ShakeOut!

Participating in New Zealand ShakeOut is a great way for your ECE centre, kōhanga reo or school to learn the right actions to take before, during and after an earthquake. So far, over 1147 ECE centres and 1344 schools have registered to take part this year. Your centre/school can get involved too by registering(external link)

Here’s how some centres and schools got involved in the 2012 drill:
“During the drill, one of the children kept asking ‘where is the siren?’. At the mat time we talked about this and children learnt that we might not hear a siren when the real earthquake occurs.”

“Our school did the earthquake drill according to our plan and headed up Tio Tio Road, which is our ‘high ground’ for a tsunami. We had a lot of discussion with the students about what would happen if all the staff were injured and the seniors would have to take over and make decisions. When we got back to school, we decided to do an impromptu drill during morning tea time to see if the students would know what to do if outside. Thankfully, they all dropped and covered their heads, which was great to see”.

“My son came home from school and we were discussing the ShakeOut. At work we had participated and discussed issues around windows, glass etc. He was disappointed in the ShakeOut as there was no shaking. He had a wonderful expectation that at 9.26am on 26 September that an actual earthquake would be conjured up for the country to practise”.

To add extra value to ShakeOut, LEARNZ is running a ShakeOut virtual field trip (13–15 October) to follow how students at Waitākiri School in Christchurch learn about, prepare for, and respond to the big ShakeOut event. Waitākiri School have their own story to tell from the Canterbury earthquakes and their students are preparing now for ShakeOut 2015. The cross-curricula field trip targets social studies at Levels 2-5.

Find out more information and enrol in the field trip(external link)