Kōrero Māori - Talk Māori

Today, I had my oral test for my mihi. It went ok, it could’ve gone better, but all in all I was quite happy with it. To help prepare for the test I recorded myself saying my mihi, so I thought I might as well share it with you all. Maybe it will be your first time hearing the Māori language, I hope I do it justice.

If you would like to learn more Māori, you can visit Kōrero Māori or Māori/English Dictionary.

Assessment Happens Minute to Minute

Since the late 1980′s, many historical events have influenced the way we as educators assess the children in our New Zealand early childhood centres. In this essay, I will highlight three such influences and discuss how they have affected the assessment of children in early childhood centres to the present day. The historical events I will examine are the publication of three government documents; ‘Te Whāriki He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa Early Childhood Curriculum’, ‘Kei Tau o te Pae Assessment for learning: Early Childhood Exemplars’ and ‘Revised Statement of Desirable Objectives and Practices’. I will discuss the theories behind these documents and how they differed from what was previously being used in centres as well as some major ways in which they impacted on the role of assessment.

The introduction of Te Whāriki in 1996 greatly influenced assessment as we know it in the present day. Before it was released as New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, assessment focused around Piaget’s developmental views that development precedes learning. This meant a discontinuous development model where children would be grouped into different developmental stages by age (Berk, 2003). Educators would test children’s abilities and check them off a predetermined list for their age group. Any tasks that the children were unable to complete to the predetermined standard were highlighted as areas that needed to be improved and worked on. This lead to an assessment process of ‘deficit value’. Te Whāriki on the other hand is more influenced by Vygotsky’s developmental views that learning precedes development.This results in a continuous development model where each child is looked at individually and their learning is scaffolded by a more knowledgeable other (Berk, 2003). In other words, educators work closely with children in areas that interest them, always trying to help the child take the next step towards being more competent. This leads to an assessment process of credit value. This can be seen in how Te Whāriki defines assessment; “The process of obtaining and interpreting information that describes a child’s achievements and competence. The purpose of assessment is to provide pertinent information to contribute and improve learning opportunities for children. (MOE, 1996, p.99) and else where states “assessment of children’s learning and development involves intelligent observation of the children by experienced and knowledgeable adults” (MOE, 1996, p.29).

Te Whāriki was also built around the ecological systems theory of Bronfenbrenner. Bronfenbrenner’s theory suggests that the environment a child grows up in will impact on their development, therefore said child’s whole environment must be taken into consideration while being assessed (Berk, 2003). Unfortunately, educators were confused on how best to document this environmental impact as well as the minute by minute assessment of children which Te Whāriki supports; “assessment occurs minute by minute as adults listen, watch, and interact with an individual child or with groups of children.” (MOE, 1996, p,29). To help, the Ministry of Education later released a set of books Kei Tua o te Pae Assessment for learning: Early Childhood Exemplars in 2005. “Kei Tua o te Pae will help teachers to develop practices that integrate assessment and quality learning experiences and to engage with children, parents and whānau about children’s learning and progress” (MOE, 2004, Book 1, p.15). These exemplars showed a new approach of documenting assessment in a narrative form through learning stories. Learning stories reflect and protect the quality and complexity of learning by using a narrative approach (Carr, 2001). This meant that educators could now assess children’s development based on their relationships with people, places and things within the child’s environment (Carr, 2006), thus supporting Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. It also showed the use of multiple perspectives from educators, caregivers and the child themselves within the learning stories, further showing its dedication to involve as many aspects of the child’s environment as possible during assessment. Long gone were the assessments involving forms full of check-boxes that only looked at the abilities of the child rather than at the child as a whole including their ecological system.

The Desirable Objectives and Practices (DOPs) were first introduced in 1990. They were put in place to enforce standards among chartered early childhood services within New Zealand. These standards were used to show educators what is expected of them and their centres. This document was then revised in 1996 to link closely with the newly published Te Whāriki resulting in the Revised Statement of Desirable Objectives and Practices (DOPs). The importance behind this is that while it is not mandatory for all chartered New Zealand early childhood centres to follow Te Whāriki, it is for them to follow DOPs. This was a clever government work around to help ensure that Te Whāriki would start being used in centres as soon as possible, as it is much quicker and easier for a government to edit a previous mandatory document than it is to introduce and pass legislation on a new one. DOPs’ close ties to Te Whāriki and the Vygotskian developmental theory of a continuous development model can be seen in the following exert, “identify learning goals for individual children, and use this information as a basis for planning, evaluating and improving curriculum programmes” (MOE, 1998). It also ties in with Kei Tua o te Pae and it’s exemplars of learning stories that incorporate relationships with people, places and things; “Educators should implement curriculum and assessment practices which reflect the reciprocal relationships between the child, people and the learning environment” (MOE, 1998), as well as with the introduction of multiple perspectives; “Management and educators of chartered early childhood services, in partnership with parents/guardians and whānau, will promote and extend the learning and development of each child” (MOE, 1998).

