The standard was once again really high and the judges were most impressed. This year’s Fair has unfortunately been a little different to previous years, as the students never got an opportunity to share their work with the scientists who were judging their projects. Despite this, Somerville did extremely well.

Congratulations to all the students who won awards this year. Your hard work and dedication has really paid off and we are all very proud of you. Thanks to the teachers and parents who helped along the way.

Year 7&8 Intermediate Consumer Science
1st Place:
Kelly Ma - Be Gone, Glad Wraps


3rd Place:   
Tiffany Ong - Battle of the Toilet Paper


Highly Commended:
Georgia and Kate Sole - Blasting Bliss Balls 


Year 7&8 Living World
2nd Place:
Valerie Perez - Food waste - Liquid Fertiliser

3rd Place:
Nyesa Khurana - Blue light has a Dark Side

Highly Commended:
Charlotte Radford - DIY Masks - Who Nose?


Year 7&8 Physical and Material World
1st Place:
Annabelle Olsen        Grip or Slip


Year 7&8 Environmental Science
1st Place:
Ben McLaren - The Sustainable Garden


Year 7-10 Technology/Innovations
3rd Place:    
Die-anche Rautenbach - A Gauge from Dad’s Book


Highly Commended:
Asher Coomes - Love Your Shelf


Special Awards:
Annabelle Olsen - Best Year 8 Project
Morgan Alley - Environmental Award (Years 7-13)


Tiffany Ong - Best Year 7&8 Scientific Method 

All our teams played valiantly and showed excellent sportsmanship. The range of skills at the tournament provided some excellent experience and the children rose to their challenges.

Team A, consisting of Lucas Xiao, Tejasvi Kichavadi, Jay Zhao and James Chen, took home the gold medals and an opportunity to compete in the upcoming National Championship. Michael Lu also took home a gold medal.

Congratulations to our Chess Club! 

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We were missing our regular goalkeeper and had a stand-in, one sub, and many of the girls playing out of position. They continue to amaze and we ran away in the second half of the game to win 8-0!

Goals from:
Taylah Byers (3)
Zoe Brazier (3)
Ashley Fillet
Ella Gibson 

Player of the Day:
Taylah Byers

The SEZ tournament was a fantastic success where all 4 teams represented Somerville with spirit, pride, and commitment.  All teams had a fantastic time with both our year 7A and 8A teams coming 3rd overall in the A grade. Both B teams coming away with 4th. 

A highlight was cheering on the Somerville Thunder in the final against Sir Edmund Hillary College that went into overtime!

On Tuesday evenings, all four teams head to Auckland Netball in Mt Wellington to compete in the very competitive Year 7 and 8 Future Ferns.  In week 3, both Year 7 teams had convincing wins and the Year 8 B team had a fierce game against St Mary's, taking the win. The Year 8 Storm lost to a very strong St Kents team.

The weather was warm and sunny, providing conditions suitable for many of our students to complete the course. Congratulations to all our students who achieved ‘Personal Bests’.  

The place getters for the day will have the opportunity to compete for a place on the South Eastern Zone team. 

Cross Country Results:

Year 7 Girls

1st - Taylah Byers
2nd - Isabelle Preisig
3rd - Gabrielle Dalton-Wilson
4th - Sandra Thompson
5th - Micaela Besley
6th - Brooke Carpenter
7th - Karli Geyser
8th - Holly Van der Mescht
9th - Holly Wong
10th - Merissa Leon

Year 7 Boys

1st - Liam Bevitt
2nd - Finn Murphy
3rd - Logan Ball
4th - Tanish Naidoo
5th - Noah Singh
6th - Samuel Asiata
7th - Nathan Martin
8th - Everest Grant
9th - Hayden Antunes
10th - Mason Bray

Year 8 Girls

1st - Sienna Pauling
2nd - Zoe Brazier
3rd - Mae Reynolds
4th - Ashley Fillet
5th - Olivia Bates
6th - Hope Zhang
7th - Monique Pulley
8th - Helena Dunn
9th - Molly Todd
10th - Cassidy Christianson-Sparks

Year 8 Boys

1st - Khavin Kannan
2nd - Finn Wessels
3rd - Christofell Greyling
4th - Spencer Carr
5th - Zach Reynolds
6th - Levi Saunders
7th - Tyler Cagiano
8th - Nathan Cox
9th - Jordan Fox
10th - Lachlan Taylor

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An outstanding achievement!
Well done to you all.

The team now have the opportunity to participate in the National Competition in Wellington.

Students and staff were invited to come to school dressed as their favourite book character, or in jungle inspired dress up, which is the theme of this year's Fair. This was a fun day and we thank all who took part.

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These designs are going to be printed onto postcards which will have an Auckland transport (AT) message on the back of them. Next week the police will be coming to our school and we will be handing out these postcards along with safe driving messages to people driving past our school.

