View comments from Shar Pene, Tutor at Gracelands Inside Learning, taken at the Symposium in Hamilton, July 2011.
Key content
Embedded literacy and numeracy in a Maori context
Transcript
The intent was to apply the application of Māori pedagogies in a marae context. So it was taking the students out of our community into another community for a six month project; and we went on a Whakamarama marae for one visit every month for six months.
I loved the assessment tool, it’s one of our biggest resources that we have. Prior to going onto our marae we actually assessed the students with the literacy tool – with the reading, writing and numeracy assessments, as well as the vocab. After the project had finished, after the six months, we assessed them again. Every learner that came on the marae either went up a step or up within a step. So the outcome for that programmr was so high with achieving literacy and numeracy results.
Because literacy is not only reading and writing, it’s actually about speaking and listening as well, we actually formed our project with a lot of waiata, a lot of performance with the taiaha, which they had to be controlled and committed to with speaking and listening. So it was really very valuable what we were doing on the marae in terms of speaking and listening. We also had pen and paper there, and dictionaries available for people wanting to upskill in meanings of words that they didn’t know or weren’t familiar with.