Melville Intermediate - Mould Experiment 4!

Melville Intermediate - Christmas Competition

Merry Christmas to all our viewers around the world! Our 2009 Christmas Competition involves this song performed by the Melville Intermediate School Rock Band on the second to last day of School for 2009! All you need to do to enter is to leave a comment below the video correctly identifying the song that they are singing! After the Holidays Mr Webb will select the best answer to receive a Melville Intermediate School Prize Pack! Including Postage! The video was filmed by Vitolina and Janice from Room 8 at Melville Intermediate School Hall on Lunchtime Monday December 14th 2009.

Melville Intermediate - Happy Holidays

Thanks so much for your visit to this site. Students in New Zealand are currently on their Summer Holidays as School finished for us for 2010 on December 15th 2009. Students will be returning for the 2010 School Year from the 1st of February. We would love to hear from you in the mean time, and will get back to you and your class site once were back! Happy Holidays!

Mr Webb and the Students of Room 8 - 2009. (Our new [2010] class will also be using this address!)

Melville Intermediate - Rock Band Finale

For the second to last day of School for 2009 our Melville Intermediate School Rock Band held an impromptu performance at lunchtime in the school hall. The Rock Band ran through various material that they'd worked on with their tutor Matt during the year. This is there take on the Green Jelly Little Pigs Song. Melville Intermediate will continue with their wonderful rock band in 2010 although all members will have to be new as the remainder have gone onto High School! Filmed by Vitolina and Janice from Room 8 on December 14th 2009

Melville Intermediate - 2009 Prize Giving

Melville Intermediate - It's All Over Now!

Tomorrow marks the end of the school year for students of Melville Intermediate School. On behalf of the class to everyone who has visited us, left a comment or viewed a piece of work that we have created thank you very much. We look forward to getting in contact with you at some point in the future, and will keep you posted about how you can do that. In the meantime we will be still posting throughout the New Zealand Holidays to catch up with all the work we have yet to put online.

Thank you once again for your visits and contact, have a great Christmas, a Happy New Year and Goodbye.


I would especially like to acknowledge all the students of not just Room Eight but also Melville Intermediate School who contributed work and material to this blog during the course of the 2009 School year and made it the success that its become.

Mr Webb on behalf of Room 8, Melville Intermediate School, 2009, Waikato, New Zealand.

Melville Intermediate - Ball Photos 2009

Melville Intermediate - Paper Hot Air Balloons

This report was written for this blog by Liam and Grace from Room Seven. It describes the steps that they went through to create Tissue Paper Hot Air Balloons and then launch them at school last week.

We made Hot Air Balloons using tissue paper and PVA glue. Step One - cut four large sheets of tissue paper out. Step Two - Cut the corners off. Step Three - Glue the sides together, but careful not to glue the sides together where you cut the corners. Step Four - make sure their are no holes. Step Five - Cut some cardboard into the shape of a square, the size of the hole at the bottom of the hot air balloon. Step Six - Cut out the inside of the cardboard square so there's only 3cm of a border. Step Seven - Glue the border/cardboard square to the bottom of the hot air balloon. Step Eight - Stick another piece of No 8 wire through the side of the cardboard to make a cross/plus sign. Step nine take it out on a cold early morning with no wind or breeze that is a location suitable for launching a balloon. You must have a adult or teacher present. Step Ten: get some Methylated Spirits and Cotton Balls and some more wire. Put some methylated spirits on the wire. Step Eleven - hold the Hot Air Balloon at the top and light the cotton balls. Hold it until you can feel the heat from the inside of the Balloon lift it up then the wind should catch it and it should launch! Here's a video of our classes attempt to lauch them!

(Note, no students were harmed in the launching of these Balloons and it was done under close teacher supervision).

Melville Intermediate - Y8 Ball Preparation

Melville Intermediate - School Ball Preparation

On Thursday of this week Melville Intermediate had their annual School Ball for the Y8 students at school. There was a huge amount of work that went into the night from the teachers and students which made for a very special event. Part of the night included a meal prepared by Mrs Brown, our school cooking teacher and a group of Y7 students who were volunteers. Nicole from Room 8, was one of the students helping. She filmed this video of the food preparation, she filmed this behind the scenes video.

