Learnings from Te Whāriki

He puraora i ruia mai Rangiåtea e kore e ngaro.

A Seed sown in Rangiātea will never be lost.

Te Whāriki states that teachers, educators and kaiako work in partnership with whānau to realise the hopes and high expectations whānau and iwi have for each child. The vision underpinning Te Whāriki is that children are learners are nurtured like a precious seed, instilling in them an understanding of their own importance and their belonging within society. They are "Competent and confident learners and communicators, healthy in mind, body and spirit, secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society." 

On the day lockdown began, I had started to write this blog post looking at te Whariki as a guiding document and how this interlinks with our focus on developing a foundation program for Juniors. As I began to write I reflected on the partnership between school and whānau and had a sinking feeling that it seems to often be an aspect of our teaching that can be surface level. By this I mean students are dropped at school by whānau and go home to them at the end of the day with a wave and quick hello, how are you, but really is there true partnership happening? Is it an equal power relationship where parents feel comfortable talking openly with their child's teacher? Does the teacher understand and value the hopes and aspirations each whānau has for their child? Do we take the time and make the effort to find out? Do whānau feel comfortable within our classrooms and know and have input into the learning that happens. Do we understand and value all the learning that happens at home?

Lockdowns have taught me that true relationships between whānau and teachers are powerful and can be a massive impact on student outcomes. 

I have made a mindset shift to purposefully form true relationships with whānau. This is not on a superficial level, this is valuing the contribution whānau brings to the learning of our tamariki. It's forming relationships that are nonjudgemental no matter what the situation is at home. It's listening to them, looking at things from their point of view, and working with them to help students learn in ways that are important and right for that family. 

For at least one of my students I strongly believe that the partnership his mum and I have, has changed his world in a significant way. The walls between school and home have come down, his whānau are helping him with his learning in their own beautiful way and he comes to school proud of the learning he is doing at home. He is able to make connections between this learning and the learning happening at school and build upon these connections. Learning is ubiquitous. The progress he is making is incredible. He has progressed from working at a developmental level of a 3 1/2 year-old, to being able to write a sentence, know all alphabet sounds, and read a sentence. I could have been judgemental when I learned about the challenges he and his whānau face, I can imagine many would. I could say that I have no control over what happens at home. But I do have control over my own beliefs, judgments, and the impact these have on others. By having understanding and true relationships based on trust and respect, there is no judgment. There is a partnership with a little learner (seed) at the center who is being nurtured by those around him and given optimal opportunities to grow. 

Lockdown for our Junior Team as with other deciles one schools allows us to see inside the homes of our whānau. We make phone calls, we do check-ins, google meets. Our parents become the teachers and we are one of their resources. They let us see into their worlds. we need to do this with uttermost respect and aroha. The relationships that are formed through this time are a true asset and like the story above brings down the walls between home and school. I can't help but feel this is what that sinking feeling that I had reading Te Whāriki referred to. These are the relationships that underpin Te Whāriki and that we need to treasure in our practice as teachers. 

In my early years of teaching I had relationships with families that I felt a connection towards but can I say I had strong relationships with those families that were more difficult to connect with... no I can't say I did...and how much of that came down to my own judgments and comfortableness. Probably more than I was willing to admit. 

I think it is important I don't let these learnings as an educator slip away. I look forward to continuing to weave the Te Whāriki aspect of Partnership through our junior school beliefs and practice and our school curriculum.

Analysis of Student's Writing Samples

I have used an analysis of my student's writing samples as baseline data to measure progress over the course of my inquiry. This analysis also includes the picture plan which gives clues to the developmental stages in terms of body awareness (drawing of people), fine motor skill development, and spatial awareness. 

The student understands that marks on a page represent writing and is beginning to form some letter shapes, however, is unable to retell their story. The people in the picture have separate heads and bodies and the drawing of a cat is discernable.

They use strings of letters to tell a story. They could say the sentence that they wanted to write. With support could record 3 letter sounds. This was with prompting and support from the teacher to find the sound on their ABC card. Drawing of people shows arms and legs coming out from the head with no separate body. This type of picture is common in children between 3-4 years of age. 

