Showing posts with label visitors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visitors. Show all posts

Friday, 27 March 2009

Heroes at Fendalton

As part of our school theme on Heroes we had a very exciting day today with visitors from a RNZAF helicopter. We managed to keep the visit a secret from the children so the arrival from above was even more special. The children loved seeing the helicopter arrive and winch one of the crew in and out. All the children had a chance to sit in the machine and ask questions of the crew.

A huge thank you to the RNZAF for agreeing to come down to the school and give the children such a treat. It is fabulous when parents are able to use their connections to arrange exciting experiences for our children!

The Heroes theme is a year-long focus through which all the classes are looking at different aspects of the curriculum and learning about our key competencies: Thinker, Dream Maker, Team Player and Communicator. All these traits were on show today as the crew explained to the children what their job entails, how they have to work closely as a team, communicate well and are always thinking and problem solving.

We have also had visits from Police officers, Mid-wives and, of course mums and dads. Teaching the children about the key competencies through real-life people is so powerful and the learning is really coming to life!

Thursday, 12 February 2009

Soaring Blade!

This morning, year 4, 5 and 6 welcomed two visiting authors from Australia to Fendalton School. Meridith and Hilary Badger are hugely popular authors of the "Go Girl" and "Zac Power" series of books. They spent time with our older students, inspiring them with the power of stories and even giving some of them their own secret spy names (my spy name is Soaring Blade and I look forward to being referred to as such in the coming weeks!). It was great to see our students in awe of the authors and, from the discussions on the way out of the village, we will be seeing some budding story-tellers emerging very soon.

A big thank you to Desna for arranging the visit and doing a great job of organising the event, including another fabulous performance from our Kapahaka group. Meredith and Hilary were blown away by the welcome that they received, the boys and girls who performed overcame any nerves to do a stunning job, as always. Spine tingling!

Visitors