Ta'iala mo le Gagana Sāmoa - Pasifika Education Community

Ālāfua, Sini, ma Fuafa‘atatauStrands, Goals, and Learning OutcomesThe strands are:Ola LauleleiWell-being• The health and well-being of the child are protected and nurtured.Fa‘asinomagaBelonging• Children and their families feel a sense of belonging.Ola TautuaContribution• Opportunities for learning are equitable, and each child’s contribution is valued.Feso‘ota‘igaCommunication• The languages and symbols of their own and other cultures are promoted and protected.Ola Su‘esu‘eExploration26• The child learns through active exploration of the environment.Each strand has several goals. In Te Whāriki, learning outcomes have been developed for each goalin each of the strands so that the whāriki (fala) becomes an integrated foundation for every child.The outcomes are indicative only; they are not absolute. Teachers are expected to develop their ownmore specific outcomes in response to children’s learning and development. In Te Whāriki, outcomesare described as knowledge, skills, and attitudes that combine to become working theories and learningdispositions across a range of areas.Ta‘iala mo le Gagana Sāmoa: The Gagana Sāmoa Guidelines selects particular goals within each strandand gives examples of related learning outcomes that are significant to the development of the learner’sunderstanding and use of gagana Sāmoa. It offers examples of learning experiences through which thislearning may occur. Teachers are expected to develop their own gagana Sāmoa outcomes for all thegoals within each strand in response to a child’s individual learning and developmental needs.Ta‘iala mo le Gagana Sāmoa: The Gagana Sāmoa Guidelines includes examples of the kinds of languagethat teachers would expect to hear children using in early childhood settings. These examples includesingle-word responses, incomplete sentences, and sentences that are not well structured grammatically.The teacher's role is to help the child learn. Where a child might say, “Fufulu lima la‘a ‘ai ” (Wash handsto eat), the teacher could respond by modelling the correct sentence pattern, saying: “Fufulu lima ‘ole‘ātatou ‘a‘ai.” (Wash your hands; we're going to eat.)Teachers who wish to incorporate the teaching and learning of gagana Sāmoa into early childhoodprogrammes are recommended to use Te Whāriki (as the foundation curriculum), together with Kei Tua ote Pae/Assessment for Learning: Early Childhood Exemplars and the sections on early childhood settings(pages 24–41), and Samoan values (pages 17–18) in this book, Ta‘iala mo le Gagana Sāmoa: The Gagana