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Gisborne Girls’ High SchoolNewsletter September 2019

Success

Te Kura Tuarua o Tūranga Wāhine

Coming Events

Gisborne Girls’ High School

Post PO Box 249 Gisborne 4040

Phone 06 868 6092

Email info@gghs.school.nz

Celebrating

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Deans andForm Teachers

These people play a critical role in your daughter’s success. If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to call her form teacher in the first instance. To arrange this please call the school office (06) 8686092

The Deans for this year are:

Grace Davidson Year 9Rita Halley Year 10Justine Ward Year 11Ingrid Meister Year 12Chrissy Bevan- Hutana Year 13Wendy Kirkwood International Students

Yr 9 Health Promotion

Tournament week

By Sabine Lapointe - Year 11 Visual Art

Football first XI went to the Grant Jarvis Tournament in Wellington. 24 teams were in the competition and they placed 3rd.

Netball Snr A went to UNISS (Upper North Island Secondary Schools tournament) They were in the C grade, seeded 24th out of 32 teams and came 10th overall.

Hockey first XI went to the Jenny Hair Tournament in Palmerston North. They finished 7th out of 16 teams. All our teams can be very pleased with their results.

27th September - Last day of Term 3

14th October - Term 4 begins

17th October - Ki O Rahi Regionals

18th October - Teacher Only Day (Show Day)

22nd October - Young Achievers

28th October - Labour Day

31st October - Senior Prize Giving

Dear students, parents and caregivers,He kura ao, He ao kura ko Turanga Wahine. Nga mihi aroha ki nga kaitiaki a o tatou rangatira.

This term has certainly been packed with lots and lots of trips, activities and positive student involvement as shown within. We have had students traveling to Rotorua (Geography and Tourism trips), Wellington (History Trip), Palmerston North and Upper Hutt (TSA Challenges), Auckland (Senior A Netball), Palmerston North (First XI Hockey), Wellington (First XI Football) and tertiary trips to Auckland, Palmerston North and Wellington. There have also been many different activities closer to home. Education is definitely not confined to the classroom.

Well done to our Year 13 Drama students for their excellent production this week - Caustic. This was a very professional performance with slick scene changes and a powerful message.

We welcomed prospective students and whanau to our Open Day on 18 August. I encourage all students who want to enrol to send in their enrolment forms as we will be setting up interviews for the start of Term 4.

Our Pay It Forward Day on August 14 was another great day with our students giving back to their community in many different ways. Well done to all those who participated - I know you all would have felt good that day.

Subject selection for next year is now complete for Years 10-12 and it is time to start building the timetable for 2020. Year 9’s will choose their specialist subjects early next term. Senior students begin their Benchmark Examinations next week and they need to remember that these are very important should something happen at the end of the year. If a student is absent from the final examinations in November due to illness or some other unforeseen circumstance, then their benchmark results may be used for compassionate consideration. Students, therefore, need the best results possible from benchmarks. All senior students have study leave from Thursday 19 September to Tuesday 24 September inclusive. Prepare well and make use of the help offered by your teachers.

At the end of the term, we have the first of our recognition assemblies. On Thursday 26th September, we have the Contribution Awards Assembly in Period 5. At this assembly, we acknowledge those students who have contributed to our school as an active member of a student council.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou.Jan Kumar

Geography trip

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Wellington History trip

Choir and BandquestFour of our eight Play it Strange Tracks are being recorded this week. Paris Maxwell’s winning Peace Song “Lifeboat” was recorded by her band Astrik, and Monisha Whaitiri-Te Miha had her song “Taku Mama” recorded with the help of her band Mahuika. Mere-Heni Matete recorded “Night turns to Day”, and Pounamu Wharehinga now has a pro-fessional recording of “Triggered”. In a couple of weeks our engineer Jol Mulholland will return to record the other four tracks which made GGHS 2019 School of the Year for Play it Strange.

Last Thursday the choir walked down to Te Wiremu to entertain the residents with a bracket of songs they have been working on this year. The final song “You are my Sun-shine” got everyone singing.

