MAGS Blog!

On the morning of Saturday 15th June, more than 20 anxious MAGS students rolled up at Auckland International Airport to meet their French exchange students for the first time. Families got to know each other in the hour long wait for the kids to emerge with French teacher, Madame Olive. There was a flurry of excitement and a jumble of "will I recognise her?" and "is that them?!" as the wait grew longer and nerves escalated. Eventually a bunch of familiar faces rounded the corner, and students and their families awkwardly met their new house guests for the next five weeks. The French kids spent three weeks at school with their students, following them around classes and making new friends. They got the chance to practise their English skills and learn different subjects, even though in France it is the Summer holidays! After the three weeks of work, the real fun began! MAGS students took their kids on road trips throughout the country, visiting places such as Taupo, ...

Quitting Added Sugar It has been my goal, this year, to not consume added sugar . I have eaten honey a few times, and maple syrup on my sugar-free pancakes. Most breads contain added sugar too. But for the most part, I have avoided added sugar by cutting cakes, chocolates, ice cream, and all those other “ amazing ” sweets from my life. I’m often asked “How do you do it!?” “Why do you do it?” That’s what I’m going to shine light on today, because quitting added sugar is totally feasible, for you too. There are two types of sugar; added and naturally occurring. Added sugars are added to food products during the manufacturing process. Naturally occurring sugars are those that “ naturally occur ” in fruits, vegetables and dairy. They’re chemically indifferent in the way our bodies process them, the difference is the form in which we consume them. When we eat natural sugars we consume them with other nutrients, fibres and proteins that are vital for our health, whereas added sugar...

Last Friday, thirteen students, accompanied by science teachers Mrs Nisha and Mr Frank, attended the 2019 NIWA Auckland Science Fair, held at Mount Roskill Grammar School. The students had worked either individually or in pairs to perform a science fair project and display their experiments and findings on a board for the fair. Projects from 29 different schools crowded the hall at Mount Roskill Grammar School and the vast range of experiments and the detailed knowledge displayed was astounding. It was open to public viewing on Friday evening and Saturday and drew a lot of fascinated supporters, enjoying the creative display boards and getting fascinated by the results of hours and hours of work from hundreds of students. Projects were entered into specific categories - such as material world, living world, technology - and within each category were prizes for first, second and third as well as highly commended. Several MAGS projects took out prizes, with a first and third p...