To celebrate Maori Language Week, Elm Park School students learnt about the language and culture through a series of interactive lessons.
Techno-savvy pupils starred in and helped produce five video lessons and pod-casts, one for each school day. These tackled the pronunciation of everyday terms and greetings, as well as facts about Maori culture.
At the end of the lesson children were given a Te Reo question of the day, with prizes awarded for correct answers.
Teacher Kerry Tetupu, who helped to organise the week’s activities and lessons, says children were enthusiastic about the programme because of the hands-on role they had in lesson planning and production.
In previous years the school intercom was used to broadcast Te Reo lessons to children.
“The kids did the filming,” says Mrs Tetupu. “They’ve done all the research and some of them did everything from filming to editing it themselves. They could tell you [the answers] because they had to practise them for the filming. I think it’s made all the difference.”
Additional Te Reo resources were provided by the Newspapers in Education group, and parents were invited to view the daily lessons from a screen in the school library.
Mrs Tetupu has been planning the lessons since last term and wanted to give this year’s activities programme a community theme.
“Every day at 9am the whole school did it together. It’s really neat, a real special way of celebrating Te Reo.”
Maori Language Week ran from July 27 to August 2.
Ka rawe te korero Maori – Gee, speaking Maori is good fun.
