Holiday Writers' Camp @ Raroa

Are you a word warrior? Have you ever thought that maybe one day you'd like to be an author? Or do you just enjoy making up stories for friends?

If you’d like to have a book published there are more opportunities for you now than ever before and this course will give you the skills and techniques you need to write awesome stories.

Who is it for?

This course is for middle-grade students who are enthusiastic about writing.

What will I Learn?

Write Like an Author will teach you the skills you need to construct well crafted,imaginative stories. Working alongside a published author, you will be taken on a guided journey atthe end of which is a story you have created entirely from scratch.It’s the first step on your own road to becoming a published author.

Where? When?

Raroa Intermediate School 37 Haumia Street, Johnsonville 8 - 11 October, 2018 (First week of the next school holidays) Cost: $195 (special early-bird price)

Who?
Fifi Colston

Popular TV presenter and award-winning author/illustrator of over 30 titles including Wearable Wonders, Glory and Torty and the Soldier.

For more information go to writelikeanauthor.com 

Great to see the students again!

Last week was a busy and exciting week - 

catching up with each other and getting the terms' learning underway.

Tournament of Minds teams are underway with their 6 week challenge - the best part as they see it is no adults can be involved!!!  Each team has chosen their challenge and each team is in a different discipline so Raroa won't be competing against Raroa this year!

Any students who are interested in trying out for Raroa's Mathswell team?  Come to the Learning Support Room before 9am on Monday to register your interest.

Ext(reme) Writers welcomed 3 new students last week: Aspen,  Lara and Cara.  Great to have you... enjoy your new writing learning and writing with some new colleagues.  Upcoming is the Poetry Slam evening for family and friends in week 4.  Keep an eye out for details via an email.

Lynne is looking forward to meeting up with students and parents this Tuesday and next.  See the previous post if you'd like to make a booking.  Manawanui will be for a shorter time this week (1.30-2.50pm), due to Conferences starting at 2pm.

Other events this week...check out the calendar to the right of this post for this week's classes and activities.

Wellington Regional Year 7/8 Chess Tournament

Report by Trijal Pednekar

This inter-school chess tournament was run by the NZCF (New Zealand Chess Federation).

Eight Raroans represented Raroa at the Wellington Regional Year 7/8 Chess Tournament at the end of last term: Sarthak Singh, Chloe Hartwell, Molly Zaslow, Richie Moon, Trijal Pednekar, Daniel Roscoe, Alex Vannucci and Mitchell Su. 

The team reached the venue (Newlands College). The air was filled with excitement and everyone was talking about their plans to win. We started initially by playing friendly practice games. Soon, it was time for the tournament to start which brought in excitement along with nervousness. Soon silence spread around the room as the games were played with the focus on time management.

The tournament had match points to calculate the scores. If the team won the match then the winning team got 2 points and the losing team would get 0 points. If the team drew against another team, then each team would get 1 point. All the teams got to play 6 matches.

After a lot of persistence, Raroa A came 10th place,​​ winning 3 matches. Raroa B came 17th, winning 2 matches and drawing 1. Even though everyone lost some matches, we were respectful to our surroundings and opponents. We had lots of fun and we are looking forward to improve and perform better next year.

Thank you to Mrs Dunn for organising the chess teams, Eric Zaslow, Helen Roscoe and Min Jeong Kim for taking the photos and staying with us at the chess tournament, and Adesh Pednekar, Eric Zaslow, Min Jeong Kim, Marisa Vannucci for the transportation.

Published Writers @ Raroa

Recently, some of our students entered the Young NZ Writers Intermediate School's Short Story Competition. The story could be science fiction, fantasy or horror, and was themed "Beyond Expectations".

Congratulations to Izzi Anderson (Rm 1) who came 4th, was published and invited to the Book Launch and a writers' event, and also to Nathan Stacey (Rm 11) whose story was published in the competition anthology. 

 Links to their stories can be found here: 'Fear' By Izzi, 'It's Hard to Stand Out' By Nathan.

Below is an interview with Izzi by the team at Young NZ Writers from their website, followed by Izzi's summary of the writers' event.

