Room 13 students created cultural tiles to celebrate and share the many cultures represented in their class. They designed tiles showing important aspects of their cultures, then sewed the tiles together into a quilt to display in the school. The process involved brainstorming design ideas, carefully copying designs onto material tiles, and problem-solving how to display the finished quilt. The students learned about different cultures and had fun taking their inquiry from ideas to displaying the final product.

1. Room 13’s Inquiry
Journey
Come share it with us

2. Haka

3. Citizenship, Culture and Visual Arts

4. Our Cultural Family
 Room 13 children come from all over the world
and have a variety of cultures. We celebrate
the fact we are all different. Some of us can
speak 2 languages
 We link ourselves to the following countries,
China, South Korea, Philippines, Samoa,
Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Fiji.
 Every morning we call the roll in a different
greetings.

5. Our Place in Society
 We learnt about society and how we fit in
to it.
 We belong to many groups like our family,
our school, Auckland and New Zealand.

6. Roles & Responsibilities
 We studied some jobs in society and talked
about why they were important to us. We also
made lists of what we thought their
responsibilities would be.
 We chose
children, mums, dads, teachers, doctors, firem
en
and policemen
 We realized how important it is to have people
who will care for us and look after us. It’s what
makes our community important and special

7. NZ a-Thon
 Willowbank School held a NZ a-Thon to
help us learn about this beautiful country
of ours.
 Everyone in the school was so excited
and worked hard to find out the answers.
 Some of the children in Room 13 even
won prizes for their efforts
 Watch out! We would like to quiz our
parents on our open day to see how
much they know about New Zealand

8. 2011 Rugby World Cup
 Rugby has been a favourite New
Zealand game. It is part of the kiwi
culture.
 This year the Rugby World Cup was
held in Auckland, New Zealand. There
were 20 teams and the All Blacks won!
We are now the world champions!
 The All Blacks have the NZ silver fern on
their jumpers and we used this
on calendar art.

9. Indian Culture
 One day my mum came in and put some henna
on to Miss Ross. Everyone looked at it and liked it.
 Henna is made out of a greenish colour plant

10. Rangoli Patterns
 Rangoli patterns are used in the Indian
culture for parties. They are put in the
door way to welcome others. They are
said to bring good luck.

11. Manderin
 One of our mum’s came in and wrote
some words in Manderin on the white
board for us to learn. We found this fun,
but tricky.

12. Chinese celebrations
 China uses lanterns and fans in their
parties. We made some of our own and
had fun. We will be happy to teach you.

13. Korus
 Korus are often used in Maori and NZ art.
It is curly and green. It is about new life
Room 13 made some of our own koru art.
You can see them around our room.

14. Buddhist Temple
 Team 1 wanted to learn more about other
cultures so we visited the Buddhist Temple.
 It was so peaceful, had beautiful gardens and
lots of bells.
 We learnt all about Buddah, and our guide
suggested that we do good, think good and
say good each day.
 We had lunch there. Some of us thought we
were eating chicken, but it was actually crispy
soy. We felt proud that we had tried something
new.
 When we came back we made some of our
own temples.
 You can see our photos displayed in our room.

15. Taking Action –
Our Big Idea
 We had a walk around the school. We
saw there was not enough children’s art
on display, so we decided to make some
more.
 We came up with the idea of making tiles.
They would show a piece of culture that is
close to our hearts.

16. Cultural Tiles
 We brainstormed all the pieces of art we had
done this year.
 We made a easy and tricky list of what would
work well.
 We made our own picture and tried it for a
few days on paper. We did the same picture
each time to make sure it always looked the
same.
 We decided we would use outside tiles and
paint them. We wanted to display them on a
wall for people to see.
 We couldn’t get hold of the tiles we wanted
so we brainstormed some new ideas.

17. Making Decisions
 We thought we could use material tiles
instead.
 We ordered in some material and copied
our designs on to it. We were very careful.
We used 2 main colours for our base. The
next day some of us used material felts to
draw finer detail on in a 3rd colour.
 We used the projector to look at different
ways we could display our work. We
found a quilt. Miss Ross said she could
sew all our tiles together to make one.

18. Making our tiles

19. More brainstorming &
decision making
 Our next problem to solve was, how we
could hang our work up in order to display
it. We brainstormed some more and
decided to look at some ideas on the
projector.
 Our solution was to sew material loops on
to the top our quilt and put in a piece of
wood to hold them on to.

20. Our completed work.
 We love it.

21. Reflection
 We were happy with our pictures but if we did
it all over again we would put more effort into
them.
 Most of us were careful when we used the
paint and paintbrushes so our work turned out
well.
 Most of us were happy with using material for
our tiles. We would still like to use outside tiles
one day so lots of visitors get to see our work.
 We learnt lots about NZ and other cultures
during this inquiry and had fun.