He Māpuna Te Tamaiti - Team & Individual Self-Assessment

During our staff hui we spent time discussing, reflecting, reviewing many areas of our centre and teaching practices and the degree to which we are including effective, evidence-based strategies that promote positive behavior.  

How supportive and inclusive is our learning environment for all tamariki?

Below I will outline some notes to myself made during this assessment - areas for goal setting and improvement.

Establishing a positive Climate: Ensure arriving and leaving routines are unhurried, planned, personal. - I want to be more available for parents at these times to build relationships, meet needs of learners, and share learning etc.

Constructing values: displaying values

Developing and promoting expectations: ensure expectations are displayed - ideas behaviour treaty, gentle hands book.

Establishing consistent routines / Supporting transitions: co-construct routines with tamariki - could do for taniwha group, kai was hads etc, display and teach routines - make a mat time sign. Make it fun, transition songs chants. 

Creating a safe inclusive space: Make signage culturally inclusive. Greetings in different languages. We could reach out to whānau to have more culturally inclusive events during the year.

Support tamariki to understand, express, and regulate their emotions: Could use more visual aides - feelings. Empathy stories idea.

Helping tamariki support others in their learning: Ensure tuākana have opportunities to take leadership roles. Include tamariki in routines, set-up/enable older tamariki to lead activities. 

Helping tamariki solve social problems during conflict: take a preventative approach, teach/promote problem-solving skills, prepare tamariki for specific situations that cause conflict. I feel I'm still emerging in this area but am constantly observing how other teachers use preventative strategies, manage group activities, and provide social coaching during conflict and emotional outbursts.

Support tamariki to manage their learning: Extended interactions with tamariki about their plans, projects. 

Provide rich and varied learning opportunities: organize more community involvement in our centre, outreach to more schools in the area - ideas: school visits. music, arts, environment/conservation, Matai Whetu Marae. 

Knowing about behaviour / Responding to Problem: I have a lot to learn in this area, again constant observation of strategies used by other staff and what has worked for myself. A huge part of this is knowing your learner and building a positive/trusting relationship with them. I have observed over the past year how our learners' behaviour is not fixed but very much goes through phases. Reasons often being reflective of home-life - new siblings for example, or just age and stage, being emotionally immature compared to peers can cause frustrations for individuals. I love the philosophy behind He Mapuna being - responses to behaviour are mana-enhancing and preserve the dignity of all involved.

He Māpuna te Tamaiti - Social Emotional Competencies

 He Māpuna te Tamaiti - Social Emotional Competencies Zoom Hui workshop with Lorrraine Sands

My learning stories are written as past tense stories, I am not always writing directly to the child when I retell the event. I do try to inclued lots of learners voice, writing their dialogue in story form. Wrting shorter stories directly to the tamaiti will help strengthen the connection our tamariki have to their learning stories. Example learning stories the kaiako writes "You are.....

Using lots of verbs to describe their learning and dispositions.

Effective Internal Evaluation Document:

Empathy books to show/demonstrate to our tamariki a specific scenario, they can include different parties perspectivies. Topics: tidy up time, too much TV, want to try this with Ch-R to help her see her behaviour and how it affects others as well as her own happiness and wellbeing during the day. It's like how Pania uses a story with her when she is in the "redzone", and it helps get her attention and reset her away from negative emotions.

Ruth Beaglehole

"Creating The Thinker" Nathan Mikaere Wallis. The strength of ako. Our learning stories should reflect that, by encouraging creativity, thinking.

 

Ureia - Tīkapa Moana o Hauraki

 

He Māpuna te Tamaiti PD 2021

 

PDF link

Some questions:

Do parents believe their child "behaves" better for us teachers at our learning centre than at home?

Do we let parents know we have challenging moments with their children and share our strategies with them?

In trying to keep a positive learning environment are we hiding some of our frustrations or challenging moments from whānau. Would they be offended or relate to this?

Reflections / feedback from session 2.

Use: I wonder what happened ? vs What's wrong ?

Whanaungatanga - An early childhood perspective

Whanaungatanga - An early childhood perspective

I wanted to learn which strands of Te Whāriki does whanaunga relate to, or how it sits within Te Whāriki - for example as a value. This reading helped give the term more context within ECE setting.

Whanaungatanga approach is consistent with the early childhood curriculum strand of Belonging|Mana whenua. To achieve a high quality learning environment, a sense of belonging and identity is not only important for Mäori learners, but all learners in early childhood settings. "In the learning context, whanaungatanga demands a focus on the quality of teaching-learning relationships and interactions, and the agency of the teacher in establishing a whanau-like context that supports engagement and learning.” (Bishop, Ladwig & Berryman, 2014, p. 28)."

My CNY learning story educa   PDF learning story link