In conclusion we can see how the documents; Te Whāriki, Kei Tau o te Pae and DOPs, have been linked together to allow a relatively swift transformation in the way assessment is carried out within New Zealand early childhood centres in the present day. Introducing new developmental theories by Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner to help push assessment towards focusing on the achievements of the whole child and their place within, and interactions with people, places and things in their environment. Providing a good guideline on how assessment can be done while leaving it open enough to allow for individual centres’ philosophies and environmental impacts to be taken into consideration. I doubt assessment would be as it is today if any of these three documents had not be published to help support the other two.

References

Berk, L., (2003). Child Development. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Carr, M. (2001). Assessment in early childhood settings. Learning stories. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Carr, M. (2006). Learning dispositions and key competencies: A new curriculum continuity across the sectors? Early Childhood Folio, 10: 2006, 21-26.

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: Early Childhood curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

Ministry of Education (1998). Quality in Action; Te mahi whai hua. Wellington: Learning media.

Ministry of Education. (2004). Kei Tua o te Pae. Assessment for learning: early Childhood Exemplars. Wellington: Learning Media.

Airdmhor Montessori Front Door

Teacher’s College has started up again, so I’m back in to Uni on Wednesdays. We had our first day last week and were told we would be going on teaching practice (TP) this week. Not much notice for me to tell my pre-school that I would be away for the next two weeks on TP.

For those of you not in the know. I am in my final year of a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education. I’m studying at Canterbury University in their College of Education via their Centre Based route. This allows me to work four days a week at a pre-school and come in to Uni one day a week to study. You are actually only required to do 16 hours of work a week, but I have bills to pay so I do the full 32 hours plus whatever shifts I’m needed at the liquor store.

Anywho, twice a year I am required to go on TP at another centre. This is a great opportunity to observe and learn how other centres work and stimulate learning among their children. In other words a great time to steal others ideas to use in your own centre. The problem with this is you don’t get paid while on TP. So that leaves me out of pocket for two weeks now and three weeks at the end of the year.

Airdmhor Montessori Outside

So, I have been on TP for the last week at the Airmhor Montessori. This is the first time I have worked at a Montessori school and I am really enjoying it. This particular Montessori has moved with the times and adapted there policies to be more up to date with todays early childhood teaching strategies. This has made them less strict with the children allowing more self exploration learning through free play while still providing wonderful structured learning activities. Resulting in some truly magnificent children who respect their environment and others within it, are academically ahead of their peers. All the while having a fun time and enjoying their childhood.

Working in Kindergartens in Taiwan I was amazed at how much the children were academically learning, but also upset with the lack of social interaction that was taking place. Most kids enjoyed the classes while there attention could be held, but often got over tired or upset with not being able to focus more on what they personally enjoyed. Resulting in incredibly academically smart children who were happy at the beginning of the session but turned into robots with in an hour or so, only to spark back into life when a particular subject they were truly interested in would be discussed. This allowed the kids to learn great amounts of knowledge through rote learning, but quite often the children found it hard to adapt that knowledge to solve real life problems.

Airdmhor Montessori Classroom

After returning to New Zealand and working in pre-schools here I found the tables had been completely switched. Children were encouraged to learn through free play while the teachers were almost completely taken out of the picture and only used as observers and guidance. These kids have a fun time, but seem to be quite often under stimulated. They are still learning basic academic skills through play like maths through blocks and pattern matching games etc. But teachers seem almost scared to help push them to the next level. Afraid to use real academic strategies in fear that it won’t be fun for the children. I have noticed this almost unlimited freedom seems to result in a lot of behavioral problems with in the classrooms.

I could see the benefits of both cultures education systems, but believe neither were offering a balanced one. That is why my goal is to open my own centre and work towards offering children a balance learning opportunity. Thanks to Airdmhor Montessori my minds picture of how that center will operate is much clearer now.

While I was looking for a group of children that were showing an interest in language and literacy to observe, I noticed that on a whole the girls in the class seemed to be much more interested in the topic than the boys. Most girls were trying to write their names on art work by themselves while the boys would just take it to a teacher to name. Both the sexes were interested in stories that were read by the teacher but girls spent more time looking through story books by themselves. The boys did however enjoy looking through are space book but spent their time talking about the rockets rather than trying to put a story to the pictures. It is not surprising that in the end I observed three girls. From the three observations I took, I noticed that the older two girls were more interested in individual letters, how they compared with other letters and what sound they symbolised. While discussions with the youngest child G’s step-mother revealed she was more interested in small picture/symbols like stars and bows. The older children also took great pride in their writing, showing it to parents when they were picked up in the evening. The eldest C was also able to extend her interest without the help of a teacher by using the Letter Land program on the class computer.

