Cromwell College
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Half Day School News
Science Award Trust
Half Day School students in year 8 and 9 celebrated their science success last week at an awards ceremony to receive their science badges. The Science Award Trust offers a choice of activities for each of 24 badges, such as astronomy, psychology, home physics, botany, ornithology, to name but a few. Students must complete a certain number of points to qualify for their badge, which takes a great deal of effort, commitment and thought. Students could choose from such activities as: investigations into hokey pokey; experiment on crystallisation; making a balloon powered car; design and experiment with an ice lens; make a worm/ant farm; investigate how colour affect people’s behaviour; design and test (under lab conditions) cat preference to various cat food brands; explain tide theory; design and make a bird table; assess how different bird noises affect other birds (note – budgies don’t like morepork recordings!)
Congratulations go to: Ella McDonald (large animals); Hugh Bradford (home physics); Monica Hamilton (botany); Cowan Lowrey (marine biology); Brad Ashe (astronomy); Brett Ellis (ornithology); Millie Fraser (botany); Isaac Steentjes (home physics); Amelia Wilkinson (home chemistry); Jade McMillan (large animals); Hazel Gibson (marine biology); Ash Stanley-Suter (geology); Tegan Buchanan (large animals); Marikit Stroud (ornithology); Olivia Pinkney (zoology); Dawn-Marie Williams (large animals). Thanks go to Mrs Scott and Mrs Inglis for presenting certificates and to Mr Pearson for moderating scientific standards in the work.
Cromwell College are Open Minds 2011 Winners
Ever thought about the end of the world? That was one of the challenges facing students from the four local high schools at the 2011 Open Minds Tournament held in Queenstown last week. Students chose either an arts category, which this year consisted of condensing a Shakespeare play into 5 minutes, devising a Shakespeare play that he would have written if he was alive today, and writing a comic or cartoon on another of the Bards plays, or a science category. The science and technology category involved an eschatologists conference (people who look at the implications of the end of the world) and the requirement to build a wheel which would turn for exactly fifteen seconds to predict the end of the world.
The overall trophy this year went to joint winners Cromwell College and WHS. Jamie Silvester, Jack Harrison, Bryn Gibson, Mitchell Devon and Reilly Bell devised a wheel powered by wind from a balloon that had just the right amount of air in it (thanks to Mr Pearson's equation assistance) that went for exactly 15 seconds before landing on zombie apolcalypse and hence the end of teh world. Judges were impressed with the ingenious design, the quality of the design plans and the creativity of the symbols.
Jilly O'Brien, Half Day School teacher said that the benefit of Open Minds is "partly social. The meeting of like minds that we often talk about is very important to grow networks and friends between the schools. The other benefit is in encouraging creative, divergent thinking with a real outcome. Challenges are difficult, there is plenty of frustration before it all comes together, which is hugely important. All the Cromwell College teams did an excellent job." Other Cromwell College teams used puppets to portray the play " As you like it" and the best line of the day came from Cromwell College's Juliet Capulet who replied to Romeo's desperate plea of "are you dead?" with the immortal Shakespearean words: "no, I'm only planking".
Cromwell College retain the "iron brain" trophy for six months, whereupon it gets passed to Wakatipu HS for the remainder of the year.
Liz Breslin
Cromwell College Half Day School students in Year 9 were treated to a poetry workshop this week by local poet and play wright Liz Breslin. Students got to hear some of Liz's poetry and to explore different forms, ideas and ways of writing poetry, dispel some myths about poetry, as well as learn about the poetry "world". Half Day School teacher Jilly O'Brien says it is wonderful to have somebody of Liz's calibre come in to share their wealth and breadth of experience with students, and also for them to see first hand that a passion for learning - in this case for poetry - is something that is lifelong, sociable and enjoyable. Students are pictured here after some hard work with iambic pentameter -whoever he is!
Model United Nations Assembly
The Model United Nations is run by Rotary and UN Youth, usually for senior students. However these year 9 students from Cromwell College's Half Day School ran their own UN Assembly last week. Resolutions proposed and debated included the whaling ban, illegal immigrant quotas, more funding for disaster relief, more funding for the international space station, request for support for the Kyoto protocol in reducing CO2 emissions, proposed banning of religious head wear in schools, Aids research funding, reduction of trade barriers involving chicken due to bird flu.
The UN Chair, teacher Jilly O'Brien was kept busy as two delegates staged a walk out over proposals to reduce Greenhouse gases, one member state was sanctioned on account of alleged bribery, and another was penalised on a Point of Order for insulting the delegate from Italy.
Mrs O'Brien said the event had been a huge success as students had been able to showcase their research skills, thinking ability, speech making and reasoning skills, learn about the real UN, practise persuasive arguing, work on compromise and ultimately come up with solutions for the benefit of all.. " The students had enormous fun with this UN Assembly, and along the way learnt a great deal about the UN, their chosen country, how the world fits together politically, and about themselves. "They were outstanding, both in attitude and in performance"
Parent Mrs Tamsin Yarnall, ably took the role of UN Secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, whilst UN Security, in the form of Mrs Hepburn, performed her role with ruthless precision.
Dunedin Fringe Festival Winners
Congratulations to Sarah Hurdle and Monica Hamilton who have both won the Dunedin Fringe Chindogu competition. Chindogu is the Japanese art of inventing something "un-useless" - something that looks at first sight to be very useful, but is actually not at all useful! Sarah created the "Portable Time Fooler" for when you need more time to finish your classwork, whilst Monica developed the "Spacer Chaser", to allow more personal space when in the canteen queue or similar. The prototype Chindogu are pictured here.
Half Day School Speed Thinking December 2010
Cromwell College HDS year 7's VS. Mt Aspiring College Rutherford year 7's played a morning of speed thinking challenges - intellectual problem solving challenges set up by each member of the team. The result?
Cromwell College 43, MAC 41. the People's Choice award for the best challenge must go to Millie Fraser (Cromwell College) for her construction challenge with dry spaghetti, marshmallow and an egg! Students then went climbing at Basecamp climbing wall in Wanaka - thanks to Loz and Clay for a great afternoon!
Open Minds Challenge 2010
The inaugural Central Otago Open Minds Challenge took place in Queenstown's Memorial Hall on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. The Open Minds Challenge tests teams in year seven to year 10 in their problem solving abilities and critical and creative thinking.
Teams from Cromwell College, Mt Aspiring College, Dunstan High School, Wakatipu High School and Star programme took up either an arts based or science and technology based problem, which took four weeks to prepare. The ten minute presentations had to be given within three square metres using only recycled materials. The Brain Trophy, designed and sponsored by Metal Works of Wanaka was eventually won by Dunstan High School (well done), however our Cromwell College year 8 teams aquitted themselves extremely well against tough opposition in their first tournament of this type