Hello, This morning, we went to Engineering in the hall. When everyone arrived, there was excitement building inside of me as I saw a lot of poles and planks. In front of us was a group of engineers. After they introduced themselves and told us what we would be doing, we were sent to our activities in the lines that we were already in. For my group’s activity, we were doing the bridge that Leonardo da Vinci created. The aim of our bridge that we’re making is to build a sturdy bridge using chopsticks.

• Posted by TJ

Malo E Lelei Reader,

This week we have been still focusing on learning brand new facts about Matariki, this week was the most busiest/exhuasting week in this whole term because we had to write 4 DLO’s about 4 things so Matariki, Sir Bom Gillies, Sir Edmund Hillary,  and Maurice Gee. 

We had to write facts about Matariki and find out when was Matariki first celebrated so that we know why we did have a public holiday on Friday because it is really important that we know the reason why we celebrate Matariki. Our school celebrated Matariki by going over to Papakura Marae and to prepare/eat the Hangi for our school. So basically my teacher ( Whaea Lorraine) had to choose 10 people she could trust the most and let them go over to Papakura Marae and help prepare the Hangi for the whole school, just like what I said on the sentence above.

Here is my Matariki DLO:

_ Susana – Matariki

Ngā mihi, Susana

Kia ora, Reader!

Every Monday, the year 7 and 8 students from my school travel to Papakura Intermediate for technology classes, giving us the chance to learn in a completely different environment. It’s like a mini field trip every week!

This term, I’ve been placed in the Hard Materials rotation, where we  work hands-on tools, wood and metal (etc) to design and build real projects. Take a look at what I’ve created during my time in the workshop!

Take a wild guess! What do you think I made? If you said ‘Dominoes’, give yourself a high-five because that’s exactly it!

I’ve made the dominoes by scratch, learning how to use a DRILL PRESS during the process. I used the drill press machine to make the holes in my dominoes, it’s this big machine with a lever that you pull down to lower the drill bit. The more pressure you apply, the deeper it drills into the material. Super accurate hole space if you add the same pressure every time, quite easy to use and I find it pretty satisfying to do/watch!

Of course, to keep the dominoes even, before it was all into pieces, it was this long wooden board where I added some lines 30 cm apart to even up the blocks. (It indicates where I should saw !)

The fun thing about owning these hand made dominoes is that I could play games with them! Like the main one of course, the Classic Domino Game, or use them for math challenges, especially what you’ve seen in the video I’ve added. (If you observed the video well enough, you can see that I attempted to make the number 9 which symbolizes my class room).

Took me 2 weeks to complete by the way! Practically 2 Mondays.

If you’re filled with questions or want to give me feedback, just comment down below, please!

Thank you for reading! Have a great time .

Kia ora, Reader!

Every Monday, the year 7 and 8 students from my school travel to Papakura Intermediate for technology classes, giving us the chance to learn in a completely different environment. It’s like a mini field trip every week!

This term, I’ve been placed in the Hard Materials rotation, where we  work hands-on tools, wood and metal (etc) to design and build real projects. Take a look at what I’ve created during my time in the workshop!

Take a wild guess! What do you think I made? If you said ‘Dominoes’, give yourself a high-five because that’s exactly it!

I’ve made the dominoes by scratch, learning how to use a DRILL PRESS during the process. I used the drill press machine to make the holes in my dominoes, it’s this big machine with a lever that you pull down to lower the drill bit. The more pressure you apply, the deeper it drills into the material. Super accurate hole space if you add the same pressure every time, quite easy to use and I find it pretty satisfying to do/watch!

Of course, to keep the dominoes even, before it was all into pieces, it was this long wooden board where I added some lines 30 cm apart to even up the blocks. (It indicates where I should saw !)

The fun thing about owning these hand made dominoes is that I could play games with them! Like the main one of course, the Classic Domino Game, or use them for math challenges, especially what you’ve seen in the video I’ve added. (If you observed the video well enough, you can see that I attempted to make the number 9 which symbolizes my class room).

Took me 2 weeks to complete by the way! Practically 2 Mondays.

If you’re filled with questions or want to give me feedback, just comment down below, please!

Thank you for reading! Have a great time .

We have been reviewing our School Values. This week, our focus was Rangatiratanga. This goes well with PINK SHIRT DAY !