Melville Intermediate - Y8 Ball Highlights

This week on Thursday night, Melville Intermediate School held their School Ball. The students had been learning the dances for a number of weeks at school, and a huge amount of work and organisation had gone into the preparation and decoration of the hall by Mrs Taylor, Mrs Bleakin and the other Y8 teachers. Mathew from Room 12 was in the Sound Box running the electronics for the evenings and also filmed some highlights including this of the dancing. Well done to everyone who was involved and participated!

Melville Intermediate - Preparing for the Y8 Ball

Melville Intermediate - Hot Air Balloons!

Melville Intermediate - Skyping with Mr McClungs Class

Today in class we had a Skype Conversation with Mr McClungs Class. The students were excited once again to be talking to other students around the world. Its another opportunity to network. We also had some visitors in class, part of our Girls Basketball Team Kelsey from Room 3, Te Mania from Room 5 and Ashley from Room 5. They had never taken part in a Skype Conversation before, it culminated with Mr McClungs Class demonstrating the Pledge of Allegiance before spontaneous renditions of the New Zealand National Anthem, sung by the Girls and the Star Spangled Banner from our friends in Arkansas! A great, great moment in ICT Interaction! If you have not visited Mr McClungs wonderful site you can do so by clicking on the linked picture. Thanks again for making your class available.

Melville Intermediate - Creative Student Dance

This is the third and final video from our students Creative Dance Group. Twice a week students have 'Options' which are 90 minutes specialised lessons. For our fourth and final term for 2009 the students had four weeks of Options lessons. In that time each of the dance groups was able to plan, rehearse, choose the music for and then perform a creation of their own. We were lucky enough on Thursday 3rd December to have the performances from the three Y8 Dance Options, and have Keegan there with a camera to record the entire event.

Melville Intermediate - Senior Girls 4x100m Relays

This is footage of our 4x100m Senior Girls team at the Waikato Inter-Intermediate Athletics Day that was held on Tuesday 1st December 2009. The final event of the day was the 4x100m Relays and this is our Senior Girls Team running in that event.

Melville Intermediate - Student Creative Dance

Our Y8 option students performed their dances to the Melville Intermediate School whole school Assembly on Thursday 3rd of December. This is the Girls group performance to the new song by 'Muse'. Filmed by Keegan from Room 8.

Melville Intermediate - Inter-Intermediate Relays

This is footage from the Waikato Inter-Intermediate Athletics Finals. Its footage of the Melville Intermediate 4x100m Junior Girls Relay team - you really need to watch Atela fly in this race! Filmed on the day, Tuesday 1st December 2009 at Porritt Stadium, Waikato. Melville Intermediate are in the Green/Red combination uniforms.

Melville Intermediate - Y8 Dance Option Part 1

Students at Melville Intermediate School twice a week have 'options'. These are lessons in addition to the regular class program that allow students to involve themselves in special curriculum areas. In the block of options that has just finished there were a group of Y8 students who were performing dance. At school assembly on Thursday 3rd of December the Y8 dance option performed for the school. Keegan from Room 8 filmed it. This is the Boys Tribute to Michael Jackson.

Melville Intermediate - Inter-Intermediate Athletics 2

Melville Intermediate - Inter-Intermediate Waikato Athletics

Yesterday was the Interschool Inter-Intermediate Waikato Athletics competition. My events for the Athletics were shot put and cricket ball throw. I did really well in both events and was having fun as well. I really concentrated on my events.

The best part of the day was the relay running. Even though we didn't come first or second for the relays, but who cares at least we did our best. Everyone had fun and some people had to wait around. I was enjoying myself because I didn't want to stay at school and do work. Every single school were cheering for the people that represented them in the events they were in. Like sprints, shot put, running, long jump, high jump and all the other events. Yesterday was really cool.

Out of all the schools that were there, we came fourth. This is the best result for Melville Intermediate School in the past six years! Our school was the hosts for athletics.

Recount by Vitolina Room 8.

The following students were placed in the top three for their events for Melville Intermediate School Athletics for 2009:
Kendall 3rd in Senior Girls Shot Put, Donovan 2nd in the Junior Boys Shot Put, Kalib who was 2nd in the Junior Boys 1000m, and 3rd in the 1500m. Terrina was 2nd in the Senior Girls 1500m and 3rd in the 100m, Travis finished second in the Senior Boys Cricket Ball Throw. we also had two students win their events Hamish in the Senior Boys Criket Ball Throw and Corbyn in the Senior Girls Cricket Ball Throw.

