Visiting Coastal Taranaki School recently, I was lucky enough to meet Aria Broughton who is an exceptional kaiako responsible for teaching Te Reo Māori across the school from Year 1 through to Year 13.  We talked about how Aria would like to give more opportunities for students to be creative and show their learning.   Giving students the skills so they could have more choices to show their understanding was important too.

Aria also helps the community to learn Te Reo Māori and Tikanga by tutoring adults outside of school hours.  She explained to me that she uses the Te Ataarangi approach and how quickly people learn.  Te Ataarangi is a methodology for learning Te Reo Māori developed in New Zealand by the late Manukura Katerina Te Heikoko Mataira.  I was fascinated to learn that this approach using rakau (cuisenaire rods) began back in the 1970s as a way to revitalise Te Reo Māori.

A colleague at Bay of Islands College who I work closely with also learned Te Reo Māori using the Te Ataarangi method.  From these two conversations, I developed a template resource that teachers could use with their students to help build a resource bank of common kupu and Māori phrases or

The animation below is the first draft.