The East Coast region Bandquest was held on 31st August, with GGHS students rep-resented in the lighting crew, the official photographer and as the guest band. Astrik performed a twenty minute bracket which had the audience on their feet.

Tongan language week

At the beginning of the term, 3 teachers, 2 helpers and a bus-load of year 11 and 12 students headed down to Wellington for three days of learning, exploring and lots of fun. Some highlights included the Te Papa exhibi-tions, a tour of Parliament, taking a look around Victoria University, as well as a bit of shopping and some yummy food. We also had the privilege of meeting and talking with the Governor General, Dame Patsy Reddy, about her job and what she does, as well as taking a tour through Government House. As it was a history trip, we also spent some time throughout the trip learning about the history of our capital and our country, as well as of women’s suffrage and New Zealand’s involvement in the World Wars, among other things. Overall, I would say that we had a fantastic time, learned lots, and made some valuable connections with both the people and the city. By Sabine Lapointe

“I love this city, the hills, the harbour, the wind that blasts through it. I love the life and pulse and activity, and the warm decrepitude ... there’s always an edge here that one must walk which is sharp and precarious, requiring vigilance.”~ By Patricia Grace from the book ‘Cousins’

A couple of weeks ago, our Year 12 Geography class took a trip to Rotorua and the Volcanic Plateau with Mr Tallott and Mr Loffler. We had a talk as soon as we got to Rotorua in the Museum’s tea rooms about how Rotorua was based and built in a crater after a volcanic explosion that happened there. We stayed at the Aura Hotel in Rotorua, which had hot pools heated by the thermal activity in the area. On our second day, the class walked over Waimangu Valley which is located just outside of the Rotorua township, where we saw the Frying Pan Lake, and the Inferno Cra-ter Lake which was a bright blue colour due to the acid-ity levels. That was an interesting environment because it had all been formed as a result of the Mount Tarawera volcanic eruption in 1886. There was a lot of thermal ac-tivity happening as we were in the area. We also took a boat ride over a crater that formed from the Tarawera eruption and saw a geyser in action spraying up water as we were on the boat. On our way home from Rotorua , we stopped at Kawerau where we went to a mill that was built espe-cially for the processing and exportation of logs from the Volcanic Plateau.This trip and the information that we took in about Rotorua and the environment around us will help go towards our class passing our external paper on the Volcanic Plateau. We were also looking at how tourism has changed and evolved since the Tarawera eruption in the Rotorua area. Monica Ririnui-Harnett

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Pay it forward day

Yr 13 Drama Production - Caustic

Year 9 Hauora activities

Can you imagine a world, run completely by Coca-Cola? Where sugar, carbonated water and e-numbers are the main food groups? Imagine if you could take a ride in your coca-mobile, to the coca-park and read your copy of the Coca-Cola times? A perfect utopia.....or is it? What about those deadly Pepsi rebels, and the watchful, brutal eye of the coca-cops, who tend to make people disappear....This month, the year 13 production was rehearsed and performed for audiences in the Drama Studio. The production of Caustic, by Thomas Sainsbury, focuses around a slightly dystopian future, where corporations have taken over the world, and focuses on the lives of citizens who are dominated by the Coca-Cola Corporation. This production was student di-rected, and student driven, and featured some amazing performances from the year 13 students, and the extras and tech crew who brought this whole production to life. It created a fantastic spectacle for all that came and saw it, while also posing the question, are big corporations really a good thing in modern society?

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TSA- Tough Guy Tough Gal Challenge Out and About

NZDF - YDU ADVANCED LEADERSHIP COURSE

The Youth Development Unit of the New Zealand Defence Force conducted an Advanced Leadership Course for 24 selected Services Academy students throughout the central North Island. Three of our TSA students attended the course at the Kaitoke Regional Park , Upper Hutt 12 - 16 August 2019.

AH12TSA;“The weather was very cold. During the week we were put in section groups; we were paired with Makoura, Wairoa and Mana Colleges. Over the duration of the week we had to eat ration packs, we were encouraged to get out of our shell and be put out-front giving orders to our section; we were given timings for everything. Advanced leaders taught me how to give orders, how to work as a team, showed me what I’m capable of, taught me to be adaptable to change and made me think more about my future career. The week was mentally and physically challenging but I’m glad that I got the opportunity to go because, I learnt a lot about myself, others and gained knowledge on how to be an advanced leader”.