Melville Intermediate - Athletics 4x100m Relays

Filmed at Porritt Stadium, Hamilton, on Tuesday 1st of December 2009. Junior (Y7) Boys 4x100m Relays. Melville are in the Red/Green combination.

Melville Intermediate - Inter-Intermediate Athletics

This is the video of the Y7 Girls relay team from the Waikato Inter-Intermediate Athletics finals at Porritt Stadium, Hamilton Waikato filmed on Tuesday 1st December 2009.

Melville Intermediate - Inter-Intermediate Athletics

Today at Poritt Stadium in Hamilton the final event of the 2009 Inter-Intermediate Sports Calendar took place - Inter-Intermediate Athletics. There were 11 Schools there in total competing a variety of events in an action packed day. So many highlights but it included a win in the Senior Girls Cricket Ball throw to Corbyn from Room 5... Terrina from Room 1 finishing as runner up in the Senior Girls 1500m and also coming 3rd in the 1000m.... Kalib from Room 12 finishing as runner up in the 1000m and 3rd in 1500m... Atela coming 5th in the 100m... it was a jam packed day of action (and mainly good weather thank goodness)... there are some very brief highlights from the day... coming soon... Melville Intermediate School ended up finishing 4th out of 11 Schools for a job very well done on a great day! Our warmest congratulations to our friends at Peachgrove Intermediate School who dominated proceedings!

This is the video of our Senior Boys in action for the 100m - Thamer and Elijah in their heats and then the Boys 100m Final.

Melville Intermediate - Y7 Big Day Out 2009 II

Melville Intermediate - Big Day Out 09 Powersurge

As part of the Melville Intermediate Y7's Big Day Out on Friday November 27th 2009 the students went to Rainbows End Fun Park in Manukau, Auckland. The students got to go on a number of rides, including the Powersurge. This is video of that ride.

Melville Intemediate Y7 Big Day Out 2009

These are just some of the images from the Melville Intermediate Y7 End of Year Big Day Out. This year we went to Rainbows End Theme Park in Manukau City, Auckland for the day. The students had the opportunity to try out some of the rides and enjoy themselves to celebrate a successful 2009! The school year in New Zealand ends on December 15th and will restart again in February.

Melville Intermediate - Y7 Big Day Out 2009

This is footage of some of our students riding the Pirate Ship Ride at Rainbows End - the recount will be following shortly. Recorded on Friday 27th November 2009 during the Y7 students 'Big Day Out' trip to celebrate the end of the year.

Melville Intermediate - 2009 Big Day Out

One of the important traditions as Melville Intermediate School is when the Y7 and Y8 students celebrate the end of the school year with their "Big Day Out". For 2009 the Y7 students went to Rainbows End Theme Park in Auckland. We had to be at School at 8:00am for a 8:20am departure (Aucklands about an hour and half away). The students got to enjoy New Zealands only Fun Park for the day! This is some of the footage our our Y7 students on the Corkscrew Roller Coaster.

Keegan wrote the following recount about our trip: When our School got to Rainbows End we went to El Dorado and checked ourselves off the list. We could then leave. Me and Jordan went to the Roller Coaster. It was a long wait but it didn't take long until it was over. Jordan and me went to the Power Surge. It was fun if you held on. Then I went to the Motion Master. It was a long wait but it was worth it. I went onto the Roller Coaster again and the Power Surge over and over. Then we went home.

I really did enjoy Rainbows End because I went on rides that I have never gone on before. I was dissapointed that I only went on three rides, but there was too many people.

Melville Intermediate - Enviro Schools Competition

Those of you who know that we've been competing in the Melville Intermediate School Enviro-Schools competition will be unaware of a pretty major disaster that occurred earlier this week. Persons unknown appear to have reached into the classroom during a lunch break and sabotaged our growing effort by snapping the bean plant! We decided that some pretty drastic action was required to get back into the competition so Keegan our Enviromental Officer went into the School Gardens and re-potted the bean plant! To remove all allegations of any underhanded cheating we had the idea to film the original bean plant being transplanted into its new container and then decided to post this online so that the other schools could see the evidence that we've put up of this!

