On Friday, March 18 we held a fun sports day as a syndicate competition involving 24 teams (six in each syndicate) and 12 activities. These were touch, bike track, fun relays, crazy relays, adventure playground, tug-o-war, golden runner (basketball shooting), long ball, volleyball, knock out (a tag game), table tennis and a hip hop battle. Teams received 0, 1 or 2 points for a loss, draw or win and 0, 1 or 2 points for the ADMIRE values that they displayed at each of the 12 activities. This was one of the most enjoyable school days that I can recall, with much enthusiasm from the staff in charge of each activity and very keen efforts from the 257 students who attended.

Final points were:

1st place Waipoua 218 points

2nd place Waiohine 195 points

3rd place Waiawangawanga 193 points

4th place Kaituna 167 points

The maximum total score that each team could receive for the twelve activities was 48. Waipoua team Toru managed the highest score of 42. Their team members were:

Luke Jonas, Theo Polley, Phoebe Fleming, Lily Greenfield, Libby Hay, Ben Bradley, Jazz Wilkin, Quinn Omundsen, Shaniyah Toki.

I enjoy designing, creating, and learning new things a lot. That is why Design Tech is an excellent opportunity for creative people like me! I like how I can manage what I create, as well as I can push myself to try new things that aren't offered in usual classes.

In Design Tech for this current term, I have decided that I want to make a model of a dragon that can stand by itself. This will pose quite a challenge and push my resilience because I have a box full of pieces and no instructions to put it together.

The first step to making this dragon was to find a suitable dfx file online that I liked and edit the file to suit the laser printer's format, so I had the pieces to the dragon. Once that was done I had to make sure all the gaps for the pieces were exactly three millimeters to be the right size for the wood we were using as well as making it be an average size dragon. I say that was the hardest part so far with me being still a learner with the website format. There is always room to improve and I have definitely gotten better each time I use it.

Then I moved the project around so it could fit on the laser bed and not waste material space. Then I wait about twenty minutes while it printed slowly. During this time I had to watch the pieces with laser glasses to make sure the pieces didn't get caught on the laser when it goes back to the starting position.

If they did, the pieces would break and the printing would have to start again. Not only wasting materials and time.

Now I have the pieces ready for assembling when I go to my next session. But not every session is working on our projects, Some sessions we may help create things around the school such as tennis bats for the new school tennis tables.

I enjoy DT Extension very much and think that anyone that likes challenges and woodcrafts and has enough resilience to keep going should give this extension a go in Term 3.

-Aleah Mitchell

DT is a techni that Mr Rick runs each year and this term, it's the Year 8's turn. It is a place where children can build and work together as peers but also as a pair, because he says you can only work in twos because two brains work better than 3. DT is a place where you can build anything that is free on dxf files that is not a gun or a knife. There are lots of cool things in there like there is a drinking fountain just outside the room. There are also safety glasses if you need to use the drills there and the safety rules are don’t play with the vice and don't go in his space where all the danger is. Not long ago we had made some new concrete ping pong tables at our school. So we got to make some wooden bats with Mr Rick to use on the tables. We laser cut all of the parts out on the cool machine and then glued them all together. We had to clamp it so it would glue faster and not move. After the glue had set we were allowed to test them out on the new ping pong tables and they were really really good.

By Zeb and Theo

This term for my techni class I am learning about science in Whāea Rika's lab. We have been learning chemistry. Whāea Rika sets up fun experiments for us to do but we still learn a lot as we do them.We are learning about acids and bases, we use litmus paper to dip in a liquid and see if it's an acid or base. There is also an axolotl! His name is Gilbert, we like to watch him swim around. I am also a part of the science extension group studying marine biology on a day 3 after lunch.

Christian Churchwood - Room 18

By Ruby Edwards, Room 7.

COVID has hit our MIS tennis teams pretty hard. Some teams have had to cancel a lot of their games and have not had much playing time. Although in the times that we have played there has been great sportsmanship and kids have been improving extremely fast! Some of us were fortunate to play against Hadlow (who were very strong!). We didn’t win any games but I heard our players gave it 100%!

We hope that we will be able to play our next game with a full team and thank all the coaches for putting in their time and effort to teach us how to play a fun game.

By Jed Karam - Room 7

It was Thursday the 24th of March and my veins had excitement running through them because the next day we were going to go to a Women's Cricket World Cup game, South Africa vs the West Indies and it was going to be so fun, provided that it didn’t rain. I slept through the night and then at 5:00 am my alarm went off waking me up, reminding me of the game we were going to later that day. I had a shower and put my PE gear on and within twenty minutes I was ready to go. I got in my car and my dad dropped me off at MIS as I waited until we got on the bus and headed for Wellington.

When we got to Wellington or more specifically, The Basin Reserve, we were taken around to a small area behind the stadium to get all of the gear that we needed to perform the national anthems with the teams on the field. After we did that we were taken inside the actual stadium to rehearse what we needed to do for the national anthems with the teams. After we had finished doing the rehearsal we went up into the pavilion to wait for the match to start.

Whilst we were waiting it started raining which caused the toss and the game to be delayed to a later time. During the time when we waited for the toss to be announced we started a game of cricket in the small area next to the pavilion. After a while it had stopped raining and the game was set to start at 1:00pm but then the rain came down again and delayed the game for another two hours.

Whilst we were waiting for the game to start we went into the Museum that was there and it was so cool. In the museum there was heaps of stuff about the history of New Zealand Cricket but the best part about it was the fact that it had a VR (Virtual Reality) cricket game there. It was really fun to go on it but it was really difficult to even hit the ball. So it was also really hard to score any runs but it was still very fun.

After we had finished in the museum it was finally time to get ready to go out on the field and perform the national anthems with the teams. After that we were given a cool t-shirt by the ICC Committee. We then went back to the pavilion to watch the game but not before we all went and bought some food. After about 30 minutes of watching the game, it got rained out again and it showed no signs of going away so we decided to go back to Masterton. Everyone had such an amazing day and we feel very lucky to have had this opportunity to attend this wonderful sporting event. Thanks to Wairarapa Cricket for the experience and to Mr Mann, Nathan and Mrs Stevens for taking us.

By Casey Judd - Room 7