KT12TSA;“To start off, I would like to say how grateful I am to have been chosen to take part in this one week course in Upper Hutt, Kai-toke Regional Park. The weather was good to us, nothing we couldn’t handle and the environment was straight out of a fantasy scene you would see from Lord of the Rings. The overall experience was buzzy, just utterly fantastic and something that I would forever remember and use in my day to day activities. I feel more confident as a leader and will use what we were taught in such situations to benefit and contribute to my own skill set. I feel now that when challenges occur, I can take them down by using a format that can benefit a lot of leaders in such difficult scenarios. S.T.A.R.R. STOP, THINK, ASSESS, RESPONSE and REVIEW. A format that helps the leader when approached by challenges to stop and calm yourself down, think what is the situation, assess what can be done, response how are you going to approach the situation and review debrief of what had happened. Just a little taste of one of the many skills taught to us”.

ZM 13TSA “Monday was the worst day of the week, only because of the weather as it was raining and everyone’s tents were soaked. The highlight of the week was on Thursday night because everyone was having chill out time and hanging out, music was play-ing, so I decided to take the lead and started dancing which created a domino effect of people getting up and dancing. This course also really helped with boosting my confidence, even if by a little bit, with my friends and people I would have never thought about going up and talking to as I have noticed that I’ve become more talkative and a lot louder”.

The Tairawhiti Services Academy travelled to Palmerston North on the 2nd of August and were hosted by Queen Eliza-beth College Services Academy. We participated in the Tough Guy Tough Gal Event held in Linton Military Camp on Saturday 3rd August.

SB12TSA;“It was an awesome experience to do with my peers from the academy. I think that the weekend was a good way to bond with those individuals that I did not know too well from the academy. This challenge was definitely one that was out of my comfort zone, especially doing a mihi to Matua Lani in front of the whole academy. He also was generous enough to let us stay at QEC(Queen Elizabeth College) and I thanked him very deeply for that along with our staff and academy by singing him our waiata. It was something that I really enjoyed and would do it again if I was given the op-portunity. I enjoyed the overall event but I also enjoyed the Waiata practice because we were all together as a group and singing our hearts out.The race day was good with Ra shining down at us, but a bit makariri with a cool breeze passing through us during the day down there. Being honest, that run was tough though, I didn’t think my body could handle that 6k run, but I did it, I am still here and glad that it’s over. I enjoyed the experience mixing myself with mud, dirt, those cold as ponds and that electric fence, which I was told was turned on, but not even. The run was mean with the brothers, we ran and we walked, but we crossed that finish line and scored a free loaded drink, that was pretty cool”.

PR11TSA;“This trip was a weekend to remember. I made many new memories with new people and made new friends. It was a joy to be a part of. Starting off with waking up at 5:30 in the morning on the friday and ending with the bus ride home playing loud music at the back. The bus ride to Palmerston North was an experience and I got a taste of what it’s like to be in TSA. When we got to the Queen Elizabeth College we were greeted by two people. They were very kind and welcomed us in the building. I found it really funny that the two people that greeted us weren’t even from NZ, in fact one was from America and the other from Turkey. The powhiri was beautiful and it was cool how it was the first time that the year 9’s had done a powhiri. We greeted everyone else and they showed us around the school and where we were going to stay. Later in the night we cooked dinner and had a great time, singing and dancing with each other while cry-ing from cutting the onions. After dinner we went to the gym and played basketball and volleyball while others worked out. The next day was a struggle getting up so early in the morning. All the nerves running down my body waiting for the race to begin. The mud run was so much fun and an experience by getting sucked in mud waist deep. I also met people while running and talked with random people I wouldn’t normally talk to. I met two new girls who were from QEC ( Queen Elizabeth College ). I loved all the challenges I faced and this mud run made me think more on what force I might want to go in in the future”.