This week, we have been finishing our reading slides, focusing on identity and making connections. We also completed a survey about our ideas on reading. We will discuss the results next term. Finally we had to create a poster about our favourite book.

This term, students and staff embarked on a meaningful journey of self-discovery and cultural exploration through the theme of Ko Ai Au. This Māori phrase translates to “Who Am I” and reflects the deep connection to one’s identity, culture, and heritage. Through various creative activities, we delved into what makes us who we are, celebrating the richness of our backgrounds and the diverse cultures that shape our community.

One of the highlights of our exploration was the crafting of Alliteration Poems. Students reflected on their personal experiences, values, and identities, using alliteration as a tool to express themselves creatively. These poems became an empowering activity for many students, giving voice to the unique qualities that define us as individuals while connecting us to the collective identity of our community.

As the term progressed, the engagement only intensified. The learning environment became a space of rich dialogue, where staff and students alike shared experiences and insights, further connecting to the broader theme of Ko Ai Au. We reflected on how our cultural backgrounds influence our perceptions, values, and actions, creating a deeper appreciation for the diversity that exists within our community.

Overall, this has been a highly busy and engaging term—one that not only celebrated who we are as individuals but also highlighted the importance of understanding and embracing our shared heritage. Through our poems, artifact stories, and cultural reflections, we’ve come away with a deeper appreciation for the complexities of identity and the rich cultural tapestries that make up our lives.

This term our inquiry focus has been: Ko Wai Au? Who Am I?

It is all about understanding who I am and standing strong in my identity shapes the unique person I am becoming. Check out Room 3’s identity projects on our class site  https://sites.google.com/edmundhillary.school.nz/aliciakake/inquiry-rapunga

Junior About Me Student Presentation by Junior Lagofaatasi

We are learning how to make connections with what we are reading by using our prior knowledge and information from the book.

It was interesting learning what connects we how to our stories.

We have been researching the birds our groups are named after. Whio, Tui, Pukeko and Kea. Many of the endemic birds are in the book Nz Birds.

In reading, we have been learning to find key information or facts and write a summary.

Malo e lelei

We learnt how important it is to have a unique passphrase, so people cannot hack your account and maybe take your money or say and do horrible things from and to your account.

We had to roll the dice at least 6 times. This gave us 3 words to begin our passphrase. Next, we had to change one letter to a symbol, a letter to a number and one to a capital. We decided the first letter was not a good one to make the capital, as this is like a sentence.

Malo E Lelei Everyone,

This week we got given a task by our teacher ( Whaea Lorraine ) to do an explanation writing on our favourite dish that we love. We chose which dish we wanted to write about to our teacher and why we chose it. I had to plan what I was going to pick and I decided to pick Kopai. I picked this dish because it came from Tuvalu which is where I come from and so is this dish. Kopai is a dish that has a lot of soup and its colour is white and it has bread that goes into the soup and you would think its raw but actually it is cooked perfectly. But we needed to make sure that we had questions to answer otherwise our explanation writing is going to be boring and maybe not that descriptive about the food we are talking about. Then we had to create a doc and then explain why we chose this and the 5 w’s ( Where, When, Why, How, What ) but we also had to ask other questions.  Here are some of my questions.

1. What is your Favourite dish ?
2. Do you eat it often?
3. Why did you choose it?
4. What Island / Country did it come from?
5. Is it sweet or salty?
6. What are the ingredients to make these??

These are my questions for my favourite dish. I will add my work here. There is also a picture on the doc that shows you what it looks like.

Favourite Dish

Thank you for reading my blog I hope you have a good rest of your day and remember to spread the gospel.

Nga Mihi – Sala 

We are learning how to identify 3D shapes.

We all learnt something different, some of us learnt how to identify prisms, which have some rectangular surfaces. Pyramids have some triangular surfaces. All of us learnt new vocabulary: such as vertices, apex, edges, curved surfaces, prism, vertex and 3d = 3 diminsional.

We went for a walk around the school identifying different shapes. We created shapes using sticks and playdough/plasticine. Then we had to find the vertices, edges and surfaces and complete the chart above.

WALT write about me. WHAT when I have written my name and drawn my picture to explain 2 points about me.

