The Big Rescue by Steph Matuku is a reflective fiction text that weaves family storytelling with humour to explore how stories change as they are retold and how truth, memory, and imagination can blur together. Through the voice of a curious child, the narrative revisits a much-loved family tale about a dramatic rescue that grows more exciting with each retelling. As different family members share their versions, the story is gradually revealed to be far less heroic than first imagined, yet still meaningful in its own way. By playfully unpicking exaggeration and embellishment, the text highlights the joy of oral storytelling and the bonds it creates within whānau. Warm, funny, and gently revealing, the text supports students to understand communication and perspective through lived experience and voice.

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2
Year Level: Year 4

English (NZC Levels 2–3): reading for meaning and enjoyment, analysing narrative voice and dialogue, understanding story structure and humour, making connections to personal experience, identifying how stories change with retelling

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: family and community life, communication across generations, continuity and change, identity and belonging

Text type: Fiction, narrative story, reflective narrative

Key words include: storytelling, tall tales, exaggeration, humour, family, whānau, communication, memory, truth and fiction, perspective, oral storytelling, cousins, aunties and uncles, grandparents, relationships, imagination, curiosity, listening, narrative voice, continuity and change

This pack contains a range of structured literacy activities including

• Spelling rules ck / dge / drop the e / y as a consonant or vowel
• Sounds of -ed
• Exploring parts of language - adverbs, adjectives, nouns, verbs etc
• Doubling or not when adding -ing, -ed
• Floss rules
• Compound words
• Identifying and naming suffixes
• Identifying and naming prefixes
• Vowel teams
• Root words
• Controlling 'r'
• Diagraphs
• Schwa words
• Ghost diagraphs
• -oo- and -oo- / -au and -ow / 
• Hard and soft c and g
• Common subordinating conjunctions
• And much more!!

storytelling, tall tales, exaggeration, humour, family, whānau, communication, memory, truth and fiction, perspective, oral storytelling, cousins, aunties and uncles, grandparents, relationships, imagination, curiosity, listening, narrative voice, continuity and change