Kei Tua o te Pae
Kei Tua o te Pae/Assessment for Learning: Early Childhood Exemplars is a best-practice guide that will help teachers continue to improve the quality of their teaching.
The exemplars are a series of books that will help teachers to understand and strengthen children's learning. It also shows how children, parents and whānau can contribute to this assessment and ongoing learning.
We are making improvements to our download-to-print functionality. So if you want a printed copy there are PDF versions available at the bottom of the main cover page.
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Child's name: James, 9 months, 3 weeks
Date: 8 Oct
Observer: Julie
A learning story
James crawls to the puzzle area where Leigh (3.5 years) is completing a puzzle. He looks at what Leigh is doing, then chooses a puzzle and starts to work with it. He takes a piece out and attempts to put it back in. He tries quite a few times to position the piece correctly by lifting it out, repositioning it, and putting it back in. Eventually, the piece goes in the right way.
Leigh (the older child…
29 May Teacher: Fionna
Mikayla is playing with the puppets when James comes into the family corner. Mikayla asks Maxine if James would like a puppet. Maxine tells Mikayla to ask James if he wants a puppet – which Mikayla does, and she holds the puppet out for James to put his hand in – which he tries but misses the hole. He gets the puppet on his hand with some help. Mikayla, Maxine, and James together play with their puppets, pretending to talk to each other and pretending to eat food. James g…
Guidelines and principles for assessing learning have been set out in the first nine books of Kei Tua o te Pae. Each of books 2–9 asks evaluative questions about assessment practice. The four overarching evaluative criteria, based on the four curriculum principles in Te Whāriki, are set out as questions on page 19 of Book 1:
Is the identity of the child as a competent and confident learner protected and enhanced by the assessments? (Empowerment/Whakamana)
Do the assessment practices take accoun…
Black and Wiliam,24 writing about strategies and tactics for teachers’ formative assessment work, include a discussion of the nature of educational tasks that form the basis for assessments. They cite research that concludes that tasks should: be interesting; offer reasonable challenge; help learners to develop short-term, self-referenced goals; focus on meaningful aspects of learning; and support the development and use of effective learning strategies. In early childhood settings where childre…
Children are developing a wider horizon of interest beyond the early childhood setting and beyond their home settings.
Learning dispositions and working theories include developing an interest in and a recognition of new learning identities or “possible selves”8 and a capacity to “read” the environment and therefore to navigate between different forms of individuality and competence as defined in different communities. For some children, this involves navigating between te ao Māori and te ao wh…
Child: Tia
Date: 16 August
Teacher: Grandmother
Examples or cues
A Learning Story
Belonging
Mana whenua
Taking an Interest
Finding an interest here – a topic, an activity, a role. Recognising the familiar, enjoying the unfamiliar. Coping with change.
Tia and I were travelling out to Whitecliffs and the wind was blowing very strongly.
Tia asked, “What's that?” I told her that it was Tāwhirimatea and he was blowing very hard today.
She asked, “Where?”, meaning “Where is it? I can&…
21 OctoberToday I was sitting at the puzzle table and several children were looking through their folders. Fergus was watching the other children and then asked me to help him look for his folder.
“Where’s my folder? I’ve got two folders now, cause Mum paid for another one,” he said.
He found both folders and got out his new one first. “Where’s my other one?” he asked. “Cause this one’s only got one page and I want to look through my other one.”
Fergus found his folder, and then he and Willia…
Veins, wonderful veinsNovember
This morning in the hospital playroom we talked about veins in our bodies. Jessica dressed up like a doctor and looked to see if she could find Shani’s veins ... DISCOVERY! Jessica found a vein on the back of Shani’s hand. “Could medicine go into this vein?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “The doctors might think that was a good vein to put medicine into.”
“OK, I’ll be sick, OK?” suggested Shani as she climbed into bed.
“OK – and I’ll put some medicine into your…
May
I approach you Finn as you are working at the art table; you are deep in thought and using a lot of concentration while you work. I wait quietly for a bit and then ask, “What are you doing there, Finn?” “A dragonfly.”
