Achievement objectives

Students will:

1.1 greet, farewell, and acknowledge people and respond to greetings and acknowledgements
1.6 understand and use simple politeness conventions (for example, ways of acknowledging people, expressing regret, and complimenting people)
1.7 use and respond to simple classroom language (including asking for the word to express something in te reo Māori)
2.2 communicate about possessions
2.5 communicate about physical characteristics, personality, and feelings
3.3 give and follow directions
3.4 communicate, including comparing and contrasting, about how people travel
4.4 give and seek permission or agreement.

Learning intentions

Possible learning intentions for this unit of work are to:

• understand and use words for common classroom objects
• understand and respond appropriately to some classroom instructions
• ask and answer the question “He aha” (“What”)
• ask and answer questions about possession
• ask and answer questions about location
• understand instructions in PE lessons and respond appropriately to them
• understand and respond appropriately to directional instructions
• understand and use “me” at the beginning of a sentence to make a suggestion
• understand the use of “mā” to mean “and others”
• ask someone to pass something, using the correct form
• understand and use common words for the colours to describe objects in the classroom
• understand and use the Māori terms for the curriculum learning areas
• understand and respond to some greetings and farewells
• ask and answer questions about disposition
• use knowledge of the numbers one to sixty to express time
• describe the different times of the school day
• answer the roll-call in te reo Māori
• understand and use some phrases to give praise
• understand and use a simple phrase that expresses politeness
• understand and use some everyday survival expressions in the classroom
• use “ko” to name the different people who work at school
• specify the day of the week
• specify the month of the year.

Possible learning intentions for extension are to:

• recognise, understand, and use some less common classroom vocabulary
• use the correct form in Māori to indicate future events
• explore some word derivations
• learn the words for the days of the week
• express negatives
• further explore ownership and possession
• learn the dual pronouns
• communicate about different modes of transport
• give and respond to directions to get from A to B
• differentiate between tense markers to indicate present, past, and future
• use the correct word order to describe someone
• understand the notion of compound words
• understand that some words in te reo Māori are synonyms.

Tasks and activities 

The tasks and activities below are at varying levels of difficulty, to give the flexibility to meet the diverse needs of students. They can be done individually, in pairs, or in groups.  

Translations

Beside the examples of te reo Māori in the following tasks and activities, English translations are provided to assist you. They are not literal translations, but how to communicate the same thing in English. This support does not mean that you should necessarily say the English. That depends on the task or activity and your students' needs. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download:

• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.1 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.2 (.pdf)
• Taku AkomangaWorksheet 2.3 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.4 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.4a (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.5 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.6 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.8 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.9 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.10 (.pdf)
• Taku Akomanga Worksheet 2.11 (.pdf)

Assessment opportunities

To improve student learning in te reo Māori, assessment is best seen as an ongoing process that arises out of the relationship between teaching and learning – where the gathering and analysis of evidence, much of it of the moment, provides useful information on your students’ acquisition of te reo Māori. Through the gathering of such evidence, you will gain insights that will shape your practice, and your students will gain insights that will shape their learning.

In the curriculum guidelines, Te Aho Arataki, there are suggestions for possible learning and assessment activities for curriculum levels 1–2 and curriculum levels 3–4. In addition, there is helpful material collected online in Te Whakaipurangi Rauemi. This collection elaborates on some of the communicative tasks outlined in Tasks and activities, including cloze tasks, dycomm tasks, information transfer tasks, multi-choice tasks, strip stories, same-different tasks, dictocomps, listen-and-draw tasks, true-false-make it right tasks, and 4–3–2 tasks.

Ways to monitor progress, both informally and informally:

• Observe your students as they work on different communicative tasks and activities, individually, in pairs, or in groups, and assess their performance. Are they spontaneously greeting and farewelling others in real-life contexts? Do they have correct intonation and pronunciation? Do they have the necessary vocabulary to communicate about classroom objects, the timetable, and the classroom layout? Is the language that they are using accurate? Can they ask others about their mode of travel to school? Can they act on your instructions? Can they work with classmates to negotiate a route from A to B? Can they convey a simple negative, for example, “Kāore i konei” (Not here) in the context of calling the roll? Do they initiate communication in te reo Māori, for example, when asking for something to be passed?

• Factor formal assessment opportunities into your reo Māori programme so that the students’ performance is measured by their doing tasks that are framed in authentic language-learning contexts in your classroom (or school). For example, labelling different items in Māori on a classroom plan or role-playing a dialogue about lost property (or misplaced items) at school.

