International Languages Week

Green Bay High School 2008

This week was International Languages Week at Green Bay High School, although we started last week with a poster competition for the junior language classes, to advertise ILW. Although it was difficult to choose, we ended up with 3 winners.

A lot of the teachers got into the spirit of things by wearing a badge with a greeting - 'hello' or 'thank you' in another language, which seemed to be appreciated by the students, who were interested in where these languages were spoken.

They also really got into the staff quiz, which was left in the staffroom and completed by teams of staff, over coffee.

On Wednesday Year 11 Japanese did a treasure hunt around the zoo - following directions and counting animals. Fortunately we had nice weather.

Thanks to the Sasakawa Fellowship Fund for Japanese Language Education we were able to buy a badge maker and all the junior language learners made a badge to promote learning languages - they were allowed to wear their badge all week with their uniform, and most of them will pin them to their bag once ILW finishes.

We intended to take some of our junior students to the contributing Intermediate and Primary school, but ran out of time this week, so we'll have to do that later in the year.

A number of students have enjoyed watching foreign language movies at lunchtimes, with a Japanese animé on Monday, a French movie on Tuesday and a German movie on Wednesday.

Remember - LANGUAGES TAKE YOU PLACES!

Beate Starke

Green Bay High School 2007

On Friday 24 August, 3 year 7/8 classes from Glen Eden Intermediate School came to visit us at Green Bay High School. One class was studying Japanese, one German and one French.

The objective of the day was to hear and speak as much of the target language as possible.

After a quick welcome in the auditorium the year 7/8 students presented us with some lovely, well rehearsed little performances. The Japanese class acted out a school scene with students wanting to drink water in class and wanting to go to the toilet – which gave the teacher (also acted by one of the students) a headache – asking for panadol…

We then started our rotations of 35 minutes each for the day.

The Japanese learners started with ‘games’ – 2 year 11 students – Kelly and Jess – explained in Japanese how to fold kabuto (Japanese hat) using newspaper. This was followed by some free ‘play’ with traditional Japanese toys – kendama, kamifusen etc.

The second rotation for Japanese was a guided tour around the school. Each pair of year 11s took a group of 7/8 Intermediate School students for a walk around the school. Each year 7/8 was given 1 or 2 cards with the names of certain rooms around the school on it. The directions around the school were all in Japanese – go straight here, turn right/left here and this is the tuck shop…who has the tuck shop card? The cards were then stuck on the doors of the rooms around the school. It was a colourful sight. It did not quite take the 35 minutes, but the rest of the time we played a quick game of ‘buzz’ and ‘Simon says’…

The last rotation for Japanese was the food. The year 11 students had been busy all morning rolling sushi. A few rolls had not been done yet, and with instructions in Japanese by one of the year 11 students – Sarona Manase -a few year 8 students had the opportunity to roll some sushi – and then eat it of course!

After all the students were back in the auditorium we were fortunate enough to have Auckland Taiko come to perform for us. One of our students – Connor – is part of the Taiko group and they were able to take time out to come and do a performance for us, which was funded by the Sasakawa Fellowship Fund.

During the day, the students were encouraged to speak as much in the target language as possible, and they could collect ‘well done’ tokens. The students with the most tokens won prizes – unfortunately there was a bit of cheating involved, so teachers had the final say. There were 2 prizes for each Intermediate School class and one for each year 11 class.

It was a very successful day and enjoyed by all.