PPP Celebration.
It was fantastic to see a huge turn out last Friday to view our Personal Passion Projects. Many of the students were immensely proud of their achievements and it was great to see them share the process they went through with the younger students and parents. They have made honest reflections on their journey and eager to have another go so they can make adjustments and improvements. Look out in Term 4 for another round! It has been an excellent learning opportunity for our seniors to explore their passions!
Speech Finals.
After our PPP sharing we went straight into our biannual Speech Competition. This is a conclusion and celebration of 5 weeks work where each student had to plan, research and present a 3 to 5 minute speech on a subject of their choice. Every student gave 100% in class and delivered really impressive speeches. It was a tough decision for each teacher to choose the top three from their class to represent them in the finals. The standard this year was incredible, along with a huge variety in subjects from the difference between chimpanzees and humans, Heroes, Parents to Diapers and Miners strikes. It was an incredibly tough job for our judges Mr Bird and Mrs Hooke too but winners were announced… Congratulation to Alice for coming third with her well delivered speech on Heroes. Tessa was runner up with her very entertaining speech on ‘How to deliver the perfect speech'. Check it out below:
This year, the winner of our speech competition was Tom who delivered an outstanding speech on 'World Records'. The speech was very entertaining, informative and was linked together nicely. Top job Tom! Check it our below:
Kapa Haka
Our Kapa Haka group have been working incredibly hard over the past few weeks with Mrs Hooke and Mrs Algar preparing for Polyfest in a couple weeks. There is still lots of work to be done but they are well on tracked for their performance in a couple of weeks time.
Mural & Mike Weston
By Joshua in Room 24:
Last Thursday, Room 24 was graced with the appearance of Mike Weston, a famous New Zealand artist! Mike Weston was kind enough to come into Room 24 on Thursday to teach us about how he became such a successful artist!
His career as an artist began mainly with photography and photo-shop as he worked to create posters for his music gigs. Unfortunately, he found that most of the time, all of his work would go to waste after his show, as he had to scrap the posters afterwards.
He decided to do full time art, but his real career began when he started to work with his friend, Otis Frizzell, and acted as a sort of 'Art Producer' like how a music producer might work.He would tell Otis what to paint, how to paint it, and when. Otis used to be mainly a street artist, but with this new setup, he could paint on canvas's instead of walls, and so, get paid.
Later, Mike Weston became famous for his 'Behave' piece of Artwork. He drew the original draft on a napkin at a dinner party, and later made a rough draft on the computer. The piece of artwork consisted of the Beehive matchboxes logo, with the Beehive company brand below changed to 'Behave' in stencil writing. The original black and red stripes were changed to have four white koru's in-between them to add some Maori cultural influence. The piece was made during a time where the country was trying to figure out how to be multi-cultural, the art piece saying that the solution is to 'Behave'.
However, when he presented it to his wife, she said that it was dumb and wouldn't sell. After many iterations he abandoned the idea and let it sit for awhile. A few years later he re-visited the idea, and he decided to dump his box of sharp metal pieces, nails, bolts, screws, rocks and sandpaper all over the piece of art. Surprisingly, it made it look much better, the scratched and bruised 'Behave' looking much better than the clean and non-damaged one. He brought it to an art exhibition where it quickly sold for $1500 to the Labour party leader at the time, who quickly displayed it in her office within the Beehive (House of Parliament). It sold quickly after that first time as the price was set, and many copies were sold, even requiring them to find a printing press so that they could mass-produce copies. Eventually it even managed to become a sponsoring brand, going on to win an award at a wine awards ceremony.
The 'Behave' brand was Mike Weston's crowning achievement, making him $1.5 Million over the ten years since it was first launched in 2004. However, Mike Weston has worked on other projects despite the fact that 'Behave' is still making him money today. Some of his other more interesting projects include artwork on Woolworth's recycle-able and a large mural depicting Auckland's most famous landmarks.
Because we were so inspired by him, Room 24 will be making a 'Behave' mural on our bland breeze block wall, which is quite fitting for a school! Room 24 gives many thanks to Mike Weston for spending some of his time to come to our class and teach us about himself and his art.
- Joshua (Half-dead) Class Blogger.
The mural is slowly taking shape... watch this space for the finish product!
OnTV
From Aless and Lea On Wednesday our technocraft group went to Capital E, to On TV. We had to act out a small play/news focused on the Wahine disaster. At school, before we did anything we had to learn about the Wahine disaster and some of us had to write our own scripts.
The Wahine disaster happened on April 10, 1968. Fifty one people lost their lives that day after it hit Barrett reef and capsized. Mostly everyone had deep cuts, gashes and hypothermia was one of the major problems.
On Wednesday we all met at Days Bay wharf to catch the ferry across to Wellington, from there we had to walk to the Capital E centre and to meet Kit who would help us with the props and filming. We went upstairs to get started. When we got there we were amazed at how professional the studio looked. After we settled down and Kit had talked us through what was going to happen that day, he showed us the costume room and we all got dressed into what our characters might have worn. We had one hour to practise our lines and acting - that time went really fast!
When we knew our lines well enough and the time was up we finally started filming. We had two practices of real filming to get the hang of everything, but after that we had to start with the real stuff. It was really nerve wracking to know that we were on camera and to think we might forget our lines and ruin the filming. Finally after another mucked up show we had one last go left. With only one mishap in the middle we filmed the perfect show!
After we watched our finished product, we went to the Food Court and we all went off to find food. Slowly the table started filling up and we all talked and laughed together. Before we went back to the ferry, we had a quick trip to the City and Sea Museum and then we slowly walked to the ferry and nearly missing it.
This is our finished product.
By Lea and Aless.
Muritai TV.
Our Muritai TV Team have been working hard over the past couple of weeks packaging up some short clips on promoting our school values. This week Sammy, Xander, Theo and Arie shared two clips in assembly on what students at Muritai think Respect and Curiosity means.
