This week, the following article appeared in the Southern Times Messenger. Our video can also be viewed below.

KWN 2011 from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

Last night our Immigration movie was screened at the Mercury Cinema as a part of the Education Department’s New Media Film Festival. Several students from our class attended the festival to represent our movie team and received a certificate and iPod touch for their participation in this event. If you haven’t had a chance to see our movie it can be found in an earlier post on this site.

Festival Kapa Haka 2011 from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

Finally, we are pleased to be able to post the video of our Kapa Haka performance at this year’s Public Schools Music Festival. The boys worked hard on their performance and will soon join some other students from Hackham East on our mini tour to Adelaide schools. We are on the look out for a new Haka to learn for next year. If you know a Haka other than Ka Mate or Tika Tonu and would like to teach us, we would love to hear from you. Press play and enjoy the performance.

Today, I was asked to post the following message by Mr Thiele (our Principal)

“The sympathy of the Hackham East School community goes to Jake and Tyler on the tragic loss of their mother, Lisa who was one of those special parents who help make Hackham East such a special school. She was a wonderfully active supporter of the school footy teams. I would like to acknowledge the boys who were able to attend Lisa’s funeral on Friday to support Jake and Tyler. I know that that support will continue both in and out of school.

Bob Thiele, Principal”

The last week has brought sad times for our class and school community. The thoughts of all of us are with Jake and Tyler as they deal with the loss of their mum, who tragically passed away last Sunday. Lisa will be missed. On Friday most of our boys (including many of last years class members) attended Lisa’s funeral to show their support for Jake and Tyler. I have always been proud of my class, but the support they showed for their friend on Friday was a true display of what friendship and compassion is all about. I am extremely proud of all of them and am sure that they will continue to support their friends as they return to school.

KWN 2011 from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

This week Ashton, Jack and I travelled to Sydney to take part in the Panasonic KWN Movie Awards. Hosted by Toni Pearen, the awards are held each year to acknowledge the work done by students in this film making competition. This year our student won the South Australian Primary Award for their film ‘Immigration Australia: A Special Report’. This is the second year in a row that our class has won this prize. The award comes with $2000 of prize money to spend on Panasonic goods. We would like to congratulate all of the students that contributed to this year’ films. Click play above to see our 2011 entry.

Our students with other KWN teams and judges Toni Pearen (actor), Luke Carroll (actor), Tim Farriss (INXS)

2010 Festival Performance from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

This week we had a our first visit from some year 7 boys from Kangarilla Primary School. The boys are visiting us each week to learn Haka to perform at their graduation ceremony at the end of this term. We are teaching the boys Ka Mate and are reposting this video to help them with their actions.

In the last week, Apple have released some major updates to their operating system for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The new updates have some great features that will be really handy in the classroom. Unfortunately, the new software is not compatible with our class app. We are working on rebuilding our app to work with iOS5 and will let you know as soon as an update is available. Our Android app is still working fine.

We have a new member of our class starting this week… and iPad 2! We are lucky enough to be able have one just for use in our classroom. I would be very interested to hear from other classes about how iPad is used in your own classroom.

Term 3 has been a hectic one for our class. Some great learning has happened and we have had some good opportunities to participate in some pretty special events. Today, we spent some time reflecting on some of these opportunities.

KAPA HAKA
Our Kapa Haka Boys have had a HUGE term with two very important performances. The boys have worked hard all year preparing for these events including a weekend sleepover rehearsal where we had the chance to work with an adult Kapa Haka group to improve our performance skills.

The first of our major performances was the South Australian Opening of the Rugby World Cup. We were asked to perform at this event by Premier Mike Rann. The boys did an impressive job and had the chance to mingle with the crowd made up of our South Australian rugby community.

Our second big performance was as an assisting artist at the South Australian Public Schools Music Festival. At this event, the boys performed their set for 2000 people on the main stage at the festival theatre. Their performance was outstanding and was given a HUGE round of applause by the audience. We have received several phone calls and emails from people who were in the audience congratulating the boys on their performance and from this we will now be teaching Haka to a group of students from Kangarilla Primary School next term.

CHOIR
The night after out Kapa Haka boys performed, some of the boys from our class performed in the choir at the Festival. The choir performed 14 songs for a new audience of 2000 people. The did a fantastic job and represented our class and school brilliantly.

