Grade 7 Activity Week

Last term Grade 7 had a special activity week.  Activities included were excursions to Rock It, visit Mures, orienteering, Team building, helping out at  Salvation Army, Ten Pin Bowling and, for some, a  visit to the Tahune Air Walk. The whole week was entertaining and was a really fun experience.

On Monday our class went to Rock It.  We left just before recess on the bus. Once we got there we were split up into two groups. One group went rock climbing first and the second group went in the tunnels first. After about an hour we swapped over so we all had the same amount of time rock climbing and going in the tunnels. Afterwards, we walked down to Mures and we all got an ice cream each. Then we walked up to Saint Joseph's church and Mr Mac told us about the history of the church. After we finished, the bus came and picked us up. It took us back to school. I think we had an amazing time and it was only the beginning of our fun week.

On Tuesday we did Orienteering. The activities we did there was a game of trying to find small hole punch like objects and punch a hole through the card at recess. This game was played around the whole campus, the hole puncher-like things were placed in places from the 5-6 playgrounds to the ovals. The aim of the game was to get all the numbers of the hole puncher like things to match with the numbers on the card. In the end, you would see if they would make up a certain arrangement of words. After that, we played Generals and Spies after lunch. This game requires a lot of understanding. The aim of the game was to capture the opposite general but the other team doesn’t know who it is. They were a set of numbers 1-10, a spy (1)  and a general (10) in each team: this is also played around the whole school. It's a fun game to play with a large group of people. 

On Wednesday we did the Team building activity with Mr Canning at school. We did a lot of activities. The activities were:  getting to know each other bingo, slide show, a rope game, a booklet about positivity/negativity/other little activities as well and more. The Rope game main idea was to get to know each other. For instance, if you had the same thing with someone else in your class you would keep a bit of the rope and throw it to the person with a similar thing. Another thing  Mr Canning did with us was a slideshow with pictures and questions. Some of the questions were trying to show you different perspectives of things. Some questions were mostly about your classmates and what they like and more.  Mr Canning made us pair up with people in our class we didn’t know too well and ask them questions about them and they would do the same. After that, Mr Canning would pick a pair and ask a person to answer those questions without questioning them, the winning pair would get a block of chocolate. There were other activities where Mr Canning gave prizes like in the getting to know your classmates Bingo.  In the end, Mr Canning showed us a video about a guy who would suffer from bullying and slowly he figured out how to stay positive and ignore the negative energy.

On Thursday we were going to the Salvation Army but before that Mrs Mariott showed us a video about what the Salvation Army does and their history. After that, she handed us worksheets about it. After that, we went to the Salvation Army, where we did 3 activities that had very effective meanings.  The first thing we did was to be greeted by a very nice Salvation helper. She introduced the reasons the motto of the Salvation Army, the history behind it, the things they do there, the 3 types of homelessness and more. The first activity we did had to be groups of 4 where we had to guess how much each item was, the closest item would get chocolate. The next activity was a little biased, the reason why was because in this activity they handed us these cards and the salvation helper would call out something and if you had that you could take a step. The main idea was to show that most people who are fortunate get better opportunities unlike the least fortunate.  After calling the things out she would tell everyone to run to grab the chocolate the people who are closer to the chocolate would get it.  

On Friday we went bowling. It was super fun and exciting. We all got two games each and before we got there we picked the groups that we wanted to go in. Some groups decided to have the rails up and some didn't. Overall we all did well, a lot of us got  high scores and it was a nice surprise. Some classes instead went to the Tahune Airwalk but unfortunately, some classes didn't have the best weather so instead, they went bowling.

After the week ended I can say we all had the best time. Every day was an adventure and it was so nice that we all got together to do fun activities. I believe it gave us all a chance to get to know each other better and make new friendships.

Report compiled by Molly Duffy &  Zannatul Zaisha Grade 7G

Grade 9/10 Photography

Students in Grade 9/10 Photography have been hard at work this week creating landscape sculptures out of sourced materials that they then photographed and edited to make them appear like the real thing. This is a project within a photographic unit they have just begun called 'Constructed Landscapes'. In this unit, they will be exploring miniature photography and will be learning how to construct landscapes out of paper and using miniature figurines.