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.

The quality of assessment in early childhood education – ERO(external link)

Book 17: Oral, visual and written literacy – Te Kōrero, te Titiro, me te Pānui-Tuhi

Introduction – He kupu whakataki

The exemplars in this book should be considered in conjunction with the discussion in Book 16. The concept of literacy described in that introduction informs this book of exemplars. Literacy assessment in early childhood settings has tended to focus on a ledger of skills and conventions to do with the mechanics of reading and writing, for example: the identification of letters of the alphabet, being able to recognise and/or write one’s name, and knowledge of print directionality. Being literate is much wider than this.1 The qualifiers "oral, visual, and written" not only reflect a broader view of literacy but also acknowledge the importance in the early years of establishing a sound oral foundation, particularly in the realms of conversation and storytelling. This foundation is integral to reading and writing enterprises.

The exemplars in this book are viewed through one or more of the three lenses outlined in Book 16:

  • a lens focused on assessment practices, referring to the definition of assessment as "noticing, recognising, and responding", from Book 1 of Kei Tua o te Pae;
  • a Te Whāriki lens;
  • a lens that focuses on the symbol systems and technologies for oral, visual, and written literacy.

In this section

Downloads