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The guidance is provided as a starting point to show how services can meet the requirement. Services may choose to use other approaches better suited to their needs as long as they comply with the criteria.
C7 Curriculum responsive
Criterion 7
The service curriculum is inclusive, and responsive to children as confident and competent learners. Children’s preferences are respected, and they are involved in decisions about their learning experiences.
Guidance
A curriculum that is inclusive ensures all children know that the early childhood service they attend is a place where they belong and where they feel valued for who they are.
An inclusive curriculum is strengths based and founded on Te Ao Māori values and principles consistent with Te Whāriki. Educators and coordinators should seek to develop mutually positive relationships with mokopuna and to work with parents and whānau to realise high expectations.
The curriculum should recognise that all mokopuna are competent and confident learners who are active participants in their own learning, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, and abilities.
The curriculum should enable children with diverse strengths and needs to be actively engaged in learning with, and alongside, their peers in the service. Offering an inclusive environment involves adapting environments and removing any barriers to participation and learning. Teaching inclusively means that educators and coordinators should work together with parents and whānau to identify and dismantle barriers.
Things to consider
- How can we ensure the curriculum provides genuine opportunities for children to make choices and develop independence? How do we seek out children’s voices and perspectives to guide our decision making?
- How does our curriculum reflect gender and ethnicity, diversity of ability, and learning needs?
- How do we respond to diverse family structure and values, socio-economic status, religion, and beliefs within our curriculum?
- How does our image of the child influence our teaching practice?
- How do we support and enable infant and toddlers who are non-verbal to make choices within our curriculum?
- Some older children may be non-verbal, what appropriate strategies and teaching practices do we have to support them to make choices within our curriculum?
- How does our service curriculum include strategies to understand and respond to the diverse strengths and needs of mokopuna, parents and whānau, educators, and coordinators?
The links below give educators, coordinators, and service providers more information, advice, and guidance to support implementation of the licensing criteria.
C8 Language-rich environment
Criterion 8
The service curriculum provides a language-rich environment that supports children’s learning.
Guidance
Language is a vital part of communication and cultural transmission. If children are competent communicators, they are well-placed to enjoy their relationships with others and to be successful learners.
Language consists of words, sentences and stories, languages of sign, mathematics, visual imagery, art, dance and drama, rhythm, music, and movement. For children who are non-verbal, alternative and augmentative communication (ACC) technology and devices can be used to replace or augment verbal communication. Mokopuna are encouraged to engage with different forms of expression in ways that they find meaningful and enjoyable.
Te reo Māori is a taonga under article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In Aotearoa New Zealand, it is important that te reo Māori is valued and used in all early childhood settings. This may involve, for example, using correct pronunciation, retelling stories, and using Māori symbols, arts, and crafts. Fostering the learning and use of te reo Māori is the responsibility of all educators and coordinators in the education system.
The environment should be rich in signs, symbols, words, numbers, song, dance, drama, and arts that give expression to and extend children’s understandings of their own and other languages and cultures.
All children will enter an early childhood service with a first language. Sometimes this language is different to the language, or languages used in the service. It is important that educators and coordinators work in collaboration with the parents and whānau of the child to ensure that the child’s first language is integrated into the service curriculum in real and meaningful ways.
Educators and coordinators should be organised with groups of children in ways that support secure and consistent care, language learning pathways, and positive transitions for children and whānau.
Things to consider
- What happens at our place that reflects the importance of language/learning?
- How are individual children’s languages and symbols, and cultures promoted and protected. How do we intentionally and purposefully notice, recognise, and respond to children’s first languages?
- How would we explain to others how children’s learning is supported through a language-rich environment?
- Do we notice who talks, when they talk, and what they say? Do we notice who does not talk, and why?
- How do we communicate with parents and whānau, whose language is different to the predominant language used at the service?
- Have we considered employing speakers of different languages to support children’s first language?
- What opportunities might exist for educators and coordinators who are speakers of a child’s first language to journey with them throughout their time at the service and support language learning pathways and positive transitions?
The links below give educators, coordinators, and service providers more information, advice, and guidance to support implementation of the licensing criteria.
C9 Range of experiences
Criterion 9
The service curriculum provides children with a range of experiences and opportunities to enhance and extend their learning and development – both indoors and outdoors, individually, and in groups.
