Melville Intermediate - Questions and Answers for Scotland

Those of you who are regular followers of our class page will know about the recent collaboration with students from Lochardil Primary School in Iverness, Scotland.  Jamie is researching Scottish culture for her cultural diversity work that we are doing next term.   P6/7 replied to us and replied in depth, and then they posted on their wonderful class page a series of questions for us to answer about New Zealand for them.   Their questions were:

What is your national anthem?
What are your traditional foods?
What is the weather like where you live?
What is the story behind your flag?
What time do you start and finish school?
What religions do people follow?
How big is your town?
What’s homework like in your school?
What’s the national plant?
What music do you listen to?
Do you have any traditional dances?
What sports do you do?
What languages do you speak?
Is your town, Hamilton, named after the town Hamilton in Scotland?
Has anyone in your class been to Scotland?

Well today in class Jamie, along with assistance from Kristal and Elizabeth sought some answers to these question from our new friends in Scotland.  We talked about an interested way to respond and it was decided to go class to class at Melville Intermeidate and ask different students from different classes (and one deputy principal, thank you Mrs Patterson!) to answer the questions.  This video was shot on Friday 25th May 2013.

QuestionsforScotland from myles webb on Vimeo.

Melville Intermediate - Ireland Collaboration

Add caption

As part of our school holidays Mr Webb was busy keeping our class page up-to-date and making sure that he was looking for lots of interesting class pages for us to visit.  One of these pages that was discovered was in Ireland.  If Only the Best Birds Sang is the 2nd Year Room Six Blog.  While the students might be a bit younger than those at Melville Intermediate the work that they are producing is fantastic! We've heard already from their teacher and we received this comment from them.

'Thank you for your message. We are fascinated by the Maori Mihi. We suppose every culture must have their own way of greeting one another and introducing one’s self. We thought the Maori way was very special.

After hearing about the Maori Mihi we talked about how Irish people greet one another and tell people about themselves. Like the Maori people the Irish people try to speak their own language (Irish/Gaeilge/Gaelic) as well as English.

We are doing a little work on this that we will send your way. It will have been somewhat influenced by your lovely Maori custom.'

Today in class in preparation for this collaboration we held a collective brainstorm session to see what the class knew about Ireland. None of the students in Room Five have ever been to Ireland, although Levi's Nan has been there on holiday and brought a t-shirt.

We discovered that we knew the following information about Ireland
1. Dublin is the capital of Ireland.
2. You can kiss the Blarney stone in Ireland and it gives you good luck.
3. Glenview Primary School last year for their school production had dances from around the world and one of the dancing acts that was Irish and the performers danced an Irish jig.  Damien was in the audience and said that the dancers moved their legs from side to side.
4.We think that they have lots of pubs
5. Potatoes has something to do with Ireland
6. The Titanic was built in Ireland, Levi's Nan went to Ireland for a holiday and as a result of that trip she brought a t-shirt that had that fact upon it.
7. Fairies and Leprechauns are creatures from Ireland.

 Our Room Five Ireland Brainstorm Wednesday 30th January 2013.