supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

There are some great indicators of where we are now, such as the
children asking for the te reo instead of English and spontaneously using
Māori such as when drawing on the concrete today. J said „I‟m drawing
a porohita‟. He then carried on with drawing other shapes. I asked him
what a triangle was and he said he didn‟t know but a child at the kai
table said „tapa toru‟ (Jl: A, 9/8/04).
In Case Study Two, te reo Māori had progressed in a very short time (4
months) from tentative greetings and waiata to children supporting each other in
developing language skills. Another strategy reported by case study participants
and questionnaire respondents involved using te reo for greetings, farewells and
commands. This is not surprising given that DOP 4(d) (Ministry of Education,
1998) suggests that educators “consider the use of te reo Māori for greetings,
farewells and across the curriculum (p. 35). Seven out of ten respondents (n=50,
70.5%) indicated that they used te reo Māori daily for greetings and/or farewells.
These results are similar to those in the research by Mitchell and Brooking (2007)
who noted that 63 per cent of their respondents spoke te reo Māori every day for
some of the time and that the main use of te reo (90%) was for greetings and
farewells. Importantly, children in my research also began to use farewells as they
became familiar with them:
A staff member left the centre. I said „Ka kite, D‟ [teacher]. Child R was
sitting beside me. He said „Ka kite ano, D‟ (Jl: J. March 04).
Chris H shared how she was incorporating Māori words into her teaching:
Practising some Māori words like when we are doing some drawing
some crayons and I will name the colours of the crayons and some of the
toys like whero, kākāriki (Tr: CH. 8/12/08).
Employing te reo Māori for colours and numbers was also frequent with
almost three quarters of the questionnaire respondents (n=54, 74%) indicating that
they were using te reo Māori to denote colours and/or numbers on a daily basis.
The following example from Case Study One also shows how colours and numbers
were incorporated into the programme:
For colours I made a book. When I get my book back from the teacher I
am thinking of reading it to our children. Of course we sing the colours
song every day. But I think looking at the colours and reading the poem
will make a difference. I am thinking of using Māori numbers more often
(Jl: Sb, 10/5/04).
However, the highest daily use of te reo Māori was for commands (n=60,
85%), with only 3% (n=2) of respondents never commanding children in te reo
Māori. Typical commands would be sit down, stand up, come to the mat, listen to
204