Not only do students experience authentic science by following the Scientific Inquiry Process or the Engineering Design Process, they also develop literacy, numeracy, technology, critical thinking, communicating, creativity, collaboration and self management skills.
Congratulations to all students who entered a project this year. It is a lot of hard work and takes considerable time and effort, and you have all done yourselves proud!

The standard of projects this year has once again been very high, even through a pandemic, and we would like to thank all students for producing such amazing projects. Well done! 46 projects were entered and of those, 14 have been judged the best of the fair.

Special congratulations to the students listed below and a special thanks to the parents and teachers who supported them along the way.

Innovations and Inventions:

Asher Coomes - Love your Shelf
Anushka Ram and Tiana Sharma - Point Joint
Die-anche Rautenbach - A Gauge from Dad’s Book

Intermediate Consumer Science:

Samar Brar - Homemade Sanitiser vs Commercial Sanitiser
Aleisha Coleman - VEGAN? Muffin to worry about
Kelly Ma - Be Gone, Glad Wraps
Tiffany Ong - Battle of the Toilet Paper
Valerie Perez - Food Waste - Liquid Fertiliser
Georgia and Kate Sole - Blasting Bliss Balls

Living World:

Annabelle Olsen - Grip or Slip    
Charlotte Radford - DIY Masks - Who Nose?

Environmental Science:

Celine Chen - Chaos at Sea
Morgan Alley - Bio-Plastic Fantastic
Ben McLaren - The Sustainable Garden

Over the next few days we will interview all these students about their projects and then decide which projects will be entered into the NIWA South and East Auckland Science and Technology Fair, to be held at Mission Heights Junior College on 20-21 August. We wish all these students well and all the best for the judging, and their interviews.

It was great to see so many parents and caregivers taking the time to view and purchase books on sale during the three way conferences. We will share the amount raised to purchase new books for the library, for all children to enjoy, in the next newsletter.

The event was organised and led by Ella from the Gecko Trust and Cate and Frazer from Sustainable Schools. Three local schools took part: Cockle Bay Primary, Howick College and Somerville Intermediate. We even had a university student (local school alumni) join us.

We started the day by helping transfer the carex plants across to the plant site. Ella taught us how to plant “like a ninja”. Then equipped with spades, gloves and a bucket load of enthusiasm, we set about our task. The Eco-Warriors worked in small groups, often with students from other schools. It was amazing to see the younger students working with the intermediate and college age students. The older ones got alongside and took them under their wing.

First the older students dug the holes, then removed the carex plants from their pots. After placement in the hole, the soil was replaced and patted down. With carefully calculated spacing, the newly planted carex plants will form a natural buffer to help shield the manuka trees. Altogether we planted five hundred carex plants in total.

After lunch, Ella took us on an ecological health survey of the reserve. We assessed whether Mangemangeroa is ecologically healthy by trying to observe a range of indicators. We saw birds, insects, plants and abiotic features. Did you know that Mangemangeroa has rats, mice, possums and even stoats? The Head Boy at Howick, Ethan, (also a former Somerville student) organises a small team of year thirteen students who set and clear the traps on a regular basis.

The advantage of our school being located right next to Mangemangeroa is that we were able to explore a little longer after the others had departed. We walked the pathway down to Shelley Beach and learned about bees by visiting some beehives.

It was a tired, yet satisfied group of students who returned to school at the end of the day; our legs were fatigued and our muscles ached. Yet, we all had an awesome time and learnt a lot throughout the day. Many students stated how much fun they had had; the smiles on their faces testified to the memories created.

Mr Read would like to thank David and Caitlin, our two adult helpers for their assistance and the wonderful team from Gecko Trust and Sustainability Schools. It was a privilege to be part of this tree plant.

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How we used the Speed Gun:
All Monitors had at least 3 or 4 turns at using the Speed gun. By doing this we would simply hold down the bright orange trigger and then aim at the car by following it down the road. The speed the driver was going flashed on the screen and we recorded them.

Our results: (Speed limit = 40km per hour during school hours)
The highest speed recorded was 62km which resulted as 12 kilometres over the speed limit.
Our lowest speed recorded was 16km, thank you, driver, for keeping all students safe.

When we were checking the speed, we noticed that as soon as the drivers saw us they immediately slowed down although they were driving much faster before they saw us. When we moved up near the slope we observed that they were a lot faster including a few that even went over 60 Kilometres per hour! Many of the drivers were within the speed limit but we still saw driver's much over the school hours speed limit (40km), even when we were barely 10 metres away from the school which is concerning as this could be endangering our fellow students.

Overall all Travelwise Monitors enjoyed the experience. And we can’t wait for the next morning duty.

Thank you to Miss Carter for organising this event.

Reported by Ayaan Lambert and Krysten Kan