NEW ZEALAND DAY - AOTEAROA DAY

NEW ZEALAND DAY - AOTEAROA DAY

Thanks to our language assistant; Michael Boyle, and his brother, Luke Boyle, we have been celebrating Aotearoa Day all together in Moret Park. There have been lots of orginal and fun activities where students could show us their hidden talents, using English language all the time. Thanks Michael.

Michael's Aotearoa Outdoors day

"When asked what I would like to do towards the end of my time here at the High School I knew I wanted to have an outdoors day. My background and previous experience running days in the outdoors with intended educational outcomes left me with thousands of ideas and how we could get the students to have the most fun while learning. 

In the end we settled on the 27th of April which was the same week as one of the most important holidays in New Zealand and also luckily was when my older brother was coming to visit me. So we could have two fully fledged kiwis to give a huge impetus to the day. The weather really came to the party and we had glorious sunshine batheing us all day in Parque Moret. Also due to this it was a warm day which meant we changed plans a bit to keep everybody cool in the shade when possible. 

The primary goals of the day were to get the students speaking English, being creative and working together to create some awesome stuff! First off we had the jigsaw race to get the students to form teams. These teams then shed their boring numbered names as the competitions began. Each competition gave the winner the right to choose first from lists we had created a list of animals, adjective and verbs. 

This lead to the resulting teams being named: 

The Lazy Kicking Dragons

The Energetic Running Dogs

The Hungry Singing Llamas

The Smelly Attacking Ducks

The Fast Playing Cats

The Sweet Sleeping Unicorns

The Passive Snoring Kiwi

The Aggressive Cutting Lions 

The Sour Swimming Sheep

The Slow Sliding Worms

After the teams were named the challenge was put to them to design a team crest and song. The results exceeded our expectations and there were some wonderfully creative ideas as well as some hilarious results when it came to the songs. 

At the end of the day the Sweet Sleeping Unicorns came out on top after all the points were tallied. 

The day in my opinion was a huge success and the students got to enjoy the chance to be creative in the games we designed. A huge thank you to all of the students and also Beatriz, Diana, Alejandro and Raul who helped make the day possible. One of the most successful outdoor days I have been a part of! " (by Michael Boyle)