Recounting our trip

This week, Autahi went to Ākau Tangi with Tautoru and the year four students. There was lots of learning - and fun - on the day. It was a chance to build our Worser Bay whānau relationships, with students buddying up with people they might not usually work with, supporting each other and making new friends. We worked on being good sports people, using our Strengths of Zest, Perseverance and Teamwork. And, of course, we were coached in some sports skills: gymnastics, netball and all-round ball skills. 

And the learning didn't end there. Real, shared experiences are fertile ground for developing our writing skills. They give us lots to talk about, building rich oral language that we can use in our writing. Our trip also gave us the chance to create a recount text: telling the story of our trip, one event at a time. 

We began on arrival back at school by capturing our four highlights from the trip by drawing them. We asked our students to retell their highlights to us, making sure that they sequenced the events correctly: what came first, next and so on.  

Having captured these ideas while they were fresh, we were able to use our drawings as a guide to writing our recount the next day. We tried to write a sentence to go with each picture.

The plans helped us to include extra details in the recounts, and also make sure that we were telling the story of events in time sequence. With lots to share, many people found that they were able to write more sentences than usual, too. It's exciting to see our writers' skills and independence growing!