ACG Strathallan Student's Blog

This term’s Quad Fiesta was a great success! With a rainy start to the day, followed by a sun-filled afternoon the weather arrived just in time for the fun. With this term’s theme being “spend some to save some” there were a variety of opportunities for our students to get involved and help raise money for others. Whether it was food, such as the cake bake or sausage sizzle, or activities such as balloon popping, the coin trail, crash the cans or the sponge throw, there was an event for everyone to enjoy. Students also had an opportunity during the week to provide for charity by bringing in a can with the “you sure can bring a can” movement, with all cans being donated to the Salvation Army. The day of fun ended with a tremendous amount of money raised to help others in our community so a massive thank you for all those who got involved and for the house leaders who organised such a fantastic day.  

 

– By Zeena Haba

Our student council did a great job organising the Junior Social for our year 7 to 10 students last Friday. The ‘glow-in-the-dark-themed’ lighting, the sounds from DJ Mckay and the many activities kept the students entertained throughout the night

Strathallan had wo Year 7 and 8 teams enter the highly popular ‘Kids Lit Quiz’ this week, a national competition for intermediate-aged students who love literature. Tahlia Pillay was one of our participants:

We arrived at the competition quite early which gave us plenty of time to settle our nerves by running through some practice questions. Soon the main hall at St. Cuthberts  was packed with eager young literary enthusiasts ready to take out the competition. When all the teams had been seated,  the quizmaster gave us the run down of how the competition would work. There were ten categories. In each category there are ten questions. He would read out the questions and we would write down the answers to each one in our booklets. At the end of each round, we were to rip out the page and hold it up to be collected.

The initial rounds were quite tricky and we were horrified to get a Harry Potter question wrong. We soon got the hang of it and even won a round earning us some Whitcoull’s gift vouchers. The lit quiz was fun and very challenging and there are some students out there who really know their literature. Some of the draw breaker questions were really amazing to watch being answered. One girl from  the Carmel 1 team answered her question at the speed of light. The quizmaster was reading the first two words of a poem when the girl shot her hand up and exclaimed ‘The Jabberwocky! By Lewis Carrol’.

My team placed 15th overall and our Year 7 team was placed 17th. The lit quiz was fun and very challenging and I found that I learnt quite a lot about literature. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience participating in the LitQuiz.

 

What an enjoyable sunny day to welcome our grandparents to Strathallan.

First we performed in the hall to show off our music skills led by Mr Randell. Afterwards in class there were activities linked to Social Science and Art that we worked on appreciating the helpful ideas.

Some of us toured the school to show our grandparents the different areas of learning. A great big morning tea was enjoyed before we said ‘goodbye’.

Thank you to everyone who made the day special.

Creative non-fiction. At first glance, it might seem an oxymoron – indeed, it did to me. ‘How can something rooted in pure fact be creative?’ I had wondered to myself when I was first introduced to the concept last Friday, at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Parnell. There I was, one of two lucky students from ACG Strathallan who attended a writing workshop entitled “Creative Non-fiction and the Short Story”.

It was the first of our two guest speakers, Bianca Zander, who worked with us on this apparently contrary genre. A recipient of the CNZ Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary, presently the editor of Little Treasures magazine, an author of two novels – as well as a multitude of works for radio, television, and film – and having taught creative writing at both AUT and MIT, to say she was an authority on the subject of writing would be quite the understatement. She explained that, in essence, creative non-fiction was “a true story well told”; the inclusion of literary devices such as dialogue and metaphorical description results in a piece which seeks to entertain as well as inform its reader. As an aspiring journalist, this concept very much appealed to me, as is hopefully apparent by the style of this article.

Ms. Zander also went on to demonstrate to us a technique for combating the bane of writers everywhere; writer’s block. We used the astutely named “One-Inch Window” – a one-inch by one-inch square cut into a piece of paper, functioning to eliminate outside distractions whilst describing a certain object viewed through the aforementioned aperture. Whilst mostly designed to prove the point that there is plenty to be described in a mere one-inch view, it was a fascinating and useful exercise nonetheless.

The second speaker was yet again undoubtedly qualified; Tracey Slaughter is a talented and accomplished multi-award-winning writer of short stories, and lecturer in creative writing at the University of Waikato. She worked with us on the skills involved with the writing of such pieces, including altering cliché opening lines to be more gripping, the best way to end a piece, and how to write characters properly. Passionate and personable, she was inspiring to everyone present, and provided welcome insight into the world of professional writing.

The workshop was, in a word, invaluable. Engaging and entertaining, we developed our abilities greatly, and added many techniques to our repertoire. I sincerely look forward to future events such as this, and wholeheartedly encourage other young writers to look into attending one such workshop too.

 

Although I do freely admit that the morning tea of biscuits and jelly snakes certainly contributed to my opinion.

Written by Angus Cameron who attended a writing workshop hosted by the Michael King Writer’s Centre at the National Library in Parnell.