Tūngia te Koingo and Reading Together® in Taitoko / Levin

The New Zealand Education Gazette (Vol 96, No 22, 11 December 2017) has published an article and video titled 'Tūngia te Koingo and Reading Together® in Taitoko / Levin: A snowball of positives', available here. An excerpt from the article:

The Muaūpoko iwi, tangata whenua of Taitoko in the Horowhenua region, is an iwi that in the past has achieved its goals by forming strong community connections. That approach has really come to the fore recently through a partnership between Muaūpoko, the JR McKenzie Trust, Ministry of Education and Levin East Primary School. This partnership is currently achieving more than everyone involved could have hoped for in positively engaging tamariki, whānau, iwi, kaumātua, teachers, and community leaders. ...

CEO of the Muaūpoko Tribal Authority Di Rump says the Ministry of Education helped by providing access to the Reading Together® resources but what's most important is that there's a true and equal partnership around the design and delivery of the programme. The programme puts the Ka Hikitia philosophy into practice by focusing everything on tamariki learning and achieving as Māori – with the emphasis being on the "as Māori" and they’ve gone a step further with a focus on their tamariki achieving as Muaūpoko.

"What we were invited to do was to make sure that Reading Together® was a programme that our whānau and our tamariki would enjoy, as Māori, and especially as Muaūpoko.

"When we asked [our whānau and kaumātua], they expressed a desire to use and incorporate our own spaces and places. So we made the programme just a wee bit longer, and we started and finished it on Kawiu marae. We ran part of the programme in our community whare, surrounded by our artwork. We also used some other significant spaces and places throughout our rohe, and held our sessions in partnership with the school.

"It's been amazing. What struck me recently, at our last session, was when I watched our whānau, teachers, our iwi leaders, the principal from Levin East School, the kids, parents and grandparents all together and it's impossible to tell who was who. That's how comfortable they've become working in this partnership together. That's aside from the amazing feedback and results we're getting, which have been really positive too."

January 2018 Update
The video is also available on the Ministry of Education NZ Facebook page here. Quoting comments made via Facebook on 21 Dec and 22 Dec 2017 respectively:

Lynn Edwards
This is a great programme - I was part of the very first one when Jeanne Biddulph set it up. Always believed every new school parent in every school should have the opportunity to participate in it.

Maddie Jones
Fantastic!  Read what Lynn Edwards wrote above: 'every new school parent should have the opportunity to participate in it' - not discounting current parents of course, but perhaps this is a very practical way to start a child's school learning.