Ngatu

W.A.L.T... Write using aspects of an information report structure. Identify the significance of Ngatu in the Tongan culture. What I enjoyed about this piece of writing was researching information. What I found hard was writing it out and finishing it off. Maybe next time I could try and finish it off.

Ngatu - Tapu clothes

What is a Ngatu cloth? A Ngatu cloth is something that is made in many other cultures around the world. Some women from Tonga are trying to keep the tradition alive for Tonga.

What is Ngatu used for and what is it significance? Ngatu is used for many different things in Tonga. Ngatu can be used for weddings, birthdays, funerals, mats and many different occasions. The significance of Ngatu in Tonga is very important because they use Ngatu for mostly everything.

How the Ngatu is made. There are many steps to making ngatu, here is how to make it. After the hiapo is cut down girls will peel the bark from the tree, then they will hang the bark out on a line to dry in the sun. After that they soak the dry bark in water to make it soft. Then they beat the bark with a wooden tool called ike to make it thinner and wider. Then they will but the bark back out in the sun to dry again. The strips of dry flat bark are called feta’aki. Next you will lay a white cloth on top of the tabletop, the white cloth will be backing for your ngatu, once you have done that then you will have to line the ngatu along the tabletop of the backing material. Then paste the edges with of the feta’aki to the backing material. After that they cover the backing material with paste, then they carefully lay the feta’aki over the top of the backing material. Next they will press the two pieces together and slowly roll it up. Then after that they carry the ngatu outside and roll it out on the concrete so that it can dry in the sun. When it is dry they will paint the ngatu with some brown dye, using a piece of feta’aki as a brush.  This is what the finished product should look like:

Tongan vocabulary

feta‘aki: the dried pieces of the beaten bark

hiapo: the paper mulberry tree (known as “aute” to Māori)

ike: a wooden tool for beating the ngatu

ngatu: the Tongan word for tapa

tutu: the bark used to make ngatu

   

Why cellphones should be banned in schools

W.A.L.T...write a persuasive text. For the past few weeks our class has been writing a persuasive text on weather cellphones should be banned from schools or not. What I found difficult was trying to figure out how to put my text together. What I enjoyed was finding facts to back up my statements. What I need to work on is my use of punctuation and try and add more facts to back up my opinion.

Dear:______

I strongly believe that phones should be banned from schools, as it may be a distraction for the students in the class. I think that phones are a huge distraction of our generation. They can also have an addiction to their phones, which makes this generation unable to communicate with the people around them. If we allowed phones to be used during school time, students at our school that may be using phones would highly likely to become less talkative and unsociable. This would happen because the students would spend heaps of time on their phones checking out their texts social media etc.

The first reason why I think we should ban phones from our school is because like I said in the beginning of this letter it could become a huge distraction to the children. Like what would we need them for anyways? When we have the tools at school e.g computers and the office phones.

Secondly, I hear all these people saying, “We should allow phones at school, because in case of an emergency we can call our parents so that they know we are safe” I mean yea that could be a reason, but if we allowed the phones at school and if there really was a emergency, then the phone towers would get blocked because everyone is trying to get ahold of other people, so there's really no point in taking your phone to school.

Pursuing this further if we did allow phones at our school, during a test some people could cheat and try to get answers from their phones because they are allowed to have their phones during the test.Also if something like that happened and someone caught them in the making of the incident then the teacher would have to deal with what the student has used their phone for, so then we would have less learning time because the teacher is to busy dealing with someone's bad behaviour.

Therefore this is why I strongly believe that phones should be banned from schools.