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Matangi Whenua Geography Competition

By Cyprus Causer (Year 11)

The annual Matangi Whenua Competition was held at Mt Albert Grammer school and two teams from Sancta Maria College competed in it. There were 17 teams from all over Auckland designed for Year 11 Geography students.

There were two teams representing our school:

Team 1: Lana Shaba, Hena Walls and Cyprus Causer

Team 2: Kim Webster, Thomas King and Isabella Nguyen

The first activity was a general knowledge quiz. This was followed by five rounds of activities, each having a duration of 10 minutes per activity. Teams were required to rotate around these stations and activities included:

· matching the flag to the capital city as well as the country’s outlying.

· moulding geographic-related objects using playdoh; such as a subduction zone, a scatter graph and make land with hills and valleys from contour lines. The sculptures would get a point if there was a close resemblance to what it should look like.

· connecting cities on the map to its name in Maori and match it to a fun fact about the place.

The second round of activities was about identifying features on a topographic map, like locating spot height, forests and measuring distances from A to B. In one of the activities ‘What does the map show’, groups were given 20 maps without titles or keys and had to pick what they thought the map represented. They were given some options and chose the one that best suited. The final round concluded with a ‘Blues clues’ round where we had to guess the country from some clues they gave us.

This was a great learning opportunity as it helped us enhance our knowledge while having a great time! All of this would not have been possible without the support of Mr Rimamate, so Thank you!