Junior School The Year 6 exhibition the Foundation Class and Year 4 share their inquiries, an afternoon extravaganza of the arts, technology challenges and we farewell two long-serving members of staff.

YEAR 6 EXHIBITION

An important time in the school year for our Year 6 students is their PYP Exhibition. The exhibition is an opportunity for girls to collaboratively engage in an in-depth inquiry where, with teacher support and guidance, they demonstrate independence, responsibility, creativity and ownership in their learning.

The focus of PYP Exhibition was the How We Organise Ourselves. Using the IB learner profile, we explored what it meant to be a global citizen and the responsibility we have in our communities. Year 6 Service Week was the perfect provocation to get the girls active in our community. Revered Roberston spoke to the girls about our Dio motto, Ut Serviamus, and how using our head, heart and hands can make a difference. Thank you to the wonderful organisations that worked in partnership with Year 6: Auckland City Mission, Anglican Trust for Women and Children, CureKids, Conservation Volunteers New Zealand, Elizabeth Knox Home and Hospital, Friends of Oakley Creek and Who Did You Help Today?

Year 6 continued to unpack what it meant to be a global citizen by exploring the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. In 2015, world leaders agreed to aspirational goals for a better world in 2030. These goals have the power to end poverty, fight inequality and stop climate change. We should use these goals to work together and build a better future for everyone. Year 6 teachers challenged the girls to think about how they could raise awareness in our School community and take action to contribute to the achievement of these global goals.

Some of our staff and two Year 6 girls had the opportunity to listen to Helen Clarke talk about these goals and her role on the United Nations, which gave them an interesting insight into how we might achieve these goals by 2030.

The girls were confident and knowledgeable as they shared their new knowledge on a range of current world issues such as women’s rights, life below water and environmental issues. There were a range of student-led actions carried out, from visits to Patakai Pantries, Auckland Council (Sustainability Initiatives), interviews with experts and beach clean-ups.

“I really enjoyed the process of exhibition and discovered more about myself when working with a group. The whole process of creating our central idea, lines of inquiry and doing our board layout are skills that I can use in the future. Finding out about the Global Goals, (especially Goal 5: Gender Equality) and learning about what action we can take really had an impact on me. I realised that not all women have the chance of an education and some women can’t drive! When I had my interview with stunt woman Zoë Bell about feminism, I found it really interesting to learn about women’s rights from a different point of view. Overall, the exhibition is something I will never forget and a great experience.” Zara Johannink, 6LS

LEARNING ABOUT CHANGE

Through our ‘How the world works’ inquiry ‘Exploring change helps us understand how the world works’, the Foundation Class has been looking at change in many different ways, including the observable features of living things, the sequence of change, and how living things rely on change. We have enjoyed lots of experiences; watching flowers form, seeing what the weather is doing, observing the changes happening to food as it rots and drying fruit in the dehydrator. Over many days the girls waited for eggs to hatch and wondered what animal might come out. Penguins? Snakes? Chickens? Dinosaurs? – or perhaps even a platypus!

Children in the early years learn most effectively when they are engaged in meaningful experiences. The rich conversations that are generated from inquiry and research supports children’s oral language acquisition and allows them to think about the world around them.

SHARING

THE PLANET

Year 4 students spent seven weeks in Term 3 exploring how natural environments are impacted by the way we use and dispose of materials.

Having investigated different types of composting, it was agreed that Year 4 would set up and trial a bokashi bin. This is now underway with monitors collecting food scraps after lunch and adding these to the bin.

The war on waste continued with an audit being undertaken of the litter in school lunches. Each day for a week, two students would check the lunchboxes of an allocated class. Girls then presented their data using Google Sheets. Well done Year 1 who came out on top, being almost litter free!

It was great to see the connections being made to global warming and the carbon cycle when the girls were presenting their own inquiries. The sense of responsibility they now have for the planet, the knowledge that they can do something about their own carbon footprint and the action they have already taken, bodes well for the future!

This issue is very much in people’s minds as regular articles are appearing in the media about the amount of single-use plastic being produced, the problem with straws littering our oceans and the ongoing debate about the emission of greenhouse gases. All these concerns were quickly picked up and became hot topics for discussion by our girls. They were keen to undertake investigations in the MakerSpace, checking out worm farms, looking at the process of filtering dirty water, considering the effect of oil pollution in the ocean and working through the carbon cycle. They embraced this inquiry and quickly became advocates for cleaning up our school environment.

Arts Extravaganza

The Junior School Arts Extravaganza was held this year in Diocesan’s Performing Arts Centre on Wednesday 18 September. With the inclusion of the opening of the Year 6 PYP exhibition, the Arts Extravaganza once again had parents spoilt for choice. Containing a feast of performances, parents were able to wander through the different rooms listening to the Junior School music groups and watching items that showcased their daughter’s weekly learning in dance, drama and music.

