Ruapotaka's Year 7's and 8's visit The NZ Breakers

Yesterday I took 10 very lucky year 7 and 8's to the NZ  Breakers basketball team training facility on the North Shore.

The boys and myself were impressed with how hard they trained every day.

Then, we got to play some B-ball and do some skills and drills with the team. Aydrian can't believe how tall some of the players are!

We had an amazing day with the Breakers.

Mr Reid

Henare's Favourite Scene In The Huntsman.

Henare wrote this about his favourite scene. It's great work.

SnowWhite and the huntsman is a fantasy/drama film.

The main cast members in the movie are:

Kristen Stewart as Snow White,

Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna,

Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman,

Sam Claflin as Prince William/ Snow White’s best friend

Raffey cassidy as young Snow White

My favorite scene in the movie is when the evil queen shape shifts into Prince William and feeds Snow White the poison apple. As she takes a bite she feels herself dying. As she is dying the queen turns back to her normal form. As she is lying on the ground crows start circling Snow White, Prince William and the Huntsman hear the crows and rush over to see what was going on. When they see Snow White and the evil queen, they try to hit Queen Ravenna with all their might but she disappears!

Safety Week-Halloween and Guy Fawkes

With Halloween just finished and Guy Fawkes coming up all the senior classes have been getting refresher lessons on safety.

It's important we make sure we don't put ourselves in harmful situations and look after each other.
Enjoy your week everybody.

Mr Reid.

MRS GREN

This week as part of our inquiry we are looking at MRSGREN-This will help us understand and identify living things and what actually makes them alive. Room 11's students have been researching and creating presentations that explain explain each characteristic better.

Our Trip To The Botanic Gardens

We were so lucky with the weather today and had a fantastic trip to the gardens.

Room 11 by one of the many sculptures.

 A brilliant view across the lake

Too many interesting plants and flowers to look at

The sculptures were cool too. 

Highlights were the edible garden where we saw all the plants we could eat, the rock garden next to the lake and walking the many trails to all the different plant species.

A new Term, A Fresh Start!

Term 4 is getting off to a bang. Crazy Spring-Summer weather (Wind, rain, cold, hot, sun every day) and we are finally back in our own room after last term's asbestos scare. And,

Auckland Botanic Gardens

http://www.aucklandbotanicgardens.co.nz/

The whole school is going on a trip to the Botanic Gardens this Thursday and it will be an interesting trip. (Well, as long as a storm doesn't blast us while we are there!)

Our Senior Block Being Fenced Off!

Our senior block has now been fenced off and Room 11 is working in the music room. We wish we had our old room back but it looks like we won't get back in it until next term.

It is nice to back at our own school though after spending all last week at Tamaki Primary (in their art room) because of the asbestos found in our roofs.

A big thank you to all of Tamaki Primary for giving our school some spaces to use so we could try to do normal school things.

Mr Reid.

Ruapotaka's Mini Olympics

We had our school Mini Olympics on Friday. It was an amazing day with lots of parents attending and all our teams participating and having fun. The spirit of the Olympics was alive and well at Ruapotaka.

Jovi Clay Modelling-By Halaiano

On Friday, Room 11 made models with jovi clay. We used our hands to make these models, these models were a bit hard to make because the Jovi clay was hard to rip apart. The models I made were a red crocodile and a snow man and as you can see in this picture I took, it is the crocodile eating the snow man, and the snow man is screaming HELP MEEEE!

Rio 2016!

The 2016 Rio Olympics are almost here. Ruapotaka has a mini Olympics day planned for later in the term  and Room 11 will be studying the history, economics, geography and social issues of The Olympics as part of our inquiry learning.

https://www.youtube.com/user/olympic

Mr Reid.

Maori Language Week

Kiora! (Hi!) This week is Maori Language Week in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Ruma tekau ma tahi (Room 11) will be using as many Maori words as possible through their mahi (work).

Speeches R11

We decided on our own speech topic this week to present to the class in Term 2 (From WK 7-WK10)

We needed to start our speech preparation together as a class/small groups to get ideas and topics sorted. (Learn/Create/Share) We helped each other to find specific information to use in our individual speeches. We are lucky that our chromebooks give us so much access to online information.

Check out...

Our Speech Topics to see how they are progressing...

And the...

Speech Checklist-Success Criteria we used to help us complete our speeches...

Matariki

Matariki is the Maori New Year celebration and Room 11 is going to find out about it as part of our inquiry learning, our writing and our reading programmes. 

My Favourite Rugby Player-By Sebastian

My favourite rugby player is Julian Savea. He plays  for the All Blacks and his position is wing. He is my favourite player because he plays well. He doesn’t drop the ball and he always shares the ball. He always gets a try and he represents New Zealand. He is also my favourite player because he inspires me like no one else can. He was born on the  7th of August 1990 (25 years old).

Ruapotaka's Soccer teams.

Unfortunately, our interschool football competition has been cancelled due to the crazy weather we have had over the last week. That's a real shame as our Year 7/8 and Year 5/6 teams have trained really hard and we were all looking forward to playing. There's always next year. :)

Our Year 5/6 team...

