Tamaki Today - Learn to Speak Samoan

It was probably the thing that started off the most success with the blog, and to say that it would be a complete accident is an understatement. I had an ESOL (English as a second language) student who spoke no English only Samoan who was placed in my class for the year. It was a matter of having an idea to send the student with the Teacher Aide to the Staff Room (vacant as it was the middle of the day) and film something, bring it back and then have a look. The first one was okay, it was the second video (imaginatively entitled 'Learn to Speak Samoan 2) that really came back with a good 'vibe' about it. From there it was a simple matter of using MicroSoft MovieMaker to put the Credits onto the screen where the students were speaking. As I have mentioned previously this video in the series were nearly all one take videos. I had students who had a natural flair for speaking, pride in their culture and it all sort of came together. Following the initial success of this video and reflecting the diverse nature of the classroom that I was teaching we branched out into 'Learn to Speak Tongan, Learn to Speak Maori and Learn to Speak Fijian'.


This is the second most popular piece of work that's spawned from the site, however one of the reasons that its done well is the relative lack of other material of this nature out there. At one point in 2008 in our classroom in Auckland, New Zealand was hold three of the top ten Google Hits for Samoan Language worldwide. We got a huge thrill out of this at the time, and its something that I know the students are still very thrilled with. We also received feedback from all over the world that the students treasured. We had a series of instructional Sasa (Samoan Slap Dance Videos) that were called "Learn to Sasa". We had our instructional video used as part of a school display in Rome, Italy where a class of Italian students using our videos as a lesson performed a Samoan Sasa! (and receiving a copy of footage of that show was, and is absolutely mind blowing for all concerned).