Melville Intermediate - Tutoring in Maori Language

As we're approaching Maori Language Week again, and now fully operational in the classroom we're again offering tutoring through Skype for students in Maori Language.  We've done this for several years now, with our Mihi work and our general activities, and its proved very popular! We have a team of students and connections with other classrooms that are available at different times to suit, if you are interested please let us know.  To remind some of you about our past experience have a look at this selection of video work.
Here's Hayze and Mackenzie two of our Tutors from 2011 explaining what a Mihi is and giving examples:
But its not only students in New Zealand that we've been teaching Maori Language to. Last year we had interaction with students from Lyudmila's Classroom in Kransnoyarskiykray Kray, Siberia, Russia. There students learnt to introduce themselves in Maori and say the days of the week!
We've also worked with numerous schools throughout New Zealand including Waiuku Primary School in 2011. This video shows an example of some of our Tutors at work with a classroom teaching their students Maori Language.

Melville Intermediate - Skyping in 2012

Today the new students from our class Skyped for the second time, the first time with another class.  We were lucky enough to be able to Skype with students from St Clair's School in Dunedin.  Before we made the connection we talked about who had been to Dunedin (three of us) and what we knew about Dunedin (which was not very much, only that it was in the South Island and it was cold).  We looked on google maps and found out there was nearly 1,000km between our schools!  You can visit their wonderful blog by clicking on the link here.

We had to go to a PE session in the middle block but Brae (filmed), Sam (technical expert), Sarah, Damien and Veronica were able to talk to the class and as World Ukulele Day is coming up we were lucky enough to have the students from St Clairs play and sing to us! We then answered some questions as you can see in the video!



Following this we tried our first call to the United States of America! We spoke to Mr Miller whose a teacher in California - there weren't any students in his class but he was able to talk about his class, and we were surprised to find out although it was Thursday morning in New Zealand it was only Wednesday afternoon in the USA!  You can visit Mr Millers wonderful blog by clicking on the link here.

Melville Intermediate - Teaching Maori Using Skype

Today we had a session with students from Waiuku Primary School. Hayze and Mackenzie from Room Eight spoke to Waiuku during Maori Language Week, and worked with the students to help them with their Mihi (traditional Maori Greeting). They were keen to talk with us again and show us how they had improved - and wow what an improvement they'd made since last time. They had obviously been doing a huge amount of practise. This video shows some highlights from that session.

Melville Intermediate - Online Tutor

At Melville Intermediate, in Room 8 we had a wonderful moment today. Thanks to AlanahK's Class at Appleby School in Nelson we were able to do some real time interactive learning. We've been admiring there online work when they're teacher said "what about a Skype link up?". We were thrilled and a bit nervous at the same time, never-the-less at 1:30pm today we duly connected. Nick did the honours for Room Eight. Some students were so excited when we saw the faces from AlanahK classroom they couldn't help rushing the screen to wave! We had an excellent experience, one of those motivating lessons for students and teacher and as a result Nick will be producing a Pivot animation which we'll post online in the next few days. If there is anyone else intersted in Skype-ing with us, let us know! A massive wonderful thanks to AlanahK and her class!