Kei te whakaae/ Recognising

The first thing I noticed before starting my observations was that girls seemed to be more interested in language and literacy than boys. According to Dr Sax, boy’s and girl’s brains develop differently, “In girls, the language areas of the brain develop before the areas used for spatial relations and for geometry. In boys, it’s the other way around.” (http://www.whygendermatters.com/) This was clearly seen while I was looking for a group of children to observe as almost all girls were focused around activities that had connections to language and literacy.

Observation 1 saw three girls decorating giant W’s. Although an interest in language and literacy had brought the girls to this activity one of the main skill development that was taking place was for fine motor skills, as the girls manipulated Popsicle sticks and foam animal cut outs. They girls also had to communicate and work together deciding what they were going to decorate the W’s with. Throughout the activity a teacher was also with the girls at all times. She demonstrated the sound the letter W makes a number of times but repeating “W w wa wa wa”. She then asked the girls about what words start with the letter W. This helped the girls to recognise that the picture they were working on actually represented a sound in their language and that words are made up of sounds and therefore letters. C and J seemed to already have a good grasp of this concept providing words straight away while G required a little more help from the teacher to get her correctly answering the question. The teacher showed good scaffolding techniques but not just providing an answer for G, but by providing encouragement and hints that were within her proximnal zone of development.

In observation 2 C is by herself at the computer. Without assistance from the teachers she finds the letter W in the Letter Land program. This shows that she was able to recall what she had learnt early that day during observation 1 and was able to actively seek out new information that was of interest to her without the aid of a teacher. This is a wonderful skill allowing her to take more responsibility of her own learning. She listened to the W song five times until she was confidently singing along with the computer. C must have had a great feeling of empowerment after setting herself the goal of learning the W song and achieving it. As suggested in Kei tua o te Pae “The principle of empowerment emphasises children’s rights and their need to pursue their own goals and interests as a base for developing working theories.” (2004, book 6, p. 5).

During observation 3, we find C and J playing together with peg boards. Once again the girls developing their fine motor and spacial awareness skills by placing the pegs into the board. C starts creating a W on a peg board while J watches. The two girls talk about the picture as it takes form, discussing how it looks like a V when it’s half complete. The girls are starting to recognise patterns within the alphabet which will later help them with their reading and writing. After C has completed the letter W she shows J who thinks it is a letter M since she is viewing it upside down. Showing some great problem solving skills C realises why J thinks it is an M and turns the peg board around for her to view it the apporpriate way. Both girls find this quite funny and laugh together having found another pattern within the alphabet. This is a great example of how these girls are strengthening their grasp of the alphabet in a fun and playful manner. Barbara Wasik believes that learning the alphabet through play is develpmentally appropriate for children in early childhood education “For children who do have numerous literacy experiences, alphabet activities reinforce letter learning in playful, developmentally appropriate ways.” (Wasik, 2001, p. 36) as stated in her article Teaching the Alphabet to Young Children.

While discussing C interest with her mother I found that C, who I would consider as being the most confident in both writing and reading the alphabet, is encouraged at home to practice the alphabet using writing sheets and reading books from ABC. This provides backing to the importance of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological-contexual model as stated in Kei tua o te Pae. Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological-contextual model is founded on the idea that all the social worlds of children and their families are intimately connected in a number of ways. Learning is enhanced when there are connections and relationships between early childhood settings away from home and other places and spaces in the children’s lives. (Book 2, 2004, p.4) Cs mother also mentioned that she enjoyed reading (retelling in her own words) books at home. This will be helping C to develop her mastery of words and improving her vocabulary.

My co-teacher told me that C and J are both signing all their own art work in class. G, being younger than both C and J spends more time practicing to draw stars, hearts and other symbols but has started to take an interest in letters especially letters contained within her name. This is probably due to scaffolding that is taking place within her relationship with the older girls.

Kei te anga/Responding

To help encourage G’s interest in writing I set up an activity in the sandpit outside. I emptied the sandpit of all toys and replaced them with flax. I called the girls over and asked if anyone could use the flax to write their name into the sand. C was the first to try and she did an excellent job of writing her name. J tried next and did an equally impressive job as C. When it was G’s turn she managed the first letter of her name, but had some trouble remembering the order of the other letters. I wrote her name coreectly in the sand and asked C and J to help her copy it a number of times. With the help of her friends G managed to write out her full name in the sand. She was so proud of herself that she asked me to take a photo of it so that she could show her parents. This experience links to Te Whariki’s principle Relationships by G’s development being influenced by the relationship she has with teachers and friends.