This student uses the picture box for text and picture. Marks on the page are beginning to look like letters (symbolic mock letters). Although the 3 people in their picture are basic each looks different. They are able to retell their story to the teacher. 

They were unable to hold their pencil correctly and the picture and text resembled scribbles without the fine motor skill control to create a discernable shape (The circle was drawn by the teacher). This includes a scribble for the picture of themselves inside the bubble. This may indicate a lack of body awareness. This stage is called controlled scribbling and is usually seen in children between 2-3 years of age. This student without prompting will use a cylindrical grasp of the pencil (developmental stage 1-2 years)

Spatial awareness is challenging for this student. Even with prompting and modeling from the teacher is unable to draw the picture in the box. Arms and legs come out from the head however, hands do have five fingers. Is able to articulate a simple sentence and with support from the teacher can find some basic words on the word card and copy them. This student has an understanding of the directionality of print.

These students are all within their first year at school. So what does the above data look like in terms of the Literacy Learning Progressions?

According to the literacy progressions at school entry children enjoy writing for a variety of purposes and can hold a story in their heads long enough to retell it. They may write marks on the page that represent letters or words. We also expect some children to be able to write their names, form some letters correctly and hold a pencil correctly. These student's writing shows some of these features, however, it also indicates some features of earlier developmental stages.

The progressions also indicate that from this 'entry point' there is then a high level of scaffolding by teachers to help students to develop the ability to: 

• hold an idea in their heads long enough to write it down (oral language/memory)
• say, hear and record the dominant sounds in words (phonological awareness), 
• write from left to right, leaving spaces between words (directionality, spatial awareness, concepts about print)
• form letters correctly (fine motor skill, directionality). 

My wondering is that is it possible to work on pre-literacy developmental stages whilst still teaching the progressions that are expected within a child's first year at school? Can we strengthen those foundation skills alongside exposure to the skills other students at the same age are developing? 

The Beginning of my Inquiry 2021

This post marks the official beginning of my inquiry for 2021. The actual beginning was an exciting conversation two weeks ago, between myself and our Principal.

The conversation was a future-focused discussion to gain insights from staff voice about our current reality, as part of our school-wide self-review process. It was also an opportunity to discuss a possible direction for my CoL inquiry fitting with our school's strategic plan and Manaiakalani's patterns of student learning.

Our conversation was prompted by the question;

Moving forward, looking to the future, how might we be better? Or How might we strengthen our School/practice?

As my former 2-year inquiry had focused on creating an intensive oral language programme for junior students I already had seen the importance of oral language for building literacy across the curriculum. However, starting a new year with Year 1 students I had become acutely aware that oral language was just one facet of developmentally being 'ready' to learn to read and write. Students need gross and fine motor skills, emotional and social self-regulation skills, oral language, visual, hearing and good health.

My informal observations of students this year showed these were areas our students found challenging.

Thoughts I have taken from our discussion:

• If we are to accelerate students achievement in Reading, Writing and Maths our students have to first be developmentally ready to read and write.
• Many students are starting school displaying development age levels of two and a half years to three and a half years. I feel that we are expecting these students to jump over key developmental stages and start reading and writing at the 'expected level' and 'progress rate' by throwing them into 'formal' reading and writing programmes instead of creating programmes that meet their developmental needs.
• There is urgency. If students are already starting school two and a half years behind their peers we need to find the most effective way to accelerate the developmental progress within their first year of school so that they are then ready to learn to read and write. If not, how can we be expecting to accelerate learning to meet the level of their peers further along in their schooling when our students are leaving the 'ready for school' starting blocks two and a half years later than the peers.
• There are lots of programmes out there however, our students, community, school is unique and we need to find what works for our students. We need to create a localised curriculum to meet our student's diverse needs.
• We have an exciting opportunity to create a localised curriculum for our Year 1 classes that meet the needs of our students and accelerates their developmental progress.
• The development of a curriculum programme to meet the needs of our students and accelerate developmental progress will take time to create effectively and sustainably. We will learn about our students and their specific needs, research effective practice that is already out there, create a model that suits our students, whānau and community and share our findings throughout this process.

Therefore, my focus for my inquiry will be 'Creating of an effective learning programme to accelerate the developmental progress of Year 1 students to establish skills for school readiness.

