’t been to Lake Rotokare, we REALLY recommend that you go. Also, check out our school Facebook page for an awesome video of our day!

We are learning times tables with blocks. We made arrays to match numbers, like 14, 20, 10, 16, 25, 36. Then we wrote the different equations like 4 x 4 = 16. have you used arrays?

Elevating Our Practice with Gemini: Crafting Bespoke Reo Māori Resources

Tēnā koutou katoa,

As a Manaiakalani school, we are consistently encouraged to explore innovative digital tools that enhance our pedagogy and enrich our shared resource portfolios. Recently, I engaged with the Bilingual Gemini Games Toolkit, exploring how we can leverage AI to design interactive, curriculum-aligned games to embed directly into our class sites.

The process is remarkably straightforward, yet highly effective. Even with a foundational prompt, the output is incredibly robust:

The Base Prompt: > “Create a game for my Tau [Year Level] who are focussing on [Learning Intent/Topic].”

Tip: You can easily layer this prompt with deeper specificities—such as particular achievement objectives or localised contexts—to ensure the game is highly intentional and targeted.

Addressing a Resource Gap in Te Reo Māori

As many of us know, sourcing high-quality, interactive Reo Māori digital resources can be a significant challenge—particularly when looking for targeted practice in kupu building, describing words, and complex sentence structures.

I am incredibly excited about this tool because it allows us to bridge that gap, giving us the agency to generate bespoke, culturally responsive resources in seconds.

I highly recommend exploring this toolkit to see how it can support your current planning. Have you experimented with utilizing Gemini to design games for your akonga yet? I would love to hear how it went!

After reading our book about Rabbit who looked for his perfect tomorrow and ended up realising it was his today, we wrote our own stories using Boon Creator about Our Tomorrow. We used our senses to describe the tomorrow we wanted. What would you want your tomorrow to be like? can you use your senses to describe it?

Wolf-Lee’s Tomorrow

Taika’s Tomorrow

Rio’s Tomorrow

Ari’s Tomorrow

Kyfah’s Tomorrow

Kingslee’s Tomorrow

Harlin’s Tomorrow

Kyra’s Tomorrow

Mila’s Tomorrow

Last Week Matua Richard came and we learnt about the importance of worms. We did a little investigation in the school grounds. On the field, Matua dug a small hole and we had to explore the dirt to see how many worms we could find. We used gloves and magnifying glasses. We found 6 worms. They were quite small worms.

Then we went to the school garden and Matua dug some dirt from one of the garden beds.We found 16 worms in the garden sample. Some were big and some were small.   Matua said the soil was very healthy because there were so many worms in a small space.

You may have heard that we’ve been busy trapping pests around our kura!

Here is a timeline of our trapping adventures so far. We will keep adding to this, so stay tuned!

Are you doing any trapping at your house? We would love to hear about your backyard trapping in the comments!

WALT describe the Pukeko in our story.

‘Perky the Pukeko Goes to School’ by Michell Osment.

A school bus has a flat tire and stops by some nosy Pukeko. The tire is fixed and the children travel back to school. Uh oh! Perky’s chick is missing.

This is what we did:-

1- We worked with our reading buddy (Tuakana teina)

2- We thought of words that described Perky to help us write an interesting sentence

3- We told our sentence to our buddy

4- Together we wrote our descriptive sentences. Look below.

Here is a sentence starter for you try, then share your sentence with us.

Pukeko have ….

KO TE TOHU I WAIHOTIA A TE WHITI KO TE RAUKURA KIA WHAKAARO PAI KI NGĀ TANGATA KATOA, AHAKOA KO WAI, AHAKOA NŌ WHEA.

“Goodwill to all mankind”

In Te Mātā Puawaitanga, our tamariki have been exploring meaningful strategies for looking after one another, providing a beautiful foundation for our discussions around Anti-Bullying. At the heart of our learning is our localized raukura value: “Kia whai kororia ki te Atua i runga rawa. Kia maungarongo ki runga ki te whenua. Kia whakaaro pai ki ngā tangata katoa” (Glory to God on high, peace on Earth, and goodwill to all mankind). This is a treasured value that Te Atiawa Iwi has fostered since 1860, passed down from the time of our prophets, Tohu and Te Whiti.

The teaching of “Kia whakaaro pai ki ngā tangata katoa, ahakoa ko wai, ahakoa nō whea” (showing goodwill to all people, no matter who they are or where they come from) aligns perfectly with the Pink Shirt Day message: “Kōrero Mai, Kōrero Atu. Mauri Tū, Mauri Ora.” Together, we have been focusing on the importance of treating everyone with respect, kindness, and consideration. Our goal is to encourage open conversations about how we wish to be treated, empowering our students to speak up confidently and trust those they confide in. Ultimately, we are celebrating our differences, understanding that everyone comes from unique backgrounds and cultures, and embracing that diversity whole-heartedly.

Do you have a whānau, community, individual, school or/and iwi value that aligns with Pink Shirt Day?

Today in Miromiro we wore pink to show that we stand together to stop bullying. We talked about what bullying means and what we will do as a team to stop it.

• Kindness: We use our words to lift people up, not pull them down.

• Inclusion: We are a team, our team is big enough for everyone.

• Being an Upstander: If we see someone being mean, we don’t just watch. We tell a teacher or help the person who is sad.

We also got a close 2nd place for the best dressed class!

Thank you whānau for your support.

This term, our inquiry focuses on native and invasive predators. We have written about two invasive species that harm our native wildlife and are doing our bit at school by setting traps. Did you hear the news? We even trapped a hedgehog this week! You can help us keep our native wildlife safe by trapping at home, too. We would love to hear all about your progress!



We learnt how to drag and drop with our touchpads.

We learnt this by using the polyline and using your tōnui and tōroa fingers to drop and drag.

The challenging part was coloring the words.

A awesome tip to be successful is never give up and keep trying.

Do you know how to use your touchpad too?

Last term we completed our visual pepeha from our Ko Wai Au unit. We focused on learning the school pepeha, then in our Visual art pepeha we drew the maunga, awa, waka, marae and iwi. The tamariki worked hard to complete their art work and Whaea Paula helped a few with theirs.

Last week we completed some Candy Shoe Art after reading a book called Mrs Grindys shoes. Mrs Grindy wanted new shoes, but after trying on lots of shoes she decided she liked her old shoes best!