Melville Intermediate - Summer 2009

Edublog Nominations - MrCsClassBlog

This is the first post of 400 this year not with the 'Melville Intermediate' Prefix. This is my nomination for the Best Class Blog for the 2009 Edublog Awards. There is one site that I go back to constantly that inspires me every time that I visit it. The innovations, the ideas, the quality of the work and the sheer effort that goes into it is stunning. Will Chamberlain from Noel Elementary School MrCsClassBlog is an outstanding education site that is the best that I have ever seen. Its had such an influence on me and other educators.

I believe it is the most outstanding educational site that I have ever been on and it is a superlative site that deserves nomination for the 2009 Edublog Awards for its excellence.

Melville Intermediate - Rachana's Milk Add

In class as part of our Milk Unit for study this term students have to design thier own Milk Product, including the packaging. As part of this the students have to create their own advertisment to go with their product. Rachana from Room 8 took a camera yesterday afternoon gathered together some other students and filmed this effort. As a class we will be viewing this on Wednesday morning, discussing what we're seeing and coming up with suggestions for it as a piece of work, so that it will improve the presentations from others.

Melville Intermediate - Athletics: Sprints

This is some of the highlight from Melville Intermediate's Elite School Athletics held last week. The top two sprinters in the 100m and 200m qualify for the Inter-Intermediate Waikato Schools Finals so the pressure was on to make one of the two spots from our 320 student school for Y7 Girls, Y7 Boys, Y8 Girls and Y8 Boys. Next week on Tuesday we are holding the Inter-Intermediate Waikato Schools Athletics Finals at Porritt Stadium. From Room 8 Vitolina will be there in Shot Putt and Cricket Ball Throw. Kaleb and Nick will be there with the Y7 team representing us in Sprints. Mr Webb will be there managing and we will have a film crew filming during the day.

Melville Intermediate - Jamie's Glog about Milk

In the past week the class as a whole has been experimenting with different ways of publishing work online. One of the programs that we've been using is Glogster. It caught the students attention because of the possibilities of including videos as part of the presentation process. Currently we'll be reviewing and looking at Jamie's Glog (which is not currently finished) in class tomorrow.

Melville Intermediate - Kapahaka from the CPA

This is the final video from the CPA Group's performance on the 28th October 2009 (in the Maori section). It's the awesome Poi dance that the students performed (wait until the lights go out its breath taking). We've been uploading some of these selected videos on Youtube and making them available to a wider audience.

Melville Intermediate - Skyping Around the World

On Friday we went a little skype crazy in Room 8. We started off chatting with Mr C's Class from Noel Elementary School in Missouri, USA. We'd only had only a national connection with the South Island before this, so the students were quite excited. The fact that it was Friday morning in New Zealand but also Thursday afternoon in the USA was a big deal, as was the fact the students had to stay inside during Winter! Later in the afternoon we went down to the South Island of New Zealand, near Nelson to continued our work with Appleyby School and their class Mihi that
the students have been hard at work learning. Our students have
phenomenally well to this taking on the role of teacher for this task.

While that was in progress we had another call from a class in Glenview, Hamilton, a test of equipment for an upcoming project that the students are pleased about. We then finished that off with a call from Australia and a class from Gleelong, Victoria from BPS School. In in all it was quite a hectic, but exciting day for the students I was very impressed that they were able to harness the power of technology (in this case Skype) to make them more worldly wise. Sharing
greeting students from other countries around the world was a very positive experience for the students and really has got them thinking about connections for the future, as a teacher it has really opened up my eyes to the ICT Interaction that is available to our students and I would thoroughly recommend that you try it if you have not already (indeed Room 8 would be more than keen if you just drop us a line!).

A huge thank you also to the teachers and students of the schools that we spoke with around the world.

Melville Intermediate - Linking with Appleby School

Over the past week or so our students have spent a considerable amount of time taking our first Skype steps online. We've made contact with Appleby School in Nelson, and helped them with their Mihi work. Today in class one of the school Deputy Principals Mr Barlett stopped by and we were able to show him what we were up to, and he was able to help out as well!

