FPS Nationals!

Kathleen's Passion Project

Goal:

My goal was to successfully run team building sessions for the girls going to AIMS Games, and to design and order personalised hoodies for the team.

Purpose:

I chose to do this for my passion project because water polo is definitely my passion. As AIMS Games was coming up, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a project based around it. I thought that we could benefit from some team building activities and they might improve the way we played together as a team.

Process:

Term 1:

• Research, research, research!
• Design hoodies
• Meet with Dr. Bird and Mrs Taylor

Term 2:

• Choose hoodie supplier etc.
• Get hoodie info

Term 3:

• Order hoodies
• Create training calendars
• Run team building night
• AIMS Games!

Term 4:

• Essay
• Present

Reflection:

I’m really proud of my entire project. I have worked so hard on it and it was pretty successful. The highlights for me are still seeing girls wearing their hoodies after AIMS, and also the fact that the parents and coaches decided to get their own hoodies after seeing ours. This project has meant a lot to me because I have learned so, so much, developing and learning many skills. My project means a lot to me and has been a great experience because of what I achieved. Overall I have loved doing this project and now I’m so glad I chose this topic.

AIMS Games

We’re Coming To

AIMS Games!

In 6 days, 19 Year 7 & 8 girls from Selwyn House are going to Tauranga to compete in the national AIMS Games tournament. We have two teams entered - our Under 13 A Netball team and our A Waterpolo team, as well as two individual swimmers who double up as waterpolo players.

But what is AIMS Games? AIMS Games is the biggest sporting event for kids aged 11-13 in New Zealand, and is held each year in Tauranga. It has 19 sports you can compete in, and on the first day (Sunday 6th September), there is an amazing opening ceremony. To learn more about AIMS Games go here.

We are incredibly excited to be going and are really looking forward to the tournaments. Here are some photos of us in our team hoodies that we got for the tournament!

If you see this post and you’re also coming to AIMS, comment below and we might see you there!

Quadblogging & Custard

custard

ˈkʌstəd/

noun

1. a dessert or sweet sauce made with milk and eggs, or milk and a proprietary powder.

Right? Wrong. Our definition of custard is something a little different. Custard is an acronym used as a guide for writing quality blog comments, something that’s currently very useful for us as this term we are doing quadblogging! 

Custard:

We use custard to help us when we write our blog comments on our quadblogging classes’ blogs. This term we are quadblogging with three schools, and we make up the fourth. Our quadblogging buddies are:

• Irongate School
• Balmacewen Intermediate
• Rotorua Intermediate
• and us!

We think that this is a great opportunity to help improve each other’s blogs, and we are starting to have some ‘comment conversations’ with our quadblogging buddies!

Here is a conversation Joanna had with Megan from Irongate School:

Now you can give it a go! Next time you comment on a blog, use this method.

Try it by clicking the button below!

-  Ella S & Kathleen

Year 8 Science

Does a carrot have more starch than sugar?

On Friday, we had a science lesson with Mrs O’Meara. This term, we have been focusing on plants. We’ve been learning about things such as Dichotomous Key, germination, pollination, photosynthesis, and a few other interesting topics. This week we were looking at photosynthesis. As part of this we conducted an experiment to find out how much starch there was in various materials. The materials we tested were:

• Potato
• Onion
• Carrot
• Apple
• Flour
• Sugar
• Salt
• Paper

To conduct our experiment, we put one material in a beaker. Then, we would add around 4-5 drops of iodine solution to each material. If the material contained starch, the iodine would turn it a blue/black colour. Here were our results:

Material:	Colour with iodine:	Starch?               Yes/No
Potato	Black/blue	Yes
Onion	Yellow, tiny black dots on parts	A very small amount
Carrot	Dark orange/transparent, with some black	A small amount (approximately 1 gram)
Apple	Green/black/blue/yellow	A small amount
Flour	Black/blue	Yes
Sugar	Brown/yellow	No
Salt	Yellow/brown	No
Paper	Yellow	No

Here is a photopeach of our experiments:



What other materials do you think might contain starch? Conduct your own experiment and let us know in the comments below!

• Hattie and Kathleen

Success at Spelling Quiz!

Outstanding Success 

@ Canterbury Extra! Spelling Quiz!

This week, Selwyn House was ably represented by 12 of our top Year 7 and 8 spellers at this annual spelling quiz. The girls were involved in 10 rounds of questions that tested everything from their knowledge of words and their country of origin, through dictionary skills, root words and endings, proofreading and mystery word rounds, to more traditional spelling testing of words taken from commonly misspelled lists.

It is our very great pleasure to announce that the Selwyn House team of Kathleen King, Harriet Compton-Moen and Lucy Jessep have been crowned champions in the Year 7 and 8 competition with a grand total of 97 out of 100 - beating out 81 other teams. Congratulations girls - this was a hard fought win and we are very proud of you.

