Golden Key Mentoring Programme - Alex Zhou & Xavier Yeo

By Shona Mckenzie | Posted: Friday June 25, 2021

I was excited when my teacher said that I would be in the Mentoring Programme.

The teacher gave me a notice that the programme would be coming up soon. When the day came, I was buzzing with excitement. My mentor’s name was Grace Hanlon and she was working on her Master of Science degree. My partner, who was from this school, was Isabella Prince. We were going to work on a poster on Water Science!. We decided on this topic because my partner and I had both done the Water Science Badge last term. So we got into it.

The first few weeks, we just planned out how to do everything. We wrote information on Google Docs and Google Slides for our presentation. After we did the draft on slides, we decorated the slides and printed them out. Then we glued them on the poster and that was probably the first part done! Grace drew patterns around the pieces of paper so it stood out a little more. Now was the fun part. This was the part where we decorated the poster. We drew pictures, printed and lots of photos, stuck on stickers and that was probably it. I drew a funky title in bold letters and then we were pretty much done!

Finally, after some work and more work, we finished the poster. It was worth the time. It looked amazing in the end and finally, the day came. I went to the University of Canterbury and met up with my group. Grace had already set our presentation up but something was wrong. I forgot my school uniform. Oops! My teacher said it was okay so I forgot about it. But wow! Everyone’s presentations looked so cool!. I wandered around and looked at other people’s presentations. There was a very wide variety of presentations. Sherbet, Deja Vu, Rocks, Food, a model of the Golden Gate Bridge, Movies and those are just a few. Overall, the programme was really interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. I got a certificate at the end and said farewell to my mentor.

By Alex Zhou

Room 5 

Earthquakes - Xavier

My mentor’s name was Kian Laylo and he was an engineer that studied rockets, mathematics and science. Our group consisted of Hayato, Alex Y, Harry and myself. Hayato and Alex were Year Eights while Harry and I were still in Year Seven. Our mentor told us that we needed to have the main topic and had all of us list down topics we would like to research and present. We all came up with different, unique ideas but we didn’t have a topic that we all agreed on. However, we noticed that all of our ideas were related to destruction. After lots of discussions, we decided that our main topic was about Earthquakes as they are great destructive forces. Our mentor, Kian Laylo, would delegate a small task for each member of the group. These included researching a topic, finding a design or creating a document with graphs and earthquake-related images.

After the first two weeks, we decided to make a model pyramid out of marshmallows, tape and spaghetti as they were fragile materials and it would have been more challenging for us. The purpose of it was to show how earthquake-proof buildings and structures were built. Our group also designed and decorated a science project board filled with research we had gathered as a group - with each of us researching one main point and printing out our research to glue onto the project board. We all made equal contributions and although it was work, we had lots of fun.

Six weeks of building, researching and designing our project board flew by and soon it was the day to present our project. We all met up at the University of Canterbury at six o’clock on the presentation day and in the same room were about twenty other presentations that the other groups from different schools had made and designed. Each project was to be put on a table and while waiting for everyone else to get ready, we had a look at what the other groups had done. Some of the other groups' presentations included a film, a sherbet making station, the evolution of food, a shaking bridge and much more. There was lots of food, water and people there that night and our presentation was one of the most popular as many people were visiting our table. After presenting for about an hour or so, there was a prize-giving and each of us received a Certificate of Achievement. In the end, I had made great relationships with my mentor and group and the programme was really fun and enjoyable

By Xavier Yeo

Room 5