Rotorua Primary

The day finally arrived for our wonderful singing debut! We were welcomed into the school which was really cool. The students sang and then did their school's haka. The haka was amazing! The boys did the warrior faces and chants very well. Then, it was our turn to sing. We sang "You Are My Sunshine." Thankfully, it was over very quickly and nobody laughed at us.

This school is a decile 4 school. They had three breaks in the day. Two twenty minute breaks for morning tea and lunch and a thrity-five minute break for activities. all of the breaks made the day go by very quickly.

We were gifted around the school by two Year 8 girls. They were head girls for their syndicate. The fist syndicate we went to was the gifted one. We went to the two Year 8 and two Year 7 classes. A lot of the classrooms were looking into natural disasters like the recent earthquake and tsunami.

The next syndicate was the digital classrooms. The students had to pay $100 per term to be in the class. Each student used laptops for almost all of their work. One thing that I found really interesting was that the class used a website called Ultranet which was similar to Facebook. Students can create their own profile, upload pictures, and have friends. The teacher posts assignments on their and the students submit their work onto it as well. The tecaher and other students can comment on everyone's work and give advice on how to improve it. Also, parents can create their own profiles to keep up with their child's work.

One unique thing about this school was that they had an all boys class and an all girls class. Since they separated the genders in my high school, I was interested in seeing this. The all boys class was doing reciprocal reading. The boys were on task and doing their designated jobs.One group was doing spelling words and they had to write them ten times and sue them in a sentence. the all girls class was int he library doing worksheets on New Zealand. Brittany and I distracted a lot of the girls because they were really interested in knowing all about America.

At the end of the day, we met with the woman who ran the school's interventions. She used a book called Toe by Toe to teach the students how to pronounce sounds and blends. Also, she tries to get the student's parents to come in and observe a session. She teaches the parents some of the techniques to use when their child is reading.

On the ride home it rained, and we saw a rainbow. It was beautiful! Also, Sofya taught me how to count to ten in Maori. I will definitely have a pretty good New Zealand vocabulary when I get back.