Bayfield High School pupils have taken their message to the world by putting together a radio show - and producing a film about their experiences.
Their two hour show, "Bay Tunes," which aired today on Dunedin's Monster FM, included a round-table discussion on local recent events such as the new sculptures of teeth on Portsmouth Drive, and the construction of a playground close to the car-park at Bayfield Park.
There was also some local news, a promotional piece about changes to Bayfield's uniform, and a jingle for the school's upcoming show, Spamalot.
The show was a joint initiative between the Year 10 English classes taught by Bridget Murphy and Linda Scott-Araya and a group of three students and teacher Sonia van de Klundert, from Aoraki Polytechnic's Radio Diploma course
During the show Bayfield students also welcomed to the classroom Bayfield's own talented musicians Ethan Cameron Tohiariki, Will Hannagan, and Oliver Dearnley Smith of the "Crawling JELLY!" band.
The students performed and were then interviewed. Some of these same students have now just found out that they have won the V48 Hours Furious Film making Competition's "Best Worst Film," in the city finals. Paradoxically, this is a great honour and the students are thrilled.
One group of year 10 students also interviewed three of the leads of Spamalot, in an interview, which, true to the nature of Monty Python, descended into comical farce, with the year 13 boys delivering a mish-mash of their lines interspersed with the lines "You're listening to Dunedin's Monster FM!"
As well as those students who were actually involved in delivering prepared interviews, skits, and advertisements, everyone had the chance to be involved in ‘shout-outs.' Other students used their talents in film-making and editing to produce a short film about the making of the radio show.
This was also a chance for them to gain from the experience of Steph-Mai, a year 13 Media Studies student. We hope to show this short film at this year's school Open Night.
Finally, students from both classes then learned more about transactional writing, writing for a specific purpose and a target audience as they wrote articles to be included in this issue of Bayleaf.
Both Ms Murphy and Ms Scott Araya were thrilled with the collaborative and interactive learning experience in which the students engaged, and excited about the ways in which senior students and people from the radio industry were able to mentor the younger students so effectively.
A big thank you to Aoraki Polytechnic's Sonia van de Klundert and her students for their patience, their humour, the wonderful prizes and quizzes, and most of all, for what they were able to teach our students.
- Lynda Scott-Araya
