Hawkes Bay

Quoi de neuf ?

Swiss Exchange 2025

Napier Girls High School is participating in the New Zealand - Switzerland exchange 2025. We look forward to welcoming our French-speaking Swiss students who arrive in August. The girls are enjoying getting to know each other so far.

THS French class eats out at Tennyson Café, Napier

After the Y10 class from Taradale High School attended the French film festival to watch Belle et Sebastien back in Term 2, it was time for a seniors' outing. Café Tennyson in Napier had a French manager at the time, who kindly translated the whole menu in French. They even had the surprise of being served by a former THS Senior French student on the day.

Newsflash !

Year 10 French at Woodford House won the NZALT video competition for their year level, about the benefits of learning a second language. The video is about their trip to Tahiti. Guess what we spent the prize money on!

Hawke's Bay Farmers' Market

Tahiti Trip July '23

Woodford House is taking a 10 day trip to Tahiti during the July holidays. It is a combined French (Year 10-11), History (Year 13) and Geography (Year 12) trip with 22 students travelling. We are spending 5 days in Papeete staying in a hotel and doing tourist activities such as the circle island tour, the inland jeep tour, market vist, va'a paddle school, a concert at the Heiva Polynesian song and dance festival, which will be a trip highlight. Then we go across to Mooréa for another 4 days with a visit to the Atitia Cultural Centre, a lagoon cruise to a small motu snorkelling and having a Polynesian feast. It has been a huge carrot for my Year 10 class and I've created a whole unit around Tahiti which we've been working on this term. If you'd like to use it, you are welcome. We can now all sing Keen V's 'Un jour, j'irai à Tahiti' enthusiastically , dance the tamuré and we are keen to try the poisson cru!

Hawke's Bay LangSem 2025

On 30th May, language teachers from Hawke's Bay gathered for a full day of PLD with the theme of motivating students in the classroom.

The keynote speaker was Liam Printer, who was stunning as a presenter. If you haven't yet subscribed to the Motivated Classroom podcast, you're missing out! There are 102 amazing podcasts to listen to around using the Comprehensible Input method of teacher. It has to be the best languages PD ever! If you are short of time, just listen to the first 10 and you'll have a good understanding of how this method of story-telling and story co-creation works.

We also were fortunate to have representatives from each language with us for sessions focused on the marking of NCEA External Assessments. Getting your marking brain aligned with that of the markers was invaluable to us all.