Scaffolding plays such an important part in creating independent (mana motuhake) ākonga, which is something I am constantly striving for. Last year, I heavily scaffolded my senior students to be able to complete their internal assessments using workbooks. Although my ākonga did well using these workbooks, I discovered that most of them found it difficult to cope in an external exam situation. I had scaffolded them so much that I had removed their independence or mana motuhake. So how much scaffolding is too much scaffolding? Perhaps the scaffolding strategies I used were not effective. There is so much I need to learn about these strategies.

In Term 1 of this year I took away these scaffolded workbooks and used the new units we had purchased from Poutawa Reo.  All learning was online, apart from the group or pair work done in class. I witnessed a lack of engagement, attendance and motivation to do the work set-out. As the assessment due date drew near, I had an after-class discussion with my mixed senior Te Reo Māori class. I asked two questions: 

1. How do you feel about completing the assignment?

2. Why do you feel this way?

Responses to Q1 include: The majority expressed their apprehension and lack of confidence in completing their assessment that was due the following week. Of the 14 students present, only 3 were confident to complete the assessment.

Responses to Q2 include: 

• “We used the booklets last year to do our written assessments and now I feel I can’t complete it without it” (Year 13)
• “It’s really difficult to do [the assessment] without the booklet” (Year 13)
• “It’s very hard to memorise sentence structures” (Year 11)
• “It’s hard to find the right words with the right definitions” (Year 11)
• “I can’t put stuff into sentences” (Year 11)
• “It’s hard to use the right structures and tense markers” (Year 11)
• Everything is hard (Year 13)
• I don’t know how to write in Māori (Year 11)
• “The assessment is hard as” (Year 11)
• “Because it’s too hard” (Year 11)
• “I’m not confident with creating sentences on my own” (Year 11)

Where to from here? What next?

• I need to create the resource packs (my leadership project) for ākonga with low confidence and proficiency in Te Reo Māori (purchase some Resource Packs from Jannie)
• I need to create booklets for my Year 13s and run them in conjunction with the resource packs – I recognise that although I need to build their proficiency, there is pressure to also complete their internal assessments and that is why I will be using the booklets. The purpose of the booklets is solely to keep student motivation going to complete assessments, however they do serve my goal of building student proficiency in te reo.