Key Competency

Inquiry Taster

You can download the document above for the comprehensive inquiry and context but below is a taster of what it offers.

• Identify age-relevant New Zealand poems; share with students and decide which category/genre that they fit into. Put these examples up on your poetry wall and discuss why they are there.
• Read examples of poetry from the book 1OO New Zealand Poems for Children, edited by, Jo Noble, illustrated by: David Elliot. Identify with a sticker all of the poems about things that you might see on a walk.
• Take a sound walk in the local environment. Record the sounds heard while walking and annotate them, e.g. an unknown person unwrapping a pie from a dairy, traffic noise of engines idling at the traffic lights, a large black dog growling at another dog, feet crunching through dead leaves, a thrush calling in a tree, and make a class list .
• Take photographs on your walk from which you can get students to write.
• Depending on the age/ability of the students, introduce them to similes/metaphors.
• If teaching simile, use the sounds that you collected from your walk as examples, e.g. feet crunching through dead leaves like .........../engines idling like.........../.
• Wikipedia: Search for the definition of ‘simile’ and share with the students.