“I LOVE the writing kits! This is the 4th year I've participated and I love how it exposes my students and I to new creative writing opportunities. Each year you guys come up with something new and exciting to generate amazing writing.
Due to COVID this one was a bit of a challenge to get completed within the timeframe (despite it being extended) mainly because we had so very few students return back to school.
It was great to have a digital aspect using google maps - a great tool that we can use for LOADS of other purposes too.
The teacher notes and links are helpful so please keep providing those! and I highly recommend joining the School Kit facebook pages for the extra support! They are an excellent resource!”
“A fabulous writing resource for my Year 6 class. They loved the 'Just to Say' poem and shared some hilarious incidents that they could write about. It was great to look at our local area for 'The List' poem and to locate where our buddy school was on the NZ Map (some great learning in that alone) I did find the final poem - A Sistena, quite a challenge to explain and model to my leaners.
Thanks so much School Kit for exposing my learners to some very cool new poetry types!”
“We loved doing this at Banks Avenue School in Dudley. The children found it challenging working out the coordinates and locations geographically but it was excellent learning. This opportunity gives the children a chance to connect beyond their local community and this is so valuable. Thinking nationally is part of our pedagogy. I would love to do this again, if the opportunity arises. The only stress for me was that it appeared that the package got lost however it was obviously found - whew!”
“This is the second year I have done the Get NZ Writing kit. The class enjoyed learning how to navigate Google Maps to find different ways from getting from one destination to another. I did find it a bit hard to navigate the teacher notes and what to do, we got there in the end. I will definitely be back for next years. Thank you so much, School Kit!”
“Thank you for the opportunity to be buddied up with another classroom.
COVID-19 took a toll on students' learning as per expected and there's nothing we could've done any better but try our best to maintain what was learnt in Term 1 during lockdown.
We appreciated the updates and communication throughout lockdown also. Students enjoyed talking about the naughty things they've done and loved sharing and relating to each other. I'd have to say it created a more comfortable place for students to share the not-so-good stories in life because of this.
The sestina poems we thought could've been best explained and perhaps modelled through more activities as students found this certain concept a bit hard to grasp. I've had to do a mini inquiry project about it first before attempting - hence why we took so long to complete! The idea however, was great!
Our buddy class was AWESOME! Loved their letters to us (Masterton Intermediate).
Thank you once again to your team for the great experience. Looking forward to next year's kit!”
“Get NZ writing was fun for the kids - they especially loved the mapping task and finding all of the different places on our journey from here to Christchurch! Taught them a lot about Google Maps too! Haha. We focused our little poems around our camp experience which they also loved. Because of the huge break between sending and receiving, the excitement had worn off a bit, but they did still enjoy reading the poems that our buddy class had written. So thank you!!”
“Room 8 at Clive School really enjoyed the parody poems at the beginning of the Get NZ Writing kit for 2020. The sharing of the naughty things they had done was a great way to get to know each other better and they had a blast sharing these and using them in the format of the poem provided.
My Year 5 and 6 students were slightly more challenged by the sestina and it took a bit more brain work for all involved than what we had initially thought. Once we got our head around it however, we were good to go and using the 'journey' as the inspiration, the ideas were soon slowing. The Google Maps skills were great when navigating from one location to another!
Unfortunately the kit that we received from our buddy class had 3 missing postcards and several that were not completed, however after discussion with my students about everything that has been going on around us and around the world, they were more understanding about this. Just a shame they couldn't make the sestinas to read aloud in full (and the puzzle on the opposite site).”
“Fabulous kit yet again from School Kit. Luckily we managed to finish ours before lockdown and could send it off when the couriers were organised after we returned to school. We haven't received any from our partner school yet but are hoping they will managed to do so when they are ready. The children were fascinated about the glasses and absolutely enjoyed the mapping journey. The postcard writing really freed some of the children's ideas and enabled success for reluctant writers. Altogether great fun and imaginative. Thank you. Loved it.”
