New Zealand: Aotearoa

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (episode 47 of the mini-series New Zealand, two languages) is a short documentary about New Zealand, a country of islands in the Pacific Ocean with two names: New Zealand in English, and Aotearoa in Māori. A single narrator explains that the Māori people arrived first, more than seven hundred years ago, by canoe from other islands in the Pacific, and that people say Aotearoa means "the land of the long white cloud". In 1987 Māori became an official language of New Zealand, so people use it in schools, in courts and on road signs, and some places have two names, like Aoraki Mount Cook, the highest mountain in the country. The narrator then looks closely at the sign of a hill whose Māori name has eighty-five letters: in Māori a place name often tells a story, and this one tells the story of Tamatea, a traveller with big knees who played the flute on the hill for the person he loved. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple and the past simple, with the highest, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (Aotearoa, official language). The study topic is Māori and English in New Zealand: two names for one country.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three photos, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (Does a place near your home have a name with a story?) for a short class discussion about local place names. Learners should know the words country, island, name and mountain, and be able to read years such as 1987. The pack's key words explain the new words (canoe, cloud, official, court, hill).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged languages-places-stories (5e, "Des langues, des lieux, des histoires", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.