Beginners' Samoan on Education Perfect

Education Perfect and the Ministry of Education have partnered to produce a Beginners’ Samoan package of 30 lessons free to all schools throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.

We were supported by FAGASA (organisation for the teaching and promotion of the Samoan Language) in the writing of this course. These lessons are designed for primary students at the beginning of their learning journey with gagana Sāmoa, but are appropriate for all learners.

Course information

This article contains some ideas and suggestions for how you can use the Beginners’ Samoan course to engage your students. Let's explore!

Using the Interactive Introduction lessons

• Classroom Instruction: Use the Introduction slides with the whole class to introduce the vocabulary and expressions instead of using a PowerPoint presentation. To do this, we recommend using presentation mode. 
• Interactive Quiz: These questions can be completed altogether as a class, to engage the students. These questions can be turned into a game with the entire class.
• The Flipped Classroom: Assign students the Introduction section of the unit to work through in their own time. They can read and listen to the slides and complete the questions to reinforce their learning. This can be done at home to support in-class time. Students can complete these sections as many times as necessary to feel confident with the learning material.
  • This is especially powerful when providing work for students who are absent, as they are able to keep up to date for the remainder of the unit despite their absence.
• Content Revision: Students can refer back to the Information Slides in the Introduction section at any time during their learning.

• 

Using the Listening activities

• Work together as a whole class: The teacher plays the sound file through their computer and students complete the questions as a class together - this could be turned into a game. Project the questions on the board or on a handout if the students don’t have individual devices. 
• Work individually: Teachers can assign the listening activities to students to complete at their own pace. Students can repeat the sound files as many times as necessary and choose the speed. This could be done in class or outside of class time as part of a flipped learning programme, allowing more class time. This could also be done as part of a learning station or choice board.
• Self-marking and easy to track: All of the listening activities are either self-marking or have model answers, so if students are working through these at their own pace, there is no need for marking. However, the teacher can easily track student progress and see where students might need more support. 

• 

Using the Reading Comprehension activities

• Work together as a class: Work through the reading activities as a class with the text on the projector. The teacher could read through the text or the students could take turns reading out loud, sentence by sentence. You can also work through the questions together as a class.
• Work individually: Assign the reading comprehension tasks for students to work on individually at their own pace. 
• Work in groups: Students could work in pairs or groups on the reading comprehension tasks and read through the texts together out loud. They could then complete the questions in pairs or groups, but enter their individual answers into the system.

Using the Speaking activities

• Students can listen to the pronunciation of words and then record themselves saying the word. They can then compare their pronunciation to a model answer and repeat as many times as necessary to feel confident with their pronunciation.
• Students can complete the speaking activities either in the classroom or at home. If it makes the classroom too noisy to have everyone doing it at once, assign the speaking as part of a station rotation where students rotate around different activities. 
• Different options: All of our speaking activities could be used in conjunction with other speaking activities you might be doing in class, such as speed dating or role playing. You could use our speaking tasks as scaffolding prior to doing the other tasks, where the students self assess before doing other “live” speaking tasks.
• Create your own: Teachers are able to develop their own focused activities where students are required to produce or recite language samples, thus personalising their programmes. Complementary training is available to help teachers acquire these skills.

Using the Writing activities

• Students can use the interactive alphabet lessons to help students with the formation of characters.
• Work at their own pace: Assign the writing tasks for students to complete at their own pace. Students can take the time to self assess and submit when they are happy with their work.
• Work in groups: Assign the task and have students complete it in pairs or groups or as part of a learning station rotation. If you choose this option, specify to students that all group members still need to submit their own piece of writing.
• Differentiation: Set different tasks or assessments for different students. For students who are struggling, you might choose for them to complete a modified selection of the writing activities. For those who require extension, you might require them to complete all of the activities. 

Ideas for engaging students

EP Dash is a great way to end a class, where students race against each other to answer questions correctly. Dash gives your students a fun and interactive activity at the end of the lesson to see how much they have learned. 

You can create class competitions to help increase engagement. These can be set up for one class, or any number of classes to compete against one another!