The Geography Department has had a busy couple of weeks. Recently we had two Year 11 teams compete in the Canterbury round of the Maatangi Whenua competition.

This is a fun geographical competition held at the University of Canterbury where students compete in teams of three against other schools. The students chosen to represent the school were Claudia Fowler, Olivia Sidwell, Hayley Dore, Mia Cochrane, Julie Song, and Abbey Loffhagen. The girls had a lot of fun and our top team came 5th out of 19 teams.

Last week we celebrated Geography week with a range of activities organised by the Geography committee. This ranged from Ako class challenges to a display about Geography in the news, a lunchtime Kahoot challenge as well as raising $120 for an HIV charity in South Africa. In Year 12 students have just finished studying the global pattern of HIV and this was a chance for them to respond to what they had been learning about. 

Congratulations to the following students who received their Geography Committee badges for service in 2019; Aki Gillespie, Emily Brown, Catalina Heale, Neve Maguire, Sabrina Irvine, Millie Righton, Mya Hopkinson, Hannah Smith, Ella Trezise, Georgia Allfrey, Aria Carroll and Madi Cooper.

Geography week is also an opportunity for us to acknowledge our top achieving students by awarding them their Geographer badge. To gain their silver badge students need to achieve 5 assessments at the Excellence level and the Gold badge requires 10 assessments at the Excellence level. The following students received their silver badge; Alice Ridgen, Sophie Harris, Lorna Cameron, Madi Cooper, Aria Carrol, Catalina Heale, Hannah Smith and Amelia Plimmer. We look forward to awarding some gold badges before the end of the year.