For over twenty years teachers in New Zealand schools have been using Marie Clay's systematic observation tasks to guide their teaching of young children in reading and writing in English. These measures are also widely used in other countries and more recently have been reconstructed for use with Spanish-speaking students (in the USA).

Although the emergence of programmes delivered in the indigenous language of New Zealand is a fairly recent phenomenon by comparison, teachers working in these classes have long recognised the potential of developing and applying this assessment in Mäori. This has not occurred however without debate about cultural appropriateness and assertions that we as Mäori should be developing our own assessment procedures. While the latter describes the optimum situation and should indeed be encouraged, we should not discount the valuable research and work already carried out in the literacy field, especially when our own country is the source of origin of such research. Arguments in support of its usage can be further substantiated when the focus is on skills and processes which are transferable across language. In Mäori and English for example, reading occurs from left to right, reading is about understanding messages through print, ideas can be recorded using words made up of sounds which are represented using roman alphabetic symbols, and so on. He Mätai Ata Titiro Ki Te Tütukitanga Mätätupu Pänui, Tuhi however, is not a literal translation of Marie Clay's work but rather a Mäori version which recognises and accounts for those characteristics which make this language unique. This reconstruction was achieved by working in close partnership with the author of the original work.

At present teachers in programmes where Mäori is the language of instruction do not have access to the same range of assessment procedures enjoyed by their mainstream counterparts. He Mätai Ata Titiro Ki Te Tütukitanga Mätätupu Pänui, Tuhi can be perceived as a response to increased demands for written evidence of children's achievement by the Ministry of Education and its agencies, by principals, boards of trustees and parents. It can be used by personnel who provide support to schools such as advisers, the Special Education Service and so on. It may also be used as a springboard for further research into literacy learning in Mäori or as an encouragement to other indigenous languages wishing to begin a similar development. However, its primary function is to assist teachers to:

Feedback from teachers involved in trialling the tasks included comments such as the following:

In order to provide a fair reflection of child and programme performance, it is recommended that He Mätai Mätätupu be used by teachers who deliver programmes in Mäori and have been trained in its administration, on children who are receiving instruction in Mäori at least 80-100% of the time. It should be used with caution outside of this, recognising that errors in teacher judgement increase with each variation made to standard procedure.

This publication has been organised into five sections.
Section I consists of reprints of chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Clay's original work. These include discussions about the benefits of systematic observation, the complexities involved in learning to read and write, and the rationale for early intervention for children who need assistance in literacy learning beyond the normal classroom programme.
Section II provides a description of the status of the Mäori language in New Zealand while also defining and tracing the development of Mäori medium education. These discussions are necessary in order to place He Mätai Mätätupu into perspective and provide the context and a further rationale for its use. Section II also traces the history of the development of the Mäori version and describes the research methodology involved including the trialling of the tasks, the training of teachers in its administration as well as summaries of teacher responses to questionnaires. These have been included to provide a further context for interpreting the results. Descriptions of any reconstructions deemed necessary to cater for the linguistic characteristics of the Mäori language or cultural considerations are also provided in this section.

The corresponding instructions in English for administering the tasks, the English equivalents for the recording sheets, and the tables for converting raw scores into quartiles can be found in Section III.

Chapters 9 and 10 in Section IV provide direction for summarising the observation survey results for He Mätai Mätätupu. Such summaries inform teachers and the educational sector about children's progress and their needs in early literacy acquisition.

The final section appears in a separate but complementary form. This is written exclusively in Mäori and contains the instructions for administering and scoring te täutu reta (letter identification), ngä tikanga o te tuhi körero (concepts about print), te whakamätautau kupu (word test), te tuhi kupu (writing vocabulary) and whakarongo, tuhia ngä tangi o roto i ngä kupu (hearing and recording the sounds in words). It also contains the basic instructions for taking ngä pükete pänui haere (running records) but teachers are referred back to the main document for descriptions of conventions for recording children's reading behaviours, directions for analysing and converting these records into percentage accuracy scores, along with other important information.

He Mätai Mätätupu has purposely been formatted in this way. It allows teachers who prefer to use material written only in Mäori with children in classroom settings to do so. The layout also ensures that teachers return to the main document where important discussions for each of the tasks can be found.

There is also the added advantage of providing teachers with a means of further checking their interpretation of the Mäori instructions if desired and to allow for consistency in understanding.

Next: Observing change in early literacy behaviours

Cath Rau
cath@kiaatamai.org.nz

Many thanks to Marie Clay for her
permission to reprint her work.