Personalised Passion Project: Beast King Kabuki

For the past few weeks on Wananga, we have been working on our personalised passion projects. We have assembled a group of seven people, five from our Wananga and two from another Wananga next to our classroom. On the first day, we brainstormed our ideas and concluded into creating a life-sized sculpture which is the "King of the Beast" from a Kabuki play. Kabuki is a form of theatre, Japanese theatre. We also developed our driving question; How can we use sustainable materials (recycle), such as newspaper and cardboard to create art--life-size sculpture? 

On the following day, we began to construct a plan and the measurements of the sculpture whilst thinking about the materials we require to make the sculpture. Proceeding to Wednesday, we began to measure the cardboard around the torso including, arms and hands. We then began to cut out the pieces that we measured around the torso, arms and hands. On Friday, we measured and cut the body, head and put together some of the pieces cut. Overall, the materials we used include cardboard, newspapers and any other junk. 

Wananga Reflection - Matariki

From the recent celebration of Matariki, we have been learning more about the story of Matariki during our wananga time. Matariki is celebrated from the 19th of June to the 11th of July. The term Matariki refers to 'tiny eyes or 'eys of God' in Maori. The children of the earth mother, Papatuanuku, and the sky father Ranginui wanted to separate them to bring light and life to the Earth, as they lived in darkness wondering what it would be like to live in the light. Eventually, Tane Mahuta, the god of the forest, laid on his back and used his feet to force them apart. Angering Tawhirimatea, the god of the winds, causing him to tore his own eyes out and threw them out into the sky. Tawhirimatea's resulted in many constellations, and among lived Matariki, the mother and her six daughters. 

Reflection Wananga - Venus and Adonis

During English, we are reading a play by William Shakespeare known as "The Merchant of Venice." Resulting in me getting interested in Wiliam Shakespeare and his other creations. Moreover, as for my reflection, I will be writing about a poem by William Shakespeare. The poem is called "Venus and Adonis," published in 1593. Presumably, Shakespeare's first publication. The poem is narrated in the Greek Mythology of Venus the goddess of love. Together with, another character named Adonis; described as an extremely handsome young man. 

During the poem, Venus falls in love with Adonis and tries to seduce him. However, Adonis was only interested in hunting. As Venus was scornfully rejected, she faints and feared he has killed her; she recovered after Adonis kissed her and then kissed again. The following day Adonis goes out to hunt boars even though Venus had a vision of him being killed by a boar. The vision came true which resulted in Venus becoming devastated. Because of this loss, she declared that love will henceforth be incorporated with suspicion, fear, and sadness and that love will be untrue, and full of fraud.

 

Poem: Poetry Foundation

What kind of language is used in the text?

The type of language used in the poem is referred to as Early Modern English, a language period that lasted from about the 1500s to the 1750s. The language used in the period was related to Elizabethan English or Shakespearian English. 

Assertiveness and Aggressiveness

 During our wananga time, we as a class have been learning more about other people such as our relationship with them. However, this time we learned about assertiveness as well as aggressiveness. We split into pairs and did some activities with that person, we were given a different task for each person on each pair. An example of this is person A will have a task set for them to do to person B, and person B will have a task to do to person A. We then went outside without a clue of what the other person will do, it was all about trust. Anyway, we did the activity and it would show how we reacted which is either by being assertive or aggressive. 

After that, we went back to our classroom and discussed situations where a person has been aggressive to us. We then talked about how we can react to this situation by being not aggressive, this is the things that we could do; Deep breaths, walk away, find a friend/adult, activities to calm down, ignore it, say thank you, stop and thing, and most importantly SMILE!