Census Day!

Tuesday. I think my battery is dying on my alarm clock because the alarm didn’t go off this morning even though it was set. We both woke up at 7:40 and hopped straight out of bed. It was a bit of a hectic morning but at least we only live five minutes from school and we don’t have to be at the school until 8:30.

Besides waking up late today was great! I got to do the role- we are working on looking people in the eye when you greet them (in most of the island cultures it is respectful to look down to show respect) and we are still working on the students Spanish skills by having them greet me with a buenos dias Miss Hyde as I call each of their names. Afterwards we had sport where they got together as a house and ran a few laps in the field. Afterwards I spent the next half hour guiding the class through a maths standardized test. I was able to grade them and then put the students into maths groups based on their score. It was very interesting to see the spread of the scores across the class. It surprised me that most of the students were at the lower end of the spectrum. Granted it is the beginning of the year but they are year 6 students.

I was also able to work with my new reading group. I opted to take the middle ability (not advanced and not low but the one just on track) group who will be performing a reader’s theater tomorrow for the class. Today was also world literacy day and NZ census day. The census usually takes place here every 5 years. However, the last census occurred back in 2006. In 2011 the census was scheduled but due to the earthquakes in Christchurch the census was postponed. So today was a pretty big deal and our teacher did a whole lesson on what is a census and why it is important. The students had 4 questions they had to research to discover what the census was all about. I even got to play a part in the census because I am here on a visa besides a visiting visa so I got to fill out a sheet too! Pretty cool eh? It’s officially gone down in the history books that I lived in NZ even if it was just for a few short months :). What an exciting day!

Census:  http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census.aspx
Pomaria: http://www.pomaria.school.nz/Site/Home.ashx