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From the desk of...
Dave Scott, Middle School Principal
The extreme weather events of the past week have brought misery to some in Auckland, including a few families within our Kristin community who experienced flooding. We offer our sympathy and commiseration to those adversely affected. Of lesser significance was the interruption to our calendar, with some scheduled sports fixtures sadly having to be cancelled over the weekend. However, our 1st XI Cricket team still managed to play a 20/20 match, against the odds, and recorded a resounding win over Mt Roskill Grammar - every cloud has a silver lining!
Hopefully we can now enjoy a less exceptional and more predictable Autumn, as we move towards the close of the summer sports season and into the winter sports. In sports not interrupted by the weather, Elmo Jackson placed 4th in the Horse of the Year Show, a very impressive result. More top results were achieved at the Swimming New Zealand National Division II Championships held in Rotorua. Tiernan Keane was particularly successful winning: 6 gold, 3 silver, and 1 bronze medal; while three other swimmers turned in notable performances with Nora Zhang winning: 3 gold and 1 bronze medal, Joshua Sampson: 2 gold and 1 bronze medal and Katrina Miehlbradt: 1 gold medal.
Our Polyfest group, made of Poly Club and Year 12 and Year 13 dance students, took to the stage today at Polyfest 2017 at the Manukau Sports Bowl, a first for Kristin. As the first term enters its final weeks, life certainly does not get any slower here at Kristin and the range of activities and events on the weekly calendar are astounding in their range and diversity across all three schools.
Finally, I would like to remind you all of some upcoming events here at Kristin: the New Parent Dinners take place on Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 March in the LIC, and the KFF Open Air Cinema Event on Saturday 1 April promises to be a fabulous community occasion for all ages. Tickets are available through iticket.co.nz. I look forward to seeing many of you at these events.
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Awarded by the Governor-General
Nicholas Baughan and Ethan Bull were presented with awards by Her Excellency, The Rt. Hon. Dame Patsy Reddy, Governor-General of New Zealand for work they did on producing a promotional video for Kiwanis’ South Pacific Schools Support project to Vanuatu.
Last year, as part of their media studies, the two boys won a school competition and went on to produce the promotional video for Kiwanis New Zealand-South Pacific. They filmed the longstanding project that has been operational for more than two decades – shipping containers of school supplies, library and teacher resources to Vanuatu where they are distributed to schools and villages. “It was a feel-good project for all concerned” said Past Governor Megan Allan, who instigated the making of the video. “The boys got experience ‘in the real world of video making’, exposure to community service and a look at the culture of a third world country when they visited Vanuatu to complete filming. Kiwanis gained an important publicity tool. The project was made possible by Kristin School’s generosity in partnering with Kiwanis to produce the video."
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Swimming Success
Last week saw five Kristin swimmers; Nora Zhang, Catherine Miller, Katrina Miehlbradt, Tiernan Keane and Joshua Sampson participate at the Swimming New Zealand National Div II Championships held in Rotorua.
All swimmers performed well and achieved new personal best times. They also brought back a good number of medals:
- Tiernan Keane: 6 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze
- Nora Zhang: 3 gold, 1 bronze
- Joshua Sampson: 2 gold, 1 bronze
- Katrina Miehlbradt: 1 gold
In addition Tiernan, Nora and Joshua qualified for the National Age Group Championships to be held later this month in Wellington.
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Term 1 Highlights by 5B
What an exciting start to the year. We have already completed lots of fun and interesting work and we have recorded some of our thoughts and highlights.
"Reading Eggs is my highlight because it makes learning fun." - Tobias
"My highlight for this term is mathematics, because I now know how to work out decimals and what the decimal point means, how it splits the whole number from parts of a whole." - Sam
"The cultural food day was my highlight because I got to taste new types of food from other cultures." - Xin Zhu
"My highlight for this term are the class toys Milky, Tiger, Pengy and Ely." - Lucas (These go home with students who show the PYP attitudes. The students are chosen by the classroom leaders.)
"Making my summer banner was my highlight because I wrote a cinquain poem, a simile poem about myself and a photo of my holiday." - Mary
"My highlight is having Peter Troake as our prefect as he is fun to be around." - Brodie
"I enjoyed making her summer banner because she loves to draw and write." - Won (It has a cinquain about herself, a photo of her holiday and some similes about her.)
"My highlight for this term is the sailing boat ride when I visited the Maritime Museum. As I got on the boat it was like a smooth cruise. The only downside was the continual rain." - Archer
"My highlight for this term is mathematics because I used to think it was boring and now it is fun because I understand what I am doing." - Daniel
"My highlight for this term is going to Mr Lockyer for reading because I learn things." - Wan Yu
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Horse of the Year Show
Congratulations to Elmo Jackson (Year 13) who competed at the Horse of the Year show last week with his mare 'Next'.
Elmo placed 4th in NZ in the ‘Young Rider of the Year' competition’. This is a class for riders aged 21 and under and is comprised of only the very top riders in the country. Well done Elmo.
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Changing Times
Year 2 went back in time to explore the concept of Change for their current unit of inquiry. Dressed the way children would have in the 1800s, the children visited Howick Historical Village to see what life would have been like.
In one of the original houses the children helped to unpack a trunk that a migrant family may have brought from overseas. They acted out some of the activities that families did without the use of the modern technology that we rely on daily. The children had a chance to play with a variety of indoor and outdoor toys that children would have enjoyed in the past. They discovered that there are many similarities to the games they enjoy now, the main difference being the materials used to make them.
"I liked learning to play with the quoits." - Chloe
"I loved the log walkers because I felt like I was very, very tall." - Jonathan
"I liked walking on the stilts and playing with the metal hoop." - Nikol
"I liked playing with the Jacob’s ladder because it could flip down and jump." - Austin
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Physics Competition
Kristin participated in Auckland region’s 12th New Zealand Young Physics Tournament at the weskened. Twenty schools from Auckland and Hamilton participated in teams of three students to challenge each other to their solutions to open-ended problems. In each stage of the "physics fight" one team reports their solution including their physics theory and experimental work conducted to help investigate the problem, while the other opposes by summarising the strengths of the reporter's presentation and highlighting errors in their experiments.
The seven problems were released in Term 3 last year and Physics Club have been meeting each week since to investigate the problems which included a balloon airhorn, a fast chain, resonating wine glass, a gee-haw whammy diddle and a vacuum bazooka. Several of these experiments have also been selected by students as the focus of their IB extended essay.
A panel of judges gave scores out of ten for each presentation based on use of relevant physics, methodology and presentations. Over the day there were many excellent presentations thanks to rigorous data collection and analysis that fully explained the phenomena. This year, Kristin’s Year 13 team of Felicity Qin, Dhruv Ohri and Christina Yu, and the Year 12 team of Jake Lyons, Polly Huang and Iliana Ren both came a respectable 12th place in the competition. Well done to the team, reserves and everyone who has worked behind the scenes in physics club to help.
The students have learnt an incredible amount of physics by participating and developed excellent communication and critiquing skills. I recommend current Year 11 and 12 students get involved in Physics Club later this year when the 2018 competition problems are released.
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