Dream~Believe~Achieve - by Jessica

This film is about how we grow and achieve our life goals. From when we were little to how we are now. The people involved were Alexandra, Jozlo, Riiana, Tupouseini and my teacher Mrs Buchanan. Thank you all for working with me.

Music: 7 Years by Lukas Graham and See You Again by Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth (used under Ruapotaka School's One Music Licence).

Celebrating Success! - by Bella

Our inquiry related to celebrating success. We came up with the idea of successful role models. There were some challenges while we created our movie about role models but we got over them and had some fun at the same time.

Celebrating culture and success - by Leilani

Our group has celebrated three cultures in our film. We will show our dances in Samoa, Tongan and Maori. This video was made by our team work and facing challenges.

What is Teamwork? - by Tyron

Teamwork is when you work with people and do something together and have fun. For an example: when you're cleaning up a room and people help and you all do it together that is called Teamwork. Teamwork is a good way of doing things faster and better. Team: Together Everyone Achieves More.

Thursday December 1st 2016

When we were making the cake we first had to take the cake and put it on a type of plate and Pupuke had to get some icing and spread it across the sides. It looked delicious already. Then Julianne and I had to put some kitkat around the edges and then it stuck to it sort of. The next thing we did was tip some M&Ms on the top of the cake and whala there you go a m&m cake with kitkat on the sides.

Working as a team - by Solomone

I loved the movie because Julianne, Tyron, Pupuke, Katrina and I made a cake! Mrs Buchanan was recording us. When we started we put the cake on the table and Pupuke put the icing on the sides to stick the Kit Kat on. After that we stuck the Kit Kat on and Katrina and I put the M&Ms on top. Then Julianne,Tyron and Pupuke helped us. When we were done we finished recording.  I felt great because we got to make a cake! When it was lunch time, Julianne cut the cake and we got 1 piece of cake and 1 Kit Kat each.

We worked well together to make our movie. I used Panzoid to make the introduction about teamwork. Katrina used button base to make the beat for the background.

And That's What We Did For Our Movie! It was fun!

The colour of spring?

After seeing such beautiful cherry blossoms on our visit to Auckland Botanic Gardens earlier in Term 4, we created our own cherry blossom trees to celebrate these spring colours in Room 10.

Learning and seeing new things - by Tupouseini

Growing our ideas about plants

What a beautiful day for our trip to Auckland Botanic Gardens! The sun was shining and the cherry blossom certainly let us know that spring has sprung! We will share what we saw and learnt about the different plants on our blogs over the next few days.

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.

We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo

School's takin' us to the zoo tomorrow

Zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow

School's takin' us to the zoo tomorrow

And we can stay all day!

We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo ...

Rio 2016: it's all go!

Which Olympic sports can you spot in this Google doodle?

Shake, shake!

From farm to table: we have been learning how milk is made, what is made from milk and how milk gets to our table. The Fonterra milk that we drink at school has been on quite a journey before it arrives at our desks.

As we buy our milk, cream, butter, cheese and yoghurt at the shops, it is hard to imagine that around 150 years ago, there were no fridges and many families in New Zealand made their own butter.

What did those families have to do to make butter? Churn the cream! Although our cream came from a supermarket (not a farm), we were able to make our own butter for our table by shaking and whisking. It took almost as much energy as fitness!

The cream thickened before changing into solid yellow blobs in a thin white liquid. We strained off and squeezed out the buttermilk liquid and, voilá, delicious butter to spread on our bread.

The Vector Trip - by Saluselo

Following Vector's visit to Ruapotaka earlier in Term 2, a group of students from Ruapotaka, including ten from Room 10, visited Vector Arena in the city on Tuesday. They were lucky enough to look behind the scenes at the events centre.  They even checked out the chill-out zone where the stars hang out. They also explored how Vector, the energy company, is investigating new technologies to charge electric cars.

Thank you, Saluselo, for creating this video at home to share some of the photos from your visit.

Frosted curls and a golden star

Despite today being the shortest day of 2016, we finally replanted our Room 10 garden! We read the information labels, planned our plot and measured the distance between each plant. Lots of digging, lots of earth and lots of smiles as we watched our garden take shape. We will water and watch to see how our native grasses and other plants grow. The coprosma, Golden Star, reminds us of Matariki.

Food for thought

On Thursday, we were privileged to hear Fay's real life experience about how the food and exercise choices we make affect our everyday lives.  She shared her challenging journey of change from a teenager who struggled at sport because it was too hard to move around to an athlete who finished 6th at her college cross-country in her final year at school.  Thank you for sharing your inspirational and moving story with us, Fay.

S'more sun required!

The sun shone brightly on our solar ovens yesterday as we tried to cook pizza and chips using the sun's energy. We left the food in the ovens for an hour before lunch and the results varied for different groups. Everyone's shoestring chips were warm but as some pizzas had more cheese than others, not all the cheese melted!

Today it was time for dessert - solar s'mores. Although the sun disappeared behind cloud at the beginning of our one hour "cooking" session, the marshmallows were warm and the chocolate gooey and melted!  We learnt that we can use the sun's energy to cook some food but that hot chips need s'more sun to be perfect!

What's cooking?

Cardboard, cling film, newspaper, tin foil: what are we cooking up here? We have created our solar ovens. This week we are hoping the sun will shine to see how they harness the power of the sun.

What time is it?

The sun was shining ... we were thinking about Maui slowing the sun. We were reminded about the history of time, clocks ... and sundials. Can we tell the time using the sun?

We discovered that we can tell the time using a sundial ... on a sunny day ... but that the shadow moved "the wrong way" (anti-clockwise) because we live in the southern hemisphere!

Now that this time has passed, we're waiting for another sunny day to find out how challenging it is to harness the sun's energy.

Is healthy eating a challenge?

This week, Kuini, Julianne, Tupouseini and Zion worked together to discover how much energy, fat and sugar are in some foods by reading the nutrition information labels.  Kuini shared what they found out in a table.

Based on 4 grams being equivalent to 1 teaspoon of sugar, everyone in Room 10 was amazed when they worked out that one 250ml glass of Coca Cola has about 7 teaspoonfuls of sugar.  Jamie Oliver says that 10-11 year old learners should only eat about 6-7 teaspoonfuls of sugar a day, unless it is the natural sugar in fruit and milk.  Our conclusion is that eating healthily every day is a challenge for all of us.