Teachers and students at Tautoro School talk about videos they have created to support the learning of te reo Māori. "Our students make resources for themselves. Digital learning objects where they make the creations of promoting more vocabulary in their language."
Tracey Simeon: We’re a school from year 1 to 8 and we have two levels of learning for te reo Māori. We have level 3 which is from 30% to 50% must be delivered in te reo Māori and we have level 2 which is from 50 to 80%. We are resource rich in the fact that our marae, Te Ringii marae, is next door to us. What digital education has done is opened more experts into our little classrooms. What I mean by that is that students can access websites that promote more te reo. The fact that I can use Tōku reo all the programmes that are filmed in te reo as a resource for my students to learn, as a resource for my students to create from, has been probably the most exciting part of our te reo programme. Our students can source other experts to help them with their learning in te reo Māori. Our students make resources for themselves. Digital learning objects where they make the creations of promoting more vocabulary in their language.
Chanella Leaf: Ever since the introduction of Chromebooks has come into our school, it’s changed the way I teach because I’m able to do things in a more global way. So for example, our parents who don’t know how to speak Māori, they can tune into what we do in the classroom and how Māori is taught. Also the goals that the kids have. If they have goals and expectations for te reo Māori the parents are able to see that straight away and they can click into any of the links and they can go onto their blog sites, you know what the children learn in the classroom. We’re able to give the power back to our kids.
We are making a music video about our twelve waka hoes and what they mean. And it’s an action song so the teina of our school can learn it.
Ok so we’ve got our words to our waiata for our exercise video, ānei ngā waka hoe mō tō tātou nei kura.
Chanella Leaf: We got down, we talked about the values of our school and then all the words that were on the chart, we just you know, made up a little tune about it and then they came up with the actions to it. They wanted just not the school to do it but everybody out there in the community so that when they come into our school they know that we have values in our school, we have tikanga in our school, and it works because it shows them what they do and they have a lot of pride and sense in their te reo Māori and their tikanga Māori.
Student: We were having an attendance competition and the class who got the most percentage went to Whangāerei so we made our movie based off of that.
Oh tino makariri te wai, engari, he tino haumaru ana mātou.
Student: We made a video to practice our Māori sentences and to practice our language.
Student: If we didn’t know a word we would look it up on the online dictionary and try see if it would make sense in our story.
Student: We wanted it to be perfect so we practiced and practiced to make sure we were getting it right.
Student: I like it because we learn more Māori and we can go and teach others what we learnt.
Tracey Simeon: The other project that they’re working on is based around a myth called Poutini who was a taniwha who took a young wife and in the end Poutini tried to hide her by making her into pounamu. The reason why we’re doing a South Island myth is because we have two schools, Mamaku and Greymouth, that we are blogging to under tuhi mai tuhi atu and so we thought we would give them a koha because they’re always commenting on the fact that we use a lot of te reo in our blogging.
Student: Lights. Camera. Action. Kia ora koutou. Ko tēnei te pakiwaitara o Poutini. This is the story of Poutini and how greenstone was believed to have been created in New Zealand.
Student: We wanted to learn how greenstones were created. We wrote it as a group, together. We found out that greenstones were a treasured taonga to us and our Māoritanga.
Student: And this was the story of Poutini and how greenstone appeared and was created in New Zealand. Be careful of that taniwha Poutini. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Tracey Simeon: To promote te reo Māori, you want it to be the best for them because it just gives them a sense of pride. This is our work and we’re sharing it to the world.