I am a trained primary school teacher and a current PhD doctoral candidate studying at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. My interest and research work lies in culturally responsive, relevant and safe youth mentoring.
Posts By Yvonne Ualesi
Snapshots of Matariki Week Celebrations!
What a great way to end the term by extending our Matariki Celebrations right through to Book Week. We celebrated by making a class korowai and painted our rākau sticks before playing Mauī, Matau. We made porotiti and most of us either made or tasted rewena bread. In addition to making kites there were plenty of games played including knuckle bones Kōruru and sang waiata E pāpā Waiari playing with ti rakau (short sticks).
It was an enjoyable time of reading Māori Myths and Legends as a syndicate and engaging our creative thinking by innovating on these texts. There were some great arguments written about why Matariki should be celebrated as a public holiday but one of the highlights would have to be the whole school haka!

Class Korowai. Includes individually painted A3 sized feathers showing our painting techniques and smaller feathers embed with our inquiry questions.
Atawhai Syndicate – Migration Topic Study
What a fantastic term of learning we have had so far! The Atawhai Syndicate have been busy bees learning about migration as part of our topic study and we have been fortunate enough to have had two special visitors come in and share their migration stories. Firstly, we had Father Sherwin tell us about his experiences when he first migrated from the Phillipines to New Zealand in 2010. We then had the privilege of having Mr Holt talk to us about his migration story from South Africa in 2005 to Aotearoa. Each visitor shared a wealth of both personal and cultural knowledge where the students were able to ask questions and discover reasons as to why they decided to migrate here. We were also treated to a visit from Frazer of the Auckland Maritime Museum to talk about migratory animals as part of our Science topic. It was a great follow up to our syndicate trip to the Auckland Maritime Museum in Week 5!
The Auckland Maritime Museum | A Recount
”Woohoo!! to the Auckland Maritime Museum we go” That was the sound of chatter from the Atawhai Syndicate last week when we were heading to the Auckland Maritime Museum. Initially we got onto the bus and away we went on an amazing ride. We saw huge places when we were in town. We hopped out of the bus and in our groups we went and stood outside of the Maritime Museum. The museum was very small from the outside! But as soon as we went inside it was like we were in Mr Obama’s White House! Then out came Frazer! He was our guide.
After a 10 minute talk with Frazer we all ate our morning tea, then he told us a bit about how we should treat the Museum and pointed out where things were, that were related to our topic. But the main thing that he told us about were things to do with migration. We then got to walk around with our group. I was in Magnificent Magdalene’s group who is Keesen’s mum! She was an amazing parent helper!
We first started walking around on the bottom floor, we saw different sort of things including, wakas and canoes that our ancestors used to come to New Zealand! The texture of the canoes was quite different from nowadays. The canoes felt bumpy and rough, and most of the canoes were brown. We also had to find certain items from the map. We found four items downstairs and then we got to go upstairs, and we found the rest of the items!
But then at 11:30am everyone had to go back and meet up with Frazer. We went into a sort of movie cinema! It was massive! In the room we watched movies about mythology and how our ancestors travelled to New Zealand.
Finally it was time to go back to school. Then we went on the bus and off we went!
Siotara F Neria Stowers Y6