1. Room 13s InquiryJourneyCome share it with us

2. Haka (movie - click at bottom) 3. Citizenship, Culture and Visual Arts 4. Our Cultural Family Room 13 children come from all over theworld and have a variety of cultures. Wecelebrate our differences and are glad thatwe are all unique. Some of us can speak in alanguage other than English. We link ourselves to the following countries,China, South Korea, Philippines, Samoa,Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand,Fiji. Every morning we call the roll in a range ofgreetings. How many languages can you saygood morning in? 5. Our Place in Society Welooked at where we fit into society. We discovered that we are members ofmany groups such as our family, afterschool activities, Willowbank School, EastAuckland, Auckland, North Island, NewZealand, The World. We then listed why each group wasspecial. We found it easy to list lots ofthings for most groups, however findingunique things about East Auckland wasthe trickiest. 6. Roles & Responsibilities We studied some jobs in society andtalked about why they were important tous. We also made lists of what wethought their responsibilities would be. We chose kids, mums, dads, teachers,health professionals, firemen, policemen We realized how important it is to havepeople who will care for us and look afterus. Its what makes our communityspecial 7. NZ a-Thon WillowbankSchool held a NZ a-Thon tohelp us learn more things about thisbeautiful country of ours. Everyone in the school were so excitedand worked hard to uncover the answers. Some of the children in Room 13 evenwon prizes for our efforts Watch out! We would like to quiz ourparents on our open day to see howmuch they know about New Zealand 8. 2011 Rugby World Cup Rugby has always been a favouriteNew Zealand game, and has becomepart of the kiwi culture. This year the Rugby World Cup washeld in our city, our country. There were20 teams that competed and the AllBlacks won! We are now the worldchampions! The All Blacks have the NZ silver fern ontheir jumpers and we used this symbol when we created our calendar art. 9. Indian Culture Oneof our mums came in and showed us a slideshow of all the special things in India. It madesome of us want to visit there one day. She used henna to create a peacock design onMiss Ross arm. It looked beautiful. We thenmade our own using felts Henna is a plant that can be made into a paste.You then use it to create designs on the skin,usually for celebrations. 10. Rangoli Patterns Rangolipatterns are used in the Indian culture during celebrations. They are often placed in an entrance way to welcome others. They are said to bring good luck. 11. Manderin Anotherone of our mums came in and wrote some words in Manderin on the white board for us to learn. Most of us found this fun, but very tricky. Why dont you give it a go. 12. Chinese celebrations Some of our students told us that in China they use lanterns and fans in their celebrations. We decided to create some of our own and had such a wonderful time doing it. We are now experts and will be happy to teach you. 13. Korus Korus are often used in Maori and NZ art.It is spiral shape based on the NZ silverfern. It represents new life and growth Room 13 made some of our own koru art.You can see them around our room. 14. Buddhist Temple Team 1 wanted to learn more about other cultures so we visited the Buddhist Temple. It was so peaceful and had beautiful gardensand lots of bells. We learnt all about Buddah, and our guidesuggested to us that we do good, think goodand say good each day. We had lunch there. Some of us thought wewere eating chicken, but it was actually crispysoy. We felt proud that we had tried somethingnew. When we came back we made some of ourown temples. You can see our photos displayed in our room. 15. Taking Action Our Big Idea Whendeciding on what we could do toshowcase our inquiry journey, we had awalk around the school. We noticedthere wasnt enough childrens art ondisplay, so we made a decision to makesome of our own. We came up with the idea of making tiles.They would represent a piece of culturethat we personally relate to.. 16. Cultural Tiles We first brainstormed all the pieces of art we haddone; korus, chinese writing, silver ferns, kiwis, artfrom NZ a Thon, flags, greetings, rangoli patternsand henna. We then made a pros and cons list of what wouldbe tricky with each design if we were to use apaintbrush. Eg would it hard to paint little stars? We each thought of our own design andpracticed for a few days on paper. We repeatedthe same picture each time to ensure it alwayslooked the same. We decided we would use outside tiles and paintthem and then display them on a wall for visitors tosee somewhere around our school. We couldnt get hold of the tiles we wanted so webrainstormed some new solutions. 17. Making Decisions We decided that we could use materialtiles instead. We ordered in some special fabric andcopied our designs on to the material.We were very careful. We used 2 maincolours for our base. The next day someof us used material felts to draw finerdetail on in a 3rd colour. We used the projector to look at variousways we could display our work andfound a quilt. Miss Ross said she couldsew all our tiles together to make one. 18. Making our tiles 19. More brainstorming &decision making Ournext problem to solve was, how wecould hang our work up in order to displayit. We brainstormed some more ideasand decided to look at some options onthe projector. Our solution was to sew material loops onto the top our quilt and insert a piece ofwood to hold them on to. 20. Our completed work. We love it. 21. Reflection We were happy with our individual designsbut if we did it all over again we would putmore effort into them. Most of us were careful when we used thepaint and paintbrushes so our work turned outwell. Most of us were happy with using material forour tiles. We would still like to use outside tilesone day so lots of visitors get to see our work. We learnt lots about our country and othercultures during this inquiry