Panda Camp Trip

Nicky Edwards & Tash Fraser —

Our Halswell School teaching and learning trip to China!

In the upcoming July holidays, eight Year 8 students are going to be heading to China to attend the Global Youth Ambassador Programme, Panda Camp, in Hunan province.

This programme is designed to combine language and cultural learning with personal development and leadership skills. The trip gives our students an opportunity to fully demonstrate the special qualities of our senior Halswell students. Their resilience, confidence and friendliness will all be valuable assets to them when creating new friends from different cultures. Our students were all chosen by the Chinese camp organisers through videos the children made highlighting their leadership qualities.

During the seven day Panda Camp, Nicky Edwards and Natasha Fraser will be teaching for three sessions each day. Lesson subjects will be English, Art, Sport and NZ culture.These will be taught to two classes of 25 Chinese primary school aged children. Our Halswell teachers will be assisted by the four boys and four girls who have been fortunate to have been selected to go. Our students will be attending Mandarin classes as well as experiencing cultural activities and games. There will be some opportunities for sightseeing particularly as we travel to and from the Panda Camp. The group is looking forward to experiencing the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and seeing the Chinese countryside during a 6 hour bullet train ride from Beijing to Changsha.

We are particularly excited to be visiting Changsha as this has been the home of some of our current Halswell families. We have enjoyed hearing about the places we are travelling to and look forward to experiencing them first hand.

We will be sending updates back to school as we go, and look forward to sharing our experiences on our return!