Hillcrest Normal School eNewsletter

Students' Learning

Junior School

This term in Room 5 we have been focussing on learning within the social sciences curriculum. We used the shared book, Kupe and the Giant Wheke to explore connections and design. We worked on collaboration and completed many beautiful art works. While reading the story we decided we would like to make our own waka. During Learning Through Play, we worked together to design, draw and create a huge waka we are so proud of. We have made some beautiful colourful oars. We each have our own oar that represents our families. We used chalk, pastel and black dye to complete our koru representation of our whanau on the oar. He waka eke noa - We are all in this together.

Middle School

Social Science Unit - Our Journey

This term we have been exploring 'migration' in Aotearoa history for social science. In Room 14, we looked at what life was like in Britain in the 1800s compared to New Zealand at that time. We explored why different groups of people may be attracted to migrate to New Zealand. We used drama to put ourselves in the shoes of Europeans back then who heard about New Zealand as a country to migrate to, and debated the pros and cons of moving and staying. This approach really helped us look at things from different perspectives, dive into these tricky concepts with deeper understanding, all while having fun learning about this part of NZ history.

Senior School

Room's 8, 22, 23 & 24 Production

For the last few weeks, we’ve been diving into our production and it’s been awesome! A group of students from each class worked with Mr Mason to come up with our script, and we are super excited with what we landed on. We’ve had loads of opportunities to act out different scenes and work with different groups of students. For those of us who were keen on a main role, we had a few extra sessions to show what we could do.

We’ve also started learning some of our production songs, and they are absolute bangers! We can’t wait to share this with you next term! On top of that, a group of passionate dancers have choreographed an epic dance which they have been teaching us all this week.

We’re loving all the different ways we have been able to be involved and are looking forward to next term, where we will be getting on the stage and into our characters.