The Great War - Journeys Abroad

In World War I thousands of New Zealand troops boarded ships bound for the war in Europe. Among these men was Alister Robison. You can read about what his voyage may have been like according to Abbey.

Read this free book made on StoryJumper

If Shakespeare Could See Us Now

I read about the Bard upon a site,

That kids could write a sonnet on their own.

I pondered on the subject overnight,

Decided that we could; outcome unknown.

Returned to school to introduce the Bard,

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

So many rules he set to make it hard,

So hard to write a masterpiece this way,

Ideas flowed, and structure soon was built,

The syllables and rhymes worked as they ought,

Iambs in fives proved far more difficult,

The task seemed out of reach, or so we thought.

But finally our sonnets are refined,

A prouder teacher you will never find!

Wow, what a term it's been for our Year 7/8 authors! Today it was thrilling to see the pride and satisfaction on each other's faces as we put the final touches on our writing. We hope you enjoy reading our work as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Another Look at Last Year's Science Fair Success

This information has been moved from the Science Fair page to make way for the 2013 Science Fair.

Below are the 2012 entries and winners. Joe, Cameron and Liam went on to win 2nd Place in the Physical World category at the Waikato Science Fair and Sonya and Kirsten went on to win a Highly Commended award at the Waikato Science Fair.

Following a great deal of hard work students finally submitted their project boards for judging at our school science fair. The investigations were varied and included finding which fruits grow the most mould, which soft drinks create the best Mentos volcanoes and which firewood burns best. Thanks to Pamela Dunn and Jasmine Ahmu for judging the competition.

And the winners were:

1st place: Kirsten Maclaurin and Sonya Fenton with Menacing Mould

2nd place: Joe Harris, Cameron Mailer and Liam Loveridge with Fire Fury

3rd place: Joel Geissmann with Tough Stuff



Highly Commended: New Helper by Jennifer Qiu





Fishy Business by Katie Simpson

Liquid Electricity by Katelynn Pini and Jemma Goodall





Bombs Away by Brendan Hunt and Brandyn Smith

Teddy Town

Welcome to Teddy Town. In Teddy Town there are four houses of each colour and four teddies of each colour. The streets are very special. If you walk along a street from east to west all the houses are a different colour and the teddies living in the houses are a different colour too. The same is true if you walk in a north south direction. In other words, looking at a map grid, each row and column must have different coloured houses and different coloured teddies.

The JEM's (Junior Extension Maths) have been puzzling over Teddy Town for a while and today Camryn found a solution. What great perseverance she showed to solve this problem. Great work Camryn. Here is her solution.

What will Teddy Town look like if there are five teddies and houses of each colour and five purple teddies move into town and build five purple houses?

Thanks nrich for the great ideas and resources.

Under Pressure

Today students presented the work they have been doing on pressure groups. Having compared and contrasted two existing pressure groups the students' task was to create their own pressure group and design a way to share the new group's message with the public.Some students made videos using movie maker, adding photos, video recording and backing music. Quite a few students created wikis or blogs with embedded code, avatar messages and links to other sites to promote their cause, and yet others created pamphlets, posters and clothing. There was a very impressive array of presentation methods utilised to convey the messages these new pressure groups were advocating. Check out what we've been doing on the Student's Work page.