Being Culturally Responsive

One of the focus for the term for both myself and Ashley was to become more culturally responsive this year. I would like to record these as a reflection for myself to see what major lessons we have covered this term to integrate cultural aspect into our teaching.

The first one that comes to mind is

Asking students to make posters about their culture. This was done as a writing task and students. We asked students to tell us about themselves. It was great to see them become experts and talk about themselves. It was also good for us to know what our kids brought with them to the classroom. 

 It was a great activity as all students could make connection with one another and become friends. We even had Samoan, Tongan and other groups that started to talk in their languages. This was awesome because then they sat in their groups and talked about the island they had come from and the different things that they enjoyed doing when they visited their home country.

Reflection- It boosted their self confidence and they cherished the fact their culture was valued in the class. 

Shared Reading and social Consciousness

This Term, in the first few weeks we have had eight new enrolments in our class. We wanted to make them feel at home and also wanted to know about all of them. We decided to do this through shared reading.
We chose to read "Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street".






It is very important to celebrate every students culture in the class and acknowledge what they bring with them. The text that we had chosen was a perfect pick.

After reading the text we asked students wrote their stories about Tuna coming to Tamaki Primary and bringing things that were valuable in their culture. One of the stories that a student wrote read:

'The Tuna with the magical korokoro jumped out of Tamaki river, went on to Alamein road and came to Tamaki Primary school. It came to me and opened it's waha wide. I pulled out a piupiu. I wore the piupiu and began to kanikani.'
by- Joshua

Everyone used words from their languages to describe their item.
The next day students got lavalavas, piupius, pois and other traditional clothes from home. We took photos and made a class shared book about the magical tuna coming to our school.

This was a very powerful, engaging lesson. Building on students life experiences, talking and learning to read and write about their lives and their cultures was very empowering. All students were engaged and wanted to share and show off about their little things that they had brought to school.
Current real world examples help students connect to the curriculum, allow for deeper engagement and help students make their connections with individual and global identities.
A classroom can definitely be a space for students to develop and explore their social consciousness.