Key Principles for teaching Pasifika students
From the NZ Curriculum
 High Expectations
 Cultural diversity
 Treaty of Waitangi
 Inclusion
 Learning to Learn
 Community Engagement
 Coherence
 Future Focus
From LEAP
 The languages that bilingual students bring with them are a key linguistic
resource and a crucial foundation for their learning
 Bilingual students learn better when they are able to use their first or home
language at school
 Teachers are more effective when they understand how bilingual students learn
and when they know and implement the principles of effective language learning
teaching
 To succeed at school, students must know and understand academic language.
While this is true for all students, it has specific implications for bilingual
students and their teachers
 Teachers can make academic language accessible to their students through
deliberate explicit instruction.
 Students learn English as an additional language at school better and faster
when they are taught in effective and focussed ways and not just left to ‘pick the
language up.’
 Teachers can help their students learn English as a second language through
deliberate explicit instruction.
Derived from 4 interrelated strands of research and teaching:
 Bilingualism and bilingual learning
 Second-language teaching and learning (including ESOL principles)
 Literacy
 Teaching diverse students
From ESOL practice

Know the learner

Identify the learning outcomes including the language demands of the topic

Begin with context embedded tasks which make the abstract concrete

Provide multiple opportunities for authentic language use with a focus on learners using
academic language

Ensure a balance between receptive and productive language

Help students achieve the same learning outcomes using differentiated levels of
support

Include opportunities for monitoring and self-evaluation
From David Wray & Maureen Lewis (literacy & language learning)
Principle1.
Teachers need to ensure that learners have sufficient previous knowledge and/ or understanding to enable them to
learn the new things planned for them. They also need to help learners make explicit the links between what they
already know and what they are currently learning.
Principle 2.
Teachers need to make provisions for group interaction and discussion as part of their teaching, giving pupils
opportunities to engage in guided work both in small, teacher-less groups and in groups working alongside experts.
For group interaction to truly take place, and to be beneficial in learning, the activities planned for students need to
demand more than that they simply sit together: they have to be planned so that discussion is an essential part of
them.
Principle 3.
Teachers need to ensure meaningful and appropriate contexts for learning, particularly in basic literacy skills.
Students need to be taught the skills they need in settings that are as close as possible to those in which those skills
are regularly used. Decontextualised exercises, for example, are not likely to be effective as a long-term teaching
strategy.
Principle 4.
Teachers should try and promote learners’ knowledge and awareness of their own thinking and learning. This might
be done by, for example, encouraging them to think aloud as they perform particular cognitive tasks. It will also be
achieved through the essential teaching strategy of teacher demonstration.
From the MOE Pasifika Team (ELS Pasifika Focus- secondary)
7 Key Principle for Teaching and Learning
with Pasifika Students.
1. Teachers, students, parents and schools have high (but realistic) expectations
of student success and achievement matched with an equivalent level of
support.
2. Teachers, select, gather and analyse student and other relevant data and
evidence to inform planning, teaching and learning.
3. Teachers, schools, parents and community set up appropriate learning
environments that are conducive to learning.
4. Teachers ensure that students’ prior knowledge and experiences are activated
and used to build a ‘bridge’ between what they know and ‘new’ knowledge.
5. Teachers use effective home and cultural practices based on research as part
of effective pedagogical practices.
6. Teachers use effective task orientated feedback and feed forward to support,
guide and inform student learning.
7. Teachers encourage and support students to understand learning processes
and use effective learning tools in order to become independent learners.