A FAVOURITE: LEARNING ABOUT FAMOUS NEW ZEALANDERS

In Social Studies for most of this term we have been learning about famous New Zealander's ... not too in depth but just enough so they can appreciate what people have done to contribute to New Zealand history.  So far we have done Edmund Hillary, Kate Sheppard, Jean Batten, Burt Munroe, and today we introduced Sir Apirana Ngata and the amazing work he did for Maori.  We use the same format each session, they sit on the mat and listen to 5-15 minutes of information about the person in question and then they get a sheet of paper with a box for a drawing relating to the person and some lines for writing about them on.  This worksheet is to reinforce the small amount of knowledge they have gained about this person.  Then they are laminated and put up on the wall with the rest of the famous New Zealander's we have studied.  

While this is a superficial type of learning, I hope it is helping them understand all the different ways people can contribute to history.  Incidentally, the New Zealand History website is a wonderful reference for all things history which relate to NZ!