If you’ve followed the previous posts on this blog then you’ll be aware of the art that the students have recently completed. The results were fabulous, but what has been even more amazing was the extra art that a particular group of students managed to complete without my knowledge – a picture of myself! To get things in perspective, the artworks are around a metre high and require access to photo software and an interactive whiteboard. Nonetheless, this elite group of secretive students managed to acquire a photo and complete the art without me knowing anything about it. The fact that these students would put in such an extra effort was a huge and very nice surprise. I love it!

It seems that a lot of my posts are to do with Art, but to be honest the subject does lend itself to the best photo opportunities. Anyway, here’s another! We’ve started our latest Art project and this time it includes a little woodwork. The students will be sawing a piece of wood to the right size, sanding it down then transferring a photo of themselves (which they altered on “Gimp”) onto the wood before finally varnishing the finished product. This is a picture of the first stage with Tayla, Georgia and Nathan helping each other out.

Some of our recent artworks have been completed and the results are great. These works are pretty big, about a metre high, and they’ve taken quite a while to finish. What do you think?

This task is to post some school work. It could be your new persuasive writing, your artwork or even your bike system. I know we haven’t all finished our work, but that means you have even more of an incentive to complete the work.

Last week the students took part in one of our hottest “Lapathons” yet. The students collected sponsors for the number of laps they could run (or walk) around the oval. The senior students naturally had the longest distance to cover and tried to do at least 20 laps. Unfortunately, it was a very hot day so it turned into a bit of a slog. However, the students did everyone proud and are now bringing in their sponsorship money which will go to helping Kathmandu Kids and purchasing new iPads for the school.

I was having a browse through the students’ blogs today and I had an amazing surprise. Monika has had a monster blogging frenzy! She posted eight, yes 8 new posts in one day and all of them were different and interesting. She’s also on the verge of being only the second person in the school to reach over 1000 visitors. Great work, Monika.

This week our amazing Art teacher, Miss Sveinbjornsson, invited the incredible and energetic Aussie artist Phil Doncon to present his inspiring “Paint Storm” show. However, not only did we get the show, but we were also lucky enough to take part in a painting workshop with Phil himself. We learned how to plan, build and create art in specific stages while Phil painted one of his famous super quick masterpieces. After the instruction the students were allowed to create art for themselves. In their groups they performed a mad-dash, tag-team display where each student had about 60 seconds to add their own contribution to the sound of exciting music. The whole experience was highly energetic and incredible fun. Some photo’s are below. Check out Phil’s website – especially his gallery page and his Ocean and Surf paintings.

Well, we’ve only got 7 weeks left of the school year! It doesn’t seem that long ago that we all walked into our new class together and now a whole year has almost passed us by. The students’ blogs are approaching their end as students will be leaving my class and I’ll be getting ready for a new set of bloggers. However, because I’m moving up a year some students may be fortunate/unfortunate to have me for a second year and will be able to hold onto their blogs. Even I don’t know how it’s all going to work out, but to be honest I’m just looking forward to seeing what the students come up with for their last 7 weeks.