Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to the August edition of the Te Poutāhū Early Learning Update. In this issue we cover the latest information about the gazetting of Te Whāriki, and the three parts that make up the gazetted framework.

There’s also details about a range of eLearn courses to support your professional development, the latest updates on Kōwhiti Whakapae, and some new resources to help you plan playgroup learning for your ākonga.

Finally, we’re sharing a new ECE Facebook page that you can join to get the latest curriculum news and updates.   

Ellen MacGregor-Reid

Hautū | Deputy Secretary

Te Poutāhū | Curriculum Centre

curriculum.newsletter@education.govt.nz

To subscribe to these updates directly, click here.

A notice was published in the New Zealand Gazette on 1 April 2023 which gazetted the full framework of Te Whāriki ready for implementation on 1 May 2024. The gazetted framework now includes:

• Part A – Te Ara Whānui: the framework of principles, strands, goals, and learning outcomes you will all be familiar with. 
• Part B – Te Ara Māori: a new interpretation of the full framework, designed to be used by Māori-medium and bilingual early learning settings. 
• Part C – Te Whāriki o te Kōhanga Reo: the framework for Kōhanga Reo.

You can read more about the gazetting here:

Gazetting Te Whāriki - Update – Conversation space (education.govt.nz)

A suite of resources is being created to support the implementation of Te Ara Whānui and Te Ara Māori. These resources will include posters, cards, eLearn modules and videos. The roll out of these resources will begin this year, so watch this space!

eLearn courses are a great interactive way to access professional learning. You can work towards completing these at your own pace, as an individual, or as a team. There are a range of eLearn courses available to support you in strengthening your implementation of Te Whāriki, with more to come! Currently available courses include:

• Pepehatia! –  a course that explores the concept, tikanga and purpose of pepeha and mihi
• Local curriculum design – a module to help kaiako intentionally develop a localised curriculum for their setting
• Te Whāriki and the NELP – understand what it means to have regard for the NELP and explore how you can implement the NELP in your setting
• Why Histories? – three modules to support kaiako to reflect on Aoteroa New Zealand’s Histories and why it is important
• He Māpuna te Tamaiti – a deep dive into understanding effective practices that enhance social and emotional competence in the early years
• Growing bicultural practice – designed for new kaiako or for those who have come to work in NZ from overseas, these modules will grow cultural capability and understanding of tikanga Māori, te reo Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The courses are located on the Education Learning Management System, which you can find here by logging in with your Education Sector Logon (ESL):

Education LMS - External Dashboard page

You can find more information about an Education Sector Logon here: 

How to get an Education Sector Logon – Ministry of Education

You can also download an ECE user request form here: 

Education On-line services access for Early Childhood 

Once logged in you will need to select the Te Whāriki tile to access the full list of courses.

Development of Kōwhiti Whakapae practices and progressions continues, with the social and emotional learning content coming this September! The maths and oral language & literacy content will be available in June 2024.

Kōwhiti Whakapae supports kaiako to strengthen learning for all children, notice and recognise children’s current capabilities, and respond to broaden and deepen learning at different phases of progress. It also supports kaiako in recognising when additional learning supports may be required.

Thank you to all those who have contributed and continue to contribute to our user testing – you are ensuring that this tool is useful for kaiako.

We are excited to have the first draft of the maths and pāngarau practices and progressions, and look forward to working with early learning experts to refine these before the first round of user testing later this year.

Also underway is a Literacy Kaiako Guide, a deeper dive into teaching and learning literacy – and work on the Maths Kaiako Guides begins shortly. Together with the Kōwhiti Whakapae tools, these will provide the early learning practices of the Common Practice Model (CPM) for the Literacy & Communications and Maths Strategy.

You can find out more about the Strategy here:

Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy – Education in New Zealand

How can you be involved?

If you would like to be involved in any further user testing for Kōwhiti Whakapae, or you have any questions, please contact us at early.learning@education.govt.nz

The playgroups page on Te Whāriki Online now has new resources to support playgroups! These include:

• A curriculum planning template with guidance and examples to support playgroups to plan and enact a programme consistent with Te Whāriki.
• Two stories of practice; from Rātā playgroup (a multigenerational playgroup based in Petone, Wellington), and from XO Little Rockers (a long-standing playgroup based in Invercargill).

You can find the playgroups page here:

Playgroups | Te Whāriki Online (tki.org.nz)

If you don’t want to wait for the next issue of the newsletter for the latest curriculum updates, you can join our ECE Community Facebook Page! We’ll post the latest news there as it happens. Search for Early Childhood Education Community | Ministry of Education, or find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/earlylearningeducation