🚀 go-pugleaf

 > The students and I are not familiar with your grading
 > of classes, how old are students in F2 ?
 > Deborah

Many thanks for acknowledging receipt of Cameron's efforts with the Weather Watch project.  We have been doing a study of the weather in our class to help us use data to predict what might happen with the weather in order to make sensible decisions about activities on the water.  Our school is right alongside a bay in Otago Harbour, and we have a large set of boats and equipment to learn about using our aquatic environment sensibly and safely.  It is very appropriate for us to join your weather watch proje





ct as it is relevant to our development of weather awareness.

Like you we are not familiar with the grading systems used in other countries where they differ from ours (in name only).  Our school is what is called a Full Primary School in N.Z.  That means we have classes (or Grades) up to and including Form 2, which would be Junior High School in the U.S.A.  Form 2 children are 12-13 years old.  Our system is labelled like this-- First year at Primary School = 5yrs old, called J1 (Junior 1), Second year = 6yrs old, called J2, Third year for most = Standard 1, Fourth 





year = Standard 2, Fifth year = Standard 3, Sixth year = standard 4, Seventh year = Form 1, Eighth year = Form 2, and then the children attend Secondary School (for our pupils a bus trip into Dunedin)-about 7 miles away.  Most Primary schools near the larger cities and towns in N.Z. are either Contributing (that is children up to 10-11 or Standard 4), or Intermediate (with only Forms 1 and 2 (11-12, and 12-13yrs old).  Ours is one of the few that combine both groups.

I hope this explains it for you in a way you can understand, as it's much more complicated than your system isn't it?

Incidentally Cameron will be away to High School next year.
Our school year finishes next week, on 18th December.  I shall try to arrange our Weather Watch data gathering to continue, but we shall be on Summer break from 18th Dec. until the beginning of February so you probably won't receive anything after next week for a while.

Please let Jeffrey Lavallee & Emily Walaszek know that we received their Weather Watch report for Wed 2nd Dec., and thank them for their efforts.  I notice a few slight differences in how we measure and record, such as degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit, etc.  Did you notice any? We also seem to date things the opposite way--yours is month-day-year (12-2-92), while ours is day-month-year (2-12-92).  Isn't it great that we are different in some ways yet very similar in others?  My children are very interested i





n comparing our differing cultures etc.  I hope we can continue our dialogue.

Meanwhile best wishes for the Christmas Season and
Kia Ora from New Zealand,
Garry Bain.


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