PANASONIC KWN MOVIE COMPETITION
Our KWN team have done a great job with this year’s entry. They have worked hard to create a very professional movie about Immigration in Australia and have now been rewarded by being selected as finalists in the competition. Two students and I will travel to Sydney for the final awards ceremony in week one of term 4.

SPORT
This week has been Sports Week at Hackham East. Our class performed well and enjoyed participating in a variety of events. Our class took out 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in both the year 6 and 7 boys sprints. This term has been a big one for sports outside of school with Raph travelling to Canberra as part of the South Australian state team for soccer and Tãne travelling to victoria as part of the state rugby team. In these school holidays Tãne and Ashton will both compete interstate as part of State Rugby teams.

It is always good to see success for students, and I am very proud of how far these boys have come this year. They have earned a rest for these school holidays and I am looking forward to seeing what they can achieve in term 4.

Congratulations to our class KWN movie team who have been selected as finalists for their move ‘Immigration Australia: A Special Report’. We received notification late last week that the movie had progressed to the finals. On Tuesday 18th October Ashton, Jack and I will be flown to Sydney for a day of sight seeing and then attend the 2011 Panasonic KWN Movie Awards ceremony the next day. At the ceremony, we will be in the running for a range of awards including an overall state award and a technical awards. A HUGE thank you to the Mubake family for sharing their story with us. Please check out the movie in the post below and tell us what you think!

KWN 2011 from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

Our KWN team has been working hard on this year’s entry to the Panasonic film competition. Once again, it has been a fantastic learning experience that has supported our learning about immigration in Australia. This years team have once again produced an excellent end product and we are very happy to share it here.

On the 27th of July, Cardijn College put on a performance at the Noarlunga theatre. The performance was called Guys and Dolls. Guys and Dolls had a large range of 21 songs. The play was very artistic, using bright colours when things were going good and dark colours when things went bad, which I thought was a clever idea. In person I think the bright colours catch peoples eyes and brights the stage up.

The number of characters in this play are 21 and more. The length of the play was 2 and a half hours long with a half time interval. The audience really was mesmerized at the acting of most of the students. Our class gives this play a 10/10.

New Project 3 from Jarrod Lamshed on Vimeo.

This term we have been exploring current issues around asylum seekers and refugees. These students have written a song inspired by the stories of the thousands of people who flee their countries in search of a better life. The song is called “Freedom”. The boys recorded the song and their video over the last two days of the term. The lyrics of the song are below. Click the video above to play.

Freedom
by Toby, Ashton and Maxx

I woke up this morning
and I just knew there’d be trouble
I woke up this morning
and I just knew there’d be trouble

Sitting in the dust of the earth I love
The earth that’s got my soul yeah
They came in their rusty boats yeah
They came in their rusty boats

The clouds gathered in the sky
Like the storm that knotted in my belly
I wanna stay here where my brothers stay
But I’m on the boat to freedom

They came in their rusty boats man
They came in their rusty boats yeah
Took me to a place that was foreign to me
It was cold and dark and so unfriendly

No-one smiled at me
no-one cared as my tears wet the ground
No-one smiled at me
no-one cared as my tears wet the ground

They came in their rusty boats yeah
They came in their rusty boats
The clouds gathered in the sky
Like the storm that knotted in my belly
I wanna stay here where my brothers stay
But I’m on the boat to freedom

They came in their rusty boats yeah
They came in their rusty boats
The clouds gathered in the sky
Like the storm that knotted in my belly
I wanna stay here where my brothers stay
But I’m on the boat to freedom

Meet our 2011 KWN movie competition team! The boys have organised their roles and are ready to start filming their movie when school returns next term. Our topic this year is ‘Refugees in Australia’ and has been inspired by local stories of families in our school community as well as the story of Anh Do who presented at last year’s KWN inspiration sessions.

Congratulations to our class Kapa Haka group who received official word that we have been selected as an assisting artist for this year’s Public Schools Music Festival. The boys will perform in front of around 2000 people at the Festival Theatre on September 15th.

Congratulations also go to Raph who was selected for the State Soccer team for his age group and to Tãne who was selected for the State Rugby team. Well done everyone!