Inquiring Into Specific Aspects Of My Current Teaching Practice

Main Learning About My Teaching and My Next Steps

To be reflective is uncomfortable. I'm a firm believer in those aspects of your teaching that you become defensive about are probably the aspects that most need changing.

I have observed three aspects relating to my teaching where that uncomfortable feeling rose from my gut. Indicating an area that I need to reflect on. Below is a description of those moments and what it has meant to me in regards to areas I can make changes to my practices.

Situation 1

During an observation of behaviours of students within my class, my DP observed two students rushing through their writing. We had a great reflective discussion regarding the possible expectations I have of these students. 

Some questions I reflected on:

Do I have lower expectations of these boys who find it difficult to stay focused and complete tasks to the same level as other students? Thinking back to lockdown these were the boys who refused to do online learning when their parents asked them too. What is causing this divergence? If I up my expectation of these students will they persevere more with their learning?  One of these boys is a fidgeter and struggles writing his letters in sequence. Does observing these tendencies lower my expectation of writing output? What would happen if I lifted the bar? How can I motivate them to write more, for longer periods? How can I use self-directed learning and student agency to accelerate progress with these students?

Situation 2

Every now and then we come across a difficult situation that takes us by surprise and makes us evaluate how we see the world. My second reflection on my teaching practice is not actually directly related to my teaching. It was a cultural misunderstanding by me that made me reflect on the value of Whanaungatanga and my understanding of what this means. 

My instant reaction to a conflicting situation that arose was to stand my ground in what I believed in, but I was wrong to do this. I needed instead to look at how others see the situation to truly learn from the experience. The situation that arose (without going into details) could easily put down to miscommunication, however, I believe the real problem was my own lack of knowledge of Māori culture, values, and the Tikanga of Whanaungatanga. I am on a personal journey to grow my understanding of Te Ao Māori and this highlighted important new learning for me.

The situation made me reflect on how I have been brought up. I have grown up in an English family who are insular in our ways. We are not part of a large community, we don't go to church or have large family gatherings, I didn't play team sports and although I will do anything to help I often need to be told what to do. Whanaungatanga is something I am having to learn.

How much do my Pakeha beliefs and values come into my daily teaching practice that I am not even aware of? Of course, they are going to, but I truly believe I need to acknowledge my culture and put it to one-side and embrace Māori and Pasifika culture, to teach Māori as Māori and Pasifika as Pasifika in culturally responsive ways. I'm sure I will not be successful all the time and I will make cultural mistakes (as indicated above) but if we are putting students in the centre of teaching and learning, then expecting them to assimilate to Pakeha culture is not the way, it is putting us in the centre instead.

Situation 3

The third learning about my teaching is how easy it is to revert back to the comfortable, the well-established ways of teaching. Looking at my learning site during lockdown is an example of this...

There were great things I was doing on my site to engage learners, make learning accessible for those students that were working independently without adult help and continuing with ways to accelerate language acquisition through our work with Dr Jannie Van Hees. However, the one thing that slipped away was culturally responsive teaching. This tells me that that I have a long way still to go until culturally responsive teaching practice is a natural way of teaching and a part of all that I do. When the hugeness of lockdown happened and we had to change how we taught and students learned in many ways. That is the one thing that dropped off. This tells me that there is so much more work, learning, changes to my everyday practice that I need to make to ensure culturally responsive teaching is at the forefront of my practice.

Summary

• High expectations for all students. Student agency and self-directed learning to engage, motivate and encourage perseverance amongst the boys in my class.
• Acknowledgement of my own culture and putting my culture perspectives aside to truly learn about and experience Te Ao Māori and increase my cultural responsiveness.
• Keep the changes I am making to my practice in terms of PELP and culturally responsive practice at the forefront, even when times are challenging and you feel yourself reverting back to past ways of teaching.

TIA20 Academic Reading; Krashen

S. Krashen

Facilitating language comprehension; what we do as teachers naturally and what we should actually focus on.

Slowed down speech, clearer articulation, use of more high-frequency words, syntactic simplification, shorter sentences and the use of fewer idioms may appear to promote language comprehension however this limits students to minimal language input. Secondly, we actually tend to make these changes naturally when speaking to a second language speaker, therefore, this is not what we as teachers need to focus on.

