Early Reading Together® at BestStart

In October 2022, the Ministry of Education provided a Briefing Note: Reading Together® Te Pānui Ngātahi: Summary of evaluations and implementation exemplars and A3s, available here.

The following excerpt is from Page 6 of this Briefing Note, and the example given is about the implementation of the Early Reading Together® programme:

Despite Covid-19 challenges, feedback from providers and parents and whānau about implementation was highly positive. For example, BestStart, after a trial implementation across 17 Early Learning Centres, commented:
“The impact was huge...not just for the parents but also for the teachers. And the relationships really improved as well between teachers and their whānau. That was quite an exponential thing especially for the parents from different cultures and different language groups.”

Celebrating Collaboration with Whānau

The following excerpt is from a BestStart blog post titled Celebrating Collaboration with Whānau, available here:

We have been lucky enough to be included in the Early Reading Together® programme which supports parents with reading at home. This programme is proudly a New Zealand product, designed for New Zealand tamariki and whānau. The importance of understanding the parents role in reading at home, navigating the barriers that prevent reading at home and being able to share ideas that support this are vital and helpful within the community.

A Love for Learning

The following excerpt is from a BestStart blog post titled A Love for Learning, available here:

At BestStart Tōtara Park, we aspire to promote our centre as a community of learners, rich in a sense of family, working collaboratively with whānau as partners in their children's learning journey. The months of December and January led us on a journey to explore literacy with and alongside our whānau, where we delivered three workshops on behalf of the Ministry of Education's Early Reading Together® initiative/research. Whānau engagement was at an all time high with enthusiastic parents and tamariki participating and sharing their knowledge and new learning with us.