Finn, you have such attention to detail and you take time to study the book, which is open at the end of the table, before you go back to your drawing. I ask you if you have ever seen a dragonfly and you tell me, “At my friend Olivia’s, she lives away way in Tauranga. She…
What’s happening here?
This exemplar relates to two entries in Leora’s profile book from a home-based setting. They demonstrate Leora’s concern for two other children.
What does this assessment tell us about the learning (using a Well-being/ Mana Atua lens)?
Leora’s developing identity as someone who assists others is documented here. In the first story, Leora sees that Krystal is upset when she gets her fingers pinched in the drawer. “I think she needs help,” says Leora in the second story, wh…
Children learn through play – by improvising, randomly exploring, compromising, negotiating, and being playful.
"Good scientists, like good artists, must let their minds roam playfully or they will not discover new facts, new patterns, new relationships." 8
In The Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith lists some features of the “playful”, including exaggeration, playing with boundaries, playing with time, playing tricks, teasing, completing puzzles, and playing with sound. He states,…
Today a group of boys came out from the back room, all dressed up.
They asked if they could use the water paints and promptly got to work with the paint brushes, applying lipstick, rouge, eye shadow and nail polish.
Giving children the opportunity to explore what it might be like to be someone or something else is important in developing their understanding of themselves and how they, and others fit in to the world around them.
The next day ...I thought that their interest in dressing up coul…
10 May
He mahi uaua te whakawhanui i ngā kutikuti, heoi ano ka ako au, titiro ...
Āta titiro, āta whakaaro, whakarite ngā kutikuti. Katahi, tapahia! Anana!
Whaea Mel
Te pai hoki o ou mahi i te rangi nei e Tama!
I kōrero mai a Whaea Re-nee kei te kaha koe ki te parakatihi i o mahi tapahia me ngā kutikuti tēnei wiki Mandela. I kite koe i ahau e tapahia ana i ngā ahau i te taha tepu, kātahi i noho koe ki taku taha hei matakitaki ...
I whakaatu au me pehea te tapahia tika, te mau tika o n…
Child’s name: Sabine
Date: 30 January
Teacher: Shelley
Belonging
Mana whenua
Yesterday Sabine asked me to help her make a swing. She had seen one on High Five. Sabine described the swing that Charlie used to swing away. We found a hoop and hooked it up on the swing frame. It was not quite what Sabine wanted but it was time to finish so we decided to work on it the next day.
Today Sabine sketched the swing. We collected ropes, clips, and chains and experimented with heights.
Sabine wanted…
Child’s name: Tia
Date: 16 August
Teacher: kuia (grandmother)
A learning story
Belonging
Mana whenua
Taking an Interest
Tia woke at 6.30 a.m. I met her in the hallway and asked her if she wanted to come into my bed upstairs. She said yes. I told her there was a surprise up there for her and she was to leave the light off. We climbed into bed and I asked her to look out the window. The surprise was the Southern Cross pointers, which were still bright in the sky. I told her the traditional n…
Child: Kaeleigh
Date: October
Teacher: Kimberly
Examples or cues
A Learning Story
Belonging
Mana whenua
Taking an Interest
Finding an interest here – a topic, an activity, a role. Recognising the familiar, enjoying the unfamiliar. Coping with change.
Today we had a special visitor named Jo, who came in to talk to our teachers about ICT in our centre. Jo had a few spare minutes after lunch, so she brought her laptop out for us to play with. At first, we were looking at her photos on the…
The logging industry: Conner shares his knowledge
Connor brought some photos from home to share with his friends.
They were about his dad’s machinery that he uses when he works in the bush.
Connor showed the photos to his friend Daniel.
“This is a harvest line hauler. It pulls out logs off the hills into the skid. My daddy’s skidder pulls out logs from the bushes, too. It has chains or else it will get stuck in the mud.”
“They use waratahs in the bush and grapples and skidders. A wara…
8 AugustPamela has told me about how much Sofia loves her books. They go to the library on a regular basis and Pamela reads to Sofia often.
Today when I went to visit Pamela and Sofia, I was able to see this for myself.
Sofia was sitting near her basket of toys and began to take some out. She chose books and there were quite a few in there. She didn’t just take the first book though. She looked through each one until she came to the one that she wanted, which was Thomas the Tank Engine. She th…
