Goal One

During practicum two, I continued to do the ‘word of the day’ with the class, and also went over words that we had done in the first practicum. I started to give the words in English to the children and ask if they knew what the word was in Māori. This worked well, and it was interesting to see which words children knew and which words they tried to figure out, applying their knowledge of English and Māori.

I added words above the ‘I Feel Happy’ name section of the board (unfortunately I didn’t get a picture on the last day, the picture below is relatively early on). Having the words on the wall opposite my teaching station was a good reminder to use the words when I was speaking to the children, for example, if I glanced up it was a visual reminder to say put your pouaka kai away, rather than lunchbox, after snack and read.

There was a lot going on during practicum two and I wasn’t able to extend the current ‘I Feel/Check-In’ section of the name whiteboard to include more emotions. However, I did put up a poster from the Kuwi & Friends Māori Picture Dictionary which showed 40 different feelings.

I discussed this with the class during one of my ‘word of the day’ sessions so they were aware that it was there. A number of children began to look at the poster while putting up their names in the morning and would have discussions about how they were feeling and search for the Māori translation.

From the beginning of practicum two, it was my responsibility to read a story after morning break during ‘snack and read’ time. I decided early on to focus on stories connected to Matariki (as I was going to be teaching a number of Matariki lessons and this was a good way to introduce the subject) and Māori legends.

I read all the legends from the Peter Gossage ‘Maui and other Māori Legends’ book, along with his version of ‘In the Beginning’ and about five different stories related to Matariki. Reading these stories gave me an opportunity to work on my pronunciation and my confidence pronouncing Māori names did increase as time went on.

One of the teachers went through how to pronounce the Matariki star names during a syndicate singing session. I found this very helpful, took on board what she said and applied this to other Māori words which definitely helped me with my pronunciation.

I continued to use Māori greetings at the beginning and end of the day and would include the class name, for example, ‘ata mārie Pikorua’. I would also use a Māori greeting on the welcome whiteboard at the entrance to the classroom. However, my confidence is still relatively low when using Māori words and I need to consciously integrate te reo into my lessons. This is definitely an area of focus for me and will continue to be throughout my teaching career.

In the first week, we decided that I would do a number of Matariki lessons with the class. This gave me an opportunity to try integrating Matariki across a number of different subjects, and while it didn’t technically contribute to this goal, it did allow me to introduce Māori culture into the classroom across a number of lessons and did help me gain some confidence with pronunciation (I can now say the Matariki star names).

I started with an introduction lesson, linking this to new year celebrations around the world, as there were many cultures represented across the 54 children in the class. This was followed by a ‘Digital Breakout’ where the class had to solve clues connected to Matariki. I related these lessons to Social Studies. The next lessons were based around Technology, the first one was to design a Kite in a group, having looked at the structure of a kite and the properties it needs to fly. Each group then made a prototype of their kite from paper straws, ice block sticks, paper, string, glue and blu-tak to see if their design would work at full-size. I decided to build prototypes so they could understand the design process and because it was difficult to source materials for full-sized kites given the size of the class. The final lessons related to the stars in the Matariki constellation. I wanted to connect Matariki with the night sky and while I couldn’t show them the stars, I wanted to excite the class so they would want to look themselves, and have the information they needed to find Matariki and know about the stars that make up the constellation. These lessons related to science and art. The first lesson was making a large eight-pointed star, with a star name on each point and a definition of what the star represented (either written or drawn). The second lesson was how to find Matariki, I printed out instructions on an A4 sheet of paper then had black scratch paper for the children to scratch the constellations into. They then glued the scratch paper onto the instruction sheet and had a map they had drawn and could use in conjunction with the instructions to find Matariki.