Categories
Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up (Week 11, Term 1)

It’s the end of term and this week’s Wrap Up includes a celebration of Technology! From screen-printed hoodies in Year 9 fashion to typography and cigar box guitars in Year 10 we cover it all. We share an advertisement for tutors for our Māori mentoring programme and ask you to share that with whānau. We have hot off the press news of dramatic success in the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare competition and reveal our Year 9 Readers competition line up.

Important Dates

  • Monday 3 May — Term 2 starts
  • Wednesday 5 May, 2pm-6pm — Year 11-13 Parent-Teacher conversations. Note that lessons for all students will finish at 1.20 on this day.
  • Monday 24 May, 2.30pm-6pm — Year 9-10 Parent-Teacher conversations.
  • Friday 4 June — Teacher-Only Day.

Important Information

Principal’s message – end of Term 1

To read Dominic’s Principal’s message for the end of Term 1, click here.

Parent-Teacher conversations Term 2

Parent-Teacher conversations for Years 11-13 will be taking place on Wednesday 5 May, 2.00-6.00pm. School will finish at 1.20pm on that day.

These conversations are an opportunity to check in on your student’s progress with their subject teachers. Students should attend with you if possible.

  • Use the Parent Portal (https://portal.whs.school.nz/student/index.php) > Attendance to see who teaches your student.
  • https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/book/step1?z=5X3rxD
  • Choose the SUBJECT then the TEACHER.
  • Please leave a five minute gap between bookings.
    Note that we are only able to run one conversation with each teacher per student.

To manage noise, interviews are split between three areas. You may need to move between all three for your student’s interviews. Please allow time for this as you plan your meetings.

Riley Centre – English, Mathematics, Social Sciences, Science and Technology Faculties
Library – Learning Support, Languages Faculties plus Health Education and Outdoor Education
Drama room – Arts Faculty plus Recreation and Sports Science

Each teacher’s location is listed after their name in the School Interviews portal. The locations are close to each other and clear signage will help you move between areas on the day.

Mentoring opportunity for Māori university students

Te Kura Tuarua o Taraika ki Pukeahu Wellington High School are in the process of setting up a mentoring programme to support our Māori students ‘Ngā Manaakitanga’. We are looking for Māori university students who would be interested in being employed as tutors/ mentors. This is an initiative aimed specifically for Māori students at Te Kura Tuarua o Taraika ki Pukeahu, Wellington High School to improve their academic achievement through connecting with whānau and the wider Māori community. The programme will be run by Māori, with Māori, for Māori. Click on the image below for a copy of 

Keeping gaming in balance

Our Guidance team recently attended a seminar on gaming and came across some information that was really helpful for parents.  Please click the link to have a look at the handy tips for parent helpsheet.

https://optforwellbeing.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/CEP/Gaming/20180911-Gaming-Parent-Tips-Resource-Werry.pdf

What’s happening?

Shakespeare success

On 16 April, WHS students competed in the Wellington Regional Competition and were selected to perform in the National Sheilah Winn Shakespeare competition. This will take place over Queen’s Birthday Weekend at the Michael Fowler Centre. The students performed excerpts from the rarely seen play Troilus and Cressida, focusing on the close relationship that flourished between Achilles and Patroclus in the midst of the Trojan war. 

Huge congratulations to (from left to right) director Maddie Brooks Gillespie, Lewis Thomson (Ulysses), Vita Jerram (Hector), Brooke McCloy (Patroclus), Ursula Palmer Steeds (Achilles),  Freya James (Thersites and Paris) with crew support from Aidan Gillespie (year 9). Vita and Lewis are also directing the Shakespeare Society’s upcoming production of As You Like It in early Term 2: tickets on sale soon.

Year 9 Fashion

The four Year 9 Fashion classes have been having a fantastic fun-filled time screen printing their own designs onto hoodies, t-shirts, bags, and fabric to make patches, and all sorts of other things. No two designs are alike. Well done to all!  MKK & DNA

10DVC Typographic exhibition

This week the Year 10 DVC students have exhibited outstanding typographic design work in the school foyer. The students have each chosen an international three-dimensional designer (architects and product designers) and have then designed the lettering, and the book dust jackets in response to their chosen designer’s creative work. HPR

10DTW’s cigar box guitars

On Wednesday year 10 DTW students exhibited their finished electric/acoustic cigar box guitars. They worked hard all term on this project and were rightly proud of their efforts. Ka pai! Now let’s rock! DNA

Place, Protest and Preservation – Year 11 History

In Week 11 the two Year 11 History classes embarked on a local history field trip as part of our Place, Protest and Preservation topic. We were accompanied on our historical walk around the CBD by Steve Watters and Ricky Prebble from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. The class visited sites of significance such as the Wakefield Memorial, the Queen Victoria statue, Te Aro Park, the Trades Hall and Haining Street. Students were encouraged to ask questions about the past including who names a place, and why? What history is remembered and what is not? How can we acknowledge the history of all people who have settled Te Whanganui a Tara, in our public places? The knowledge and thinking from our trip contributed to local history projects that students submitted for their NCEA inquiry task.

Click here to read student Namu Dahlberg’s account of the trip.

Year 9 Readers Challenge competition

This year, thanks to our Library team, WHS has a team in the Year 9 Readers’ Challenge competition. The competition sees teams all over the country compete in regional events, with the winning teams going on to represent their region at the nationals later in the year. 

Our team of keen readers is Lucy Finlayson, Rosa Martelletti, Ari and Flynn Menzies and Lily Scott. On Friday we held an internal competition to give them a taste of what was to come. We are really impressed with how well they all did; we have some great readers. Lucy emerged the winner and she will be our team captain at the regionals.

He Kākano

Our students are involved in a mural project to enrich the ground level link well in the school’s main block. We’ve designed a range of nature based themed imagery that will be drawn and then painted during term 2. The students have also been involved in industrial design and digital visual communication classes.