July 2015

Blood Donation Day

Blood donation day will be Friday 7 August. Students who are over 16 years of age and 50 kilos in weight, who have not had a piercing or a tattoo in the last six months and who are free of a cold, flu, sore throat, cold sore, stomach bug or infection, are able to donate blood.

Lynfield College has a proud history of supporting the New Zealand Blood Service. It would be great if students can support this most worthy cause and help our community.
 

We Had a Ball!

The annual senior College Ball was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone  on Friday July 17 at the Ellerslie Convention Centre. The Ball Committee deserves congratulations for their fantastic organisation of this much anticipated glamorous social highlight.

The following Awards were presented.
 
King: Cree Braithwaite
Queen:  Zhavannah Peteru
Belle:  Jade Guptill
Beau:  Joel Meiklejohn
Best Dancer:  Sachin Mehta
Best Dressed Female:  Gautami Motupally
Best Dressed male:  John Viane
Cutest Couple : Alex Falaniko and Huddy Read
Best Dressed Teacher:  Ms K Mackey

One Step Closer to Tertiary Study

 

Year 13 Fashion and Design students enjoyed a day out at SewTec Fashion Academy completing a workshop on industrial machine operation and constructing a tailored pencil skirt. Students left with a sense of accomplishment and confidence ready to tackle the expectations of tertiary level study.

 

Trash to Fashion showcases rubbish outfits

    An article from stuff.co.nz......

Lynfield College students Rebecca Fleming-Yates, Miyuki Gale, Sophia May, Ale Netane and Andrew Huang in their outfits completely made of recycled material. Photo supplied by Alastair Lynn/Fairfax NZ

You can find almost anything in the trash. Students are taking dumpster diving to a whole new level by turning discarded materials into wearable works of art.

The Schools' Trash to Fashion Awards have got students working hard on their final outfits. Hours have been spent knitting, sewing, gluing and melting materials together. Now it's time for judging.

Lynfield College Year 10 students Miyuki Gale and Ale Netane have spent the past 20 weeks working on their outfits. Miyuki says moving forward from the planning stage has proved difficult.

"We've been doing all the drawings and the concepts but you can't really make it exactly to what you draw," she says. "Sometimes the material is a bit too difficult and you just have to go with it."

Three judging selection shows will be held from July 24 to 26 with the finalist showcase in early September. More than 1400 Auckland students enter the competition each year.

Lynfield College soft materials teacher Anna Wills says the competition helps students see clothing in a different way.

"It's all about finding materials that have no life left in them and making something quite beautiful." Ms Wills says the use of recycled materials also helps students get a better insight into the effect their choices can have.
"It's good for them to see that what they purchase is going to have an impact on the environment," she says.

Students must model their finished outfits to a panel of judges who will then select the best to go into the final stage.  Ale says the catwalk will be daunting but it will be good to see what other designers have come up with.

"After doing it I'll probably be a bit relieved, it's taken a lot of work," she says.

The central Auckland showcase will be held at Mangere Arts Centre on July 24 from 5pm to 9pm. Visit eventfinda.co.nz for more information.
 - Stuff

Zoo Visit Highlights Issues

 
This week students from 10WN visited the Auckland Zoo as part of a unit of work on the Chocolate Industry in Social Studies. The students have been looking at human rights and environmental issues within the industry.

The Auckland Zoo is an active campaigner in the against the use of Palm Oil.  In Indonesia and Malaysia the rainforest is being cleared to make way for palm oil plantations. Because the rainforest is the natural habitat for animals such as the Sumatran Tiger, Asian Rhino, Elephant and Orang-utan, deforestation has had a significant impact upon their numbers. It is believed that these species could be extinct in the wild by 2022. In most countries around the world palm oil has to be labelled as palm oil on product labels. However, in New Zealand and Australia palm oil can be listed as anything from sodium laurel sulphate or vegetable oil to emulisifer 422 or 476. Most consumers are very confused about how to avoid products with palm oil in them. At the zoo the students went to the education centre for a question and answer session on palm oil. They then went out into the zoo with an educator, where they took part in a series of activities focussed on the impact of palm oil. Palm oil is in many products on supermarket shelves so students were shown how we can identify it in our food, cosmetics, toiletries etc.

The students also attended the orang-utan " encounter" in which the keeper gave us an insight into the life of an orang-utan.  She also explained how they are looked after at the zoo and what impact palm oil plantations are having on their habitat. The keepers had put out food for the orang-utans that was a challenge to access. They explained that this was part of the enrichment programme the zoo has for the animals. 

The next step for the students is to undertake their own social action about an aspect of the chocolate industry they feel could be improved. This could include campaigning against child labour, human trafficking, slavery or palm oil. The students are completing this as part of an NCEA Level 1 Social Studies Achievement Standard.

Lynfield's Wearable Art Accessory Show

As part of their SPEC work this term senior SPEC Students designed and created a Wearable Art accessory.

This project concluded with an Accessory Show organised by the students and judged by Ms Anna Wills from the Technology Faculty.

The students gained their inspiration for the WOW Exhibition at Auckland Museum and focused on construction using recyclable material. They presented their creative pieces with a lot of pride.