Instead, it is important to focus on comprehension and communication and if we do this then the syntactic requirements will follow suit. (Krashen, 1982)

"Believe that your child can understand more than he or she can say, and seek, above all, to
communicate... "If you concentrate on communicating, everything else will follow." (Brown,
1977, p. 26. in Krashen, 1982)

Krashen highlights these strategies as effective methods of teaching language acquisition.

• Check students comprehension by monitoring their verbal and non-verbal responses.

• Use pictures and objects to encourage language acquisition. This helps students to understand concepts outside of what they know.

• Take advantage of what student's know about in the world however, be aware that if the context is too familiar they may have little or no interset and uptake will be minimal. Utilize their curiosity of contexts outside their known worlds whilst helping them make connections to what they already understand.

• Share the process of language acquisition with the students so that they can continue to progress and be aware of their progress independently.

These points affirm the work of Dr Jannie Van Hees and the intensive oral language acquisition work I have currently been doing. I want to be much more open with my students about the process of language acquisition. This is something I remember Jannie discussing with students on one of her modelling sessions for us teachers. This will help them to be metacognitive and add value to what we are doing. It will also help them to continue with their language acquisition when they are not in the class situation.

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition.

TAI20 Professional Reading; The Oral Language Book by Sheena Camaron and Louise Dempsey

The Oral Language Book; Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Traits of Effective Teachers of Oral Language

• Explicitly teach speaking skills
• Engage in dialogue not monologue
• Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
• Create a safe respectful talking environment
• Explicitly teach listening skills
• Explicitly teach vocabulary

What am I doing already? What can I do differently?

What am I already doing?	What can I do differently?  Ideas are taken from Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey's The Oral Language Book
Explicitly teach speaking skills
Encourage students to speak in sentences, not one-word answers.	Modelled and shared, guided and independent speaking and listening approach gradually releasing responsibility (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983)
Engage in dialogue not monologue
Say and do activities	Think-pair-share instead of hands up…. I still need to work on ‘no hands up’ Think, pair, walk and talk
Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
Provide devices and opportunities for students to record and listen back to themselves speaking. Model correct sentence structures, encourage students to use correct sentence structures.	Scaffold speaking and listening using talking strips  Doughnut circles
Create a safe respectful talking environment
Really listen to students and encourage students to really listen to each other. Value and encourage the use of heritage language in the classroom. Allow for think time and allow students to work with a partner or in small groups.
Explicitly teach listening skills
Engage Games with focus on listening carefully	Barrier Games Construct charts describing what good listeners do
Explicitly teach vocabulary
Drama and role play Retelling	Word pictures

Cameron, C & Dempsey, L (2016). The Oral Language Book, Auckland: S&L Publishing Ltd.

TAI20 Revisiting my Hypothesis

This graph shows me how my students are tracking in reading over time using Term 2 running record reading data. I can identify students whose progress has plateaued as well as those students that are making slower than expected progress. 

As I am able to identify the students, it is interesting to note that results plateaued for many of the students that didn't connect during the lockdown. Whereas, those students that did connect have all continued to make progress (this is with exception to one student). This data was collected 3 weeks after returning to school.

This is my second year teaching this group of students, and my second year of inquiring into my practice in order to raise these the achievement outcomes of these students. 

Last year I identified that most students didn't begin to make progress through the reading levels until around their first year at school. It is my hunch that factors contributing to this could be the extremely low levels of the oral language they have at school entry, the social, economic and health factors influencing their readiness to learn and the acquisition of English as a second language within their first year at school. These were the factors influencing my hypothesis during the first year of this inquiry and informed my changes of practice up until this point.

My hypothesis has been...

Utilising the student's strengths in their first language, working in bilingual and multilingual ways, creating Talanoa, and working in partnership with families will help build students English language and literacy.

Developing oral language through short high-interest topics and real-life experiences, with a focus on intensive oral language acquisition, will create an environment of language in abundance.

A collaborative inquiry across the junior school (Years 1-3) will grow professional capital across the school. The shared inquiry will allow all students across the junior school to benefit from the effectiveness of changed practice and allow teachers to learn from and with each other. It will hopefully also enable an effective changed practice to become sustainable.

