School News

As initiating school of the Transfusion painting competition, it is fitting that Hamilton Boys’ High School took six top prizes in last night’s judging at Waikato Museum.

But it was Hillcrest High School’s Julia King who took out the top prize – the Wintec scholarship and first place position.

Hamilton Boys’ High School won the competition’s overall school prize as well as five highly commended ratings at the opening of the Transfusion exhibition last night.

The full list of top place getters is listed below.

The competition saw a high calibre of judges taking part in Tim Croucher (Wintec School of Media Arts, Visual Arts programme manager), Alison Ewing (KateAlsion Arts Consultants) and Dr Carole Shepherd (former professor of fine arts, Elam School of Art).

Last Thursday night in the School Hall, we had the opportunity to honour those students with talents in the arts and judging by the extraordinary talent that was on show, HBHS has reason indeed to celebrate all of the cultural accomplishments of 2013.  The "Gypsy Pickers" kicked the evening off in fine style, and were matched by the HBHS School Choir (pictured, right), solo performers Reid Benseman and Daniel Ng, actors Luke Brooker and Liam McGuire, HBHS Rockquest entry "The Shift" and to finish, the HBHS Jazz Band.  It was a wonderful evening of music and acting and we congratulate all of the award winners and nominees listed below.

(List cont.)

Jese Rokovusoni (Year 13) has had his art work selected to be on the front cover of Te Kairaranga, an academic journal that is subscribed to by educators nationally and internationally.  The journal is published twice a year and for each, a student’s work is sourced and selected to grace the front cover, as well as a profile given about the student on the inside front cover.

 Jese’s work was selected because of its high quality and distinctly Pacifica/Maori flavour.  It is sourced from a portfolio of artwork developed under the watchful eye of Mr Sutherland. We congratulate Jese on this opportunity to share his talent with the educational community.

Chemistry teacher Graham Billing has been working with colleagues and students over the recent study break to prepare for the approaching Cambridge examinations.  He describes what this involved in the following interview:

 How long have you been teaching Cambridge Chemistry?

Five years.  It appealed to me because of the broad scope of the course.  The subject matter has application in the real world.

 How does the Cambridge work fit in with the NCEA programmes?

We combine our NCEA and Cambridge courses: for example, in Year 12, we have just finished teaching a topic which combines a Level 2 Achievement Standard, a Level 3 Achievement Standard and Cambridge Physical Chemistry, all at the same time. We complete the Inorganic and Organic Chemistry in Term 1 of Year 13.

 I understand you have been helping the students over the holidays.

Over the break the boys had the opportunity to sit two theory and two practical practice examinations. This involved five days’ work each for both myself and Mrs Basi with six additional days of technician support. There are a lot of materials to get ready for the laboratory examinations as well as big clean-ups. The boys also helped set out and put away glassware. Each week it required two laboratories and two sessions to accommodate all the students. In the second week we also spent three hours reviewing the first week’s examinations. Because it’s a crowded course it would be difficult to schedule these practice examinations towards the end of Term One. It takes till the end of term one to complete the Cambridge course notes. 

Bradlee Ashby (Yr 11) has won gold in the 15 years grade 400m individual medley in a time of 4 minutes 33.04 seconds, at the recent Australian age-group championships in Adelaide. 

Daniel Krippner (Yr 12) recently won the Hamilton High Schools’ Centennial Billboard design competition where he presented a very professional, architecturally designed billboard.

His design is soon to be displayed throughout Hamilton City and the region promoting the Hamilton High Schools’ combined Centennial, set for 17th-20th of March 2011.

The past few weeks have enabled Daniel to become more hands on with his project; evenings after school and holidays have provided Daniel the opportunity to work with Murray Borland of Borland Architecture, whose help has been tremendous in the support for the Billboard and also as a Centennial Committee Member. Daniel went on to comment about his time spent with Murray at his studio.