Important Dates
Wednesday 2 June: Evans Bay Intermediate Year 8 visits to WHS
The normal Wednesday late start will not apply: school will start at 8.45am and will finish at 12.00.
The timetable will run as follows:
8.45 – Period 2 class (line 5)
9.40 – Period 3 class (line 1)
10.40 – Interval
11am – Period 4 class (line 3)
Thursday 3 June: South Wellington Intermediate Year 8 visits to WHS
School finishes at 12 noon and will run on an alternative timetable:
8.45 – Period 1 class (Line 6)
9.40 – Period 2 class (line 3)
10.40 – Interval
11am – Period 4 class (line 4)
Friday 4 June: Teacher Only-Day — school will be closed
Monday 7 June: Queen’s Birthday — school will be closed
Monday 14 June: Open Evening for 2022 –
There will be no rōpū and school will close at 3pm
Monday 21June: School Board meeting (6pm)
Friday 9 July: End of Term 2
Important Information
Growing up with porn
We try to share information with you, related to young people’s health and wellbeing, that we think is helpful. The New Zealand Classification Office has just released their findings – Growing up with porn: Insights from young New Zealanders. This resource can help us understand young people’s experience. It also links to practical resources to help families have conversations about this complex topic.
How to Parent Without Losing Your Mind – Strengths Based Parenting
CEC ½ Day Parenting Course
(Sat 19 June – 9.30am-1.30pm $79)
Feel like whatever you say is falling on deaf ears and you want new strategies for parenting? Discover a fun approach to parenting and communicating using a strengths lens. We offer tips and tools to turn ‘argh” moments into ‘aha’ moments and find the joy in parenting. (Click course name to go to CEC’s website to enrol, or call 04 385 8919).
What’s happening?
Year 10 Student Voice Survey
Year 10 students have been asked to share their experience of connection and belonging in their Herengatahi. A survey will be sent to students’ school email. We encourage whānau to support their students to fill this in at home.
Wānanga for senior Māori students
An awesome group of tauira Māori spent 3 days on the first of three wānanga developing leadership, understanding identity and whakapapa, and knowing where we’ve come from, who we are in order to know where we are going. Our rōpū was lead by WHS alumni Kahukura Ritchie at his marae, Papawai, and Te Rangimarie marae in Masterton. A few words students used to describe the experience: “grounding, meanharo, connected, puha, ataahua, determined, fulfilling, skuxx, kūmara, buzzy, pounamu, knowledged.” Ngā mihi nui ki ngā tuākana o te rōpū BGI mō tā koutou tautoko o te kaupapa nei!
Library
Last week’s NZSL taster saw around 30 students and staff learning basic greetings and requests, and how to sign our names. Learning some NZSL gives us a small insight into the challenges faced by those of our peers who are hearing impaired. We are looking to have regular NZSL classes here in the library for those interested in furthering their ability. We will be leaving the help cards up in the library to help us all get familiar with Sign and Signing.
This week we have hosted international storyteller Andy Wright. Andy talked about Tall Tales and Fake News. More to follow next week.
He Kākano
This week our students used creative ways to learn measurement in Maths class by measuring amounts of lemon juice needed to illustrate art figures. We also learned how to edit photos of eyes in photography class using Adobe Photoshop. In PE class, peer support helps include students with diverse needs to participate.
Year 11 Science
As part of their standard on genetics, Year 11 scientists have been exploring meiosis and the relationship between phenotype and genotype by constructing reebops, small marshmallow monsters with distinctive characteristics. Students were given sets of chromosomes for the reebop parents and from these created their own individual reebops with distinct traits.
Achievements
Top Scholars recognised in Parliament
Congratulations to Julia Randerson (Year 13) and Zoe Crane (Year 13 in 2020) whose academic excellence was recognised at a celebration in Parliament last week. Julia was recognised as the country’s top scholar in Religious Studies, and Zoe as the country’s top scholar in Drama. The awards were presented by the Prime Minister.
The Top Scholar Awards ceremony celebrates the academic achievements of the highest achieving secondary school students in NZ Scholarship examinations with one award per subject countrywide. It is a phenomenal achievement and it is unusual for a school to have any top scholars, let alone two!
Shakespeare Society celebrates 30th anniversary
On Friday 14th May, the WHS Shakespeare Society finished their 30th season with the last performance of As You Like It. Many WHS alumni came to support the performers, including Thomas LaHood, who was in the first production and his son Geronimo, who appeared in the cast this year. Several previous directors also attended including David Lawrence, Hazel Osborne, Zoe LaHood and Samuel Austin. There were speeches followed by a tremendous cake. Here’s to the next 30 years.
STEMM Student Challenge winners
Two junior and two senior teams competed in last week’s Hutt Science STEMM Student Challenge. Teams competed in rapid fire, quiz style rounds of questions on the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Manufacturing and Mathematics. It included a practical round which was around estimating mass, time, length, volume and density.
Our Junior teams WHS Gold & WHS Green came 3= from a field of 36 teams from 21 schools. Congratulations to Hugh, Riley, Elizabeth, Kalani, Samuel, Marissa, Kahu & Charlie. In the afternoon our Year 11 & 12 team (Ren, Tom, Nikau) who competed one team member short.
Shout out to our Year 13 team who won the overall title! Congratulations to Hannah, Jack, Isaac and Eli. WHS are now the proud holder of the Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University) Trophy.
Success at Ngā Manu Kōrero speech competition
Breea Nikora-Mills (Ngāti Porou, Te Whakatōhea) competed in the Korimako section last Friday. She made the audience laugh a lot (and cry) with her whakaaro on the topic te reo Māori, the thread that binds whānau, hapū, iwi. In her speech, Breea unpacked the many layers of te reo and her own identity, in her own reo: “But let me tell ya, you won’t just be learning a way of communication, you’ll be learning a way of connection. Whether they stand here with us physically or not, that thread between us and our whānau, tupuna and atua can never be broken.”
Inline Hockey mixed-grade victory
Congratulations to Year 9 student Lucy Thomas who recently competed in the NZ Secondary School Inline Hockey Cup. Lucy was goalie for ‘The Dropouts’, a team comprising members from eight different schools from as far afield as New Plymouth and Hastings, not to mention Wellington. The Dropouts gelled as a team as the tournament progressed, and won their final two games to take gold in the mixed team division.
