New Zealand: The haka

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (episode 48 of the mini-series New Zealand, two languages) is a short documentary about the haka, a Māori dance with strong words. A single narrator describes the dancers, who shout, stamp their feet, slap their arms and legs, open their eyes wide and show their tongues, and explains that people do a haka to welcome visitors, at weddings, or to say goodbye to a person who died. The most famous haka is Ka Mate, which New Zealand's rugby team, the All Blacks, does before matches; a Māori chief, Te Rauparaha, made it around 1820. The narrator tells the story his people tell: he hid from his enemies in a hole for sweet potatoes, a woman sat on top of the hole and the enemies did not find him, and at the end he climbed out into the sunshine, alive. The first words, "Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!", mean "I die, I die! I live, I live!". It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple and the past simple, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (haka, and the meaning of the first words of Ka Mate). The study topic is Māori and English in New Zealand: a dance and its words.

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 (Would you like to learn a haka with your class?) for a short class discussion. Learners should know the words dance, team, eyes and legs, and be able to read years such as 1820. The pack's key words explain the new words (shout, stamp, tongue, wedding, enemy).

Curriculum alignment

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