Our Year 7/8 team.

Well done to all these students who made the teams. I'm sure we would've been very competitive.

Mr Reid 

Screencasting

Room 11 are all creating their own screencasts and will post them up on their individual blogs. We watched this neat video that was made by Mrs Buchanan in Room 10 and it explains how to do it. We hope ours are as good as this! The screencastify programme is easy to use. Find it HERE

Mr Reid.

Screencastify-"The beginnings..."

We have started to look at, and use the programme Screencastify in R11. We are hoping it will replace snagit.

Room 11 thinks it will be a great way to record our work so others can see and use it if they want.

It looks like a neat tech-tool for us to try out and share.

Wish us luck as we explore screencastify as a class and hopefully you will see some awesome work from us on our personal blogs soon. If you want to try it out follow the link-Screencastify-webstore

Thank you-Room 11.

The Water Cycle-By Halaiano and Popi

  

Animal Welfare On Farms.

We have started our inquiry learning about Dairy Farming in NZ and decided 

this video about animal welfare on the farms was a great starting point.

Check it out and see what you think.

ANZAC Ceremony T1 Video

Thank you Room 10 for videoing our ANZAC Parade.

End Of Term ANZAC Parade.

 We finished our school term with a special ANZAC Day Parade. The whole school and some parents attended it before we went on holiday.

 Sebastian was our flag bearer. It's a great honour to be chosen as a class representative for something like this.

The crosses were guarded by our flag bearers throughout the ceremony. It was a time to reflect before we left for our holiday.

Ruapotaka Six Word Winter-By Vaimoana

More ANZAC Soldiers than First Thought-By Gloria

Nearly twice the number of New Zealand soldiers served at Gallipoli in the first world war than first thought.  More soldiers arrived later on.  

More than 16,000 soldiers served at Gallipoli, rather than 8556 in 1919 documents. The discovery in January of old notebooks  detail the movements of Australian and New Zealand soldiers in 1915.  

 


Photo By:Kiwi Kids News

Science Experiments With Room 12

Finding out how to do these experiments together.

As part of our collaborative learning we spent one day a week for the last three weeks working with Room 12 on some science experiments.

Trying out what we decided to do in our work groups.

We had an aim, a hypothesis, a method and a result for each one. Our experiments were trying to make a lava lamp, a volcano and to see what happens when we add food colouring and dish washing liquid to milk.

A volcano erupts successfully 

It was hard work finding out how to do these experiments but once we all pitched in and shared our thoughts and ideas we were successful.  

Mr Reid.

Cooking is Fun-By Pepe

Every Wednesday the year 7s and 8s go to Tamaki college to do tech. At tech there are classes called graphics,cooking,wood and metal tech.This year we have been cooking with the other year 8's from Room 12.My favourite has been the chocolate milkshake so far. I wonder what us year 8's will make today .pixabay

Room 11's digital painting from week 8 and 9

In Room 11 we digitally drew A Taniwha  and mine looks like a dragon. You could try some patterns like this too. I used Sumo Paint and we all finished it last week. Everyone had different ideas and patterns to publish on our blogs.

New Internet Cable Gives Us Faster Internet-By Vaimoana

New Zealand is to get a second undersea internet cable link to the United states. The 14,000 km cable will be running by mid 2018. The cable will link New Zealand to the United States via Hawaii, and Australia. It is expected to cost about $500 million dollars for us to use. I think this is cool and exciting for us in the Manaiakalani cluster because it will give us better internet access and speed.                                                             Kiwikids News

NASA to launch inflatable home-By Samuel

NASA has announced they will launch the first inflatable home into space. The home  is called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module or (BEAM for short.) It be in space on Friday the 8th of April. It will land and be deployed on the international Space Station. Astronauts will test the BEAM of about two years to see how it holds.

Photo From KiwiKids

Metal Craft Workshop-By Isabell

Metal craft Workshop

Pewter

We finally got to go to technicraft at Tamaki College last week. The project us year 7's are going to start is  metal craft with Mr Grundy in his workshop. I had so much fun with him and we all learned things about pewter and metal. What he did with the pewter was melt it into an electric stove. We also learned about safety tips. 

What did I learn?

What I learned was when a person is melting pewter you have to be at least a metre back. When melting pewter, pewter can be twice as hot as boiling water. I also learnt new words like silhouette and recipient.

Cooking 2016-By Matali.

>>>Cooking 2016<<<

At Mrs Tuipulotu's class at Tamaki College we made smoothies and in the smoothies were ice-cream, chocolate, food colouring and some milk. When we were making the smoothies Mrs Tuipulotu was talking to us and we were laughing. For the smoothie you need to use the blender to make the smoothie nice and ... smooth! The only part I dont like about it is the foam because there are too many bubbles in it.

A Busy Time Ahead for Room 11 in 2016

Hi everyone. Room 11 is looking forward to a great year ahead that is sure to be busy. We have already been visited by The Duffy Theatre, had a school sports day (themed around 5+ a day healthy eating) and begun our testing. We look forward to giving you all more news as it happens.