I am a student at Ōtaki College in Ōtaki, NZ. My blog is a place where I will be able to share some of my learning. Please note....some work won't be edited - they are just my first drafts, so there may be some errors. I would love your feedback, comments, thoughts and ideas on my posts.
Thursday, 23 November 2023
power to the people
Friday, 10 November 2023
Power to the People
We have achieved finding our question, starting on research, and found a group that works good. We have used our time effectively and have almost gotten to the first milestone. I have helped my group with research and recovering some of our deleted work. At the moment we are working on hitting the nearest milestone. We need help with figuring out how to cleanly turn rubbish into energy. The next steps for us will be finishing our research.
Friday, 27 October 2023
"Night" by Elie Wiesel
The Holocaust was a horrific event that took place during World War 2. The book "Night" is based on this true event that happened from 1933-1945. In his Holocaust memoir, "Night", Eli Wiesel uses a range of language features including adverbs, preparation and simile to describe his experience in the concentration camp. His purpose in writing this memoir was to get people to realise what happened during the Holocaust so we don't forget or let it happen again.
One event in the memoir that affected me emotionally, was when they were removed from the ghetto. Elie and his family had to wait for the last train, as well as help the others that were lined up. While watching his family members get split up from him. "I have a bad feeling," said my mother, "This afternoon I saw new faces in the ghetto. Two German officers, I believe they were Gestapo. Since we've been here, we have not seen a single officer." The language feature in this paragraph is direct speech.
Another event that affected me was how the prisoners only got served rations of bread and soup per day. They were basically being starved. However one day a man got so hungry he stuck his face into the pot of soup and got caught in the act. For his punishment they decided to shoot him right on the spot. Heaps of prisoners were running out of the factory screaming. " Hundreds of eyes were watching his every move. Hundreds of men were crawling with
him,scraping their bodies with his on the stones. All hearts trembled, but mostly with envy. He was the one who had dared." Using repetition in this text by repeating "hundreds of" shows how many people were starving, hoping to get more food.
One event that impacted me emotionally was when Elie said, ''We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we are no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.'' Hearing this balanced sentence made me think Elie was trying to say a bomb dropping on him would have been a better death after all he was going through: starving, beatings, working to the bone, grief. I felt so horrified for them.
When Elie shared his story about his dad it made me feel so sad. No one should watch their loved ones get so mistreated that it kills them. Elie's dad was beaten on a daily basis while dying. One very short painful sentence made me feel so sick, and I found it hard to understand, ''I stood petrified. What happened to me? My father has just been struck in front of me, and I have not even blinked."
Reading the book Night by Elie Wiesel really opened my eyes up to what happened to humans for just just living in a different country or having different beliefs. How can people thing that it is exceptionable to torture, and kill people for just being a different race. This book made me realise we need to make sure anything like this never happens again.
Wednesday, 22 March 2023
Sad Joke on a Marae
This poem is called a Sad Joke on a Marae. it is about a guy named Tu that doesn't know anything about his culture. he grew up with both his parents not speaking anything but English and he never got told anything about his culture which made him very lost, angry, annoyed, confused and ashamed. There is a Maori carving called Tekoteko lots of people believe in the story but most do not. The Tekoteko ripped out his tongue and threw it onto the ground. He believes why he ripped out his tongue because he was angry about the fact he couldn't speak Maori and he didn't know anything about his culture. The tongue is symbolic with the fact he can't speak Maori. You need a tongue to speak and Tu can't use his tongue for what he wants to say. The poem tells us Tu doesnt know any of his Whakapapa or his pepeha. he drinks and fights and gets into a lot of trouble with the police. The poem never really tells us why Tu doesn't know anything about his pepeha, whakapapa, or culture but my prediction is that Tu wasn't allowed to speak Maori or he didn't grow up with people who could speak