Rereroa the albatross teaches her friend Awarua, the taniwha, how to fly. In the process, Awarua creates some of the geographical features around the Porirua area, such as the flat top of Mana Island, which was caused when she crash-landed on top of the island, and the valley in Whitireia. The story explores the tuakana–teina relationship of an expert teaching a novice.

This pack contains wide range of response activities including:

• A guided reading plan exploring key literacy elements including inference and deduction, language use, making connection and text organisation, along with key questioning to promote emotional intelligence, metacognition and compassionate inquiry. 
• Independent learning contracts including: comprehension and inferencing, text organisation and exploring author's use of language, responding with compassion and empathy, developing self regulation and co-regulation skills, understanding feelings and needs, higher order thinking skills and metacognition, complete with explainer videos for activity clarity
  
• A wide range of response activities to support developing and embedding key literacy skills including sentence and word work, spelling, and cloze activities. 

Themes explored include: Awarua, landforms, legends, Mana Island, myths, Porirua, Rereroa, taniwha, traditional stories, Whitireia, English, Social Sciences