Te Reo Māori

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As someone who completed the majority of their schooling overseas, I cannot say I experienced any Te Reo Māori lessons when I was at school. As such, when I began teaching last year I was a little unsure of how much Te Reo is usually taught and how these lessons are structured. Naturally, there is a lot of variation between courses and different ideas of how best to support the development of the language. Fortunately, I was able to experience Te Reo lessons first hand as I enrolled in two different courses as a student.
                                                    Learning about the colours

While I was a student at Auckland University, I took a linguistics paper in Te Reo Māori which helped me to develop an understanding of the structure of the language and supported me to build a basic vocabulary. As I still struggled with pronunciation and wanted to learn more about Tikanga, I enrolled in a course at UNITEC. This course was free and I would urge other educators to enrol, as I found it hugely beneficial. We went through the basics of the language, but looked at pronunciation,  tikanga and kapa haka.  The tutors in this course were wonderful; the activities that they provided were engaging and we all came a long way in a short space of time.

                                                                                                               Our Matariki Video
I now use a combination of " Ka Mau te Wehi!" which is the programme followed by my school and the lessons from my Kura Po classes at UNITEC. I have found that my students are just as engaged in the activities from my classes as I was and I can tell that much learning is occurring in these lessons.

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