The People of Tokelau

Can you imagine never leaving your homeland like Puka and living off the land?  What would your life be like?

If you were sent to go to school in another country like New Zealand, would you return home with your family to look after your parents like Hegalo has?

These are the some of the big questions that the people of Tokelau have to face all the time.  

Why do you think they have to make these decisions and how does it affect their lives??

The Topic for Year 9s in Term 2 is 'Our Small World' and we will be learning about Tokelau. The main theme for this term is Globalisation.  Here is one of the presentation that one our classmates complete about Tokelau.

No Time to Stop! Action must happen....

Well, first time writing a blog post on the class blog but font worry, I have a lot to speak of today.

During the first periods of Social Studies, 9RMz was working efficiently on finishing their presentation and now are in the process of finding their social action. I should also mention; the five groups(J.A.A,  YAMMY Gang, FLAPJ , Diego/Boots/Dora and NeProLeOn) was learning about the different types of Social Action. The three types are, Fundraise actions,  Raise awareness Actions that Pressure/Lobby the Government. However, there is an action which connects two of three mentioned, there are actions which fundraise and raise awareness for a certain matter. As the leader for NeProLeOn ( Pote), I can only speak on work from my perspective but I can say one thing. The five groups are individually working on 1-3 social actions which they hope will promote sustainability for the 5 issues they had chosen weeks prior.

Hopefully, we get to the stages where we are 100% Happy with the actions we have created and will spread all around the campus ( Eg: Posters, Websites, sales and etc...).  

Our work for today - busy busy busy!

Today our class worked really hard on our projects.

• Danny in the Yammy gang was sending out a park survey and is waiting for responses.
• The Dora boots diego gang were trying to complete their presentation and each had lots of work to do.
• Pote in Ne-pro-le-on completed his survey and has sent it to the class while the rest of his team worked on the presentation.
• FLJP worked on planning for a supper fundraiser, designing a poster and reading relevant books on Samoan and Tongan hero's.
• Andre was looking at the site to find points of views on identity
• April worked on their groups presentations whilst Alla and Jasmine watched movies!

Everyone was busy working in their own way to get it done!!!

Working hard!

Starting our sustainability inquiries

This week, we are learning to work in project groups and identify and understand a sustainability issue in our community.  We will get into groups of 3 or 4 and choose an issue that we are interested in.  We will work through an inquiry into the issue, to find out more about what the problems are, who are the people involved and ways to help make the issue more sustainable.  There are about 6 projects that we can choose from around the future focussed theme of sustainability in our community.   Here is a list of our projects:

Each group will have a leader who will write on our class blog to tell us where they are at with their projects.  This will help us keep track of where we are at and if we need help, our teachers can help guide us in the right direction.  We are really excited to work together to find solutions to make our community sustainable!

Our class visiting the River Talks programme last week.

Our river is full of pollution and one of projects will look at ways to clear up our waterways

Our learning today: Reciprocal Reading

As a class, we are preparing to decide on projects that we are interested in finding out more about as part of our study on sustainability.  The Omaru River is a river that is located only 2 minutes from our school and is a river that is badly polluted.  A group called 'Mad Ave' is going to tell the story of the river tomorrow, which our class is looking forward to seeing.

Jane, Lana, Rita and Fusi reading for understanding

Today we did a reciprocal reading activity where everyone was in groups of 3 or 4 to read an news article related to the river called 'My Auckland: Glen Innes'.  Each person in the group was given a job: there was the predictor who predicted what the story could be about, the clarifier who checked out any words or phrases that needed defining, the summariser who summarised the article into their own words and the questioner, who wrote questions for the group to check everyones understanding.  To help them remember their job, they were given little coloured cards with clear instructions on them.

Netane, Isacc, Bruno and Kahurangi working collaboratively

Promise is taking his job as predictor seriously

Most of the groups worked really well together and were able to collaborate and communicate how they were going to organise their jobs.   I was really happy to see how well people and groups got on with their task, encouraged and supported each other and used their time wisely.

Owen is eager to learn whilst Reon checks out his job as the questioner.

Andre is eager to share his work with me.

Most of the groups had completed their work when the fire alarm sounded and we evacuated our classroom for a whole school fire drill.  Students moved calmly out of the classroom and on to the field to assemble in the appropriate areas.  It was good to know what to do in a fire drill and having beautiful weather helped a lot.

Our first fire drill for the year!

Hi 9RMz!  This is your learning blog for your favourite subject social studies here at Tamaki College!  I hope you enjoy your year!