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Activities

Learning activities

You do not have to use all the activities suggested below. Choose from and adapt them to suit your students’ needs.

Introducing the text

As a class, brainstorm the different types of meeting the students know about, for example, fakataha, fono, hui; assemblies; committees; study groups; funerals, marriages, and other celebrations; youth groups. List all the types of meeting on the board to refer to later and discuss what each meeting is like – how many people are involved, where it takes place, what happens. Confirm that the students understand that a fono is a form of meeting in anga faka-Tonga.

Study the cover and title page of Ko e Fono and ask the students to consider what the boy might be carrying (a mat to sit on).

Reading the text

Read the first page of Ko e fono with the students and encourage them to study the illustration to help them establish who each character is and where they are. Then have the students work in pairs to read and analyse every page of the story. They could:

  • describe what the illustrations show – counting the number of people at the fono, the number of people on a mat, the pieces of apple on the plate, and so on
  • summarise what happens on each page
  • make connections between an illustration and the supporting written text
  • identify verbs and tenses, for example, present and future tense markers
  • study the use of pronouns (singular, dual, plural) to help summarise the relationship between the characters and their involvement in actions
  • identify aspects of the language and illustrations that demonstrate particular features of lea or anga faka-Tonga, for example, the clothing the people wear to the fono; the seating arrangements at the fono; the acknowledgment of faka‘apa‘apa/respect, fevahevahe‘aki/sharing, and fetokoni‘aki/helping one another and the act of me‘a‘ofa with the gifting of the fruit.

As you work through each page, identify any unfamiliar words or expressions (in the text or in the discussion). Record these on the board.

Support the students to notice patterns of language that they will use in other contexts, for example, ‘Oku ou tofitofi ‘a e fo‘i ‘apele …/I cut the apple …; ‘Oku ou tofitofi ‘a e fo‘i  siaine/I cut the banana; ‘Oku ou ui hoku tokoua¢ mo hoku tuofefine/I call my brother and sister.

Dictation

Dictation can help students focus on sound–spelling relationships and build good pronunciation habits, especially in relation to the definitive accent. Read the following sentences aloud slowly, repeating each sentence and giving the students enough time to write them down.

  • ʻOku ou tui fakavave hoku vala lelei'.
  • Ko au mo Nuku ʻoku ma longo pē.
  • ʻOku ou fie ʻalu ki he fono¢ mo koe.
  • Mālō hoʻomou lelei ki he pongipongi' ni.
  • ʻOku ou tofitofi ʻa e foʻi ʻapele kulokula fuolahi' ki he konga ʻe fā.

Have the students find the sentences in the book and compare them with what they’ve written. Have them write a note to themselves about what they need to improve in their written accuracy in lea faka-Tonga.  

After reading

Fono

As a class, discuss the fono that the characters went to in Ko e Fono¢. Encourage the students to identify the particular aspects of anga faka-Tonga and the Tongan values that the story expresses.

If there are questions that your class has not been able to answer, set research tasks, and encourage the students to search the Internet or the library or talk with family members, other students, and experts from a local Tongan community.

Have the students work in groups or alone to research and prepare a presentation about one of the following topics:

  • the kinds of fono that commonly occur in anga faka-Tonga compared with meetings that commonly occur in their own culture
  • the people who are present and the formalities that occur at fonoin anga faka-Tonga (for example, the seating arrangements, the formal opening, the kinds of clothes worn, who gives speeches, the purpose) compared with those that occur in meetings in their own culture
  • the significance of various kinds of fono and the reason for this significance.

Come to our fono

Have the students work individually to choose one form of meeting from the list you developed earlier and draw a poster to advertise that meeting, announcing the date, time, place, and purpose of the meeting and including as much lea faka-Tonga as they are able.

Meetings

Have the students work in pairs to choose one form of meeting that they know about from the list you developed earlier (or the fono described in this story) and then use lea faka-Tonga to draw up a list of points that describe that meeting, including how many people attend that type of meeting, where the meeting takes place, the time of day that it occurs, how the people who attend that meeting dress, and what the meeting is about. Once the students have completed their descriptions, they could present them in lea faka-Tonga to the class.

Reflecting on learning

Prompt the students to reflect on what they have learnt from working with this text, by asking questions such as:

  • What strategies helped you to understand the story?
  • What will help you to remember the new language?
  • How can you use the new language in other contexts?
  • Can you identify significant aspects of new learning about anga faka-Tonga?

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