Nationwide gifting of He Taonga helps children korero in te reo
Nearly 5000 copies of New Zealand Tertiary College’s Māori language book have been gifted in what has been a mammoth nationwide distribution effort in 2016, but the College’s commitment to bilingualism is far from over.
Since the launch of Te Reo Māori: He Taonga mō ā tātou mokopuna (He Taonga) in April, 2016, the College has gifted copies to NZTC students, graduates, early childhood centres, Associate Teachers, staff members, advisors and stakeholders to assist with the use of Māori language in early childhood centres and beyond.
NZTC Chief Executive Selena Fox said it has been a phenomenal initiative and commitment by the College to increase students’ and early childhood teachers’ skills in te reo Māori, providing them with a resource to assist them with their confidence in sharing and speaking te reo Māori in their daily lives.
By the end of 2016, 1100 current students and graduates across New Zealand will have been gifted a copy. NZTC teams have also traversed the length of the country personally gifting 3055 books to early childhood centres – 2428 in the North Island and 627 in the South Island.
“Our Admissions Team and NZTC staff members have done an outstanding job in contributing to our commitment of gifting 5000 copies by personally delivering them to early childhood centres New Zealand-wide by the end of 2016,” said Fox, “however our commitment to bilingualism, biculturalism and the He Taonga project does not end here.”
The NZTC Academic Team is busy developing a researched teaching and learning guide to partner with the book. The guide will detail how early childhood educators can best use He Taonga to teach te reo Māori in the classroom.
Feedback from centres and students has been overwhelmingly positive with many commenting that they enjoy how user friendly and unique the book is to early childhood education.
Here is just some of the feedback we have received from students and centres:
Student feedback:
“He Taonga gives me the confidence to use te reo when working with young children, so much so that it becomes almost like a second language for me.”
“It contains short easy words and phrases that allow a beginner like me to say them with confidence.”
“It has been ka mau te wehi engaging in korero with our children through being prompted by this resource. It also made way for a new selection of songs for us to learn and enjoy alongside the children.”
“This resource has given me more confidence to use te reo Māori with the children on a daily basis.”
Centre feedback:
“The chapters are written in a way that I understand… learning about the culture, the food, greetings, numbers, colours… these are all very important building blocks.”
“The children love it. It’s ‘New Zealand’… especially as we have a huge Chinese community here and they want to know more.”
“He Taonga helps me validate the use of my grammar which is most important to me… it gave me confidence in sentence structure in terms of the present and the past.”
“We used the book to help children learn about the body and the names. We had sung some songs before but now with the book, we strongly know what we can do with te reo and children are picking it up very well, not only waiata but also the words from the book.”
He Taonga is available to purchase through NZTC Books. Click HERE to purchase your copy.