Ka kite ano!

Congratulations on an amazing year in Room 10. You have challenged yourselves and achieved success. Dream big as you continue to reach for the stars in 2017! Ka kite ano! Mrs Buchanan

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

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.

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!

Gotta Read 'Em All!

Room 10 were inspired by the adventure story, George's Secret Key to the Universe, by Lucy and Stephen Hawking. George and Annie head into outer space through a portal to save Annie's dad, Eric, from a black hole ... Luckily Room 10 had Pikachu on hand to save the day in their adventure for this year's Manaiakalani Film Festival!

Release Date Announced

The excitement is reaching fever pitch as fans count down the days until Room 10's latest movie is released on Wednesday, 9th November. The premier is being hosted at Hoyts Sylvia Park as part of the Manaiakalani Film Festival.  Although the stars are trying to keep out of the limelight before the big day, they have confirmed that this movie is an adventurous change in direction from their usual music videos.

Reviewer rating: ✮✮✮✮✮

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!

Running cheek to cheek

Last week Declan from Kelly Sports took us for our first session of Run, Jump, Throw. Even though it was raining and we couldn't run outside, we improved our running style by practising indoors.

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.

Back in Room 10!

Now that the senior block at Ruapotaka has been reopened, we are excited to have returned to Room 10 to find our usual desks and things.  Alex is pleased to be reunited with her glasses which have been in her desk since 6th September!  It is fantastic to see how much our garden has grown while we were away too!

Goodbye, Kuini!

Many tears were shed today as Room 10 farewelled Kuini who is moving to another area of Auckland. Julianne, Mary and Tupouseini managed to sing a farewell through their tears. Kuini's kind and friendly nature, confident speaking and amazing athletic skills will be missed very much. We all wish you the best of luck at your new school next term, Kuini.

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!

Sustained Silent Drawing 2016!

How silent and sustained the sketching when learners can choose their own drawing lessons from Youtube! Room 10 students are loving sketching various animals in different styles this week.  I think there is even more focus than at SSR time!

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!

How will reading change your life?

Henry entertained us at our Duffy role model assembly at Tamaki Primary School this afternoon with his hilarious stories about reading at the library when he was a kid. The first book that he can remember reading at the library was Where the wild things are and by the time he was a teenager he was reading Shakespeare - which led him to drama school.  Henry says that reading changed his life!

Robati was excited to receive a Goosebumps book from Henry. It'll be hard for Robati to put that down until he's finished!

Mālō e lelei!

As  manuhiri at Tamaki Primary School, it was a privilege to watch a special assembly this morning to celebrate Tongan Language Week.  Beautiful costumes, beautiful speeches and beautiful singing and dancing! Thank you for letting us share this wonderful event with you.

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.

Just like Steven Adams!

Last week Coach Marco from Kiwisport came to Ruapotaka to begin teaching us how to play basketball like Steven Adams!  We had loads of fun dribbling the ball with our finger tips and practising our triple threat stance.  What will we learn next?

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!

A host of golden daffodils

Measuring, marking, cutting ... pinwheel daffodils for Daffodil Day!