Waiotahe Valley School with Des Hunt

Wednesday March 16

Today the Waiotahe Valley School community enthusiastically welcomed Des Hunt to our fold. We asked Des to accompany us to Onekawa Pa, where we introduced him to our beloved Whangakopoikopiko Island. This island is to be the central theme of our writing. After climbing to an excellent viewing site overlooking Whganakopikopiko Mr Andy Larsen and Mr Ray Wilson explained to Des Hunt the history of the island and the significant changes that have historically affected the area. The students then explained to Des, as kaitiarkitangi of the island their relationship and attachment to this special place.

While Des, parents and friends of the school and staff were together at the Pa site we discussed the different perspectives we could take and develop our writing from. At this time we established themes that we could pursue within this writing journey.

Des then turned and led the conversation with our writers as to where they wanted to take their writing. Themes discussed with the students included perspectives from:

1. telling the birth of the island

2. a Maori historical perspective

3. an early European settler perspective

4. an introduced species perspective

5. Maori warriors going to war

6. soldiers leaving to world wars

7. the future viewpoint of the island

This sandy bank is our beloved Whangakopikopikopiko Island at low tide

.

On our first day with Des Hunt the aspects that we found helpful were the ways in which Des gathers a variety of ideas for a story, some of which he includes in a story and those that he eliminates. This helped the writers to begin to develop their own ideas for what they wanted to include in their stories. Des also demonstrated later in the day how he uses local resources i.e our local museum to augment and validate storylines. Des provided on Day 2 some of the validating information he had found for the writers triggering authentic storylines for our students.

The opportunities that the students responded to most enthusiastically were:

· communicating with Des their attachment to Whangakopikopiko

· meeting a real live author

Bullet point two is invaluable here. The writers were so overawed with meeting Des that they defaulted to ‘silent mode.’ Some ‘priming’ would need to be done to prepare these students for the CORE crew!