Year 7 News
By Lisa Dixon | Posted: Tuesday May 9, 2023
We have started this term well with our new exciting PBL project focus on the Living World for science. Our term topic is called "Discovery. Our driving question for this unit is " How can we, as concept designers, think like scientists to investigate and design the alien creatures discovered on Planet X so that they are believable and realistic characters?"
This unit will involve the students earning their "Science Degree" in biology by learning about classification, adaptations and food webs. They will be participating in a range of activities to ignite and excite about the animal kingdom. This also included a visit to Otago Museum's animal attic to work with the educators on classification and adaptations. This was a very valuable session to create interest and build knowledge for our students. We were also lucky to have Amadeo return to Balmacewen to present at our Year 7 Assembly to inspire the awe and wonder of science with a focus on the Living World.
Once the students have completed their "degree" they will be working in teams to create and design realistic animals that could exist on Planet X- a smaller planet than earth, less gravity, hot, humid and steamy with some volcanic activity! We are very lucky to have onboard Weta Workshop artists who are assisting us with ideas for our design process and the best of our designs will be shared with them for feedback!
For our Balmac way this term we are focusing on the Balmac superskills covering Growth Mindset and Collaborative learning so far and looking at what it means and looks like to be organised and ready to learn. It is great to see students taking on board the work we are doing in this area and applying these core concepts to our classrooms and playground. Next week we shift our focus to the Pink Shirt day - looking at friendships and bullying - you will see in this Newsletter information about a Pink Shirt day at school next Friday 19th.
This term we are also learning our school Haka and school Pepeha. This reflects our new rebranding of our house groups this year and the local stories to support these. Later this term we are having a school Haka competition where each house group will compete for house points.
Thank you to all parents and whanau who continue to support our class trips and activities.
Lisa Dixon
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