Melville Intermediate - Waikato Tramping

For activity week we were involved in Waikato Tramping.  First day we climbed Karoi in Raglan, the second day we climbed Pirongi. the first day at Karoi was good weather bad slopes we use up most of our energy but the lookout was worth it beautiful just beautiful (wish we got to the summit). Day two we climbed Pirongai. The weather really foggy but we made it to two lookouts (but again not to the summit).  These are some of the photographs taken by Mr Willis and students during the treks. [This is Sam's recount of his activity week experience, you can also see Veronica in the Karoi picture, the students took five hours to ascend and descend on the first day! This is for the school magazine and Sam's portfolio].

Activity Week - Waikato Tramping on PhotoPeach

Melville Intermediate - PrEP nearly here

Melville Intermediate - Sam's persuasive writing

This term the students of Melville Intermediate School had to produce a piece of persuasive writing about a topic of thier choice.  Sam from Room Five chose to write about Minecraft. 

Persuasive writing = why minecraft should be a learning game at schools.

Hello today I am going to tell you about why Minecraft should become a learning game at school. I am doing this as a part of my school work on persuasive writing.

Minecraft it’s a game where you kill monsters build houses and all sorts of things that don’t make any sense and also it doesn’t really look like something that has anything to do with learning and really that pretty much true but there is one good reason that Minecraft should be allowed at school as a learning game. That thing is maths yes I know I said maths and I know what you’re thinking what does maths have to do with minecraft well I’ll tell you. Minecraft uses the 3 architectural side of maths perimeter radius and area and sometimes if you’re planning something in a book it uses adding and times. And what do theses thing have to do with Minecraft well if you’re trying to make a house of wood and you what to make it out of a plan then in the plan you need to think how high it will be, how tall, how wide it will be and also how much of what you want to be made of you need and all of the working out uses those three architectural side of maths

So as you can see Minecraft can have a learning purpose and I hope you conceder what I have told you and to recap Minecraft uses the architectural side of maths and sometimes adding and times tables and this why you should conceder have Minecraft in your class room bye for now and thanks for listening

Melville Intermediate - Sam and Nick: Lunch Orders Around the School

Sam and Nick lunch orders around the school on PhotoPeach

Melville Intermediate - ICT Club Recount

Today I am writing a recount on what we do at the ict club. The ict club members every day at lunch time. What we do at the ict club has mostly do to with computers.  We do stuff like crop pictures and fix old pictures using paint.  We zoom in and open LAN worlds on Minecraft.  Speaking of Minecraft what we have been doing for the past few days, I have been giving everyone it so we can play LAN world on Minecraft together.  In fact I’m working on a super secret project for a LAN world but more on that one for a recount on Minecraft.  We do other stuff too other than Minecraft and cropping pictures and all the stuff we learn we learnt from Mr Chetlleburugh or Mr C for short he’s the expert in the ict suite he help us and he plans everything and if someone is being annoying he’s the one who kicks them out. So as you can see the ict club is really cool. Bye for now.

By Samuel

Melville Intermediate - MIS in Winter by Sam

With a frosty morning to start Winter at Melville Intermediate School we sent Sam around this morning with a digital camera to capture the mood.  Sam's a Y8 student in Room Five and he did an amazing job with these photos.

Winter at MIS by Sam on PhotoPeach

Melville Intermediate: Melville Survivor 2012

Starting soon is our 2012 Episodic Online TV show being created by the students in Room Five, we are filming pre-production at the moment, organising the filming, the props etc and should be releasing the first episode if everything runs according to plan next week, this is Sam's promo shot for the new series.


To put you in the mood for the show, this is one of the 2011 Episodes, entitled "water carry".  This was episode where the students had to balance a cup of water on the outside of their hand and race around a course quicker than the other students.  At this point 'Mia' was the only Y8 student left from her team, all the others had been eliminated, and she was desperate to gain immunity to stop herself from going home... Hosted by Kelly, filmed by Kris, Mitchell and Shania...

Melville Intermediate - Bone Carving Process

Earlier this year, at the end of Term One, we received a very special present from overseas, from our friends at Vonslid School, in Denmark.  They sent us a package of shirts and information about their city, Kolding, and also about their national sport, Handball.  You can see the original post here.  In return we thought long and hard about what we could send them as a thank you in return and were thinking about something special from New Zealand that we could make.  We are very lucky to have Matua Peter in Room Five at times to assist our learning.  Matua Peter is an artist and carver.  He has been working with a group of Room Five students creating a set of bone carving gifts, which are a traditional Maori gift for Denmark, which we are finishing in class this week.  This slide show gives you a peek at the design process. Photography by Sam from Room Five on Friday 11th May 2012.

Bone Carving 2012 - slideshows

Melville Intermediate - Sam's Holiday Recount

When students of Melville Intermediate School returned from their Term Two break, they were asked to write a recount of the past two weeks, this was one of the stand out efforts, a recount written by Sam.

On Friday 20th of April on the last week of the school holidays I got to go to Mega Zone Laser Tag as part of my holiday program and this is what happened.  When I got to my holiday program we got organised and when we were organised and in the vans we went to Sky City in the Middle of Town.  When we got there and found a car parking space we went up to the bowling floor and then the first group  to play laser tag was my group. We went into Mega Zone and we got instructions then we geared up  went into the maze.  We had fifteen seconds to get into the maze and hide.  There were two teams, red and blue.  I was in the red team and each one of the guns had a name on it, mine was eclipse.  The aim of the game was to shoot the other teams base and player.  The siren sounded and the game started.  I ran through the maze and because I had played this game before I knew the maze like the back of my hand, or so I thought.  I was racing through the maze and took a turn and found out I had gone the wrong way.  Then I scouted out the new paths after finding out that they had changed them and then I found the enemy base! But someone from my team found it first so I finished the base off and went to my teams base but while I was finding my way back I found the other team getting ready for an ambush on our base so I stopped them and turned them all off but got turned off myself.  But then I ran to my base where I got reinforcements and we forced blue team back and didn't let them get to our base and then the game over sounded and we exited the maze and hung up our vests and guns.  Then we went into the entrance room to get our scores.  I ranked second in the best player rankings and got 7721 points.  After we got our scores we went and did some bowling and that was the day.  This is the end of this recount and goodbye, and have a nice day.

Melville Intermediate - Woodwork Explanation

Its nearly the half way point of Term One for Melville Intermediate 2012.   Our students all start new technology classes next week on Monday (they have technology Monday and Tuesday, two ninety minute sessions, three hours in total).   Today Sam from Room Five spoke about the Woodwork Room and showed this footage of a project he's been working on in the last few weeks.