Tuesday 28 April 2015

Gallipoli War Diary-Rikihana Carkeek


Learning areas 

Social sciences (level 4): Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges. 
English (level 4): Listening, reading, and viewing Language features: • Show a developing understanding of how language features are used for effect within and across texts. (Indicator: knows that authors have different voices and styles and can identify some of these differences.)



Rikihana Carkeek was a prominent Ngāti Raukawa leader who was in the Māori Contingent and the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion. He fought in many battles during the First World War and kept a diary throughout. Rikihana returned home an officer and died, much later, at age 72. His memoirs were published after his death.

 Key questions

• What can we observe?
• What do we already know? 
• How might people view these diary entries in different ways? 

Possible discussion questions 

• What impressions do you have of Rikihana after reading his diary excerpts? 
• How do the events Rikihana describes in these excerpts fit in with other First World War events you know about? 
• How do you think Rikihana Carkeek felt during the different events he describes? 
• Have you read any other diaries? 
• Why might it have been challenging to write/keep a diary during the war? 
• What differences might there be between the way a soldier or a nurse described their experiences in their diaries compared with their descriptions in a letter home? 
• Why do people keep diaries? 
• If someone 100 years from now were to read a diary you had written, what might be of interest to them?

8 comments:

  1. Why might it have been challenging to write/keep a diary during the war?
    It might have been challenging because it might have been too emotional for the soilders to record the death of a friend or being wounded.

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  2. How might people view these diary entries in different ways?
    some people mite say that was than and now is now.
    some people mite be steel mad.
    some gust don't care.

    ReplyDelete
  3. •Why might it have been challenging to write/keep a diary during the war?
    I think it was challenging to keep a diary i the war because you cant just sit down and write in your diary while the enemy are shooting at you and people in you team are getting shoot right next to you and then you'll have to put the diary down and replace them

    ReplyDelete
  4. People keep a diary so they can tell it things instead of keeping it inside them, its like a friend you can tell everything to.
    They also help you remember things that meant something to you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It would be very hard to keep dairies in the war because when you were writing it you would feel a bit exposed not having a gun in hand and also if something horrible had happened like your best friend had just been blown up or shot right in front of you and died then it might be hard to write that down and recall the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  6. i reckon he must have been very brave considering his fellow comrades had just been shot down next to him on the machine gun which he was next in line to use.

    ReplyDelete
  7. • How do you think Rikihana Carkeek felt during the different events he describes?

    He would have been scared at knowing that everyone that was here before him had either been wounded or killed.
    at the hospital boat he would have been satisfied at being able to crawl there with a wounded shoulder.
    and at the secreet leaveing he would have been sad at leaveing all his dead companians there and also happy and relieved that he was alive and was getting back to faimly

    ReplyDelete

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