1st day of School!

I started teaching at Henderson South today. I am in a level 1 class (kindergarten) with Miss Manos. I really like my cooperating teacher. She has so much energy. I have ten sweet little 5 and 6 year olds and they are so much fun.  There are 2 boys Konrad and John and 8 girls Faith, Skye, Sioette, Adriana, Oreiana, Devon, Piette, and Natalia. I am having so much fun with them already,We started the morning with a prayer in Samoan. It was cool to see how all of the children knew it and did it together. Tomorrow they is will be in Maori. I want to learn the words so I can do it with them sometime. Afterwards all of the junior classes went to fitness. They start every morning with fitness. I loved it. We had 20 minutes of doing there fun dances to get all of the children moving and all of it was pretty cool. I now understand how everyone over here is such great dancers. They start learning dances at school from the very beginning. I worked on hand writing with my class and the letter I. I also got to see how they do guided reading here. The main difference in my classroom was that they one at a time and the others in the group follow along instead of whisper reading together. I think I like the whisper reading more, but this way really heps the teacher to know where every child is with reading which is really helpful.

Every morning at 11:00 all of the children go outside for a snack and the teachers have morning tea together in the staff room. Don't worry they have milo/ hot chocolate that we can have as well. I really like the idea of having morning tea every day. It really gives the teachers the opportunity to get to know each other and talk to each other, which makes the school feel like more of a community. Shortly afterwards my class went into Miss Williams class for the rest of the day since my teacher had to leave early. It worked out pretty well and my class got to hear some Samoan since her class is a Samoan class. It is so cool how they value and teach different languages here.

During lunch I had the opportunity to talk to and get to know our principal Mr. Diamond more. We have an amazing principal and he has such a great relationship with the students. I love how he is always in and out of the classrooms and knows all of the students' names. He also cares a lot for the staff and I love the motto he has for the school of caring, sharing, and learning.After lunch my class had swimming. So all of my kids got their togs on and I had to remember my hat. Wearing a hat outside is a rule for the kids here because of the heat and I want to set a good example for them. Mrs. Bradley and I took the kids out to the pool. We played Simon Says in the pool, had the students practice going under water, kicking with kick boards, and swimming with their face in the water using their kick board. It was pretty fun and I even got pretty wet, which was refreshing since it was such a hot day. I like how swimming is part of the curriculum here. It is pretty cool and all the kids love it. The afternoon went by so fast by the time we got back from swimming it was time to pack up and for the children to go home. I had a staff meeting after school and it went pretty well. I love how nice the staff members and ans how I am already getting to know some of them. It really was a good first day at Henderson South and I am excited to continue working there for the next 6 weeks.