Working together to face our challenges

We are back at Ruapotaka School but learning in the library instead of Room 10 at the moment. To help us think about working together as we face our latest challenges, we completed a teamwork challenge. Each team was given 25 straws, one strip of Blutak and five minutes to see who could build the tallest tower.



It wasn't really about the tallest tower, it was about taking turns to talk, listening to others, co-operating and collaborating as each team came up with a plan. It was wonderful to see three-quarters of the teams face this challenge successfully!

Olympics: Finding out about Turkey - by Julianne

We have been working together to find about Turkey and the Olympics.

Crossing the river!

This morning we challenged ourselves to work in groups to solve a problem: how could we work together successfully to cross the imaginary river in Room 10?

We came up with some different strategies but the most successful team ripped up their two pieces of paper to make small "stepping stones" to cross the river without getting wet! It was fantastic to see such wonderful teamwork, cooperation and collaboration.

I think the answer is .....

Mrs Pine, the Maths lady, visited Room 10 last week to find out how we are getting along talking about maths and solving maths problems. Since then we have begun to challenge ourselves with one problem for the whole class to solve. To make this easier, we are all learning to share our maths thinking and take time to listen to each other as we work in smaller groups.

Thank you, Mrs Grant!

While it seems like only yesterday that Rooms 9 and 10 began a digital learning journey, we are nearing the end of our first year as Smart Learners. It is remarkable how much we have learnt: from logging in and typing a capital letter to our kawa of care, digital footprint and generally being Cybersmart. None of this would have been possible without Mrs Grant! Thank you, Mrs Grant, for setting us up for success on our incredible learning adventure!

Let's work together!

Yesterday Room 9 and Room 10 worked together to learn how to create a screencast using Snagit. Every Room 9 learner buddied up with a Room 10 learner to talk about and reflect on the favourite movies (so far) from Film Festival 2015. This talking and thinking was to be shared as a screencast. Miss Ginders and Mrs Buchanan were so proud of everyone learning together so successfully at this even though there were some challenges with the internet. When the final versions are ready, students will share these screencasts on individual blogs.