The next experience I set up was a story telling corner where I placed one chair, a bunch of pillows and a pile of picture books the children had not seen before. I asked the children to take turns being the teacher and to tell a story to the other children. I got this idea from the conversation I had with C’s mother about C retelling stories in her own words. The creative stories that the children made up while looking at the pictures of the new books was increadible. I was very surprised to see a number of boys take great interest in the experience by telling stories of space travel and pirates. I believe this helped spark and interest in words and their ability to portray thoughts and ideas amongst each other. This experience links to Te Whariki’s principle Empowerment allowing the children to become empowered by their confidence to talk and share ideas with their classmates.

Kei te hurihuri/Revisiting

The experiences I provided the children gave them more confidence in expressing themselves both verbally and in written form. G is constantly looking for new ways and materials to write her name, even using cotton balls to create letters. The children seemed to respond very positively to the story telling corner, so I will continue to offer it. I also plan on allowing the children to dramatically act out the stories for their classmates.

Observation 1

Date: 9:05 am 10/06/08

Children: C, J, G
Sex of children: Female
Age of children: 3.9 to 4.6 years
Place setting: ABC all day care. In this class room, there are 13 3.6 to 5 year old children and two teachers.
Area of Development: Language and Literacy
Area setting: All 13 children are inside having just come into the classroom from the Toddlers room at 9:00 am.

This morning my co-teacher set out three giant W’s, made from A3 sheets of paper, on the art table. Three girls quickly came over to the table and asked the teacher what they were for? “We are learning Ww in Letter Land this week and I wanted to decorate these W’s to put on the wall.” replied the teacher. “Can we help you?” asked C. “Of Course! Why don’t you girls grab some stuff from the collage shelf and I’ll get some glue.” the teacher replied. Once both parties had returned the girls quickly started gluing coloured Popsicle sticks and foam animal cut outs to the W’s, while the teacher repeated “W w wa wa wa” a number of times. The teacher then asked if the girls knew any words that started with W. “Walter Walrus” said C. “Great! Any others?” the teacher said. “Um… watermelon?” asks J. “Yes, that’s right!” “How about a colour?” says the teacher. “Red!” says G. “No, that starts with R r ra ra ra, remember we want W w wa wa wa” says the teacher. “Oh um…. white?” says G nervously. “Excellent!” says the teacher “You girls are very smart.”

Observation 2

Date: 10:45 am 10/06/08

Child: C
Sex of child: Female
Age of child: 4.6 years
Place setting: ABC all day care.  In this class room, there are 18 3.6 to 5 year old children and two teachers.
Area of Development: Language and Literacy
Area setting: 11 children are outside and 7 inside; 2 children on the computers and the 5 children at the art table.

C is playing on the computer. She starts up Letter Land and goes straight to Ww. C loves to sing songs and will quite often be seen singing while playing outside in the playground. So, it is no surprise when I see her play the W song in Letter Land 5 times in a row until she is confidently singing along with the computer. She potters around on the computer for an other minute or so before going outside to play on the jungle gym.

Observation 3

Date: 3:25 pm 10/06/08

Children: C, J
Sex of children: Female
Age of children: 4.2 to 4.6 years
Place setting: ABC all day care.  In this class room, there are 12 3.6 to 5 year old children and two teachers.
Area of Development: Language and Literacy
Area setting: 8 children are outside and 4 inside; 2 playing in  the family corner and 2 playing on the mat.

It is free play time, C and J are sitting on the mat playing with the peg boards. They start by making rainbows, comparing and complimenting each others efforts. After they have finished, C says she is going to make Walter Walrus. What she actually makes is a W. She starts and says “Hey look! It looks like a V”. J says “Yeah”. Once C has finished she shows J who is sitting facing her on the mat. J says it looks like an M. C turns the board around and they both laugh.

Discussion with Co-teacher

I discussed the three girls and their interest in language and literacy with my co-teacher. She mentioned that C and J are both signing all their own art work in class while G has only just started to sign her initials. She also mentioned that all three girls really enjoy singing, books and board stories. Especially C who will often pretend to be a teacher and read (retell in her own words) books to other kids.

I also talked with C’s mother and G’s step-mother after class about their daughters interest in Language and Literacy. C’s mother said that C’s favourite things to do at home right now are looking at books and practicing the writing sheets she brings home from ABC. G’s step-mother said that G wasn’t to interested in writing letters at home but has been practicing stars, bows and other little symbols.