Prize-giving 2016 - a celebration of culture and achievements

What a wonderful celebration of our cultures, achievements and success at Ruapotaka's annual year-end prize-giving which was held at Tamaki College.



Congratulations to our Room 10 prize-winners:

  *  Duffy Award for Attitude of Excellence - Shakaia
  *  Years 4-6 Sporting Ability - Mary
  *  Academic Excellence Year 6 - Katrina
  *  Academic Excellence Year 5 - Riiana
  *  Most Improved Student Year 6 - Pupuke
  *  Most Improved Student Year 5 - Jessica

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!

How did Leilani and Pupuke introduce our movie?

Leilani and Pupuke did an awesome job of introducing our class movie to the audience at Hoyts Sylvia Park last Wednesday at the Manaiakalani Film Festival. Here you can listen to an audio of their introduction.

Gotta Read 'Em All!

For our Whanau: Quality Blog comments! - by Henry and Pupuke

Pupuke and I created this screencast to show our families what we mean by "quality blog commenting". Hope you enjoy! (Henry)

I created this screencast with Henry so our families can learn how to write quality blog comments (Pupuke).

Over the moon!

Yesterday Ruapotaka held its annual skipping display for family and whānau. Mary, Kuini and Pupuke jumped and jumped and jumped when they represented Room 10 at the senior endurance event. Everyone was then able to show off their individual skills with short ropes, in groups using a long rope and, lastly, double-dutch. It was good to be able to relax and watch Room 9 display their skills and tricks while we caught our breath!

Checkmate!

What a lot of thinking and concentration was needed this morning! Coach Paul from Chess Power visited Ruapotaka to teach everyone in Rooms 10, 11 and 12 how to play the game of chess. Now that we've learnt the names of the pieces and how they move around the board, it's time to work on strategy!

Bouncing the ball everywhere!

Eight students from Room 10 represented Ruapotaka at the interschool netball tournament last week. Mary did an outstanding job as captain of the Year 5 and 6 team, making sure that everyone worked together while enjoying the day.

Leanah shares her writing about the day:
On Wednesday the 17th August Kuini, Tristan, Fakaola, Pupuke, Shakaia, Saluselo, Bella, Katrina, Mary and I went in a Tamaki College van to inter school netball and Mr. Reid was driving. When we got there Mary and I had to practice shooting because we were the shooters. We had to play 6 games in total. Our first game was against Pt. England. We lost to them. After that game we had other games and we won 4 of them and had a tie on one of them.

Kuini's shares her ideas about the day in an acrostic poem:

Tāne me te whānau marama

The Gruffalo reading group enjoyed reading this play by Moira Wairama during Matariki. It tells the story of how there came to be light in our sky. We decided to record the play to add to our Listening Post resources and here we share our video version.



Thank you, Katrina and Tyron, for joining the group to take on the extra roles.

Facing challenge and challenging faces

After making different 3D shapes with sticks, straws and blutak, we looked at 3D shapes from a different perspective. We cut out the nets of hexagonal and triangular prisms and then had to figure out how to glue the net to create the shape. A few people challenged themselves to make an icosahedron from a net: twenty triangular faces took a lot of effort to glue into shape!

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.

What is the area of our garden?

We are learning about area. We are learning to measure the area of a rectangle. We started by working with a buddy to find out how many squares of paper it took to cover our paper "garden".  We all agreed that it took 18 squares.

Buddy Reading with Room 4

This afternoon we visited Room 4 to listen to our buddies read.  Later in the week, Room 4 will visit Room 10 to find out what we have been sharing on our blogs.

Still Life: Positive and negative

We are still living life to the full in Room 10! We created a second still life sketch of an apple using chalk on black paper, while still thinking about shape and shading.  We found that we could add more detail to our shading using a pencil but most of us preferred creating the negative image with chalk because we could smudge the chalk to even out the shading.

An energetic afternoon!

Yesterday, Vector, the energy company, brought one of its school programmes, Be Sustainable with Energy, to Ruapotaka for Years 6, 7 and 8. We learnt about the different sources of energy that Vector uses to make electricity in New Zealand. Prudence, Saluselo, Zion, Katrina and Tyron created electricity using mechanical energy as they turned mini-turbines, while Pupuke and Azahar demonstrated how solar power can be used to turn the rotors on a model helicopter. What an energetic afternoon!

Cybersmart Driving: Dum Dee Dum

Our Cybersmart learning focus at the moment is learning to write quality blog comments. Back at school after our visit to the movies on Wednesday, it was time to put our learning into practice:

 There was also a spontaneous reflection on Room 9's film ...