Walking the campaign trail isn’t easy at the best of times, but throw in a lockdown just as you’re taking your first step, and the walk quickly becomes a trudge.

Our 10 candidates for Student Rep on our Board of Trustees took it all their stride when Auckland moved to Alert Level 3 just as they had been confirmed as candidates. So, during lockdown each of them created a 1min video, crafted posters and flyers to distribute once back at school, completed Candidate Profiles for our website, and practiced their speeches for a lunchtime presentation.

The results have been impressive and all of our students now have the difficult task of selecting one of these amazing young women as our 2020/21 Student Rep. Voting papers were distributed recently and students have until 5pm this coming Wednesday to cast their vote.

We ran all of the videos together to make this gorgeous compilation. It’s definitely worth a look – whether you’re able to vote or not!

Student Video

By Moe Tun and Zara Wilson
Year 11 Culinary Creators

This year in Year 11 Food Technology, the four classes had the wonderful opportunity of creating a meal solution for a person in need.

As part of our market research, we looked at different forms of meal solutions available and even got to taste various pre-prepared meals. Next, we looked into existing community meal solution providers and the communities they provide for. From that, and considering the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has greatly affected many people financially, we decided to create a meal solution for people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We chose to create frozen pre-prepared meals to address this issue.

Moe: My target audience was a single person with an extremely busy lifestyle living alone in a small apartment. They would not have the resources to cook a full nutritious meal for themselves every day. This is because they may be working multiple jobs, and with extra precautions needed due to COVID-19, their work shifts would be much longer and stressful.

Zara: The target market I chose to make my meal for was an elderly person. This is because they usually rely on families or neighbours to bring them meals but because of COVID-19 restrictions, that may not be able to happen. They may also lack cooking skills and  struggle to make a healthy meal that fits their nutrition needs.

We looked into different cultures that we could base our meal on and decided to go with the Mexican culture. The Mexican culture has many traditional meals but we thought the quesadillas were best suited for our need and target market.

The four Food Technology classes all donated our meals to The Salvation Army in Glenfield. They were very appreciative of the frozen meals and hearing that was definitely very heartwarming. We felt really good about donating our food as it was our way of giving back to the community and helping people who are in need of a healthy meal.

We got this feedback from The Salvation Army:

“Zara and Moe’s meal was given to a man that can not afford food. He came back to the Salvation Army building a couple of hours after thanking the salvation army for the delicious meal. His words were: ‘Best meal I have ever eaten, thank you so much’.”

Thank you for this awesome opportunity allowing us to make a meal for those in need. The feedback The Salvation Army received  really shows the meals were needed. We are planning to continue making meals and donating them.

Term 3 and 4 Key Dates

Tuesday 22 September: Gala Concert
Friday 25 September:  Chinese Night
Friday 25 September: Last Day of Term
Friday 2 October: Korean Night (in the school holidays)

Monday 12 October: Term 4 begins
Friday 23 October: Year 13 Ball
Monday 26 October: Labour Day (school closed)
Tuesday 27 October: Music Awards Dinner
Friday 30 October: Senior Reports issued
Friday 30 October: Sports Awards
Wednesday 4 November (day): Special Awards Prizegiving
Wednesday 4 November (evening): Senior Prizegiving
Thursday 5 November: Study Leave for Seniors begins
Friday 6 November: School closed
Monday 16 November: NCEA exams begin
Monday 9 November: Junior exams begin
Thursday 12 November: Junior exams end
Wednesday 9 December: NCEA exams finish
Wednesday 9 December: Junior Prizegiving
Wednesday 9 December: Term 4 finishes
Saturday 12 December: Second-hand Uniform Shop Sale

Parent Portal Passwords

Our apologies for the delay in getting the Parent Portal Passwords to you after our major IT issue. It has taken us longer than expected to rebuild our system but we will have a new password to you next week. Please note that some of the information stored in the Portal, has proven irretrievable. Our team has been piecing together as much information as possible to rebuild your daughter’s profile, however you will see gaps – particularly around school reports and financial information. When you receive the email, please go into the Portal to check your daughter’s profile. You will be able to confirm or correct information as needed.

Further changes to NCEA for students in Auckland

The government has made additional changes to NCEA for students in Auckland, to recognise the 13 days of classroom time lost during the recent Alert Level 3 lockdown.

Extra Learning Recognition credits
Learning Recognition (LR) credits were introduced this year to recognise the classroom time lost during the nationwide lockdown earlier this year. Extra LR credits are now available to students in Auckland because of the additional COVID disruption in August.

Changes to earning rate and LR credit maximums

These changes apply to all the credits students achieve in 2020, including credits earned before the recent lockdown, and cover internal assessment, exams and portfolios.

Changes to certificate endorsements
Instead of 46 credits, you will now need 44 credits to earn Merit or Excellence Certificate Endorsements.

How to notify us of an absence

This is a friendly reminder that you need to email [email protected] and your daughter’s Form Teacher if she is going to be absent from school – even if it’s just an hour for an appointment.  If you email ‘office’ or ‘westlakegirls’ the Attendance Officer won’t see it. Your daughter will be recorded as absent and could receive a detention. Nobody wants that!

By Damla Temizsoy
Motorsport Enthusiast

Ever since I was younger I was involved in motorsport. First it was my parents watching motorsport, and then as I grew older I started to watch motorsport and anything else that involves speed. So when I saw the opportunity to be involved in the Motorsport Club, and actually be part of the making of a racing kart (and possibly drive) I jumped at the chance.

For the past three years in Motorsport Club (also known as the Evolocity Club) we have been building electric karts to compete in the Evolocity competition. Evolocity is a competition that encourages secondary students to build, innovate and compete with electric karts and bikes. We put our karts and/or bikes through drag races, tight circuit races and more at regional and national competitions at the end of the year (you can find out more here https://evolocity.co.nz/about-evolocity/).

For our first year in the competition, we built Frankenkart. We bought the chassis off the internet and customized it for our electric motor. Last year we built Optimus Pram. We upcycled a double baby buggy and adapted it again to our electric motor and improved its safety since we would be racing in it. At last year’s competition, we won the ‘Show Award’ for the most interesting car.

This year, our team of eight decided to base this our kart (Woody) on planes from WW1. This enabled us to have more control over the design and innovation of our kart rather than buying a chassis. We have been using the wood workshop in our school to build our kart but any engineering expertise and help would be welcome.

We are also using Ardunio to measure things such as RPM, speed, voltage and other important information, and we will create a dashboard to display the information to the driver. We think we will finish the kart this month, which will give us lots of time to test it. If everything goes according to plan, the race is set to take place at the Whenuapai Air Force Base on 8 November.

Since I joined Motorsport Club in 2018 I gained so many new skills such as riveting, how to tap screw threads, how to properly use a drill, how to wire a motor and this club really developed an interest in me for mechanical/mechatronics engineering. I would highly recommend it for any students who are interested in engineering.

If you have engineering capability and/or facilities and would like to assist the team, please email Hard Materials Technology teacher Jez Scull ([email protected]).

Pictured above from left: Damla Temizsoy, Emily Y Zhu, Ruby McNamee, Yasmin Darwish, Cindy Tang, Lauren Dorrell, Rozanne Kruger.
Absent: Amena Yezdan