Rameka, Coles-Ritchie & Charles

1. Important Concepts By Kate Gifford Rameka, Coles-Ritchie & Charles

2. Rameka Article • The Mäori are the native people of New Zealand. • Like many native people they lost much of their culture when they were forced into the western culture. • The Mäori live by a long set of moral standards.

3. Rameka Article • The Mäori put a lot of importance in their children learning and growing as moral people. • The Kaupapa Mäori Learning and Assessment Exemplar Project put emphases on teaching and assessing Mäori children on the important aspects of the Mäori culture.

4. Rameka Article • The New Zealand Ministry of Education created this program to be used in Mäori early childhood programs. • These early childhood programs allow very young children to be exposed to the Mäori culture both at home at school. • This program changes the way Mäori children are assessed so that it is more culturally relevant.

5. Coles-Ritchie & Charles Article • This article focused on how a group of teachers in Alaska could improve the learning of their Yup’ik students. • The Yup’ik people are one of the native people of Alaska. • They have a proud heritage but like the Mäori they have lost much of their native culture.

6. Coles-Ritchie & Charles Article • The teachers were challenged to develop ways of assessing their students that would be most effective for the Yup’ik students. • The teachers first had to face the difficult challenge of breaking away from teaching to the test. A challenge that all teachers are facing.

7. Coles-Ritchie & Charles Article • The teachers had to look at ways they could include students native language (Yugtun) in the classroom. • The teachers used reflection and working together to help them come up with assessments that would benefit their students.

8. What I learned • No matter what culture you are teaching it is important that the assessment you use in the classroom is authentic. • Teaching to the test might provide good test scores but it is more likely that teaching to students abilities and culture will provide even higher test scores.

9. What I Learned • In my classroom understanding the Mexican culture would have improved my teaching. • Before creating any kind of unit it is important to think about your students culture and what you might be able to include in the unit to improve learning.