JS Poetry Competition / Never too Young to Learn

JS Poetry competition

Junior School students in Year 4 to 6 participated in the annual Junior School Poetry Competition.

Junior School Principal Jayne de la Haye with Overall Poetry Cup Winner Akaal Singh and guest judge Stephanie Caisley.

On 25 March the Junior School once again held their annual poetry competition, hosted by Suhjung Kim and Gus Forsyth (Year 6). Classes in Years 4 to 6 all took part, with the top two students from each class progressing to the finals in the Auditorium.

The competition was fierce throughout the afternoon, and this year the judging was carried out by Stephanie Caisley, who has been involved in the North Shore and National Speech and Drama community for many years, and Jayne de la Haye. The judges were looking for a poem that included descriptive and figurative language and to see that the meaning of the poem was interpreted and clearly conveyed. The judges were also looking for specific presentation skills including use of body language, eye contact, use of voice and the ability to show an awareness of and engagement with the audience.

Each year level also had the opportunity to perform a choral poem (a type of lyric poetry that was created by the ancient Greeks and performed by choruses) and it was very clear to see the work that had gone into preparing for this.

Both the winner as well as the runner up for each year level were presented with an award and this year the Overall Poetry Cup was won by Akaal Singh (Year 6) for his recital of The Cow by Roald Dahl. As in previous years, the standard was exceptional and we’re already looking forward to the 2022 competition!

Dale Connell Never too young to learn

The adage “you are never too young to learn something new” was never more appropriate than during the April holiday break when the Junior School staff spent two days on an IB PYP workshop delving into what it looks like to be a local and global inquirer.

The purpose of the workshop was to investigate what it means to be an inquirer and design learning experiences that our teachers use to draw on local and global settings to challenge their students’ thinking and encourage them to reflect and to act on their learning.

It was the perfect opportunity for us to spend a concentrated period of time immersed in professional learning that stretched and challenged us as adults. It enabled us to think more deeply about our pedagogy and use the time to refine and tweak our existing unit of inquiry plans to enhance what our students are doing.

Teachers had the opportunity to come to grips with the big inquiry picture and to be responsible for their own learning (just as we like our students to do). A focus on being an agentic learner (one who has voice, choice and ownership over their own learning) and planning to take action with what they are learning were two key foci of the workshop experience for the teachers. Delving deep into the value of language learning and internationalmindedness ensured that the Junior School staff have a common understanding of these valuable areas. The chance to sum up and create a personal action plan meant that the value of this workshop will continue long after the ‘what stuck with you?’ culmination activity was completed.

Everyone walked out of the building having learnt something new and was future focused to put a myriad of new learning into practice.