Nau mai, haere mai; welcome to Term 3 at Cashmere High Library Te Whare Mātauranga. The overarching idea for our newsletter article this term is mahi ngātahi (teamwork): ma whero ma pango ka oti ai te mahi.

Firstly, congratulations to our Cashmere High School Te Iringa O Kahukura Readers’ Cup Team for the incredible mahi ngātahi and subsequent win at Regionals in late Term 2. Congratulations to: Lucy M. Moore, Lucy Phillips, Genavieve Graham, Vida Gerard and Julia Walters! The team achieved an outstanding result, winning by a significant margin. This means I will be taking the Y9 team to Auckland in September to compete with the ‘best of the best’ nationwide. This is a great accolade for the school as we seek to further embed reading and literacy into the lives of our ākonga. We begin fundraising for this at the beginning of Term 3. If you would like to financially support the team. or you can offer sponsorship, please feel free to contact me on library@cashmere.school.nz. A huge thank you also goes to the behind-the-scenes Y12 support crew, who helped and trained our lovely team, as well as turning up on the night to be the cheering section. Great teamwork.

Working hard in the wings are our Y10 Battle of the Bibliophiles teams. This is a reading competition where Y10s from all around the country compete to answer questions on 12 assigned books, both fiction and non-fiction. We have two teams entered and we will be competing against 50+ other teams! The competition will be later in the year.

Also, this term, we have enjoyed fabulous mahi ngātahi with the English Department, facilitating together a ‘text types’ activity session for the Year 10s. This consists of a race to mix’n’match text types and a round robin group activity around eight different ‘stations’ to practise pulling information from different kinds of texts. A few teachers in particular have got especially on board and were marking down extra points for groups showing good communication skills and teamwork! One class was so motivated by a potential tuck shop voucher that they were just a focused murmur as they rotated through stations - eyes absolutely on the prize. Another class finished the stations with a few minutes to spare, and their teacher did an excellent recap game to see who could remember details of what they had just done, and the tips or hints that we had mentioned along the way. All in all, it has been a wonderful success, with lots of positive feedback.

This, alongside general book talks, Y9 novel study selection, and NCEA Connections task book selection across levels 1, 2 and 3, has made for a wonderfully busy and rewarding term.

Nāku, nā

Saskia Hill (CHS Library Manager)
Cat Lourie (Library Assistant)
Asher Jemison (Library Assistant)