Guidance
Te Whāriki interprets the curriculum broadly, taking it to include all the experiences, activities, and events, both direct and indirect, that occur within the early childhood setting.
Educators and coordinators should enable mokopuna to engage in meaningful interactions with people, places, and things.
Educators anticipate children’s needs for comfort and communicate positive feelings in an environment that is calm, friendly, and conducive to warm and accepting interactions.
Educators and coordinators are mindful of all learners when planning social, sensory, and physical environments. They are intentional and deliberate when selecting resources, teaching strategies, and learning experiences based on knowledge of the child and the local context.
Educators and coordinators support tikanga Māori and the use of te reo Māori, they encourage mokopuna to engage in kaitiakitanga with regular opportunities to connect with the wider natural environment and materials drawn from nature.
The curriculum encompasses different cultural perspectives, recognising and affirming the primary importance of the children’s families and cultures.
The whole of the environment, indoors and outdoors, is used as a learning resource. Educators provide opportunities for exploration, curiosity, and for mokopuna to test working theories.
The outdoor environment is accessible for all children and offers varying degrees of physical challenge and managed risk including opportunities for children to exercise their gross and fine motor skills in this environment.
Things to consider
- How are we seeking guidance from mokopuna in creating an environment that they find comforting, engaging, and meaningful?
- Do our experiences reflect and celebrate the rich cultures of our service every day?
- Are there enough resources to promote children’s choices for challenge, revisiting, wider community experiences, exploration, solitary, and group play?
- Does the physical access support children to make choices about their movements between the indoor and outdoor environments, and provide access for children with different abilities?
- How are children, and their parents and whānau, engaged regarding the range of experiences and opportunities that are provided?
- How do our teaching practices stimulate children’s thinking, and reflect the holistic way children learn and grow?
- How are the range of experiences and opportunities provided to enhance children’s learning and development informed by assessment, planning, evaluation practices and the curriculum?
- Is our environment used in purposeful and meaningful ways?
- Is our environment organised for small groups, quiet play, or to support the different sensory needs of mokopuna?
- Is the environment arranged in a way that allows choice and opportunities for independence and interdependence?
- In what ways can educators and coordinators deepen children’s relationships with people, places, and things in their world?
- In what ways can educators and coordinators increase the range of experiences to challenge children or extend their learning?
The link below gives educators, coordinators, and service providers more information, advice, and guidance to support implementation of the licensing criteria.
C10 Developing social competence
Criterion 10
The service curriculum supports children’s developing social competence and understanding of appropriate behaviour.
Guidance
As children learn to make sense of their world and develop working theories, they develop an understanding of themselves and others in social contexts, including the early childhood service.
What is viewed as social competence, emotional competence and appropriate behaviour may vary from setting to setting and will depend on the values that parents and whānau, educators and coordinators, and communities hold. It is therefore vital that, educators, coordinators, parents and whānau, the community, and children share with each other their understandings of social and emotional competence.
The environment, our own, and parents and whānau expectations, and our teaching practices will be strong indicators of what we consider as socially appropriate and competent behaviours.
Curriculum priorities that support social competence, emotional competence, and understanding of appropriate behaviour should provide ongoing opportunities for children to practice their growing capabilities, through actions, words, and behaviours.
Things to consider
- How do you know that children and whānau know they have a sense of belonging in this place?
- How do you establish a shared understanding of what social and emotional competence looks like, feels like, and sounds like in your service?
- Parents and whānau are the experts on their children. In what ways do you partner with parents and whānau to value their knowledge and expertise and ensuring continuity between home and the early learning settings? (He Māpuna te Tamaiti)
- How do we create a supportive environment in which all children are able to access and contribute to a rich and rewarding curriculum? (He Māpuna te Tamaiti)
- How do our educators and coordinators support all children to develop prosocial strategies for learning with and alongside others?
- What purposeful and intentional teaching opportunities do we provide for children to practice and enhance their developing social and emotional competency?
- How do our own personal values impact on and influence our teaching practice?
- How do our routines and rituals support children’s developing social competence?
- How does the structure of our staffing support the development of children’s social and emotional competence?
The links below give educators, coordinators, and service providers more information, advice, and guidance to support implementation of the licensing criteria.
Supporting teachers to assess and share children's early learning progress – Kōwhiti Whakapae
He Māpuna te Tamaiti