Exam time

students focus on written pieces for tuhituhi using scaffolding techniques ...

Year 9 Marae Study

Year 9 Māori are currently working on their Marae study referring to their workspace info to guide their progress.  Click on the link to go to workspace.

workspace

Narrowing the focus

At the beginning of term one our class focus was to choose one major item that we (my students & I ) would focus on, perfect, learn, digest, repeat day in and day out until my students could feel confident enough to move on.  Our major focus was to learn grammar structures the way my students could understand it.  Reflecting back on this now i can see it was a very positive move for all the right reasons especially that my students were able to take hold of this one strategy apply it and build on it giving them the freedom to start expressing themselves through writing about their personal experiences in Te Reo Māori with some accuracy and comprehension of basic structures in which they are now self correcting for themselves giving them more ownership over their work only looking to the kaiako for reassurance.  Setting small targets and milestones were key ingredients.

Examples:
A small target could be to write two accurate sentences using the AVPAN structure about a topic.  A typical topic could be to write about an event you participated in recently.

Students learnt a set of common articles in Te Reo Māori, leaning the meaning of these implementing and using the same ones until they felt confident and went onto add new ones.

This may seem like a slow process however the slower the better as the students needed that time to practice and once they understood it they were now independently writing without my help.

Consistency and repetition has paid off for these students as they are now onto their second topic producing drafts, crafting and perfecting their written pieces. Mauri Ora tauira mā.

Rich conversations makes for meaningful learning

Today students spent the majority of the lesson constructing sentences in Māori, it was interesting listening as they reasoned with each other about their choices for using particular words, articles, verbs and nouns to form parts of texts. The interesting outcome was the ability for students to come to a consensus amongst themselves by double checking through meaning, sound and look. They used a number of other tools such as the online dictionary, Rangatahi books, sounding out the sentence and writing it out. The discussion was so rich and meaningful that students forgot all about the time and were so caught up in what they were doing they forgot about the bell, māuri ora tauira mā.

Judges comments prove very inspiring at Manu Kōrero

It's always good to get feedback from judges, versed in Te Reo Māori and English senior Korimako.

Some very good constructive advise to improve on and to move forward, the most important thing for students today is to get that feedback often it can be very inspiring for them to learn about the things they did really well and area's they can improve on, mauri ora ngā kaiwhakawa.

Manu Kōrero

Mikayla proudly displays her certificate of participation at this years Manu Kōrero, ngā mihi kotiro.

A great opportunity for Mikayla to develop her talents and skills,  although competitive it is a great forum for learning to face public agenda's and stand proudly with the rest of her cohorts. 

Collaborative learning

This morning students were working together on paragraphs constructing sentences in Te Reo Māori about their personal experiences, using articles, i, ki, e...ana, kei te... It was great listening to the dialogue around the table from these students. The dialogue was so rich and uplifting as the students discussed their ideas about structures they could use and looking to each other for feedback, feedforward.  This year we have learnt to focus on a set of articles and learn them inside out. Therefore giving students more time to develop their understanding of the language and apply their learning to topics or kaupapa of interests. Each student choose their own topic today and focused on an experience they had the week before. The students engaged in Te Reo sharing their sentences and self correcting themselves as they went.  Mauri ora.