Description
Papa Joe by Maria Samuela is a reflective fiction text that weaves humour with family life to explore care, understanding, and change through the eyes of a young girl named Annie. Through everyday experiences at church, at home, and at a school fundraiser, the story follows Annie as she becomes frustrated with her grandfather’s loud singing, missed calls, and apparent mistakes. The narrative gently reveals that Papa Joe is not being careless or silly but is struggling with hearing loss, helping students understand how misunderstandings can grow when needs are hidden. When Papa Joe receives hearing aids, family routines improve, yet his joyful, off-key singing remains part of who he is. Warm, humorous, and compassionate, the text supports students to understand empathy, patience, and family relationships through lived experience and voice.
The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy and health, supporting inquiry into family, communication, difference, and caring for others in everyday life.
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.
Curriculum Phase: Phase 2
Year Level: Year 3
English (NZC Levels 1–2): reading for meaning and enjoyment, identifying character feelings and actions, understanding simple narrative structure, making connections to personal experience, exploring humour and dialogue
Health and Physical Education: relationships, empathy, wellbeing, communication, caring for others, inclusion
Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: family and community life, cultural identity, belonging, continuity and change
Text type: Fiction, personal recount, narrative story
Key words include: Cook Islands Māori, grandparents, hearing aids, family, whānau, church, housie, rugby, humour, relationships, empathy, communication, understanding, patience, safety, health, inclusion, cultural identity, belonging, everyday life
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