Being Culturally Responsive

Notes taken while attending the Southwest Cluster Group hosted by Core Education with Gemma Stewart and Dianne Collier.

What is culture?

How do we respond to culture?

Culture is central to learning. It plays a role not only in communicating and receiving information, but also shaping the thinking process of groups and individuals. A pedagogy that acknowledges, responds to and celebrates fundamental cultures offers full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures. Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognises the importance of including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings, 1994)

How do we be responsive for all?

Practice getting it right. Change. Confidence.

Actively work on it. Ever changing. Doing, Being, Thinking.   

Treaty of Waitangi. Four Articles.

Article One: Kawanantanga- Honourable Governance

We have to get it right for our Maori first

What actions are we doing?

Article Two: Rangatiratanga

Maori Self Determination

Maori achieving success as Maori

Children learn best in environments where their identities are valued

What opportunities am I giving them?

Article Three: Oritetanga

Equity

What does bi- cultural mean?

Article Four: The spoken Promise

Their culture

My Culture

Our Culture

The next step for me is to ask myself what am I already doing in the classroom to promote this and what do I need to be doing more of. 

Bringing the class together.

Halfway through last year I began teaching my year 2/3 class a Karakia (prayer) every morning. 

Karakia are prayers or incantations. They are generally used to ensure a favourable outcome to important events and undertakings such as tangihanga (the ritual of farewell to our deceased), hui (meetings), unveilings etc., however they can cover every aspect of life.

(source http://maori.otago.ac.nz/reo-tikanga-treaty/te-reo/karakia)

This is the one we have been saying on our class. We opted for one that was non religious to cater for all students beliefs.

Kia hora te marino

May peace be widespread

 Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana

May the sea be like greenstone

Hei huarahi mā tātou i te rāngi nei

A pathway for us all this day

Aroha atu aroha mai

Give love, receive love

Tātou i a tātou katoa Hui ē! Tāiki ē!

Let us show respect for each other

I have continued to do this every morning with my year 5/6 class as well. 

Promoting Language in the Classroom.

I will admit I don't pick up languages easily so for me to make my students feel at home in my classroom I have the words around the room. It means it's easy for me to see and use but also the other students can see them as well.

The language speech bubbles and the Sign Language cards with Te Reo are from Twinkl.  Although a UK based site they now have New Zealand resources. You can get some items for free but it is well worth paying for the subscriptions as there are so many wonderful ideas on their site.

I also want to respect all the different languages and cultures that are in my classroom. It is important to me to respect that students in my class have another language and culture and I need to embrace this. 

Time Table in Te Reo 

Commands in Te Reo

Labels around the room in Te Reo

Twinkl- Respect the languages spoken in my class. 

Everyday phrases I try to say in the classroom 

Twinkl- Sign is one of my students first languages. 

Te Reo

Over the year I have been re thinking the way I have been teaching Te Reo in my classroom. Usually it is a 30 -minute lesson once a week. I began to find this wasn't working for my class in the the fact it was only a one off lesson and by the time we re-visited the following week a lot of the students had forgotten their Reo.

I decided to do a 15 minutes lesson every day and started incorporating activities into their language programme to help consolidate previous and new learning. So after our Karakia each day we started to do mini lessons based on the topic we were looking at that term.

My emphasis was to make sure that my class were pronouncing the words correctly and had time to consolidate this. This is where I felt a one off lesson a week wasn't helping with this. My students needed time each day to work on their pronunciation and to listen to themselves and others speaking.

When we learnt about Te Tinana (the body),  I had already establish that the majority of my class knew their basic body parts thanks to 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' song in Te Reo therefore I decided to extend them by teaching them the rest of their body parts. Once we had spent time learning how to pronounce each body part correctly, we moved on to asking simple commands to help identify them.

Kei hea? (Where is your)       Anei taku (here is)

We also played a matching game in groups/pairs (as shown in the picture below)

Twinkl

During their language time, students were able to work in pairs/small groups to either play the matching game or ask Kei hea? 

We also did this when we learnt about about Akomanga (my classroom). I used a lot of the ideas from this site. Parts of our classroom were already labelled in Te Reo so my class were able to identify a few items already. We used the command 

'He aha tēnei? - What is this?'

Children used the cards to help consolidate their learning.

There were a number of ways they used these from 'matching game' 'memory' 'snap' etc. 

After each term, students still continued to use these cards and pictures during their language and free time.

I saw a vast improvement in their learning and saw the benefits of doing mini lessons each day rather than a one off lesson each week.