ENGAGE games were introduced towards the end of the first year in response to students inability to self-regulate and the effect this was having on their ability to listen and engage in learning.


I feel it is important to keep the same hypothesis however I have seen significant shifts in many of my students, however, I now want to shift my focus away from those students that this has worked for (as I hope that me continuing with methods that have worked will keep on working for these students) towards those students that are not making the expected progress. What can I do differently so that those achieving keep on achieving and those that aren't making the progress do too!For me, certain aspects of this hypothesis have been explored more than others...The standout area that last year I didn't explore was 'working in partnership with families will help build students English language and literacy.' Lockdown has made me realise that even though I thought up until that point I had developed strong home-school partnerships, I really hadn't. How can I use the strong relationships that I formed over lockdown to make a difference to the outcomes of those students that are not making the expected progress?
If I work in partnership with families then student learning will flow across home-school contexts and the student, whānau and school will have a greater common understanding of learning needs and the best ways to meet those learning needs.
Although I will be collecting and analysing data across my class. I will form a new focus group consisting of students that are not making the same progress as others within my class.

TAI20 The Nature and Extent of the Student Challenge: Whānau Voice

I have been collecting parent voice through the method of Talanoa. This method allows whānau to speak openly without the expectation to answer questions in a forced and directed way. These conversations are a way to listen to whānau and the messages they are sharing in a comfortable natural way.
All three pieces of whānau voice were collected through long comfortable conversations in natural environments with other whānau members present. This information was given by them without prompting or questioning. 

One mum talked about the impact of helping her children do their learning during the lockdown:
"I wasn't aware of the impact of what was going on at home was having on the children's achievement. They didn't use to be like this. (This is referring to an extremely difficult situation the family has been through).

They are at a 5-year-old level. I don't want them falling further behind. It wasn't only me it was the older siblings helping them.

I'm glad all the growling at them to do their work has paid off. It was hard work.

I have noticed they have changed. They are happy kids. They come home from school all talking at once wanting to tell me about their day."

Another mum discussed how she loved working with her daughter during the lockdown: 

"I want to keep working with her. I can see the progress she is making. We don't do the projects as we don't have the things you need but we do reading, writing and maths. I haven't paid much attention to their leaning before but now I'm reading and doing things with my younger children too."

Discussion during a home visit with Samoan whānau: 
"We don't feel safe coming back to school yet. We are learning through our bible studies and the church band. We are doing things together as a small family group. I am teaching them about God's ways. The children use my hotspot to go on their site in the evening after they have done their jobs." As we were talking the children were playing doctors with a toy medical kit.

My reflection of whānau voice is 

• The impact high levels of stress in the home setting has on students self-regulation and uptake of new learning at school. As illustrated above whānau may not be aware of the impact stressful home situations have on children's learning. Once made aware of this whanau made changes to their family interactions and gave more support with their children's learning.
• Families have limited resources at home however during the lockdown, having learning visible on the class site allowed whānau to become more involved in their child's learning and they could see the progress their child was making. This was a motivating factor for some whānau and they wanted to continue helping their child with their learning after the lockdown.
• It is easy to look at education and views of success through a Pakeha lense. However, it is important to step out of our cultural world view into the world views of our students. I need to gain a deeper understanding of  Māori and Pasifika beliefs of success, values and education if I am to truly look at achievement and what we measure as success. 

MIT and TAI2020 Gaining a Greater Understanding of Māori and Pasifika Perspectives of Play

It is a common perception that play is a normal way for children to learn about themselves and their environment and that the learning and development that happens through play reflect the social and cultural contexts in which the child lives. Also, that play is important for the holistic development of the child. (Bruce, 2001; Leaupepe, 2011)

The ENGAGE Programme takes this further by showing the importance games can make as a catalyst for developing self-regulation skills needed to navigate successfully through life.

My proposed project outcome is to create an online platform to connect our Māori and Pasifika whanau with the Engage programme that our schools are incorporating into their daily curriculum.

However, Leaupepe (2011) indicates through her research into Pasifika Perceptions of Play that the above common viewpoint may not a Pasifika viewpoint. Her paper illustrates the perception of play can sometimes be seen as inappropriate and taking children's time away from more productive activities like helping around the house.  Contribution/ service is a hugely important value in Pasifika cultures. 