Thank you to all the girls who were selected to represent Selwyn House - you performed remarkably, with all teams placed well inside the top half of the teams. 

Nepal Fundraiser

"In a matter of seconds, Langtang village was wiped off the face of the Earth and, in Kathmandu this week, Habash described what it was like to visit the place where it used to be: ‘It’s so stunning up there. But I just couldn’t look at the beauty of it because it hurt knowing that so much pain is in that area.” - Yasmine Habash, Nepalese earthquake refugee. (Source, The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/17/nepal-earthquake-langtang-village-everyone-was-dead)

As you may know, recently Nepal has suffered greatly from two large earthquakes.

The Selwyn House UNESCO group and a few volunteers decided to run a fundraiser event for the people of Nepal. We organised a house colours mufti as our houses are the same colours as the Nepalese prayer flags. To go with this we asked the girls to bring a $5 donation that we can send to Nepal. As part of the $5 donation we also gave the girls each a flag to write a message on.

Our Nepalese flags are hanging on display in our school courtyard. They look splendid and have messages from all our students on them. We have the prayer flags in the wind, as the Nepalese do this as they believe it allows so that the messages drift to God and those they are meant for. This is part of Nepalese tradition. 

Thank you so much to everyone who donated money, wrote a flag and participated in our fundraiser. We are so happy to have had so much support from the girls.

This was a great success and we have raised a grand total of $1,033.70.

                               

Science Club

Lego Letters

A couple of weeks ago, for inquiry, we looked at an article about lego, called “Wait, a toy company published *what* in its magazine for girls?” 

Here is the link: http://www.upworthy.com/wait-a-toy-company-published-what-in-its-magazine-for-girls?c=ufb1 

The article was about how Lego put beauty tips in their Lego FriendsTM section of their magazine.

We had to write letters back to LegoTM and here is a little bit of one. 

“...In conclusion, LegoTM is sexist and should change their moral. You need to send a more positive message to young girls, such as “You build anything you want!” or, “You can have all the adventures you need with LegoTM!” Lego should be for everyone - not “girls Lego” and “boys Lego.” Please bear in mind what we have said, as many we’re sure other girls feel the same way!”

Here is a photo of the planning we did for our letters:

What do you think of the article? Read it and tell us in the comments below!

Special Place Poetry

Here are some of fabulous poems - please click on them to view them in a bigger format. Thanks to Lucy, Georgina, Kathleen, Matilda and Lily for sharing. All our poems will be up on on our Portfolio pages on Ultranet at the beginning of next term - we look forward to hearing your feedback.

ISSA Swimming Sports

‘Take your marks ….. phweet!’ And the whistle blew.

This was a regularly heard phrase on Wednesday 18th March, because it was the ISSA (Independent Schools Sports Association) swimming sports. Many girls from Selwyn House represented our school in these. To qualify for the zones, girls had to come first or second in a championship race in our school swimming sports. Both our school swimming sports and the zones were held at Wharenui Pool, Riccarton.

All the girls swam incredibly well, and some girls have qualified for CPSSA swimming zones (Canterbury Primary Schools Sports Association) or Canterburys. This is the next step up from ISSA, and is where anyone in Canterbury who has qualified for CPSSA will swim. To qualify, you had to come first or second in an ISSA final. The Canterburys are held for both independent schools and public schools, so there are a lot of swimmers, and a lot of competition!

We entered many relay teams, and also lots of individual swimmers. Every race was 50m, so two lengths of the pool. All the girl did amazingly well, and everyone should be proud of their performance. It was a great event, with Selwyn House girls placing in almost every race they were in! Everyone enjoyed, and also, we would like to thank Mrs Bone, who managed us on the day, ran the warm ups and gave us tips, Mrs Taylor (our P.E. teacher), who was also there helping to run it, but she also was very supportive and coached us leading up to school swimming sports and ISSA, and finally to all our parents and supporters who were there on the day to cheer us on. We wish the girls going on to represent our school in the CPSSA the best of luck.

Photos taken from our Y5-8 School Swimming Sports held at Wharenui Pool last week.

World Read Aloud Day!

On Wednesday 4th of March, the Cybrary leaders (Kathleen, Amy and Meg) hosted a school-wide celebration for World Read Aloud day. To celebrate, they asked that the girls come to school dressed as their favourite book character, and brought a book to share with their buddy.

At 8:30, the Cybrary leaders held a special assembly in the Cybrary because we are in New Zealand, and our school starts at 8:30am, (unlike most other schools) we were probably the first school in the world to celebrate World Read Aloud Day! During the assembly, we managed to get the entire school to read a book aloud to their buddies! We read “Hattie and the Fox” by Mem Fox.

There were lots of creative,colourful and interesting costumes. All the girls participated in this day. And some teachers did too! 

Kizoa slideshow: WRAD - Slideshow

Introducing Kathleen!