New Zealand Education

Compulsory Education

Compulsory education starts at age 5 and ends at age 16.

Class Size

The number of students in a class is 30 students.

Classrooms

    Students from Years 5-8 stay in the same classroom for most subjects and move to other classrooms only for specific subjects. In Year 9, students take some courses With their homeroom class and some optional classes with students from different classes. Starting from Year 10, students no longer stay in the same classroom most of the time. They go to different classes according to their own choices and abilities.

Term Dates

    A school year starts in January and ends in December. There are four terms in a year. Each term is about 10 weeks.

Class Schedule

    School starts at around 8:30 and ends at 15:15. There are only five periods a day and a period is about an hour long. In the morning, around 10:30, there will be a 20-minute break when students usually have some snacks during this time. There is a lunch period at around 12:40 for about an hour.

Teachers

    Teachers have to teach students of different year level at the same time. Most teachers teach students from at least three to four different year levels. Besides, quite a number of teachers teach more than one subject. This is because the fact that many courses are optional.

What brings a nation together? Of the four choices — shared values, language, history, and religion, it's shared values. In our latest poll (民意调査), seven out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor (因素）bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely linked Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, particularly in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor uniting their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.

    Something's happening at the lowest point on our planet, some 1,388 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea, a salt lake close to Israel, Jordan and the West Bank, is shrinking at an alarming rate—about 3.3 feet per year, according to the environmentalist group EcoPeace Middle East.

    “It's not just like one country is punishing the Dead Sea; it's more like the whole region,” said photographer Moritz Küstner, who visited the area in February to work on his series “The Dying Dead Sea”.

    The Dead Sea needs water from the other natural sources surrounding it, such as the Jordan River basin. But around the 1960s, the courses of some water sources it relied upon were diverted. Israel, for instance, built a pipeline during that time so it could supply water throughout the country.

    Mineral extraction(提取)industries are another main reason why the water levels are declining, experts say. The Dead Sea's minerals have been popular for their medical power and can often be found in cosmetics(化妆品)and other consumer products.

    And then, of course, there's the Middle East's hot, dry climate, which makes it difficult for the lake to refill itself. Last year, Israel and Jordan signed a $ 900 million deal in an effort to stabilize the Dead Sea's water levels. It involves building a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea which would be able to not only supply water to Israel and Jordan but also to pump much needed water—some 300 million cubic meters annually—into the Dead Sea.

    “This is the most important and significant agreement since the peace treaty with Jordan (in 1994),” said Silvan Shalom, Israel's energy and water resources minister at the time. Whether the canal—estimated to take three years to complete—will work out positively and as planned remains to be seen.

    For now, Küstner shows us that the Dead Sea remains very much a place of interest, with people from all over the world going there to swim in its salty waters.

    Educational APP Store

    Duolingo

    Duolingo is regarded as one of the best English language apps today, which is strongly recommended for English amateurs. The system of the app helps you learn English quickly by spending twenty minutes a day. Duolingo structures your lessons that teach you about seven new words based on a topic and skill points being awarded for completing the lessons.

    Busuu

    Busuu helps you learn English language on the go and the lesson's quality is guaranteed as it is based on CEFR language framework. Lessons range from beginners to advanced learners. Busuu is actually a great English app if you want to improve your spoken English by talking with native speakers.

    Memrise

    Memrise uses some creative and easy ways to memorize English words. The focus of this app is to help the users expand their vocabulary by learning English words in an effective way. Memrise also offers an offline mode to continue learning without Internet connection.

    Rosetta Stone

    Rosetta Stone is designed differently from average language apps on the marketplace today. It's trying to teach us English the way we'd learn it, as if we were children starting to learn the language. Furthermore, it has exercises designed to help you learn basic words. A variety of lessons are offered that Rosetta Stone has been using for years.

Art therapy (治疗) involves the use of creative techniques such as drawing, painting, coloring, or sculpting to help people express themselves artistically and examine the psychological and emotional undertones. With the guidance of an art therapist, clients car "decode" the nonverbal messages in these art forms, which lead to a better understanding of their feelings and behavior so they can resolve deeper issues.

Art therapy helps people explore their emotions, relieve stress. improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, and cope with a physical illness or disability. No artistic talent is necessary for art therapy to succeed, because the therapeutic process is not about the artistic value of the work, but rather about finding associations between the creative choices made and a client's inner life. The artwork can be used as a springboard for reawakening memories and telling stories that may reveal messages and beliefs from the unconscious mind

As with any form of therapy, your first session will consist of your talking to the therapist about why you want to find help and learning what the therapist has to offer Together, you will come up with a treatment plan that involves creating some form of artwork. Once you begin creating, the therapist may, at times, simply observe your process as you work, without interrupting. When you have finished a piece of artwork—and sometimes while you are still working on it-the therapist will ask you questions of how you feel about the artistic process, what is easy or difficult about creating your artwork, and what thoughts or memories you might have had while you are working. Generally, the therapist will ask about your experience and feelings before providing any observations.

Art therapy is founded on the belief that self-expression through artistic creation has therapeutic value for those who are healing or seeking deeper understanding of themselves and their personalities. Art therapists are trained to understand the roles that various art media like color can play in the therapeutic process and how these tools can help reveal one's thoughts, feelings, and psychological disposition.

Perhaps you have seen them, those who fall asleep on the subway and then, somehow, wake up exactly at their stop. Perhaps you are one of them. How is this possible? We spoke to two doctors, who offered their insights about it.

It is possible that your body gets used to waking up at a certain point each time during your commute, said Dr. Marc I. Leavey, a primary-care specialist in Maryland. That holds especially true if you commute at the same time every day. This suggests that if you were to get on at a different time, or if the journey were delayed, your internal clock might not wake you up at your stop. It is an interesting theory, but Dr. Ronald Chervin, director of Michigan Medicine's Sleep Disorders Centers, does not fully buy it. He is skeptical that circadian rhythms can also explain why you wake up after a brief nap.

You are also likely to wake up for your particular stop because of an oral cue, such as the conductor stating the name of the subway stop over the public-address system. Such cues alert your brain that you have arrived, explained Dr Leavey. According to a study published in the Public Library of Science, during sleep, our brain reacts differently when we hear our own name and other people's names, noted Dr Chervin. This suggests that your brain does not turn off during sleep, which makes it possible to pick up on the announcement of your stop.

Another reasonable possibility: You may wake up at each stop, check if it is yours, and go back to sleep, all without having remembered it, added Dr. Chervin. He sees this in cases where patients are suffering from sleep apnea. They may wake up as many as 200 times during a single night, without having remembered a single instance. That's because they fall right back asleep before their brain has time to process their experience into long-term memory. Similarly, you could be waking up every time you hear a new stop called. But you just don't remember such instances even after you fully come awake for your stop—leading you to believe that you have slept the whole way through and miraculously woken up at the right time.