Ta'iala mo le Gagana Sāmoa - Pasifika Education Community

• writing short texts, such as email messages and lists;• reading and writing short descriptions of familiar people and objects;• carrying out a survey, for example, finding out people’s ages, likes and dislikes, and wherethey live, and then plotting this information on a chart;• preparing interview questions on a particular theme, for example, family;• filling in a form with personal information, then swapping forms with a classmate andsummarising each other’s information;• reassembling the text of a song or story as they listen to it being sung or retold;• constructing a simple timetable or itinerary, then having a classmate ask questions in orderto enter the information on a blank form;• writing simple sentences that describe someone performing actions (after viewing the performance);• labelling pictures in order to explain relationships, for example, between the speaker andtheir father, mother, sister, and pet.Gagana va‘aia: Maimoaina ma le fa‘atinogaVisual language: Viewing and presenting or performingStudents could be learning through:54• observing greetings, introductions, and leave-taking in different contexts (for example, on digitalmedia) and taking turns to role-play;• creating an appropriate greetings card or item for a birthday or festival;• viewing aspects of aganu‘u fa‘asāmoa and discussing what they see in relation to theirown culture(s);• performing a cultural item, for example, pese, sāsā, or fa‘ataupati;• matching pictures, movie scenes, or dance movements with words or short descriptions;• producing their own version of a song, dance, or poem using another medium;• role-playing a situation that they have observed (on digital media or at a cultural event)and then discussing aspects of the performance;• identifying patterns of behaviour in what they observe and demonstrating that they understandthe significance of those patterns of behaviour in particular contexts, for example, understandingthat in formal Samoan contexts there will be a formal blessing of the food before eating.For classroom language learning activities to be effective in promoting learning, teachers needto consistently monitor their students’ progress, provide quality feedback, and offer guidance asstudents make progress in achieving the objectives. Effective teachers encourage their students tomonitor their own progress and to develop effective learning strategies.All activities need to be designed with the goal of communication in mind, because theCommunication strand specifies the objectives that students are to achieve at each level.See earlier sections (pages 19–22) and refer also to The New Zealand Curriculum for furtherinformation on Effective Pedagogy (pages 34–36) and Assessment (pages 39–41).