Year 11 Prize Winners
Year 11 Prize Winners
Year 11 Prize Winners
Year 11 Prize Winners
Year 11 Prize Winners
Year 9 Class Photos
Year 9 Class Photos
English Language Learners
English
It has been a busy year for the English learning area. With a number of departures at the end of 2018, we welcomed a raft of energetic and experienced teachers into the department. Jodine Hardwicke took on the Acting HOLA of English while Jacqueline Yoder stepped into an Assistant Principal role for 2019. Also new was Nicole Kilbride, who came to us from Ashburton; Deborah Young, from Bamford Primary and Brian Johnson who chose to start his career with us here at Linwood College. Later in term 1, we welcomed Nick Colville to the team, who came to us from Cashmere High School. Unfortunately, at the end of term 3 we lost Sharon Sanders to the big wide world, as she started off on her first overseas adventure.
There have been several exciting opportunities in the English learning area this year. In term 1 we had two of our Year 10 students attend a
Young Writers Masterclass, focusing on poetry writing within the context of Seaweek. Both Elise Lester and Alex Garcia came away feeling inspired and energised to continue with all they learnt. In term 2, we had the absolute privilege of welcoming the amazing Apirana Taylor to kōrero with our students about his writing career. Throughout his time with us Taylor delivered an energetic and highly creative performance where students watched his poetry literally flying across the room in the form of paper planes. Taylor also shared with us his love for music and displayed his immense passion for language and words. Term 3 brought with it a new environment here at Linwood College Ōtākaro, where students and staff worked hard to redecorate the classrooms to make them our own.
Creative Writing Workshop
Earlier in term 1, Elise Lester and Alex Garcia were invited to take part in a creative writing workshop at the Redcliffs Community Centre. The day was spent working with award winning poet and experienced tutor, Gail Ingram, and aimed to engage students with their responses to the sea and develop writing skills to create poetry to express those ideas. Poems were then entered into the Seaweek Poetry Competition.
Both Elise and Alex had a lot of fun and came away with some wonderful ideas and inspiration for their own writing. It was also fantastic to hear that a piece that Elise Lester entered into the Creative Writing Seaweek competition came in 4th place!
This is one of the pieces that Elise entered into the competition:
Toes touching molluscs like a shock to my heart,
Screaming bloody murder as we toss them at our unsuspecting aunts,
Round like our sun,
But scarier than an algebra test,
Digging our toes in the mud,
Dirty water up to our knees, the best,
Us kids avoid molluscs the way teenagers avoid showering,
Scalier than starfish,
They smell like death,
They stick to your legs like scales on fish,
Or onion smell on your breath,
They scare me,
And my cousin uses that to his advantage.
When I sleep,
I am a starfish,
Sprawled out,
All limbs hanging
Over the edge of my rock
bed.
My sister is more of a clownfish,
She never sleeps and
She darts around non stop.
I don’t think I move when I sleep,
But when I rise,
It takes me a century to get going,
A millennia to open my eyes,
But when I do end up moving,
It’s short and fast,
Just like my sister.-
Pukeko, what are you doing,
You—keko, there's a storm brewing,
Pukeko, your time here is looming,
You—keko, don’t you realise there’s now
Few kekos and scientists have found that`
Pukekos are becoming extinct, but…
Hey pukeko, show us how you dance?
Yeah you—keko, will you do a little prance?
Show—keko, that we should bring you home and bring you
Through keko this big leap into the unknown blue
Pukeko world,
Blue—keko plans unfurled,
To-keko bring you back into this
Echo—keko,
Of a world that used to thrive.
Apirana Taylor Visits Linwood College
We had the pleasure of having one of New Zealand’s most prestigious poet, story-teller and musician visit us.
On April 4th, Apirana Taylor delivered an energetic and highly creative performance as both students and staff witnessed his poetry literally flying across the room in the form of paper planes. Apirana also shared with us his love for music and displayed his immense passion for language and words. During the performance, students were also asked to join Tpirana centre stage and take part in a variety of activities including taking us through the creative journey of turning a three-word poem into a full song. Students and staff here at Linwood College left the performance feeling inspired and captivated by Apirana Taylor's achievements, creativity, and passion for words. We hope to have him back soon.
Community Learning At Its Best
Some of our Year 11 students went next door to read picture books to our tiny neighbours at Avonside Day Care Centre.
While at first many of our students were nervous about this, as soon as the gate opened, and we were greeted by the huge smiles and laughter of the toddlers, all nerves were forgotten.
While there wasn’t a lot of time spent reading books, it was beautiful to watch our students interact with young children. There were many grand sandcastles built and our older students loved hearing the endless stories from the little ones. When the bell rang and it was time for us to return to school, both the younger and older students did not want us to leave. This example of tuakana/teina in action is something that we will continue throughout our time at Linwood College at Ōtākaro. When we followed up with Avonside Day Care Centre the next day to say how much our students had enjoyed their time, the response was mutual. According to the teacher, when the toddlers arrived to daycare the next day, they wanted to know if the ‘school children will be coming to play?' We definitely will be back.
Aupaki Schools Speech Competition
Isis-Anne Carruth was the Linwood College representative for the Aupaki Schools Speech contest on the 21st of October.
The Aupaki Speech competition is an annual event held for schools in the Aupaki Kāhui Ako. Linwood College was able to select one student from the Year 7 and 8 group to represent our school in this competition.
This year Isis was selected as our representative, and performed her very moving speech on the topic “bullying” to a crowd at the Heathcote Valley School hall. She performed admirably, delivered her speech with conviction and confidence and left the audience thinking.
We were also lucky enough to be asked to send two senior students as guest judges, who were Jessica Venter and Simon Nakan. It was a difficult role, with many excellent speeches to select from, but they did a fabulous job which was commented on by many at the end of the evening.
When I Sleep
When I sleep,
I am a starfish,
Sprawled out,
All limbs hanging
Over the edge of my rock bed.
My sister is more of a clownfish,
She never sleeps and
She darts around non stop.
I don’t think I move when I sleep,
But when I rise,
It takes me a century to get going,
A milennia to open my eyes,
But when I do end up moving,
It’s short and fast,
Just like my sister.
Elise Lester's, 10H
Indifference
Clean grey suits filled with soulless bodies, grey suits filled with indifference. Walls lined with grey paint and filth, grey walls filled with indifference. Mucky floor tiles worn by the passerbyers, mucky floor tiles filled with indifference. Men with the same haircut lined the station floor, indifferent men filled with indifference…
I wake up, have a cold shower, brush my teeth with minty toothpaste, eat breakfast then start my day. I don’t do much really, I walk three blocks to the train station, and wait for the train while fog covers my glasses. It always feel the same to me, the same polished black leather shoes, the same grey suit and ironed slacks, the same overdone pancakes and overly sweet orange juice. Every day, I never questioned my routine, because that's all it is, a routine.
But it wasn't just me, many other men and women had frowned faces and lifelessness in their eyes. It felt like we were all the same, the same nine to five jobs, the same route, the same routine even. I thought that I was different but the more I think about it the more incredulous it sounds. Now that i'm giving it more thought, the clean grey suits seemed to be filled with soulless bodies. Even the walls, they were always the same monotone grey and covered in filth. The floor tiles were multiple colours, mucky, and worn down by passerbyers. Men all with the same 2010 haircut lined the station floor. Everything was indifferent, nothing ever changed, everything is the same. I’m just another white collar worker, I’m indifferent compared to everyone.
Fabian Kazakos-Gardner, 10A