A big thank you to the Dio Arts Committee who kept everyone nourished and fuelled for the event by organising a delicious selection of food and drinks. Mehernaz Pardiwalla, Junior School Performing Arts Coordinator

TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES

EPRO8

During Term 3 a group of very excited girls, along with Laura Hillier our Science and Technology specialist teacher, competed in the Vector EPro8 competition, an engineering and problem-solving race. Every year over 9000 students from 850 schools throughout New Zealand take part. Separate events are run for different age groups.

Teams compete to: • build large-sized structures • solve practical problems • engineer using pulleys, motors, gears, wheels and axles • invent machines that can complete simple tasks • undertake unusual and fun experiments • construct basic electronic circuits • solve interesting problems using practical maths.

Each team of four was based at a workstation containing an impressive assortment of easy-to-use parts and equipment. The three-hour event began with a tutorial on the equipment teams would be using. Teams were given a booklet containing a number of challenges. All the challenges were of an entertaining physical nature. Teams chose which challenges they wished to undertake. The harder the challenge, the more points it was worth. There is not enough time allowed to finish all the challenges, so strategy is required to decide which ones to go for. When teams completed a challenge, they pushed the ‘Big Red Button’. They were then judged and the points added to the live leader board.

Special congratulations to our Year 6 team (pictured above) – Gracie Brooke, Olivia Carpenter, Zara Collett, Olivia Watson and Alianna Hay – who placed second equal with 10 seconds to spare! They go on to compete at the semifinals in November – best of luck girls!

The Junior School farewells CAROL FARR AND MICHELLE PADDISON

Carol Farr came to teaching later in her career after working in the banking industry for a number of years. She had her final practicum at Dio in 2003 and then joined the Diocesan staff in January 2005. Carol taught for two years in Year 2 and has spent the rest of her teaching career in Year 1.

She is well loved by her students and highly respected by the parent community. Carol has provided her students with a stimulating and creative classroom environment, offering many great and exciting learning opportunities. Many Junior and Senior School girls will have fond memories of happy times spent in Mrs Farr’s class.

We wish Carol all the best for the future and know she will have a wonderful time touring the South Island on the back of her husband’s motor bike in Term 1 2020. Carol will also have a lot more time to spend with her beautiful grandchildren.

Congratulations Left: Chaos at the Zoo (1st place) Betty Yao, Amelia Avery, Chloe Corbett, Jiwoo Heo,

Lucy Hoey and Pippa Forman. Above: Dio Ocean Crusaders (2nd place) Chloe Xiao, Luca Shortall, Zara Collett, Tyler Orrick, Ann Kyle, Claudia Queale and Rymer Brooke.

ROBOCUP cooperation and organisational skills. Over the course of Term 2 the teams worked on building their robots, coding RoboCup Junior New Zealand is a them to music and creating a one to national robotics competition for two-minute theatre performance. school children. Created in a true cooperative spirit, the competition Our Junior School entered three teams encompasses not only engineering in the Auckland regional competition. and IT skills but extends right across We were thrilled that from the three the school curriculum. RoboCup Junior teams entered, we were placed first also addresses social development by and second. These are amazing encouraging sportsmanship, sharing, teamwork, understanding of differences Junior School sports news is on pages 64-65 of Dio Today. between individuals and nations, results as this is the first year we have participated. We are so proud of the girls who were all fabulous team players. The girls had great parental support especially from Jason Kyle, Ann Kyle’s father, who spent many hours with the girls. The Dio teams were definitely a step above and exhibited not only their skills but their independence, good sportsmanship and support for each other.

Michelle Paddison first came to Dio as a relieving teacher in 1996. The following year she was asked to take a Year 0 class while their teacher was on sabbatical and this led to a further term relieving in Year 0 in 1998.

Michelle then took on a number of different long-term relieving roles including two terms as a PE teacher, long-term maternity cover and job sharing in Year 6. She finally joined the staff as a permanent full-time teacher of a Year 5 class.

Later, Michelle taught in both Years 3 and 4 and was a very popular dean of those classes for a number of years. mathematics, Michelle was granted a sabbatical herself to study maths programmes in New Zealand and overseas as part of implementing changes to the existing Junior School programme.

Michelle retired from full-time teaching at the end of 2016, but we have been fortunate to have her return to the Junior School each year in Terms 3 and 4 where she has started up the Year 0 class.

Michelle now plans to do more travelling with her husband and to spend time doing volunteer work, but we are sure that we will see her back in a relieving capacity in the future.