After observing Whaea Waitonga’s class at Aorere College, I made some changes to our class routines. I included removing shoes, mihi, and waiata/hīmene to our tikanga processes. Some ākonga have embraced the new introduced tikanga process, others have not. I asked those that were not keen on it and their responses included: There is a…
Category: Turu 1
Identities, languages and cultures:
Demonstrate awareness of the diverse and
ethnic-specific identities, languages and
cultures of Pacific learners.
Te Korokoro o Te Parata
What is a significant moment of learning? Te Aho Arataki Marau mō te Ako i te Reo Māori (TAAM) and the NCEA assessment system is only serving to widen the learning gaps for some of our te reo Māori students in English-medium schools. The proposed changes to NCEA will do nothing to alleviate this issue….
Learning for Assessment vs Just Learning
What is a significant moment of learning from the last season? This year as I walk around the school the juniors are still likely to respond in the manner outlined above but the Year 11 learners are more likely to respond to the question, ‘what are you doing?’ with the response ‘an assessment.’ How did I come…
Update: New Resource
After 3 weeks of using the new resource using TBLT strategies, my students were completely bored and disinterested. When I would pull out the resource, they would sigh and say, “aww are we doing this again?” It can be disengaging for ākonga who are advancing fast and are not being challenged. I feel like I…
Te Ora o te Reo me ngā Tikanga
I got to observe Whaea Waitonga and her mahi with her Te Reo Māori and Tikanga ā-Iwi classes and I can confidently say that te reo and tikanga Māori are thriving in Whaea Waitonga’s akomanga. The following are some of the key observation notes that lead to my above statement. Arrival at Aorere I walked…
Communicative Language Strategies
It has been just over a week since I changed my pedagogy and resource. The scaffolded resource I have been using for the lower-level learners of te reo Māori in my classes have been working for most of my ākonga. The pedagogy change to task-based teaching and learning has positively impacted the learning for my…
Task-Based Teaching & Learning
Today is the first day I have started using a different teaching approach (task-based teaching and learning) using a different resource. I used a resource pack that I had purchased from Jannie van Hees who is our English language specialist here at my school. Before using the pack, I sat in one of her ELL…
He Puna Rautaki e Kore e Mimiti
Ako Panuku Workshop | Friday 20 May 2022 Click here for a more detailed description of the workshop. I went to a one-day workshop in Hamilton, which was run by Rauhina Cooper at the University of Waikato. There was a lot to take in today. Rauhina covered an array of second language teaching strategies for teaching grammar…
Triadic Wānanga
Today I engaged in a triadic kōrerorero and wānanga with my Tāmaki College and Ako Mātātupu (Teach First NZ) kaihāpai. Brenton Moyes, Nyra Marshall, and Dr. Jannie van Hees make up the three strong pillars of my whare ako. These three people are the pillars that have kept me from toppling over these past two…
How much scaffolding is too much?
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…
Te Kōpaki a Ruiha Epiha 