Beyond Expectations: Izzi Anderson

At the Young NZ Writers annual Day Out in June we caught up with Beyond Expectations finalist and contributor, Izzi Anderson a Y8 student from Raroa Intermediate in Johnsonville, who’d come all the way to Tauranga to participate in our workshop. She kindly agreed to answer some questions for us. Hi Izzi – thanks so much for joining us. 
So, you’ve come all this way; does that mean you hope to be a writer one day?
—I hope so. I’ve always considered that I’d like to write for a career, but I doubt my ability to concentrate long enough to write a book. Maybe I’ll do veterinary science…but writing is my dream.

How did you hear about the competition?
—I’m in an extension writing group at school and our teacher Miss Dunn told us about the competition and gave a presentation about the kinds of stories we could write. I really enjoy writing, especially horror and science fiction, so I thought I would enter the competition.

Why horror and sci-fi? What draws you to this genre?
—I feel it’s mainly about the books I’m reading. I’m currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee at school, but my favourite story of all time is The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. It kept me up all might. It was really scary.

“I feel the books you read influence the stories you write.”— Izzi Anderson

Is this the first writing workshop you’ve attended?
—I went to another one once in Wellington. It was part of our extension writing class and we met some other New Zealand writers. One of them was Mandy Hager and there was a slam poet, too. It was almost as good at this one. I’m glad I convinced my parents to let me come to Tauranga to come to this one. It’s been really cool. I’m going to go back and show some things to my writing teacher, too. She’ll be so excited to see what I’ve learned.

So, you said you’re not sure if you have the concentration to write a novel? Does that mean you’d like to have a go?
I filled a lot of exercise books with nonsense stories when I was younger. In some ways I feel writing short stories is easier, but at the same time harder: you don’t have to spend so much time to write a short story, but you have to suggest what happened in a short amount of words. It’s the concept of show-not-tell; you don’t tell the readers what’s happening exactly, instead you suggest it.

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Izzi, and thanks for coming to our Day Out. [Please give our thanks to your teacher Miss Dunn for supporting our programme, too!]

Tauranga Young Readers and Writers Day Out   By Izzi A

Last month, on the 23rd of June, I flew to Tauranga for a Readers and Writers Day Out.

A month or so previously, I had entered a writing competition for Young NZ Writers. The best writing was to be put into an anthology entitled 'Beyond Expectations'. Two students from Raroa had their stories chosen for the anthology. I came 4th (Highly Commended) in all of NZ for Year 8!

All entrants were invited to Tauranga for the Young Readers and Writers Day Out, and I was lucky enough to go. There I met some famous NZ authors and they gave talks on how to make your writing even better.

The talks were:

• The Must Haves Of Short Story Writing
• Characters & Conflict
• What Editors Look For

I had a really great time learning new ways to take my writing to the next level. All the talks were interesting and engaging and I learnt so much!

I encourage you to check out the Young NZ Writers website (youngnzwriters.weebly.com) if you are interested in entering a writing competition; there are a lot of opportunities!

Celebrating our gifted sportspeople...

Congrats to Brayden C in Room 14 for selection in the Wellington Basketball Under 13 Boys Squad!

Also to Ava S, Scarlett A and Lucy J who will be competing in the Cross Country Inter-regionals in Nelson later this term.  Link to Raroan Report

Student-led Conferences with Lynne Dunn

Lynne is available for conferences on Tuesday 31 July and Tuesday 7 August.  

Please use this document for making a booking.  There are some times left for both days but if a time is not available for you, please email Lynne: l.dunn@raroa.school.nz.

Term 3 - Welcome back!

I hope everyone's had a great 2 weeks away from Raroa!  Here's what's ahead...

The Mathletes timetable is the same as last term.  This week, Teams 1, 3, 4 & 5 will be completing assessments of last term's learning, with Team 2 beginning their new discoveries in algebra.  Mathswell is coming up so we will be asking for students who are interested in trialling for that.


Tournament of Minds students are beginning their 6 week challenge on Monday.  We wish them all the best as they work towards Tournament Day on 2 September.

Ext(reme) Reading and Ext(reme) Writing continue this term.  The writers will be focusing on how to present their Slam Poems, ready for sharing them with family and friends in an upcoming evening.  


Three more weeks for Science Fair students to complete writing up their projects and to prepare their presentation boards. These will be on display at Raroa later in the term, after the NIWA Fair.

Block courses on offer later in the term:   

• Philosophy for GATE students 
• Springfire for the Year 8 students from Teams 1,2 and 5 (Learning about Giftedness)

THIS WEEK:  Tawa Exchange (Friday)
                    Parent Info Evening: Sexuality Education (Tuesday)
NEXT WEEK:  Student-led Conferences (Tuesday 31)

Giftedness and Spiderwebs? What's the Connection?

