Celebrating Identity - Japanese and Tongan Lessons

Our learning helps our community - our community helps us to learn! This week Rua had some more great experiences of sharing from the community and learning about different cultures.

On Thursday morning we turned the classroom into a typical Japanese classroom. Earlier in the week we'd watched some videos about school in Japan and had noted what was different. We noticed desks are set in rows, all facing the teacher, in Japanese classes. We also discovered Japanese children change from outdoor shoes to indoor shoes before entering the class. So we bought along slippers or took off our shoes and wore socks for the morning. 

During the morning Tomoyo and Kyoko helped all the children to write their name in Japanese. 

Arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much) teacher. 

School lunches are an important part of the learning in Japanese classrooms. To get a taste of the experience, we stopped for snacks midmorning. Some of the children were chosen to serve these up just like Japanese students do. 

The desks were moved back into groups for eating - the hardest part, for the students, was waiting for everyone to be served before they could eat their snack. Kyoko taught us to say "Itadakimasu" before eating. This means “I will eat now!” “Dig in!” or “Let’s eat!”.

Finally, at the end of the morning lesson, the children bowed and said "Arigatou gozaimashita" to their teachers.

After morning break, we had another special treat when Orlando's Nana Kolo visited to teach us some Tongan. We looked at a variety of Tongan words, and noted how many are similar to Maori. For example the Tongan word for children is tamaiki which is very similar to tamariki in Maori. Both languages also have different forms of goodbye depending on whether you are the one staying or leaving. 

Nana Kolo also taught us how to count in Tongan. The children were very impressed with how easy it was, and after she left many challenged themselves write the numbers to 20, 50, or 100 in Tongan. Again we noticed the similarities between counting in Tongan and counting in Maori and we talked about how the people of the Pacific have many things in common.

Finally two students modelled Tongan outfits. Nana Kolo explained that these were the sort of things that children would would to church on Sunday, a wedding, birthday party or other special occasion. 

A huge thank you to Tomoyo, Kyoko and Nana Kolo for sharing their cultures with us. It's wonderful to learn from our community, and I know these experiences will stay with the children for a long time.