Te Rangihakahaka

Let the storytelling begin...
Last term we participated in Te Rangihakahaka, a professional development program to help Rotorua teachers become more familiar with and connected to the stories of Rotorua. During our Marae stay at Ohinemutu we learned and reheard the stories of Tamatekapua, Ngatiroirangi, Ihenga, Rangitihi and more.
I understood the value in these stories as a way to connect to this place I grew up in - Rotorua, and decided that the best way to confirm my own learning was to pass it on as soon as possible.


This week I became a storyteller - not a
story reader - but a storyteller. I had had a go at telling Tamatekapuas story a week earlier, but had needed to keep checking the sequence of events and charaters names, but this time the story flowed. I was able to tell it freely with the best storytelling vocabulary that I could muster.
The reaction was great. The kids were transfixed.


My goal for the children was to introduce some of the major characters in Te Arawa history, and for them to take ownership of the stories so that they are, in turn, able to retell them. For this we have begun a few steps.
1. The kids drew or wrote as they listened to the story (backwards planning).
2. We retold the story orally in a group as a chain - each person telling the next part.
3. We wrote the story for ourselves so we could refer back to it if we forgot.

I hope to take it a step further later in the year and have the children retell these stories through multimedia for future generations.
The children really have enjoyed this first story and are engaged in their writing. I have yet to read the quality of this retell but I have seen an increased engagement in particular in a few of the Maori boys (J-R and S-R), writing screeds and screeds, and showing a strength in recalling what happened.

I hope the next story gets a similar audience.