As part of the beginning of the year, I decided to do a short unit on 'Ko wai au' 'Who I am'. I based this around the normal Pepeha structure but taught each area on a weekly basis. As part of our monring tikanga, we would do circle time where students would say their Pepeha (up to where we have preivously learnt), and then greet the next person. By the end of the term, students all new their pepeha.
As there was an interest in Minecraft with the older students, I decided to revisit a previous lesson "Minecraft and Whakapapa". This time the students had to publish their Pepeha as a story using Minecraft. This was then printed off in a book form and displayed under our waka.
Traditionally Pepeha shows where you are from, not your geneology but place. Many people can identify their connection to you by knowing where you are from. I was lucky with this particular lot of work as many of the students lived on their Marae or visited regularly on weekends. For students who didn't have a connection to an Iwi, they used either the schools connection or what was held closest to them.
Using a platform like Minecraft for the students share their learning was interesting with lots of different skills and tools being learnt, as well as lots of collaboration and peer support. Students supported each other especially with formatting and accuracy of punctuation.