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.

The right attitude pays off!

Congratulations to Katrina and Saluselo who were chosen this week to become school prefects. Ka mau te wehi! They have shown responsibility and leadership throughout the year and thoroughly deserve this recognition.

Whānau commenting: positive, thoughtful and helpful

Having created some screencasts to share what a quality blog comment is and looks like, learners in Room 10 did a wonderful job of supporting whānau to begin commenting on their personal blogs last week. We're so looking forward to reading more and more comments from whānau!

My imaginary creature - by Saluselo

I was chosen to represent Room 10 at Ruapotaka's Poetry Recital last Friday.  After reading the nonsense poem, Scroobious Pip, by Edward Lear, I created my own imaginary creature and here is my poem about him.

Poetry recital

Congratulations to Room 10's poetry recitalists at the whole school poetry recital yesterday.

Kuini and Katrina worked together to write a poem about bullying not long after we had our session on learning to play chess. They both recited the poem in front of the class and decided to do a combined presentation for the whole school poetry recital.

A warm welcome at Tamaki Primary School!

School and learning were a little different today ...  We are learning in the library at Tamaki Primary School with Room 9 for the rest of this week while our rooms at Ruapotaka are cleaned.  It was pretty cool running around the bike track for fitness too.  Thank you, Tamaki Primary School, for such a warm welcome and sharing your space with us.

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:

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!

Let's talk!

Term 2 ended today with whole school speech finals at which Zion, Katrina and Saluselo represented Room 10. Zion loves learning about space and the planets and shared some amazing facts, while Saluselo told us all about the WWE wrestler, Joseph Ano'ai aka Roman Reigns. Congratulations to Katrina who came second in the Year 4-6 category with her information-packed speech about Steven Adams. Fantastic!

When it was time for first-language speeches, Julianne, Kuini and Tupouseini looked and sounded so proud to share some personal and family history with the audience.

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.

Weather wins 1-0

Although the sun was shining, the Year 5/6 soccer team were feeling a little sad this morning because the interschool tournament was cancelled for the second time due to the weather.  The weather forecast was spot on, though, as the wind and rain did arrive in the middle of the morning.

An invitation to whānau

Parents, family and whānau, we would love to welcome you into Room 10 on Thursday afternoon as we prepare to bring our Chromebooks home.

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!

Poppies from different perspectives

Buzzers at the ready!

Room 10 were excited to host Senior Syndicate Assembly on Monday 21st March 2016. Everyone had a part to play or a job to do! Katrina and Saluselo organised a Spelling Bee for contestants from Rooms 9, 10, 11 and 12.



Congratulations to Room 12, the winners of the 2016 Spelling Bee!

Music used under Ruapotaka School's OneMusic copyright licence.

Swimming With The Instructors - by Saluselo

On the last day of swimming with the instructors, they tested how much I swam in the pool. The high standard was 8 lengths and when I started to swim in the pool, I thought I was going to do 6 lengths. After I did 1 length, I thought to myself I could do it and did 8 lengths. That was 100 meters.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

What excitement! Mary, Kuini, Henry and Saluselo rolled out their new Chromebooks today while the rest of Room 10 used more traditional ways to record their learning.  Henry was amazed by the number of emails that had arrived in his inbox since December.  Kuini enjoyed browsing through our blog at her own pace, thinking about some of the things we experienced last year.

Talking about Maths x 4

Mrs Pine, the Maths lady, visited Room 10 today to listen to us talking and working together to solve maths problems.

Duffy kids are reading round the world!

You can do it ...  Nothing to it ...

Duffy brought his friend Ruby to Ruapotaka yesterday to share his love for reading.  He took us back in time in his home-made Tardis time machine because he wanted to change what had happened in the past.  He thought Ruby should have the chance to go to school and learn to read.

Katrina's favourite part was when Duffy was supposed to go to Greece but he actually went to Japan in the time machine.  When he was in Japan he saw a ninja. The part where Tevita pretended to be a baby was Julianne's favourite bit. The baby turned out to be Duffy because he went back in time. Mary thought the characters were so creative. Saluselo enjoyed when the actors were falling down in slow-motion, even the nurse.

Of course, we were all reminded that our imaginations can take us to all sorts of places and on all sorts of adventures when we are reading.