Grow Big by Paula Morris is a historical fiction story that imagines the life of Ngāti Wai tūpuna on the east coast of Northland in the late 1700s. The story follows a young boy named Moka who helps his whānau prepare the land for planting kūmara. Through a day of hard work and small challenges, Moka learns that strength is not just about size, but about perseverance, contribution, and working together as a community. 

This pack contains a range of response activities complete with activity explainer videos for exploring thinking skills and developing emotional understandings and compassionate inquiry including:

• Blooms Higher Order Thinking activities
• Book Club guide for deepening text discussion
• A range of activities to explore emotional understanding, compassionate inquiry, empathy development, vocabulary and developing skills for self and co-regulation.

English - Reading: Interpreting historical fiction and narrative voice, Making inferences about character feelings and motivations, Identifying themes of perseverance, humility, and teamwork, Understanding figurative language and whakataukī

Social Sciences - Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: Daily life for Māori before large-scale European settlement, Traditional Māori food gathering and cultivation practices, The importance of kūmara cultivation in Māori communities, Understanding tikanga, whakataukī, and the role of whānau and community

Keywords include: ash, community, cultivation, food gathering, hard work, humility, kūmara, marae, Māori life, perseverance, whakataukī, planting, tūpuna, whānau, working together