How might spiderwebs help gifted students in their own lives?

By Elaine Le Sueur  June 16, 2018

Success only happens with action. Great ideas will not come to fruition unless they are followed up and acted on.  The spider only sits back and waits for its prey when it  has overcome the obstacles involved in building its web. It knows how imperative it is to get started if it wants to eat. 

Persevere with your dreams. Be persistent in your efforts and they will pay off. 
The spider doesn't give up when faced with obstacles.
Imagine the result you are after and keep your focus on getting there even when the going gets tough. Spiders will build and rebuild their webs to attain their goal.
Don't seek approval from those who don't understand or worry about what others think- they are looking through a different lens and the focus is not the same. Just as we do not see the world as the spider does.
Explore new challenges and be prepared to start again if necessary. The spider travels on silken threads and adapts to changing circumstances when faced with forces that it has no control over.  Understand your non negotiable foundation (your silken thread) and be prepared to adapt.
Reshape and rework if necessary to take advantage of changing environments. Have you read the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider?  
Widen your horizons. Think big. Create your own web  and make connections. 
Embrace mistakes and see obstacles as sources of new learning. Spiders don"t give up!
Believe in yourself.  Just as the spider can spin a web that is a resulting miracle of creativity  and design, so can you. Who knows how far your influence will travel?

Every success worth striving for starts with just one action.

Raroa Chess Team photos

To see more photos, click Read More 

Chess Tournament this Sunday

Chess Power: The 6th Wellington Sarapu Cup 

for 2018 is on this Sunday 8 July

1:00pm - 5:30pm

Wellington Bridge Club
17 Tinakori Rd, 
Thorndon, 
Wellington

The Sarapu Cup is a fun, social Chess Tournament open to all players ages 4 to 18. Every player gets a certificate. And the winners of each division take home a nice trophy. And we have medals for age group winners. Multiple divisions are available so if you are a beginner you can still play. You just need to know the rules of the game.

Register Now

If you can't make this one, we have scheduled Sarapu Cups in Wellington every month. 

Activities for School Holidays?

Beyond the Page:

New Zealand’s biggest literary festival for tamariki and their whānau!

This amazing literary and creative journey takes place from 7 – 22 July in the Wellington, Hutt Valley and Kāpiti coast regions, and is a collaboration between four Wellington region Public Libraries, Hutt City Libraries, Upper Hutt City Libraries, Wellington City Libraries and Kāpiti Coast District Libraries.

Click here for list of events

Survey for Parents/Caregivers for giftEDnz

This email was received via the NZ Gifted mailing list.  
Parents and caregivers may be interested.

Research Project on the Current State of Gifted Education in Aotearoa New Zealand 

Dear Parent/Caregiver

In 2003, a Massey University research team conducted a nationwide survey with schools asking teachers about identification and provisions for gifted and talented learners. A smaller replication of this study was undertaken in 2012.

A group of researchers from giftEDnz are now undertaking a further exploration of the state of gifted education in Aotearoa New Zealand to see if we can find out what has changed over the last 13 years since the original nationwide survey was completed (2004), and what the current strengths and limitations in provisions for gifted learners are. 

This research project aims to capture the voices of educators across all sectors (from early childhood education through to tertiary), but importantly, we want to also ask parents, whānau, other stakeholders, and gifted young people themselves what they know about what is happening in gifted education currently. The information being collected is not a means of assessing or judging schools, whānau or other stakeholders, but to provide a nationwide analysis of provisions for gifted and talented students at all levels.

How you can assist

As the parent or caregiver of a gifted student, we would like to invite you to participate in an online survey, which should take no more than 30 minutes to complete.

Your confidentiality and anonymity are assured, as you will not be asked to provide any identifying information.  We are anticipating that the information you provide will help us to inform and influence policy and practice in gifted and talented education in Aotearoa New Zealand. This information will likely be reported in publications and presentations.

We hope you will view this as an opportunity to reflect upon your child’s school’s provisions for gifted and talented students and we would really value your contribution to this research. 

You can begin the survey by clicking on the link below:

https://education.waikato.ac.nz/survey/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=523941&lang=en

Thank you for your valuable time and assistance.

Sincerely

Dr Nadine Ballam, Dr Louise Tapper, Jo Dean

The giftEDnz research team