Hine Raumati me te puāwaitanga - The blossoming of a dream

This term our ākonga have been composing their own waiata using the rhythm of language, a very Orff-style approach. In this video of our Year 9-10s, each student has chosen a word and transferred the number of syllables (eg "mā-nu-ka") to their instrument to create a short musical phrase. By teaching their partner the phrase and performing them both together within a 4 beat sequence with a couple of rests, a little creativity on their part becomes a beautiful group waiata:

Having looked at composing from words, we moved to writing lyrics! Here are Malenia and Zoe performing their own clever actions to the cinquain (5-part) poem they wrote about Boomojis:

Our groups also had fun experimenting with transferring their rotarota (poems) onto Te Pūmanawataki. Kimiora and Maioha demonstrate (with Dezman and Te Karauna on ukuleles):

The next step was to put it all together - using the rerenga tāruarua (repeating patterns) students created from their words, and adding their poems over the top. I only explored this step a little as it was tricky to recite the poems while playing the patterns, but one group really worked well together to create this interesting composition, exploring some clever musical ideas in the process:

Maioha and Shyon's piece, with Amelia on ukulele

Next year we will look at turning poems into melodies. In the meantime, there is something very exciting happening to the area around my classroom!

The Puoro room: work is going ahead!

School has ended for the year, and the builders have started work on creating the enclosure that will house the sound garden! Very exciting. In the photo above you can see that my room has been emptied of taonga so they can strengthen the external walls, and the walled off area below is where the sound garden will go. It's all on!

The building site at Tūrakirae (our whare)

The enclosure is due to be completed by the start of March 2019 (approximately), and once that is done we will be able to open the sound garden and share all these taonga with students not just during lessons, but in their free time, allowing them to explore ideas, collaborate, compose and jam to their hearts' content. It is really wonderful to think that in a few short months this great dream of mine will become reality, and we will see the benefits and opportunities that free access to music-making will give our tamariki. 

Haramai te toki!