The children would sit on the mat each morning and afternoon and one teacher would welcome (or farewell) the class. They would then get the other teachers to greet/farewell the class and the class would respond with the same greeting/farewell. I started to say mōrena and haere rā, rather than good morning and goodbye.

I found it difficult to work the word of the day in first thing in the morning as there were a lot of standard routines happening and it was difficult the catch the teacher’s attention and remind them. When I was given a slot (from day two) after the morning tea break each day to read a story to the class, I started using the beginning of this time to teach the class a new Māori word each day (or perhaps remind some of them of one they already know).

My AT suggested that I start with two words the class had already learnt – E tū (stand up) and E noho (sit down), and said that I could get them to stand up and sit down as they were saying the phrases. I did this and it worked really well – the children enjoyed standing up and sitting down as I said the words, finding it especially amusing when I (deliberately) asked them to E tū when they were already standing.

As part of my goal was to start using the words I was learning and to integrate te reo when I was speaking in class, I decided to focus on objects within the classroom. I have recently purchased the Kuwi & Friends Māori Picture Dictionary and the Te Kura page was a perfect place to start. This page shows objects that are commonly used in the classroom and playground.

I used the pronunciation tool on the Maori Dictionary website to help me learn how to say the words correctly. I would listen to the word and repeat it a number of times. For some words, I wrote the word phonetically so I could make sure I used the correct pronunciation in front of the class. Having been using the words in class, I can now say all of my words of the day correctly.

I started with words like pene (pen) and pene rākau (pencil), as these were words I could start using – “Do you have a pene?”, “You’ll need a pene rākau so you can start your writing”. I built on these initial words with papamā (whiteboard) and then was able to combine it with pene, for pene papamā (whiteboard pens). This was particularly good as I was reviewing the words we had already done by asking the children what words we had already done at the beginning of each session, so that we could learn and start using them.

When I did pene papamā, I asked what the word for whiteboard was (we’d done it the previous day), then picked up a whiteboard pen and asked for suggestions of what it could be in Māori. The children quickly connected the words for whiteboard and pen, and came up with papamā pene, the opposite way around. Out of 54 students in the class, 29 have English as a second language, and this gave me the opportunity to connect generally with their skill in speaking multiple languages and make a comment about words and sentences being constructed differently in different languages.

The class routine was to bring their lunchboxes into class after morning tea and lunch and have a snack while they listened to a story. Doing snack and read after breaks gave the children an opportunity to make sure that they had enough to eat if they were distracted by playing during the break, and was a good way to bring children back into a learning/classroom frame of mind after playing freely. Choosing the word for lunchbox (pouaka kai) gave me the opportunity to start telling the class to put their pouaka kai into their school bag (a word that was coming up on my list to do) when I finished reading the story, which connected with the second and third sections of my goal.