Year 7 Box Cars

Every two years we have our school gala.
The Year 7 teachers are always keen to get involved and their students enjoy making something to sell.
This year we all collected lots of boxes and in class, the boys began designing and planning a cardboard box car for little kids to stand in and run around in.  Once their designs were complete, classes booked in a couple of days in the science and technology room to build them.

Armed with loads of tape, hot glue guns and cardboard the boys got stuck in and had a blast making their cars.  Once the cars began to take shape, many of them began to talk about wanting to buy their own at the gala.  They did a great job and produced lots of fun and appealing cars for the gala.  And yes, many of the students did buy their car on the day!

Bee Bot Fun

Thanks to the fantastic Hutt Science centre, we were able to have a week trying out some coding and programming with Bee Bots and the junior syndicate.
Bee Bots are appealing, simple little robots that look like bees.  The boys use simple commands to control the robot and get it to move and follow directions.  They were instantly popular with all of our junior boys and even some of the older students were asking when they were going to have a turn.

It was a great opportunity for the boys to see how breaking things down into simple steps in a logical order can result in something working out.  As they worked through the challenges, they became more efficient at problem solving and thinking in a more logical and sequential way.

Using the Bee Bots the boys had lots of fun learning the first steps of programming.

Robotics rules!

We've started up some more robotics sessions with the Year 6 and 7 classes.
The boys have been working with partners and have either been learning how to programme the lego mindstorms robot, or build on from what they already know.  It's been great to see so many of them instantly get stuck into the challenges and start to do their problem solving independently.

We've also had the opportunity to have a play with Sphero - a simple app controlled robot that you can send on missions and just have fun with.  Apologies to parents who have had their son come home asking for a sphero, Ollie or BB8!

Check out Sphero here

Hutt Science Centre Rockets!

What a fun week we have had!
Our school has joined the Hutt Science Centre, a Lower Hutt City Council funded initiative that provides a science teacher to support schools as well as access to many wonderful kits.  Each kit is based around a theme and it comes with a few activities all ready set up including student sheets and teacher notes.
This week we have the Rockets kit and a few classes got to try out different kinds of rockets, as well as the science club who got to have some fun one lunch time.

We first tried out the film cannister rockets.  Students had to work carefully and systematically so that we could find the optimal amount of water and alka seltzer tablet.

Preparing for launch

Waiting for blast off

Then the science club spent a rather cold and windy lunch time investigating air pressure rockets.  We added an extra challenge which kept them going for quite some time - anyone who was able to catch a rocket won a chocolate fish!

EPro8 Technology Challenge

After putting all of the Year 7 and 8 students through a few different technology challenges, we got down to two teams of four to represent Wellesley at a new hands-on, inter-school challenge.

The first heat was held at Wainuiomata Intermediate and the boys got their first exposure to some unique, 3D printed equipment.  Over three hours, the boys had to choose different challenges to complete.  Each challenge had different levels of difficulty, the more difficult the task, the more points.  It was great to see the students working really well together.  It didn't really matter about past knowledge, working as a team was what really mattered.

Some of the tasks included building a moving vehicle, a weighing machine and a swing.  Then each task had different challenges associated with it.

Congratulations to both teams who worked really hard for the two and a half hours.

The team below successfully made it through to the next semi-final.