Schools combine to ASSIST community | Taranaki News | Local News in Taranaki

A GROUP of students from Inglewood and Stratford Primary Schools have been honing their thinking and planning skills together.
The ASSIST programme (it stands for Amalgamated Schools, Stratford, Inglewood Sharing Talents) gives the kids involved a chance to share knowledge and encourages the cross fertilisation of ideas, says Inglewood Primary School principal Karen Patterson.
“We’ve made this programme just between our two schools with 10 children from each school, like-minded kids working together on conceptual ideas, taking them every which way.”
The project aims to extend some of the schools’ most able students and to foster the students’ inquiry and higher order thinking skills. It runs over two weeks, with each school hosting one week. The first week is spent on planning and the second on carrying out the plans. This year the planning week was held in Stratford, and the action week in Inglewood.
The theme was ‘giving back to the community’, which involved discussion and activities about what a community is, and contains, and then the children had to think of various projects they could do to contribute to their community, and carry them out.
Some of the projects were organising a party at a local kindergarten, visiting a retirement home, car washes and a market day. Other activities included exercises such as  running outside in the rain, barefoot, then writing about how it felt.
The two groups of children had to get to know others with a different school background, and to learn to work together.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the project. Two of the participants were Josh Hook and Grace Fowler.
“We went down to the rest home and visited people that didn’t get many visitors in. They seemed to enjoy having us there. We went down to the kindy and had a party for the kindy kids too, ” said Grace. “We played lots of games with them and had pinatas.”
“When we walked in and they realised what we were doing, they were all just bright eyed and really excited,” added Josh.
At the week they spent at Stratford Primary, the students had to design and create a town and everything it would need to operate, out of play dough.
Meanwhile, Josh and Grace are also in the school’s successful Year 8 debating team, along with fellow ASSIST kids Liam Jury and Alexis Allen. The four are in training under coach Anne Talbot-Bracey for a debate with a team from Sacred Heart Girls College.