Topic One: Village Life in Tokelau - Soana Telefoni

The village life in Tokelau is very important to everyone who lives on the island. Everyone on the island, have a job and responsibility that they need to do. There are a council of elders (older men) who make important decisions for the island to keep everyone safe and these elders meet weekly. The ladies can go to work and do their job but they mostly stay at home with the children to look after them. Everyone in Tokelau relies on each other and they share their things with others like food or entertainment, no matter who the person is. People always respect and look after each other because they are all living on a small island together and they only have each other. In Tokelau, there is no jail or crime because everyone is happy and they are kept safe. If there is one person who is acting up or not behaving well, some other people help that person to get better by teaching them the right ways of living in Tokelau and that they shouldn’t be behaving like that because it’s not how people are supposed to act in Tokelau.

Topic: School in Tokelau by Elizabeth Uea

Even though Tokelau is a very small Island some of their kids gets scholarships in school like New Zealand. On a video, our class watched there was a group of kids waiting for the school boat to come and pick them up. This is how they go to school on a boat. The reason why they catch a boat is because their Island was too small so they had to build their school on a bigger Island. The school boat takes them to school and back home. Also on the video, there was a lady with a daughter who was the top student in her whole school and was most likely to get a scholarship like her mother did. Her mother said that it was good if she got a scholar and go and study in New Zealand or Australia. But her mother also wants her daughter to stay in Tokelau to be with her as a family. Because she just got back from studying in New Zealand.

Last week students from 9KRo have been writing about their understanding of the Tokelauan way of Life. They have watched the video 'Our Small World' and have completed a few paragraphs describing certain aspects of the Tokelauan lifestyle.

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.

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!

9 KRo at the River Talks