Year 7 News

By Lisa Dixon | Posted: Monday March 30, 2026

As the end of the first term approaches we reflect on how far our Year 7 students have come over their first term at Balmacewen and how busy we have been!

From getting to know their new classes, starting sport and cultural activities, school swimming, camps and completing our first PBL it has been a packed term.

Our Year 7 classes have completed their first PBL unit for the term and this week presented their finished ŪkaipŌ videos to their peers and shared out to their class communities. This has been a great learning curve for the students to not only research, plan and organise themselves for the content for their video, but also the techie skills of of how to navigate the CANVA video platform. Alongside this we have completed our literacy focus of moment in time writing, creative writing and readings to tie in with our New Zealand Histories focus through articles, journals and podcasts.

As part of this, the Year 7 team celebrated our cultures and unique heritage by having a shared lunch and dress up day. Students were able to dress in their appropriate cultural attire and brought along a special dish from their culture or special family dish to share.

We have continued our work on the Balmac way with a focus on our school core concepts and values. In class, students have completed a number of activities to reinforce these ideas with a focus on "this is how we do it here".

School swimming for the Year 7 students finished this week with rotations in swimming lessons and water skills during their sessions as a lead up to the school swimming sports/carnival that we had this week.

Next term our focus shifts to Health and Wellbeing, starting the term with our Puberty unit. As part of our "Hauora Heroes" unit we will be covering many aspect of health and wellbeing. We will start the term with an ignitor visit to the Anatomy museum, have a number of guest speakers planned for our Year 7 Assemblies and will be planning a health related PBL for the end of term. We also have the educator from St John's working on Wellbeing with each of our classes for a six week programme.

Thank you again to all of our parents and caregivers who continue to support our class programmes and activities. Have a happy easter and a relaxing holiday and we look forward to starting the term refreshed and ready for Term Two.

Lisa Dixon

On behalf of the Year 7 Team.