Coaching emails for Task 2 of the NCALNE (Voc)

For those of you following or looking for the second instalment of our coaching emails for the NCALNE (Voc), I’ve pasted them in below. As per Task 1, there are four.

Task 2 Part 1: Familiarising yourself with the content

Good work… Now you are ready to move on to Task 2 and have a look at the content in the course that connects with the world of Māori literacy and numeracy. Once again this is number one of four short emails to keep you tracking along with this task.

The first thing that you need to do is familiarise yourself with the basic content and what we need from you in the assessment task.

So to get started you need to do the following two steps. You can do these in any order, but if you check out the assessment task first you’ll have a better idea of what you need to read and remember when you get to the Study Guide. Here goes:

  1. Preview the actual assessment task. The template for Task 2 is on page 13 of your assessment guide and you can download it from www.alec.ac.nz as well. You’ll see that the template covers five key areas. These are:
    1. Pre-colonisation: Here you need to describe four examples of Māori literacy and numeracy that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. For our purposes this is before the 1800s.
    2. Initiatives: In this section you need to outline two Māori-based adult literacy initiatives. At least one of these needs to be delivered by Māori for Māori from a Māori worldview perspective. You also need to outline one initiative for Pacific learners and another for ESOL learners.
    3. Post-colonisation: In this part you need to describe two current issues that connect in some way to literacy and numeracy.
    4. Teaching approaches: Here you need to pick two teaching approaches from those supplied in the Study Guide and describe them in terms of how they relate to your learners and context.
    5. Concepts: Finally here you just need to summarise each of the concepts in the list in your own words.
  2. Read the content for Section 2. This starts on page 25 of your Study Guide. Here you’ll find some basic historical and other background information as well as short sections on all the key areas listed above.

Task 2 Part 2: Literacy and numeracy pre-colonisation and Māori initiatives

Ok… By now you should have had time to download the template for task 2 or at least look at the one in your Assessment Guide on page 13. In this short email, we’re just going to focus on what you need for the first two headings from the template. Here we go:

  1. Pre-colonisation: Here you need to describe four examples of Māori literacy and numeracy that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans. For our purposes this is before the 1800s. You might already know a lot about this. Or you might not know anything. If you are already familiar with this content feel free to write about it from your own experiences. If this is new to you, have a look at the bottom of page 26 for some examples. You can probably think of others.
  2. Just a note: Use the sentence prompts and example in the template to get started. You don’t have to use these, but they are a great shortcut to getting started on your writing for this section.
  3. Māori Initiatives: In this section you need to outline two Māori-based adult literacy initiatives. At least one of these needs to be delivered by Māori for Māori from a Māori worldview perspective. Again, you may be working in an environment where you can describe your training. Or you might be aware of local or regional initiatives by Iwi or other training providers. Feel free to write about these. Alternatively, have a look on pages 28 through to 30 for some of the more well known initiatives.
  4. Once again, we’ve given you some sentence starters to help you get going. These are always optional ad feel free to modify them if you can think of something better.

Task 2 Part 3: Other initiatives and current issues

You’re about halfway through this assessment task now. You need to finish off the section on initiatives and then write up your thoughts on current issues. Here’s the breakdown:

  1. Other initiatives: You also need to outline one initiative for Pacific learners and another for ESOL learners. You won’t find anything in the Study Guide on this so you’ll have to do some research on your own.
    1. If you are not aware of anything specific in your own community, try googling “Pacific literacy initiative”, “Pasifika literacy” or something similar and see what you find.
    2. With regards to ESOL initiatives you should have a look at English language Partners online at http://englishlanguage.org.nz/ if you need some inspiration.
  2. Post-colonisation: In this part you need to describe two current issues that connect in some way to literacy and numeracy. These issues can actually connect with anything from 1800 to the present. However, in our discussions we tend to focus on what is happening now and looking forward to the future. Issues can be far reaching, but we expect you to make the connection back to literacy and numeracy in some way. Issues that many people choose to focus on include some of these:
    1. Living as Māori.
    2. Health.
    3. Prison populations.
    4. Iwi development.

That’s about it… Just teaching approaches and concepts from Māori left to go…

Task 2 Part 4: Teaching approaches and concepts

Now you’re on the home straight… There are two sections left to complete. They are listed below:

  1. Teaching approaches: Here you need to pick two teaching approaches from those supplied in the Study Guide and describe them in terms of how they relate to your learners and context. The teaching approaches and methods are listed on pages 36 to 38. The basic idea is that you pick two of these and describe them in your own words. It also makes sense if you can relate these back to your own context and situation. To make life easy we usually suggest that people pick tuakana-teina and ako as these are the easiest to grasp and apply.
  2. Concepts: Finally here you just need to summarise each of the concepts in the list in your own words. There are summaries of each of these in the Study Guide starting on page 31 and over the pages that follow. You need to write one or two sentences that describe each concept. Following this you need to write a short paragraph describing how these concepts work together to create a framework for adult literacy and numeracy.
  3. The best thing to do here is to relate these concepts and the framework back to your teaching context in some way. For some people this framework might already be hardwired into the kaupapa or mission of the organisation. For others, you will need to think about how these apply to your context. For most people, the actual concepts describe how they like to train and teach anyway. If you’re unsure, please give us a call.

Author: Graeme Smith

Education, technology, design. Also making cool stuff...

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