THE NEW NORMAL
KIA ORA!
Like so many people across the blogosphere, we in New Zealand are experiencing a total lockdown so that everyone must self-isolate and stay at home for four weeks.
Week 1 is almost over, and it has been a huge change for every citizen as we have moved from a multi level system last week to try and suppress the virus, to everything closing down on Wednesday night. The days are feeling quite long with no school to go to, no sports to play or clubs to attend, no eating out, and no visiting, so it is important each day to get organised and engaged.
What have you done in the first week?
Have you read a book, learned a new game, tidied or rearranged your room, cooked something, helped someone, or just simply sat back and reflected upon the way that things are right now?
It is a good time to be taking photos around your place, and writing a bit of a diary from day to day, because this is a truly unique event in our history, and something you will want to be sharing with your grandchildren in the future.
While we are at home, it is a good opportunity to find some new things to enjoy. Here’s a song by Tiki Taane which I have just rediscovered, and love listening to because of the sentiment about ‘our place – our turangawaewae’. In fact I reckon this song would be a pretty good national anthem for New Zealand! What do you think?
Greetings from California, USA! It was fun to read your comment on our class blog and I’m visiting you to return the favor. We’ve been out of our school building since March 13. The first week was a large adjustment of decisions for how to adjust my teaching to an online-only format and recisions of freedoms outdoors. We are now starting our third week of online instruction and I continue to figure out the best balance of social/emotional support for students with academic content. This week I’m leaning more on the former. I’d love to add you to my blogroll so my students can find your site and add their comments for this week’s challenge.
Kia ora Mr M!
Yes of course please add our blog to your blogroll and I will do likewise. I am loving that we are not so busy at the moment that we can spend time getting to see a whole bunch of class blogs, investigate them and make friends across the globe. After all isn’t this all about developing global citizenship?
We look forward to making lots of new connections with your class.
Salut à tous les amis de Rakau ! Hi ! Kia ora !
Quel enthousiasme ! Thank you Tiki Taane, and thank you Chris Meehan for making us discover such a catchy, lively and joyful song. It’s really nice to see how much the Kiwi people love their country. This song lifts up our spirits, and helps us, French people, who love also our country but who can no longer live really free at this time.
Hopefully when we get out of this block down, we’ll find again a human life and not an existence where only asepsis and social distancing will reign, which I fear above all.
Let’s all repeat, “Everyone is welcome here, with open arms and plenty to share” because it’s an universal sentence, far beyond New Zealand.
And when I hear singing “Te kotahitanga e nga iwi, ki te waenganui a toi”, I think of the united human beings all over the World.
Thank you again for bringing us a hymn of joy, a wind of hope (and be indulgent for my English).
Fraternellement.
Serge Galligani et les élèves confinés du CM2 de l’école de Brindas, France
PS : You can see our latest achievements for the Student Blogging Challenge here :
http://cm1.galligani.eu/student-blogging-challenge/taches-hebdomadaires-2020/
and visit the other pages of our class blog. Nau mai !