Going Global! Rotorua Intermediate's Thailand Link

Rotorua Intermediate students, through the guidance of GLOBE teacher Tina Muller, recently linked up with Dara Acadamy in Chiangmai (Thailand) for a two month atmosphere investigation. Both schools regularly monitored the atmosphere at their school, and the students emailed each other their results.

At the end of the two months the students analysed the results to investigate differences between the two climates. Rotorua Intermediate students developed a PowerPoint presentation to display their findings, and the Thai students produced some graphs to compare the results.

Teacher Tina Muller said she was very impressed with the questions asked by the students – especially the Thai students. An inquiry learning approach was adopted for this study, with the purpose of exploring how different the two different climates really are. New Zealand’s temperate climate was compared with Thailand's hot and humid climate - reminding the students of how different various regions of the world are.

Moreover, the collaboration between the schools enabled the young Thai students to communicate in English – which is their second language. The Rotorua students also learnt a lot about the Thai culture, in particular King Bhumibol Adulyadej and the Royal Family and the Ratchapruck Mascots in the Royal Flora Exhibition.

To view Rotorua Intermediate’s PowerPoint presentation click here.

Also view Dara Acadamy’s graph and questions that were asked from the results.

Would you like to add an international flavour to your EMAP investigation? Not only will you compare your environment with another part of the world, but your students will learn about a different culture in a cross-curricula way bringing in aspects of literacy, numeracy, and IT. If you would like us to try link you up with an overseas school please email your project idea to emap@rsnz.org.