Year 7 News

All 8 classes had really successful camps to Waihola CYC. The weather was fantastic for most, challenging for others but all have had the experience of sleeping in tents, plenty of outdoor challenge opportunities, team building and making new friends.  

The Year 7 team certainly displayed the Balmac school value of perseverance when they tackled the 12km Taieri River track.  Other activities included using portable camp cookers, an epic Zip line through the bush, archery and rifle shooting, loads of team building challenges, water sliding for some, kayaking, bubble soccer and Archery Tag. All classes had exceptional parent/whanau help and we cannot thank you enough for giving up your time to help out at these camps. Check out some of our writing in this newsletter. 

After our initial beginning of the year getting to know our students and heading off to our Year 7 camp at Waihola, classes have turned their focus into our term one integrated theme which includes our literacy focus of moment in time writing and readings to tie in with our New Zealand Histories focus through articles, journals and podcasts. Alongside this we have been planning and working on ideas for our Tūrangawaewae exhibition. The date for this will be on TUESDAY April 4th from 3pm to 6pm in Block One for our community and whanau to visit. Further details will be shared closer to the time. 

We continue our work on the Balmac way with a focus on our school core concepts and values. In class, students have completed a number of activities to reinforce these ideas reinforcing "this is how we do it here". 

Thank you again to all of our parents and caregivers who continue to support our class programmes and activities.

Lisa Dixon

On behalf of the Year 7 Team.