If this is the case then will whanau see the value in the ENGAGE programme, and be willing to learn more about it through the proposed website?


To gain further insight into a Māori and Pasifika view regarding play I meet with Maori and Pasifika teaching colleagues using the Pasifika method of Talanoa. 

My Colleague Talking From a Māori Perspective:

"Games are viewed as learning- you are learning as you play, through play learning is achieved. Maori believe should be enjoyable because through play learning is achieved.

What memories do you have of play as a child?


"Marbles, pūrerehua, ti rakau, poi, spinning top hit with a harakeke, pole with ropes like a swing, kōruru (cow knuckle bones), and calabashes,"

What games do you play as a family at home? Are they different from when you were a child?


"Video games, more electronic games. The Whakawhanaunga, the intimacy, wairua, the spiritual connection has been lost. It is missing, noho ngātahi (being together as one)"

What are the positives about helping your child learn at home?

"Whakawhanaungatanga , spiritual connection. We are very kanohi ki te kanohi."

Two Of My Colleagues Talking From a Pasifika Perspective

Some families are strict and children have to do what they are told to do. Others allow for time to do something and spending time together as a family and play. 
Traditionally games are competitive... egg and spoon races, sack races.

The conversation turned to opportunities and challenges of sharing the ENGAGE programme with families and expecting them to implement the games at home. 

It was mentioned that it can be difficult to have the drive, and daily routines and there is the distraction of social media e.g.facebook, this takes time away from spending time interacting with children. They said that there is the risk that they will say they will do things that the school recommends but in reality when they get home it probably won't happen. 

School is school, and home is home. It is polite to say the right things and families don't necessarily say what they think. When discussing ways of sharing... Culturally, if it is fun families will come especially if it is something simple ..... food and their children performing.... bring families in to share. 


My Reflection after meeting with colleagues:

• It is important to value Whakawhanaungatanga and embed this value throughout the process and within the prototype.
• Include Maori games such as ti rakau 
• Incorporate competitive games
• Students demonstrate games as an incentive for parents to connect.
• Launch an online platform through a celebration for our Pasifika community, sharing food and cultural performances.

References

Bruce, T. (2001). Learning through play: Babies, toddlers and the foundation years (pp. 112-124). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Leaupepe, M. (2011). Pasifika perspectives of play: challenges and responsibilities. Peer-Reviewed Paper: Vol2, Num4-March 2011, The University of Auckland.

CoL: Checking In - How is our collaborative approach to teaching as inquiry going? Is our shared vision clear?

One of the key aspects of my with CoL Inquiry was to take a collaborative approach. Instead of inquiring solely my own change of practice I wanted to take this further by hopefully creating effective change across the whole of our Junior school. I have therefore been taking my team with me on the journey of inquiry, together we have been implementing new pedagogy learned from working with the PELP (Pasifika early Literacy Programme) and Jannie Van Hees to develop an intensive oral language acquisition programme. 
It is easy to make assumptions that everyone is on the same page and we all have a shared understanding but is that really the case? Also what changes can we make so that we are effectively working together to create change that will best develop our student's oral language? 

I created a Google Form to gain a better understanding of how we are going. 

Here are the responses:

What is your understanding of the 'why' behind our PELP project? Why are we doing this?

To use heritage languages as a tool to accelerate learning. Realising first languages are a powerful tool - an advantage rather than a hindrance.

The school has encouraged us to take part in this programme. The workshops and whanau meetings that we have already had have definitely proved the significance of recognition of the children's family first language in their learning. Coming from a culture and language other than English myself, I know how valuable it is to be able to communicate in more than one language both verbally and in writing. Though we are still fresh in this learning process and just trying it out, I can see how significantly it is increasing children's confidence in their learning. It is giving them a sense of belonging, courage and joy as well as leadership in leading others including their own teacher.

My understanding of PELP is that it will increase the engagement of students with their own language in school.

To utilise students first language and culture within the classroom and encouraging parents to share stories language and culture with their children at home. We are doing this to raise Pasifika student achievement through teaching in culturally responsive practices.

What is your understanding of the 'why' behind our Intensive Oral Language Acquisition project? Why are we doing this?

To aid literacy and vocabulary development.

