Building te reo Māori using stop motion animation

Keeri: For our stop motion animation, Sandy and I did a co-lab in which she would set up a task for the students and I would turn it into Māori and we could come in here [the digital classroom/lab], do the task. The thing that worked the most was going back to our classroom and using that same task, just extending them. We started off where they would watch the YouTube video and how they did it, and then they’d go away and try it on their own. So one of our animation stations was te mahi ngata, ka haere mai te ngata, ka hoki atu ki tana kāinga. The kids took it upon themselves to extend that to make it more creative and more fun. I think just having their own ownership of their own work is a good start of that. That brings out a whole lot of creativity in children.

Student: So we’re doing a song that’s a little bit popular around Tauranga Moana and it’s called Nā te rangi hau huri and we’re going to do the actions with the mannequins. We’ve just been learning from whaea Sandy to only make little movements. So we’re going to be starting with ki raro, then the hope, then down then wiri again. With this one, we’re going to put it, we’re going to get a voice and the song to go with the actions. We’re going to put it on Google Classroom. So we can learn how to do animations like this. Yeah.

Keeri: So when we had student-led conferences, one of our stations was an animation station where the child was to teach the parent how to animate the mannequin in stop motion. It’s kind of like an ako thing, so ako means reciprocated learning so I teach the kids, and then they’ll go out and find new things, and then they’ll teach me new things, it’s just constantly back and forth. I think they kind of get the best of both worlds. They’re coming here and they’re learning and they’re being just totally immersed in IT and we come back, we change it into Māori, turn it into our own, and then they produce their own work from there. In our stop motion video, it wasn’t just about IT, it brung in maths ‘cos you have to time all the framings and the spacing between moving characters and moving everything else and then there’s the science behind it, when you drop a ball, what happens? How does it change shape? What shape does it go into? And then when it goes back up, does it go faster? Does it go slower?

Student: We watched the video on Google Classroom to learn how to make a ball bounce. When it’s going up, it’s apart and then when it’s right at the top it squeezes in, like that. Then when it goes lower, you’ve got to flatten it like an oval.

Keeri: Anō hoki te reo matatini kua whakawhanake ō rātou pūkenga tuhituhi, nā te whakamāoritia te tāpirihia ētahi kōrero ki aua kiriata. Ka whakaputa mai te reo ā-waha i a ratou e tāpiri atu aua kōrero ki aua kiriata hoki. Kua hono atu ki ngā Mahi Toi i te mea kei te hanga, mā te uku kei te hanga, mā ngā ringa i ēnei momo kiripuaki mō taua kiriata, nō reira, “he oranga kaingakau, hei oranga hinengaro” which means once your inner passion is unleashed, so is your mind.