Thursday, 27 March 2014

Swimming Sports

 

Swimming sports was held on Friday 7th of March. We had lots of fun yelling, cheering and chanting for our whanau Ngata.  We are very proud of the five people in our class who participated in the competitive swimming races and excited that they got ranked between 1st and 3rd place. Congratulations to Creshanda who came 3rd in the year 8 girls 50m  freestyle, Naomi  in year 8 who came 1st in breaststroke 2nd in year 8  girls backstroke and 3rd in year 8 girls butterfly. And also to Georgia who got ranked in 2nd in year 7 girls freestyle, 2nd in year 7 girls backstroke and 3rd in year 7 girls breaststroke and also for Selina who came,  2nd in breaststroke. A big well done for Jimmy who came first for everything- backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle. Ngata came 3rd in this year’s annual swimming sports. Everybody had an awesome day! Goodluck to our swimmers who are participating in the South Eastern Zone Swimming Sports.

Written by Bahar Bayani.

Introducing our inquiry groups


In the first few weeks of school we explored the overall whanau topic of ‘Outdoor Experiences‘. We wrote down all the key words we could think of that associated with this. From here we categorised the words into four topics. These four topics decided our groups - we had to rank which topic we would prefer to study for this inquiry topic.

These are our groups, HOT Questions and Social Action (your child should be able to explain what these mean):

Great Grand Muddas – Water Safety.

(From left: Michael, Leroy, Selina, Amy, HanaJane, Ethan and Ellie. Absent: Nancy)
 
HOT Question: Investigate reasons why many Howick Intermediate students are unable to swim, survey students at Howick Intermediate school in order to find out how many students are beginning swimmers and formulate a plan of what type of support we can provide in school for the people who are unable to swim.

Social Action: Create a floatation device to support people with limited or no confidence in the pool – life jackets, fludder boards.

The Olympians – Fitness in schools


(top left: Darren, Connor, Daniel, Jimmy. Bottom Left: Dante, Naomi, Creshanda and Shekinah)
 
HOT Question: Investigate reasons why some preadolescent students are physically unfit, identify what is available at the moment for fitness at our school, and formulate a plan to convince our students that fitness can be fun.

Social Action: Students will work with Mrs Chang to create a fun and enjoyable fitness programme that encourages preadolescents to be active.

Tree Huggers - Deforestation

(top left: Mark, V.J, Gabriel, Tyler. bottom left: Chih-Li, Surbhi. Absent: Kaira)
 
HOT Question:  Investigate reasons why deforestation occurs, determine the impacts of deforestation on local animals, and construct a plan to reduce the effects the amount of deforestation in the Auckland region.
Social Action: Students will work with Mrs Templehoff to make a cushion to inform the public of the effects of deforestation.

 
Rubbish Bins – Marine life
(Back left: ChaoQi, Julius. Front left: Bahar, Demetrius, Nikhita and Georgia. Absent: James and Junior)

HOT Question: Identify reasons why people litter in our ocean, discuss how we can make people aware of the danger plastic has to our marine life, and construct a plan on how we can educate people about the effects of littering.
 Social Action: Students will work with Mrs Chang to create a musical composition to inform people about the dangers of littering to our marine life.