Tēnā koutou!  你好!  안녕하세요  Kia orana!  Bonjour!  Guten Tag!  こんにちは。Salvete!  Faka’alofa lahi atu!  Talofa lava!  ¡Buenos días!  Mālō e lelei!  Malo ni!

Ngā mihi o te tau hou!  We hope you have had a fantastic holiday and are now feeling refreshed and ready to go in 2024.  2024 has a lot happening for language teachers.  This letter is packed with important dates and information for the year ahead so perhaps grab a drink and your diary to put in the dates.

We wish you a very happy and enjoyable start to the 2024 school year.  Please keep in touch. We are here to support languages teachers in whichever ways we can. 

Ngā mihi nui,

The NZALT Team

Focus for this Newsletter:

In this newsletter you will find information about:

• NZALT 50th Anniversary 2024 conference - Auckland, 6th-9th July
• NZALT 2024 Conference Awards
• NZALT Membership 2024
• NZALT Clusters
• NZALT Excellence Certificates
• NZALT Special Awards-Life Membership, Excellence in Leadership, Excellence in Teaching
• NZALT EEP Awards
• NZALT Further Study Award
• NCEA Moderation days Terms 2 and 3
• NZQA NCEA External Updates for 1.3 and 1.4
• NCEA news from our Learning Languages NIFS - Vocab lists and upcoming workshops
• Languages weeks 2024

NZALT 50th Anniversary 2024 conference - Auckland, 6th-9th July

The ultra early bird NZALT member conference registration rate of $100 (covering all conference sessions and meals during the day) closes on 29th February, 2024. So make sure your NZALT membership is up to date to make the most of this early registration deal.

This is a very special conference year as we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. We will also be joined by language teachers from around the world for the international federation of modern language teachers world congress which will take place alongside our conference. For more information visit the conference website.

NZALT is providing conference travel and accommodation grants for this conference. Please read more here. The closing date to apply for a conference grant is also 29th February, 2024.

NZALT 2024 Conference Awards

30 conference awards of up to $1000 will be offered to support teachers to attend the 2024 NZALT conference in Auckland, 6th-9th July. Applications must be submitted by 5pm on Thursday, 29 February. Priority will be given to teachers outside the greater Auckland region.

These awards can be used to reimburse return flights and accommodation in Auckland. The awards are not for registration fees.  We strongly advise teachers to make the most of the ultra early bird registration fee before 29th February.  If the award application is successful, participants must pay for their accommodation in advance and submit their receipts (flights and accommodation) no later than Friday, 15 March, for reimbursement. 

PLEASE NOTE: These awards are funded from our current NEX contract with the MoE, which must be spent by the end of March. For this reason, no reimbursements will be made for any receipts received after 15 March. 

You can apply for a 2024 NZALT Conference award here.

NZALT Membership 2024

Please read the NZALT membership information on our website. Make sure you have provided a current email address. Invoices for existing members from 2023 will be sent to the primary email address on our system only. If you don't receive your invoice, please check your other email addresses or your online profile on our website. 

Contact membership@nzalt.org.nz if you have any issues.

NZALT Clusters

NZALT clusters are regional networks of support for language teachers where you can meet with other language teachers in your area to share experience, ideas, resources, and moderation. Afternoon tea is provided, and petrol costs are able to be covered if you need to travel further afield to attend the cluster.  

We will update our website with the cluster dates and details as they are confirmed. If you would like to get in touch with your local NZALT cluster leader you can find their details below.

Auckland:

• First cluster meeting Wednesday 6th March, 4pm, Takapuna Grammar School
• Facilitator: Jack Chapman

Bay of Plenty

• Facilitator: Wendy Pike

Waikato

• Facilitator: TBC

Hawkes Bay

• Thursday 29 February, 4pm
• Facilitator: Anita Vennell

Manawatu-Whanganui

• Thursday 29 February, 4 - 5:30pm
• Facilitator: Andrea Cerón

Kapiti Coast

• Thursday 8 February, 3:30 - 4pm
• Zoom link to be sent
• Facilitator: Naomi Connolly 

Hutt Valley

• Facilitator: Philippa Watson 

Wellington Central

• Thursday 14 March, 4pm
• Facilitator: Angel Lin 

Christchurch

• Thursday 7 March, 3:30pm
• Facilitator: Michelle Dalley 

South Canterbury

• Wednesday 13 March, 3:30pm
• Facilitator: Hiromi Horsley

Dunedin-Otago

• Facilitator: Bronwyn Thomson 

Southland-Invercargill

• Wednesday, 21 February, 3:45pm
• Facilitator: Karen Thomson

NZALT Excellence Certificates

To recognise exceptional achievement in the field of language learning, NZALT provides certificates, suitably endorsed, for NZALT members to award to their students. Please note that it is not possible to apply for certificates for other (non-member) teachers in your school.

From 2024 certificates will be sent to schools in pdf format for self-printing. We hope that this change will address the delivery issues we have experienced in recent years so that all schools have the certificates available to present in Term 1.

Dates for 2024 have now been set and are as follows:

Friday, 1st March: spreadsheets due, clearly labelled, listing students eligible for recognition. Completed spreadsheets should be sent to certificates@nzalt.org.nz. Only one spreadsheet containing the information for all languages should be sent per school. 

The spreadsheet can be found here: NZALT Certificates of Excellence 2024.

Week beginning Monday 18th March: Certificates emailed to schools.

