In 2020, the ESOL department welcomed new students from Samoa, South Korea, Afghanistan and the Philippines. In ESOL classes this year, students expanded their English learning through studying a range of topics from across the curriculum.

Students focused on improving their speaking and presenting confidence during Term 2 and the Year 11 students gave some amazing presentations and speeches. Student writing has improved a lot over the year, which is evident if you read their awesome blog posts. Practising vocabulary and grammar is an important aspect of ESOL but we also made sure we had some fun with a couple of field trips, games and project work. We also had lots of ‘Talanoa’ time where we chatted and shared our cultural knowledge, thoughts and opinions with each other.

Mrs Flores has continued to be a fabulous tutor and mentor for our Filipino students. Mrs Flores supervises the school’s Filipino Youth Group and for the first time, we celebrated Filipino cultural week by youth group members visiting the staffroom and teaching the staff some simple greetings. We celebrated Filipino Independence day in June and then had a pre-NCEA exam picnic lunch together. It was very unfortunate that we could not hold our annual Salu Salo celebration due to uncertainty around changes to Covid-19 restrictions and levels. Hopefully Salu Salo will be back even bigger and better in 2021.

Hussain, a Year 12 student, suggested that instead of our regular pot luck end of year ESOL lunch, we should order food from his family’s restaurant so students could try some real Afghani dishes. We decided to host an Afghani lunch for all our senior ESOL students during their last week of classes. We all agreed that it was delicious and we would like to try more dishes. We had smoky flavoured rice, salad, flatbread and a selection of chicken and lamb kebab.

Ms Briggs announced in November that she is leaving Hornby High School after teaching ESOL here for three years. Ms Briggs says what she will miss her ESOL students heaps and hopes that everyone has a fabulous summer and successful 2021 and beyond.