Welcome To Ruapotaka School

This morning, Ruapotaka School had a powhiri to welcome our guest from ERO. ERO is a company that visits schools to observe how they learn. ERO stands for Education Review Office community.

Our guests names were Richard and Pam. During the powhiri we greeted them with a few speeches by Tristan, Sosiua and myself... We also sang a couple of songs. Afterwards Richard had a go at speaking, but it was in his two languages. Maori and Samoan.

When the powhiri came to an end the guests and Mrs Hamilton gave us a hongi and a hand shake. All the teachers were impressed by the way we presented it and how it went as planned. 

Kiwi Can

Today we had our first session of Kiwi Can. The tutors that were hosting it were Miss Tuia and Mrs Mac. There was supposed to be another tutor, Mr Matt but unfortunately he was away. Miss Tuia had rules such as, respect everyone, don't be shy give it a try , and the best of all have fun.

Room 12 played a game called Bang, where we get into a circle and introduce ourselves to the tutors. It was going well, then all of a sudden it turned into a game where one tutor would say a student's name and then they'd have to duck and the other two on the sides would have a race to see who would say bang first.

We had a lot of fun and also learnt some things about being honest, not cheating in games and other activities or events.

Cybersmart Learning

Do you know what being cybersmart is? It means you are safe on the internet and social media platforms.

When you're writing a comment or message, make it positive or helpful. Writing negative comments will do no one good.

Using a digital device means doing the right thing at the right time. As an addition to this you become a better learner. Being on the wrong thing at the wrong time will not help you at all!

Painting

Today for our third session at Tech with Miss Ferguson, we did some painting.

It was fun being able to learn how to mix colours to create more colours. I used a paintbrush to mix yellow and blue to make green. Then red and blue to make purple and etc. I also learnt that you only need the three primary colours to make the three secondary colours. So you don't have to waste money buying hundreds of colours.

Tones
We had some time to figure out what tones were before Miss Ferguson revealed to the group what it was. The thing about tones is that it's a bit harder than having to paint casually with the colours, but, you have to mix it to make it lighter, darker or leave it the way it is.

3D Oblique Sketching

Today was our second session of Technology with Miss Ferguson doing Graphics.

We learnt how to draw 3D squares, triangles and cylinders. Some of us already knew how to draw 3D shapes.

We also learnt some new words like parallel, tone and oblique. I learnt that parallel means two lines that are the same distance apart.

A skill I learnt while at tech was drawing straight lines but, as you can see I'm still getting there. I also mastered drawing tones. Tones are when you draw lightly, a bit darker, and then straight dark.

As you can see in the photo above, I have drawn a goldish coloured cube that has a sort of white yellow line in the middle.

Hosting The School Assembly

Yesterday we had our first school wide assembly of 2019 hosted by students, Leanah, Jessica, Tristan and I. We were the chosen ones but only because our teacher knew that we were not shy.

After singing the national anthem, we sang our version of the New Zealand National Anthem we made during our inquiry research. After that, the adults said their notices. Mrs Hamilton was talking about how we are going to have a sausage sizzle on Friday. The other teachers were talking about sports equipment being broken and how a student was using his initiative and brought a child back to school when this parents weren't home.

I was a little bit nervous, but when we were singing the nerves went away.

The First Day Back At Technicraft

Today was the first session of Technicraft of 2019.

Before leaving the school grounds, our teacher sorted us into groups that we were in last year. There were new year 7 students that were sorted into different groups. When the groups were ready we waited until the time was quarter to eleven to leave.

When we arrived at Tamaki College we had to wait for the teachers to take us to their classes. The teacher we were with was Miss Ferguson and she was the graphics teacher. In her class we did 2D drawing, like squares and triangles, then we had to insert our names and emails into Miss Ferguson's slide sheet.