Oral language or speaking is the main key to read and write. It has been identified in our school that students are making slower progress than expected in reading and writing. We know how important the early years are in building the foundation for learning in any curriculum areas. So I believe that our students in the first couple of years at school need to be exposed to a very rich oral language and vocabularies to support them in expressing themselves orally first and then gaining fluency in reading and writing. However, it is quite challenging to implement a fully intensive oral language approach considering our ratio as well as other curriculum requirements to be met. Yet, it is very valuable if we can manage to implement it holistically across all our teaching blocks.

Our students will benefit with more oral language being introduced into the classroom. This will, in turn, help them with their writing and reading.


To build our students oral language through creating an intensive oral language programme. Our students come to school with extremely low oral language.

What changes could we make to our collaborative approach to teaching as inquiry so we are effectively working together towards a shared vision of raising student's oral language?

None - all is well

May be to set a goal as a team to implement some specific teaching ideas and strategies within a set timeframe; share ideas and plan, seek for help from one another, share our attempts, celebrations and challenges and give feedback.

By incorporating more intensive oral language into all subject areas we will enhance the children's abilities. A collaborative approach to this in the subject areas e.g. topic - living/non-living, will enable us to work together to help our children develop in all areas.


Sharing our inquiry with the whole school.

I normally find it hard to refer back to our Teaching as Inquiry doc to add onto it. I'm sure we all take part in implementing the ideas we have discussed. However, it is challenging to manage time to update the notes and findings on the doc. Yet, I am very happy that we are doing this together as a team as it motivates us to keep going.

Reflection: So what does this tell me? And how can I tweak what I'm doing to make our collaborative approach to teaching as inquiry more effective?

• The team has a clear understanding of the 'why' behind the new pedagogy. They see the vision and feel it is important. This is exciting!
• Acting on this response 'set a goal as a team to implement some specific teaching ideas and strategies within a set timeframe; share ideas and plan, seek for help from one another, share our attempts, celebrations and challenges and give feedback.' Making this more specific, we should be talking the walk. I love this response as it challenged my assumptions that this is something we were already doing. 
• We can share what we have been doing with the rest of the school through a staff meeting.

Teaching chunks of words PELP

Articles and pronouns are used to describe nouns and have a variety of formats. Correct use is important in writing.  Articles and pronouns are often used incorrectly or amitted in our student's oral language which of course is then reflected in their writing.

What have I learned from the Pacific Early Literacy Project and My Work With Dr Jannie Van Hees regarding the use of structural words?

• Instead of teaching bilingual learners individual words, teach words in meaningful chunks by teaching the words within the other words surrounding it. Bilingual students may understand lexical words but don't know the structural words that go with them such as pronouns and articles. Therefore, build these structural words into oracy programmes. Instead of using nouns in mind maps and think pair share activities build both the nouns and the articles that proceed them. Display the words within meaningful chunks for students to see and revisit.
• Insisting students use correct sentences through listening, thinking about what they are going to say, copying and repeating is a way of practising using the structural words surrounding new vocabulary e.g. say and do- "I am placing the tuatara on top of the log." "I am tieing the apron around his waist." 

What am I doing differently in my practice?

• I'm insisting on the correct use of pronouns and articles, I am doing this through modelling and gifting correct use and I give them multiple opportunities to practice. This can be done through hands-on 'say and do' activities like exploring floating and sinking I am picking up the stick and placing it on top of the water."  or "These objects float and these objects sink.
• Using mind maps that include the pronouns and articles that go with nouns.

How is it going?

It sure isn't easy for the students to use these words and this can seem laborious, but students amaze me with their perseverance working hard at correct speech. We talk a lot about how talking and listening are helping our brains grow.  One thing that I have noticed is the children finding it difficult to calm their bodies and minds down so that they are able to listen to others talking including me modelling the correct speech.  

What am I noticing?

The four students I'm tracking are all using correct sentence structure after repeating these correct structures a few times. They are using words such as they, that, these more often and when asked to think about what they are going to say are able to use a greater amount of words. However, they still all revert to short word-groups or one or two-word responses when they are talking naturally. I feel that significant changes to their everyday speech patterns may take time and that the hard work students are putting into their speech in the above learning situations will transfer into their day to day speech.