A Mihi, for those of you who don't know is a Maori introduction or greeting. In this instance Allanhk's Class have all learnt their Mihi and our class is helping them by checking the pronunciation. What's great about it, apart from the networking, is its allowing our students to share knowledge with students within New Zealand. Room 8 students who are participating in this are really enjoying the mentoring role and were really grateful for the opportunity!

If your online and your class would be interested in collaborating or communicating please just drop us a line!

Melville Intermediate - Waiata

This is our final CPA performance. This is the Kapahaka from the School Group which they performed to our school prior to their departure to Australia on their trip.

Melville Intermediate - Enviro Schools Competition

These photographs are the Y7 entrants into our new Enviro Schools Competition. We've got to grow a Bean Plant in the Classroom, with the competition closing on the last day of School. These are the Y7 entries for the competition. Keegan from Room 8 had the following to say about the competition:
"For the Bean Project (Competition) each class has been given a half grown bean. This competition ends on Thursday on the last week of Term. The class that grown the largest bean, or has the largest plant will win a prize. So get growing!

Melville Intermediate - School High Jump Finals

Last Wednesday we held the Elite School Intermediate Athletics Finals. We've already had the whole school competing the previous Friday on Wednesday it was the turn of those students who were the top of their class, literally to compete. In a historic moment the Boys Y8 High Jump went to a Jump Off between Thamer from Room 18 and Elijah from Room 18... at 1.43 Metres! Now of course you couldn't all be there for the finals but Room 8 was and we took this footage! Enjoy!

Melville Intermediate - Elite Athletics

As part of this term's unit on Milk Room 8 is looking at some different ways to create and display work related to the unit. One of the ways that we're publishing our work is by using 'Glogster' as most of the class haven't used this before we're still getting the hang of it, but students are enjoying a different way of doing things and the opportunity to incorporate different forms of media in their Glogs. This is Nick's Milk Glog and we'll be viewing it in the classroom on Monday in an effort to think about improving it and adding depth to it. If you've got a favourite way of presenting work that's IT based and a little different we'd love to hear about it, just leave us a comment!

Melville Intermediate - School Speech Finals

The process by which our students did their speeches. Firstly they had to choose from one of the six pre-determined topics. They then had to perform their speeches in class (its compulsory for all students at Melville Intermediate School to do so). Then the Year 7 Syndicate and the Year 8 Syndicate had their respective finals. They each nominated two speakers who spoke at the School Assembly on November 5th 2009. This is Joe's speech from Y8.

Melville Intermediate - Our Film Festival Entry!

This is our entry in the film festival - Bailey and the Magic Cowbell. It was created by the students in Room 8. Bailey starred as himself. Arahia had the role of the magic bean seller and also was the narrator. The school bullies were played by James and Tim. Arahaia, Bailey, Molinda and Vitolina provided the filming. Mr Webb was starring as the 'Old Man of the Forest' and also supplied some of the props. This was shown to the Cluster Film Festival on Thursday 12th November 2009.

Melville Intermediate - School Speech Finals 3

Amos (Y7) Speech from the Meville Intermediate School Speech Finals. The students of Melville Intermediate School had six topic to choose from. Amos from Room 12 choose a topic that was 'Winning is not as important as participating'. You can watch the entire speech by clicking on the link below! Filmed by Arahia at school assembly on Thursday 5th November 2009.

Melville Intermediate - Its the Big Day Tomorrow!

Tomorrow's the big day - the day of the 2009 Manaiakalani Cluster Film Festival. During the day over 2,000 students from a dozen or so schools will travel to Tamaki College in Auckland to view the productions from the schools involved. We'll be posting our entry online tomorrow at the conclusion of the event - so if you can't make it up to Auckland tomorrow for the show then you'll be able to see our effort (along with a link to all of the others) here online!

Mr Webb would like to send out a huge thank you to all of the students that were involved in the production of our movie, and I would also like to
send a big thank you to the organisers of the event for allowing us to contribute. It's a fantastic opportunity for our students and also very special to me as I used to be a member of the cluster as I taught at Tamaki Intermediate School in the area for six years, and that is very, very special to me. We're also lucky to have an ex pupil from Tamaki Intermediate, Moli, present our video to the guests and audience. You can check out some of her work in 2008 by clicking on the link here, or see her backstage interview with the person behind the cluster, Dorthy Burt from Point England School here.

Melville Intermediate - Janice's Cows!