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!