Busy start to Term Three!

By Lisa Dixon | Posted: Tuesday August 9, 2016

It has been a busy few weeks in Room 14. It is that time of the Year that our Year 8 students have been out and about on High School open day visits thinking about choices and decisions for next year. In class we have started working on our Term Three integrated topic - IMPACT with our focus on the Olympics.

As part of our Term Three theme on Impact we will use the Olympics as the context for looking at issues such as drugs in sport, politics and sport, and how the Rio games have focused on Sustainability and highlighting the issues of global warming and deforestation. We will link this to the students own ecological footprints and how they can make a difference in their own lives.

Next week we plan to have a Year 8 Olympic week - all classes will be split into four groups and go to four days of activities focusing around the Olympics such as planning an Olympic opening ceremony if it was in New Zealand, are you fit enough to be an Olympian?, Eating like a Champ, History of the Olympics, Designing a New Olympic sport, Art- Pictograms and Mascots..... It will be a great way to look in depth and tie in the Olympic Values into our theme and how the groups interact and participate in these workshops.

Other highlights this term will include an Art Gallery session, a visit to the Sports Hall of Fame and the Year 8 Olympic Activate Challenge.

One of task to kick start this unit was to look at Rio and Brazil - check out Caitlin and Aimees work Rio and Brazil . Now we are working on tracking Athletes and creating an Olympic History Timeline. We have also looked at issues at Rio such as pollution, Zika virus and the corruption and displacement of people. I hope students are also taking some time to enjoy the amazing stories and spectacle of sport that is the Olympics! Go New Zealand!