Language Classes Experience Chinese Culture

by Tashia Siew & Aimee Le Noel  (Year 9 Chinese)

On the 25th of June, two Year 9 Chinese language classes and the Year 13 Chinese language class went on a Chinese Cultural Trip to experience some Chinese culture including food, a visit to a temple, calligraphy and a martial arts lesson.

By 9:15 the bus was packed with students ready to go to martial arts and calligraphy lessons. We arrived at the cultural centre at about 9:45 and were greeted by the staff. After we were introduced to the instructor we were split into two groups, one would go to calligraphy and the other would go to martial arts.

Our group went to calligraphy first and we all sat down at one of the tables. We were taught a bit about the symbolism of the fish and characters that we would soon be writing. Very soon we all began to draw two fishes using black ink. We then all wrote a phrase and the date. As we walked out of the room to go to martial arts, we put the calligraphy on a table to dry.

We then walked to the martial arts room and started to warm up. We learnt two defensive moves, a front sweep and a tornado kick. The girls seemed to pick it up quite quickly but the boys seemed to be having a little bit of trouble! By the time the session finished we all knew the two moves well. We went to pick up our calligraphy and headed to the bus to go to Yum Char at Enjoy Inn for lunch.

We got to try a selection of Chinese dishes and were surprised at how nice they tasted. Some of the dishes there were spring rolls, prawn dumplings, lemon honey chicken, fried rice and stir fried noodles etc. They are very delicious. After lunch we walked to a famous Chinese temple in Auckland. We then explored the outside and took a group photo. Before we went inside we had to take our shoes off .
Once inside we began to realize all the detail that had been put into creating it.

We all enjoyed the trip a lot. We got to experience some Chinese culture that we would not usually get the chance to experience like martial arts. We are sure that everyone would love to go again another time.

Language Perfect Awards Ceremony 2015

This year’s Lynfield College Language Perfect World Championship Awards Ceremony at the end of term celebrated the success of the 38 Gold and nine Elite Award winners. The students answered a staggering 461,296 questions over the course of the competition and also came 1st in New Zealand for both Chinese and German. Lynfield College also won 1st place in New Zealand for the NZALT (New Zealand Association of Language Teachers) section and received a cup presented by Martin East, President of NZALT. This is an astonishing accomplishment and clearly shows the strong value and status that learning languages has at Lynfield College. Following some encouraging words by Acting Principal, Lexie Ridling, the students indulged themselves in some well-deserved food which was sponsored by the Language Perfect Team

.The nine Elite Awards were gained by Darren Ng, Nancy Sun, Scarlett Chen, Min Shyen Tan, Carrie Zhang, Gain, Thawornjira-Angkoon, Bethany Moxon, Andrea Lewis and Sophie Peung. We are all looking forward to the challenge of next year’s World Championships and hope to improve further on the success of this year.
 

Our Students Cook Up a Storm

Eleven students enjoyed the experience, the competition and success when they participated in the Auckland Regional Culinary Competitions at MIT on Wednesday 1st July   The students competed in a number of classes - barista, pasta, omelette, cake decorating, seafood chowder and 2 students were in Auckland Council's "What's Your Flavour?" Burger competition. Everyone competed well and Lynfield students finished with an impressive 7 medals and 2 students topping their class.   Teneil Pillay won the top pasta medal and class Peya Ono won the top chowder medal and class.

 

Learning from the Writers' Festival
 

The Advanced Learner Year 9 and 10 classes along with all Year 12ENC and 13ENC classes attended the Writers' Festival schools programme towards the end of Term 2. This included a range of lectures and workshops by internationally renowned writers. Students enjoyed hearing of the authors’ love of their craft.  As one Year 10 student stated: “Our English programme encourages students to read and write, and so did the authors . I think the best and most beneficial thing from the programme for us, was that encouragement overall. I came home wanting to write some more. I think it boosts students into English. It would be great to go again next year from school and, if not, I would definitely go outside of school. This was an event I would love to go to every year to experience different authors and just what they say to help us in writing”.

 

Race Unity Speech Awards

Congratulations to Gauri Prabhakar 13KK who won the Auckland final of the Race Unity speech competition.

The theme of ‘Big Change Starts Small’ asked students to examine some challenging questions including: how far have we come as a nation since the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) 175 years ago, and how might young people  steer our nation towards becoming a more harmonious nation?

At a special Year 13 assembly held to acknowledge Gauri’s success we were honoured with the presence of these special guests: Dame Susan Devoy, Race Relations Commissioner, representing the Human Rights Commission; Superintendent Richard Chambers, representing the NZ Police and Eric Neal, representing the NZ Baha’i Community. Gauri was presented with the shield by superintendent Richard Chambers following speeches by each of the invited guests.
 
As in previous years, the standard of speech making during all of the competition rounds was outstanding. Congratulations also to Khadija Bari (12ET), and Andrew Sampson (13KK) who made it to the Auckland final, and also to Elysha Negi (12ET) for her participation.

Gauri with our special guests after the awards assembly.

Gauri with her proud parents

Gauri with Deputy Principal Mrs Gabrielle Clark (left) and Head of Faculty (Language and Languages) Ms Cathy Feist