Legacy Cup – Challenge of the Minds

The air was tense with excitement as our top GPA students contended for the Legacy Cup, Challenge of the Minds, during assembly last week. A collective breath was held as students waited to see if their team members would correctly state the name of Postman Pat’s cat. All waited in awe to see if the Sinai team member knew the next number in the Fibonacci number sequence. And, all Zion sighed a breath of relief as their team correctly ‘guessed’ in which Star War’s film the Ewoks appeared. It was a great event with the final scores very close!

 At the end of this term we will know out of Primary, Middle and Senior which team has won the Challenge of the Minds Legacy Cup event. Each term the school runs a Legacy Cup event. The scores across Primary, Middle and Senior are tallied to give a cumulative total at the end of the year for the overall Legacy Cup winning team.

Eggmobiles

There have been bated breaths around the Middle School in many OTHER places also. The Industrial Tech students tested their eggmobiles and built bridges – with the record being 85Kg’s! Year 7s compared their answers on their data analysis assignments on social messaging sites – did you know 22 identified social messaging sites were identified as being used by our Year 7s?

Reports

This is a wonderful time of the school year with students demonstrating their knowledge, skills and ability in their finished projects, presentations, assignments, speeches, tests and much more. I am sure parents sometimes wish they could pop their head in to some of their child’s classes to see these results in action. Sadly, we often only hear from the students about how it went and then see the work transformed in to marks and comments on the reports. Having said that, teachers work very hard to assess work accurately, grade the final results and write report comments. These will be emailed out at the end of the holidays. Later in Term 3 all parents are invited to a student-led conference where students will walk their parents through their schoolwork, results, highs and lows. This is another way to have a ‘peak in the classroom’ so to speak.

Parental Participation

Parents deserve a pat on the back for their contribution to the work their child produces. I know from my own experience that there are many things parents put in place to encourage, prod, critique, inspire and at times call to account for their child to produce good results. After all this work – I hope you all enjoy the holidays! And, that you gain some refreshment, ‘smell the roses’ together and set some goals with your child for the next half of the year.

 Term 3

Next term we will be having guest speakers on Healthy Relationships and Study Skills early in the term. Please make a note of this and remember to talk about these topics with your child, as I am sure it will be the basis for some good discussions.

Jacqualina Vreeling, Head of Middle School