Join Me at Redcliffs School

Miss Saxon's Year 4/Year 5 Class is awesome! The kids are great! They are eight- to ten-year-olds. They were so nice to me during my two-week visit, and even let me teach some lessons.

The students liked the books I brought over from America. While I read aloud, I talked with them about using context clues to help understand unfamiliar words, using clues in the story to help make predictions, and using inferential thinking to understand what the author is really saying. Do these reading strategies sound familiar to you?!? Are you still using them every time you read?

This day the kids chose Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg for me to read aloud. They loved the clever story and the way Van Allsburg's drawings showed the ants' perspective of the world throughout their adventure. What's your favorite read aloud story?

I showed the kids the Culture Books my Cottage Lane students had made. They LOVED them! They were very excited to see the drawings, the magazine pictures, the explanations about different aspects of American culture, and even some real money taped into the books! When they held the books they knew these hand-made treasures had traveled across the world.

The class was inspired! They spent the rest of the day making their own Culture Books for me to bring back to the United States. They used our discussion about "culture" to get ideas, and they re-read the American Culture Books several times to get ideas about how to make a good book. They made them very colorful and very interesting. You would know a lot about the Kiwi culture after reading their books.

Click Here for Sylvia's and Ellie's Video about Their Culture Books

***Remember to turn on your computer's sound. It will take a few minutes for the computer to load the video. Be patient. Click on the link only once. You can scroll down and continue reading this blog while you're waiting for the video, but open only one video at a time or it will slow down even more. :)

Bradley and Ollie made videos for you, explaining how the word "Kiwi" is used for many different things.

Click Here for Bradley's Video about Kiwis

Click Here for Ollie's Video about Kiwis

It could become confusing when someone talks to you about their Kiwi, but it's easy if you remember to use context clues.

Here's a picture of the front of Redcliffs' School. Isn't it nice? They have lots of room to play in front and in the back of the buildings. They usually play soccer, cricket, and other games during recess. However, they had never played kickball, so I told them the rules and we went out to play one afternoon.

They caught on quickly and really enjoyed playing kickball.

You'll notice that they are all wearing hats. This is a requirement for all school children this time of year to protect their faces from the sun. Because the air is so thin down here, there is a good chance of getting skin cancer from over exposure to the sun. New Zealand and Australia have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Wearing a hat, and using suntan lotion, allows kids to play outside in the sunshine without worry.

One day I got to join the class on their field trip to Science Alive to attend a class on electricity explorations. It's a small, hands-on science museum in the city of Christchurch. Mums (They say mum, not mom here) and dads drove groups of children to the museum so they wouldn't have to rent a bus. The science class lasted about two hours, but the children were never bored because there were lots of hand-on activities. In the picture above you can see Lucas experimenting with static electricity.

Miss Saxon is also trying out some of the activities.

Just in case you think Kiwi children are very different from American children, I've included these last two photos to show you that they are not very different at all. All over the world, kids just want to have fun!