Pathways to learning
The emphasis in this clip is on the build-up to making pizzas, for example, looking at various recipes in a Māori cookbook to identify recurring verbs (imperatives), and learning useful structures (for example, homai and anei). We hear the teacher articulating their goal; that is, to share kai, using Māori language, where the main task is for the students to write down their favourite pizza recipe – which someone else will make. Along the way, we see examples of tikanga, for instance, karakia before kai and tuakana-teina practices (as exemplified in the conversation between two students about the assessment rubric in He Reo Tupu).
Transcript
We wanted to head towards sharing kai together, and sharing hāngi at the end of the term. And that was our goal, but also as we shared kai we wanted the students to be immersed in the language to be able to share kai together in te reo Māori.
Tandi McRae – Clyde Quay School
Using a te reo Māori recipe book, the class then commenced the activity of making pizzas – the goal being for each student to create a recipe in te reo Māori, that classmates would be able to follow.
We did a big build up of vocabulary feed in and practice. We fed in basic sentence structures, for example He aha māu, He paraoa māku, Homai te... And, as we do in literacy learning, we used examples of good texts to show students what a quality recipe would look like, each of the components. We had pictures, we had lists of kai, we had steps to making the pizza, so that example was there for them, and they knew where they needed to get to. So we looked at the first pizza recipe, and students were given a copy of the recipe. They worked with partners to identify the verbs from our discussions on the mat where they knew that, often, the verb was at the beginning of the sentence. They knew that in many of the verbs that were written, there was an ‘-a’, an ‘-ia’, or a ‘-ria’ at the end of those words, and so with their partners they went away and highlighted the verbs that they could see in the pizza recipe. Students then actually had to pick out and take note of specific kupu kai that they would use, but then also the action verbs that they would need to be able to write their recipe well.
Tandi McRae – Clyde Quay School
Students were then set the task of writing their recipes, using the language they had acquired.
They had to be very clear that in their writing they had written these steps correctly because they weren't going to be making their own pizza; it was a friend who was going to be making their pizzas, so they needed to make sure that they had their structure correct. From that point students then were able to move that draft piece of writing into their published piece.
Tandi McRae – Clyde Quay School
Once each student had completed their recipe, they were able to work in pairs following a pizza recipe in te reo Māori.
The pairings that I organised for the kids were we had the more confident students supporting the students who were a little less confident. And so that tuakana teina structure allowed students to be supported, but also for students who were more confident they were there to awhi. They are incredibly enthusiastic about the success that they saw in building that vocabulary and they are very clear about how far that they’ve come. They are very confident and they have built their self-esteem around learning another language.
Tandi McRae – Clyde Quay School
