Woodwork and metalwork for girls

Press, 9 February 1989, Page 6

Woodwork and metalwork for girls

By

JANE DUNBAR

Woodwork and metalwork classes will . be compulsory for junior Rangi Ruru Girls’ School pupils this year now the school has its own workshop. The workshop was finished just before Christmas and has tools, metal and woodwork machinery. A safety cord runs round the room so all machinery can immediately be turned off if any--thing goes wrong. >

Mrs Claire Wood, who will teach the courses, says she is looking forward to working with girls only. “If there are only girls in the workshop they have to do everything; they can’t get the boys to help,” she said. Workshop craft will be compulsory for Form One and Two pupils, and a seven-week course: compulsory for Form Three and Four. Fourth formers

the choice of taking the subject for the whole year. Workshop technology will be offered as a Form Five course next year, along with a design and technology course for sixth formers' Designing and making board games, cheese platters, and storage racks for cassettes and compact discs, are some of the projects planned for the year. Mrs Wood trained in Auckland and taught metalwork and wood-

work for four years before coming to Christchurch with her husband. Her interest in practical work was encouraged from an early age. Her father was an engineer, and she spent many hours working on projects with him in the garage. She went on to study engineering at the Auckland Polytechnic. She has taught technical drawing at Rangi Ruru for the last two ■years.