Exploring the images and whakataukī connecting to Te Kāhui o Matariki
Each whetū in Te Kāhui o Matariki – the Matariki star cluster – is associated with an aspect of wellbeing and the environment. Aotearoa New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ use the whetū to report on the health of te taiao in Environment Aotearoa 2022.
Tupuārangi
Tupuārangi is associated with food and growth above the ground. This whetū represents the domain of land-based ecosystems in Environment Aotearoa 2022.
Source: Ministry for the Environment, Stats NZ and data providers and licensed by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
The report introduces each whetū with a personified image and a whakataukī.
This cross-curricular activity encourages students to explore the written and visual components of the whetū and whakataukī and how each represents the science and wellbeing that underpins the environmental domain. Students are also encouraged to create their own illustration and whakataukī or poem for an environmental domain of local or personal interest. If desired, students can use images of individual whetū. The images are available in the Word and PDF files (see links below).
In this activity, students consider the written and visual components of representations created for Environment Aotearoa 2022 and create a bespoke representation of their own.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
discuss the purpose of the representation
discuss how the representation presents its message via written word
discuss how the representation presents its message via visual images
create an illustration, whakataukī or poem to represent their own thinking or feeling regarding an aspect of te taiao.
Download the Word file (see link below). You can also download separate PDF versions of the images and whakataukī.
