ATSI

Wii Gaay Camp 2021

On Monday 19th March, Jaydah Duncan of Year 5 travelled to Armidale with Shirley Johnson to attend the first Wii Gaay Hub for 2021.

This years camp was centered around the 2021 NAIDOC theme "Heal Country!".

The camp was held at the beautiful Echidna Gully just outside of Armidale. After a nervous start Jaydah made some new friends and settled in for some amazing learning activities relating to Literacy, Numeracy and IT.

Literacy

The students had to write a news report about a subject they chose from the book 'Young Dark Emu' by Bruce Pascoe. Studenst were given 5 subjects highlighted in the book to choose from - Agriculture, Aquaculture, Structures, Homes and Fire. Jaydah chose fire as her subject and read a section from the book on her chosen subject.

There were 4 workshops set up for students to gather information and then write out a report.  The facilitators of the workshop then recorded each student reading their report as a “news reporter”. Once these recording have been edited, they will be forwarded to the students respective schools..

Numeracy

This was a fun and challenging activity for the students. Students had to build their own scales to measure the weight of objects they collected. There were lots of hands on deck to assist with the building. Once their scales were completed, the students tried weighing various objects.  At the end of the activity, students were given a special bag to take home their scales.

Information Technology(I.T)

This activity was very exciting for the students. They had to choose two photos that they felt a connection to, then they had to write two quotes or small stories to put onto their photos using iPads. Once this was done, the photos were used to create a slide show and presented on the last night,  it was “deadly”.

One of the more exciting parts of camp, was when a camera crew came in and interviewed the staff and students at the camp. Jaydah was given the opportunity to be interviewed on camera and featured in a video about Wii Gaay. You can view the video below.

With the last three Wii Gaay camps being cancelled due to bushfires and then by Covid, this camp was well overdue and was a pleasure to be a part of. The students were all amazing, polite, respectful and above all happy to be finally be at camp. We are looking forward to the next camp.