Please note that applications after the March 1 deadline will not be accepted.

For more information and guidelines, please visit our website. 

NZALT Special Awards-Life Membership, Excellence in Leadership, Excellence in Teaching

In a conference year NZALT honours outstanding service to NZALT, and leadership and excellence in language teaching by awarding Life Membership, Excellence in Leadership and Excellence in Teaching awards. 

If you would like to nominate a colleague for one of these awards, please click on the links above to find out more or contact coordinator@nzalt.org.nz 

Applications for all three awards close at 5pm on 31st March, 2024.

NZALT EEP Awards

Exploring Effective Practice (EEP) awards pay for teacher release and travel to enable teachers to visit other colleagues to gather, share, and discuss ideas, pedagogy, and resources for the language classroom. These awards are funded through our Networks of Expertise (NEX) funding from the Ministry of Education.  

There are five EEP awards available in 2024. The award covers one day of relief (TRD) to visit another teacher(s) of your language. Please note that the award must be taken over one day, not split into half days.

Teachers may also apply for funding to cover travel costs (reimbursement of petrol costs, airfares, accommodation and/or airport transfers where applicable). TRD costs may be invoiced directly to NZALT and other approved expenses will be reimbursed on receipt of proof of payment.

Priority will be given to applicants who:

• are first or second-year teachers or new to teaching a language
• are first-time HoDs/HoFs
• teach in geographically isolated areas
• teach a language which has limited resourcing
• provide a clear rationale for applying 

The deadline for 2024 EEP applications is at 5pm on Friday, 29 March. The award must be used in Terms 2 or 3 of 2024.

Please apply for this award here.

For more information contact coordinator@nzalt.org.nz 

NZALT Further Study Award

The NZALT award aims to support teachers in New Zealand schools to upskill via masters or doctoral postgraduate study connected to improving teaching and learning languages.

Teachers can apply for financial assistance for further language teaching-related study costs of up to $5000 maximum. This funding is to support teachers with the payment of course fees, not for other related costs, e.g. travel and accommodation.

If you wish to apply, please complete the NZALT Further Study Award application form. You must also email the NZALT PLD coordinator coordinator@nzalt.org.nz  to let us know that you have applied.

The successful candidate will:

• provide a clearly written proposal with sufficient details about study plans and goals
• have a study focus which is relevant to language teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand

Deadline for applications for 2024: 5 pm, Friday 29 March, 2024

For further information please visit our website.

NCEA Moderation days Terms 2 and 3

NZALT in collaboration with the MoE and NZQA will be running regional moderation days for the new Level 1 standards. We are currently confirming dates and venues and will send out these details as soon as we can.

Please let us know if your school is able to host one of these moderation days in late Term 2 or early Term 3 by contacting coordinator@nzalt.org.nz. The host schools do not need to organise anything, just provide the venue.

NZQA NCEA External Updates for 1.3 and 1.4

From 2024 onwards students will not be able to take notes on paper when they are sitting digital exams.  Here is the rationale from NZQA.

The situation that has arisen is that, because we don’t have that evidence from digital-candidate-paper-note-takers we have, until now, informed markers not to take anything written in listening notes boxes in any form of the exam into consideration; this is to be consistent and fair to the paper-note-takers.  I’m sure you understand that we cannot retrieve that paper and attach it to the digital response – it’s not possible.  What we have found over the last two years of full digital experience though, is that candidates may not fully include or repeat specific evidence of what they have heard in their responses and, although we do not mark the listening boxes, markers are being required to ignore evidence that may contribute to responses.

The listening situation itself, which allows for passages to be available four times and to be played at will by candidates, has taken pressure off the listening activity itself and allowed some greater time freedom in the note-taking practice. 

Learners do not always distinguish between the listening and answer boxes in the digital space, and markers are noting that there are a number who do not repeat the evidence from the notes boxes in their responses, and even may refer to it.  We can avoid disadvantaging some candidates because they don’t “know the rules”. 

If you would like further information about this, please contact coordinator@nzalt.org.nz.

NCEA news from our Learning Languages NIFS - Vocab lists and upcoming workshops

Our Learning Languages NIFS (NCEA In-school Facilitators) - Annelies Mead, Belinda Sydenham, and Jo Veen - are working hard to support teachers with the rollout of the new NCEA assessments.  

Belinda has prepared PDF versions of the vocabulary and structure lists for each language. You can access and download the PDFs here on our website. Do look out for their newsletter with details of their up-coming workshops. This information can also be found on our website.

Languages weeks 2024

Languages Week 2024 will take place in Week 7 of Term 2 (10 - 14 June). Do get in touch if you have some ideas for how to celebrate this week and would like to share. You can also add your ideas to the Padlet board on our website, which has a great variety of activities from previous years, shared by language teachers around New Zealand.

We will update the other language weeks when they are confirmed. Watch the NZALT newsletter and website for our Languages Week competition for students launched later this term.

Once again all the best with the beginning of Term 1. Please keep in touch and take care. Kia kaha! 

The NZALT Team

Contact Details

NZALT President
Juliet Kennedy

Networks of Expertise Co-ordinator:
Juliet Kennedy

Online PLD Co-ordinator:
Madlen Kunath

If you are aware of language teachers who are not receiving this newsletter, please email Juliet Kennedy.

Posting Notices

If you would like to post any notices in our newsletter or on our website please contact Juliet Kennedy.

NZALT Networks of Expertise Newsletter, Number 1, January 2024