Born in the year of the rabbit

Born in the year of the Rabbit by Peter Mirams

Locate a detailed map of China, locate the following cities. Shengzhou, Beijing and Shanghai.

1) Shenzhou is a country level city in central Zhejiang inland south of the Hangzhou bay.

2) Beijing, sometimes romanized as peking, is the capital of the peoples republic of china and one of the most populous cities in the world.

3) Shanghai is the largest chinese city by population and the largest city proper by population in the world.

Locate the yellow river and draw a line on your map, that shows where the river flows.

What is the population of Zhengzhou in comparison to China’s largest city? It is a largest city up to eight million and its the about a half o time of New Zealand.

What are children in China counted as when they are born? Hua Yan was born in november 1999. 1999 was a year of the rabbit, In china children are counted as being one year old when they are born.

What are the animals and what years do they coincide with?

They coincide the year that you were born and the animal that you are, and this just shows what you represent.

What animal are you? Research and find five facts about the year you were born in and how this coincides with the Chinese calendar?

1. I was born in 2002 and im a horse.

2. The horse ranks seventh of all the animals in the chinese zodiac.

3. The lucky colors are green, purple, and red.

4. the lucky numbers are 3, 9, and 6.

5.  And one of the years are 2002.

Why does it state “like most Chinese children, Hua Yan is an only child”? Is that in china families in china are not usually allowed to have more than one child. China has a huge population, and this is one way of trying to stop it getting bigger.

Do some of your own research to find the answer to this question.

They have mostly one child so it makes it easy for them to deal with, and so that it makes it easy for the parents to pay for there food so it would be cheap.

Referring to the images on the pages what can we gather about where Hua Yan lives? State five facts.

1. That he lives somewhere different to we live.

2. They use stuff that we don't have.

3. They use bamboo to make things like baskets.

4.  That they have more hours of school more than us.

5. Is that they have 1 hour of homework at home

What does the word harvested mean? Put it into a sentence of your own. The word Harvested is a Verb it mean that is is showing actions.

What is the process that the nuts are harvested in?

That they put the nuts into the babbo basket so that when they have a picnic they can just put their food into the basket so that they, are organized.

Thursday/Friday

Is the river a popular place to gather? Why?

Yes because it is where you can travel and try something knew, but in the mean time it would be tiring because it is one of the largest river.

How do we know that school is China keeps students occupied during the week? We know because it says in the text that some kids is not allow to go home and some kids are allow to go home because there prantens doesn't work at all. But the prantens that works and works far they have to stay at home and have lunch at school.

What does a Chinese child’s school day consist of? Is that in weekdays, classes start at 8 a.m, and school finishes at 5 p.m. Each classes is forty five minutes long, with only a ten minute break between classes not enough time to play.

How do you feel about the hours that children in China attend school. Why do you feel this way? The reason I feel this way is because I feel sorry for the kids in china because they have school for ten hours and they have more learning and also they have to wake up early in the morning to get to school fast because where they live is fast.

Do you think it would be beneficial if schools in New Zealand were to have hours as long as schools in China? It will be really beneficial because kids in New Zealand will not be able to handle this long of school because mostly schools in New Zealand are only used to 8 hours of school.

What is a monitors role? A monitor role is that they have to wear a red scarves, and there job is that they have to stand outside and welcome kids and teachers that is new to the school and when they come very morning to school.

How long do students in China have to do homework for every night? The student in china have homework for 1 hour per week but Hau Yan homework is that he has to copy of chinese handwriting and trying to speak Zhang Tian.

How does this compare to how long you do learning at home for? It compares likely exactly the same because after they come back from school they have a break and then they go back to learning and doing their homework which is really boring and cool at the same time because they have to do their homework every night for 1 hour.

Write a letter to Hua Yan, telling him about a day in school day in New Zealand.

Your letter needs to include the following:

Your details name, age etc.

The hours at school

What subjects we have

Extra special things we have at Pt England such as we are a Manaiakalani school - what does this mean?

Tell him about your netbook!

And anything else special you might like to include.

Don’t forget how to set out your letter and sign off with your name.

To: Hua Yan

At New Zealand the hours of school is different because In New Zealand we only have 7 hours of school and at china you guys have school for 10 hours and 1 hour at home. The subjects we have here is reading and writing which  we do that in the morning and maths after morning tea and also we have Inquiry which is after lunch. Also what we have here is that we are a Manaiakalani school and we have netbook that we can just work online and our teacher can see what we are doing and also we don’t work on papers all our work is on our netbooks.