NZL/ENG-Trip to Kumara

Yesterday on the 9/4/2018 the whole year 9 group went on a trip to Kumara for a New Zealand Studies and English lesson for the day. We had to split into 4 groups and those groups would stay together for the whole day.

We had 4 activities to do:

1. Walk to Londonderry rock
2. Dramatization
3. Team Building Activities
4. History Test

For the Londonderry walk we had to take the bus out of town and we went to where the walk started. Well we had to walk a bit to get to the actual walk but our English teacher Mrs Donovan stopped us at some points to tell us the back story of some of these sights that we saw while going to the walk. One of those sights that we saw was the tailings. This was basically how miners removed large rocks back in the day. They had to use pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows to remove large rocks and pile them up. When we got to the start of the walk Mrs Donovan stopped us told us a bit more of history behind mining in Kumara. 

The Londonderry rock was a lot bigger than I imagined and Mrs Donovan told us some old Irish legends that the Irish miners brought to New Zealand. One of those legends was about the Banshee. The Banshee was a spirit of a lady that was killed unjustly and came back to warn people before death comes. She also told us of the changelings and these were basically beings that took the identity of children that wandered too far into the mountains and while they were with the fairies and leprechauns, the changelings would live their lives for them.

The Dramatization activity was okay in my perspective because we got to go see the Historical Bath Sites. It was a lot different than what I had imagined, it was a lot bigger and it looked different than my thoughts on an olden day pool. When we saw it it was full of grass and the rocks that separated the dirt and water were covered in moss, roots and dirt. We had to go into groups and pick a poem for us to act out. My group chose an Irish poem called Blackjack Joe. It was basically about a person who fights this brute called Blackjack Joe and wins and they celebrate. I was the narrator and the others were the actors(of course). We were 1 of 2 groups that actually acted out the poem and the other groups read out their poems that they chose which to me was an easy but effective way of doing so.

After we had lunch we had to do a few team building activities. Mr McDonald was leading this activity and the first team building exercise we did was "crossing the river". We had to split into 3 teams and use lily pads and a plank to get everyone across the "river". If any part of your body touched the "river" you would drown and you will be taken out of the exercise to watch. We had to make sure that one of our limbs were touching the lily pads or he plank at all times other wise that piece of equipment got washed away. My group ended up coming last but at least we got one piece of candy for perseverance at the end. The next exercise was making a catapult. We had to use ropes and sticks to make a catapult. we got a cup with elastic strings on it to launch the ball. We put ours together and it turned out that the cup was too deep which made the ball bounce of the sides of the cups before it launched. The conclusion at the end was that the ball didn't go very far.

Our last activity was a History test. We got told the history behind a person named Richard Seddon. We got in groups and walked to the bill-boards that had information on them. We had to read and search through the paragraphs to find our answers. Our group got most of it done but we missed out a few. It didn't matter at the end because we all got lollies and then we left and went back to school.