Using tasks to assess learning

You and your students could use any of the communicative language tasks described in the Tasks and activities section to assess learning. For example, the students could:

• rewrite the story (text innovation) in Hōhepa te Pūru to a school context (seeking friends in the playground)
• complete a class timetable in Māori
• engage in an information transfer task where they have to (for example) transpose a written timetable into a spoken one (or vice versa)
• sequence picture cards to match oral or written input
• role-play typical classroom scenes with scripted dialogue (see resource sheet 2.6), with the English translations on the resource sheet, put there to help the teacher, taken out before the students use them
• combine bits of information in a dycomm task to arrive at the whole picture (For example, one student might have information about the modes of transport half of the class use to get to school, and another student might have the information about the other half. Together they have to negotiate meaning in order to create a bar graph showing the modes of transport the class uses to get to school.)
• take part in a listen-and-draw task where each student has a map with landmarks on it and one student describes a way to get to school while the other students draw it on their maps.

In addition your students could participate in a 4–3–2 task, where you give the students four, then three, and then two minutes (or whatever amount of time you judge appropriate) to explain to others what the timetable for the day/week is.

Related topics

• Health and physical education – Mason Durie’s tapawhā model of a well-balanced person (taha hinengaro, taha tinana, taha whānau and taha wairua).
• Mathematics – the times for different subjects on the timetable; costs for classroom trips and school lunches.
• Social sciences – reading maps.
• The arts – making puppets to use in role-plays of classroom situations.

Resources and references

Waiata

• “Tēnā Koutou Means Hello” (for everyday classroom language, in Waiata o Aotearoa)
• “Mā Is White” (for the colours, in Waiata o Aotearoa)
• “Kōpere” (for the colours, in Te Wao Nui a Tāne)
• “Haere Mai Rā” (a welcome-to-our-school song on Kiwi Kidsongs 11)
• “He Aha te Tae?” (on Hei Waiata, Hei Whakakoakoa – Waiata to Support Teaching and Learning of te Reo Māori in English-medium Schools: Years 1–8)

Stories

Apanui, Hōne (2005). Makawe. Wellington: Learning Media. [This Pīpī book introduces the colours.]

Apanui, Hōne (2005). Poroteteke. Wellington: Learning Media. [This Pīpī book introduces some simple movements.]

Hunia, Leon and Fran (2000). He Kurī. Wellington: Learning Media. [This He Purapura book contains some simple examples of the use of adjectives to describe things.]

McCurdy, Oliver (1994). Te Wā. Wellington: Learning Media. [This He Purapura book features time.]

Ngā Manu o te Mahia (1989). Ngā Kākahu a Airini. Wellington: Learning Media. [This He Purapura book includes the days of the week.]

Taute, Hera (2003). Ngā Rā o te Wiki. Wellington: Huia Publishers. [This Ngā Kete Kōrero books contains a story that features the days of the week.]

Te Awa, Manu (2009). Taku Akomanga. Wellington: Learning Media. [This Pīpī book introduces some classroom objects.]

Yates, Piatarihi (2000). Hohepa te Pūru. Wellington: Learning Media. [This He Purapura book is about seeking a friend.]

References

Amery, H. (2007). First Hundred Words in Māori. Wellington: Huia Publishers.

Amery, H. (2006). First Thousand Words in Māori. Wellington: Huia Publishers. [See pages 28–29 for classroom vocabulary.]

Barlow, Cleve (2001). Tikanga Whakaaro: Key Concepts in Māori Culture. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Litchfield, Jo (2009). Everyday Words in Māori. Wellington: Huia Publishers. [See ages 26–27 for classroom vocabulary.]

Mead, Hirini Moko and Grove, Neil (2003). Ngā Pēpeha a ngā Tīpuna. Wellington: Victoria University Press.

Melbourne, Hirini (2007). Te Wao Nui a Tāne. Wellington: Huia Publishers. [Book and CD]

Ministry of Education (2008). Hei Waiata, Hei Whakakoakoa – Waiata to Support Teaching and Learning of te Reo Māori in English-medium Schools: Years 1–8. Wellington: Learning Media. [Book and CD]

Ministry of Education (2002). Kiwi Kidsongs 11. Wellington: Learning Media.

Orbell, Margaret (2007). The Illustrated Encyclopedia ofMāori Myth and Legend. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press.

Taranaki Playcentre Association (1992). Waiata o Aotearoa. Inglewood: Taranaki Playcentre Association. [Book and CD]

Tauroa, Hiwi and Pat (1990). Māori Phrasebook and Dictionary. Auckland: Collins.

Vocabulary

(See Teaching te reo Māori effectively for more language that is useful for the classroom.)