Fakaalofa Lahi atu, I’m Chevelle, a year 7 student who attends Point England school, aged 11 years old. Last week on Wednesday our year 7-step up programme was coming up. During the morning we had the teachers explain the programme to all of our year 7’s. Each individual teacher called our names out. Later after they called our names each, we had to remain in that group for the last three days.
Our group chose our two leaders that we thought would step-up and show leadership. Our two leaders were Justine and Ariyana. We were then commanded to form a circle with the whole group. We tried to think of a group name, there were two suggestions, first name buckles, second name the bold eagles. We fairly chose our group name by putting our hand’s up on which was best, Buckles was what most of us chose.
Whaea saf explained what we were doing for our first challenge which was a haka challenge, we all had to participate during this challenge. Our group had to put 100 percent into this challenge in order to win, we practised for half-an hour. The other groups names were announced during the haka challenge, Ms Lagitupu’s group was named Mana, while Ms Tipene’s group name was Hustlers.
Mana, Buckles, and the Hustlers sat down on each side of the street, each girl leader from each group went up to play rock paper scissors. Our leader won and listed which group was going first for the haka challenge, our strategy was putting the biggest group first. Hustlers were first up, and Mana was second, we were last in order to see what volume the other two groups had.
First up, the Hustlers went on and did their Haka first, I enjoyed how they all participated. I can tell they used teamwork in order to be successful, they all went hundred percent and showed leadership. The Mana group walked up to the front of the street, they all got in position. They started hyping their group up in order for them to be confident.
They started performing, while the audience was watching. They were all trying their best to be positive. Overall their performance was surprising, they participated to give it their all. Their chant was surprisingly welcoming, they all shouted the lyrics from the chant to hype up the whole room. The audience continued loudly cheering from afar, which filled the whole space volume to 100 percent. Next up was Buckles, there was loud cheering coming from each side of the room, we then got into positions where we could see the leaders in the front. The leaders of our group started shouting the first part before the big performance, hyping all of us up. There were some shy people during our performance, but still gave it our all during the haka. Right after our chant was up next, sounding a bit loud at first filling most of the room volume. Afterwards there were points given to us by each teacher’s group individually, Ms Lagitupu, Whaea Saf, and Ms Tipene. There was no winner said against the haka challenge which did leave us in confusion for the last two days.
The following time Mrs Ilaoa explained that we were going over to our classes for our very first rotation of the day, after explaining we went up walking over to our classes and sitting down. Whaea Saf described what our first rotation was for today, we had our morning tea break before our rotation even started. We were told to first go straight to the hall after morning tea time was over. Our group was waiting for Whaea Saf to arrive soon. As soon as Whaea Saf arrived she all told us to go in groups of 3 people each. We started off with a pen and paper, writing down what we think that Maori word is. It did take us a while for our group to figure it out. After rotating each side, we then came to a stop once we discovered each 4 Maori words. Whaea Saf wanted to explain a warm up game to do before our rotation started. The activity was called human tic tac toe, the game described that 2 groups had to verse each other. We had three people in each group, we had to run around the chair and make a row of three people, while the other group had to do the exact same thing but faster. We first started up with a warm up challenge, two first groups went up to get it over with by starting first. It was interesting seeing them verse each other, surprisingly one of the groups won by around seconds. Next up were eliminations, we all had two groups to verse each. We succeeded in participating in each round of human tic tac toe. Soon enough Whaea Saf explained our rotation of the day. We had to play rock paper scissors with the other group right next to us. If we won, we would run straight to the other side of the hall, where there were silly costumes with a small piece of chocolate on a plate. There was a knife and fork right next to the plate, in order to be able to cut the chocolate, And pick it right up with the fork. but there was a tricky twist between this activity. Once you run straight there to put the silly costume on your teammate would most likely have to keep winning in order for you to keep going, but if your teammate loses you would most constantly have to take the costume all off and run straight back, and repeat.
The first round started, most of the groups were pretty confused as we continued playing. We did start to get used to it bit by bit. In my group were Dallas, Khaing Shwe , and myself. Our activity was quite challenging, everyone challenged each other, their faces were filled with laughter, and joy.
We moved on to the final rounds, everyone participated, giving it their all.
Our group moved on to the next activity which seemed like a tricky obstacle, we went into girl versus boy rounds, each person from each group had to compete against one person. There were flat rubber platforms placed on the ground that went on zig zags. There were metal bars that almost looked like chairs, we had to jump over them to get straight to the next course. There was a net that’s meant for crawling under, with big heavy weight bags on the side of them. Jumping ropes were at the end of the course, we had to do 5 jumps until we ran straight back. We did practise rounds to learn the rules. Elimination rounds were up next, but this time we had to do 10 jumps on the jump rope.
We played all the rounds containing us to be completely finished, we lined up in two lines and walked back to team 5. We had our lunch, then after we had our lunch break.
After lunch we lined up in our group lines in the street, Ms Tipene explained we were going to participate in sports, there were three different sports, basketball, Volleyball, and dodgeball. Whaea Saf took our group to play some basketball right outside of room 3.
There were some people from the Hustlers group, we had six people from Buckles to compete with six other people from the Hustlers groups. The first six people from each group ran straight to the middle where the ball was located. We played all the rounds, most of us were exhausted throughout the whole afternoon. Later we walked back into team 5, then sat directly on the ground. Ms Ilaoa notified that day one was completed, we went back to our assigned classes, then proceeded to go home.
The next day was our second rotation, my group was rotating to Ms Lagitupu.
Ms Lagitupu explained our rotation was related to dancing. There was a list of songs on the google slide we had to choose from. We had a group of 4 each, Ms Lagitupu assigned us to classes to start our dance, she gave us half an hour to complete our dance. Our group picked a song to dance to for the last 30 minutes. After those 30 minutes Ms Lagitupu told all of us to come back to room 4, each group had to show our performance to the whole class. Ms Lagitupu started recording each group’s performances. I enjoyed how each group gave it a go. We had our morning tea time break, before our final sports game of the day. Dodgeball was our final sport to finish off the day. We played against Mana, and Hustlers. After all the rounds Mana was declared winner of the game. We went back to the street to finish the day off.
Day three was our last day of the year 7 step-up programme.
Buckles went straight into our last rotation of the day, Ms Tipene’s rotation was activities.
We went into groups of 7. Then at the end of the day we watched a movie, with snacks.