Haji worked alongside Matua today remembering what he had learned with Whaea Lorraine. He is developing his communication with others. We talked about what we saw outside and then we wrote together. Haji has learned to ask for help when he can.

Haji and I talked about the what was happening outside. We felt the raindrops in our hands, it felt cold.

Every year as we start in our new classes, we find the quirks and the skills and needs of our students are dependent upon what they need to learn. As a class, we have explored and now there is a need to navigate our way through the year ahead. We farewell the explorers and retain the skills we have and we are ready to become the navigators or wayfinders of our ancestors.

Here is our profile blurb from the past few years:

Kia ora,
We are a motivated, skilled, passionate but fun loving whānau of ākonga. We enjoy many areas of learning, especially if it gets us outside. Come and journey with us as we climb our Maunga towards success. – Mauri Ora

 “Kia whakatoomuri te haere whakamua: “I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past”  

Our whakatauki will remain for the year but we will introduce a new whakatauki for every term. Here is a sneak peek at our profile blurb for the year ahead: Come and learn with us.

Kia ora,
We are a whānau of skilled and passionate wayfinders, navigating the tides of learning with determination, curiosity, and a spirit of adventure. Grounded in the wisdom of our tūpuna, we chart our own course, embracing challenges and discoveries—especially when the journey takes us into the great outdoors.

Come voyage with us as we navigate our pathways to success, always guided by the stars of those who came before us.

Mauri ora!

“Kia whakatoomuri te haere whakamua: I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past.”

Kia ora
After creating a word a find, we used the same words to create a crossword, no not a grumpy word in sight. The challenge was writing clues that people could solve but not too easy – people can eat it could apply to so many things, lobster, oysters, kina… So that was one we tried to stay away from.

Thanks Treyden for the idea to embed the crossword into the blog.

Howdy,
Today is our first chance to do the Summer Learning Journey Activities, in class. Yes, it was a busy week Monday the Year 8s went to the High School for orientation. Yesterday we had to sort our drives and finish any work from last week or our blog posts in drafts.

We looked at Kiri’s tasks, the word find. We started with brainstorming words about the Moana. It was great I could model but then the students couldn’t access it as N4L had blocked the site. We tried the crossword instead, using the same words.

Here is the find a word we did as a class –

If you want to try it click here

It was neat seeing the computer show the answers.

Kia ora.

We are learning how to write from another point of view.

What I already know about BGG:

• there are three goats.
•  they have to get across a bridge.
• there’s a little goat, a big goat and a bigger goat.
• there’s a big troll that guards the bridge.

One day, on a big grassy paddock, three billy goats were enjoying some fresh, delicious grass when they looked to the sky to see a big storm cloud heading right towards them and their grass. The goats started to panic. What if all the grass gets destroyed, what if they get split up. There were so many possibilities. Late at night, the goats were preparing for the storm and thinking about all of those possibilities, so they worked hard till the morning when the rain started pouring down, and then a rumble of thunder came next. As the rain came in, the goats ran into the little hut they had built before the storm they hid there. But little did they know there was about to be the fastest gust of wind ever recorded.

The hut went flying, and planks were all over the place. The goats ran into the forest to hide but didn’t split up; they stayed together. The three goats hid in a bush till the storm was over and the winds were calm. The next morning, the goats rushed outside to see what damage the storm had caused, but when they got out of the forest, they were shocked to see the whole paddock flooded. They had to find a way around the water to cross the bridge where the grass was greener and lush. The goats found a passage to the bridge, but it was only big enough for the little billy goat, so he trotted his way to the bridge, and the big and biggest billy goats stayed behind to break through the bush so they would fit.

As the little billy goat was crossing the bridge up popped a troll, ugly and hairy with beady little eyes little goat knew that the troll wanted to eat him, but little billy goat said to him, “stop don’t eat me, my brothers will be here soon and they’re much bigger than me there’s more to eat. So the little billy goat trotted his way to the lush, greener grass. back on the other side, the big and biggest goats were finished breaking through the bush and were now ready to cross the bridge and be fed again as they walked up to the bridge, the big goat said what’s that rotten smell they looked under the bridge and saw the ugly troll he jumped up ready to feast, but as he was about to eat big and biggest goat he heard more trotting, but from the other side, the sound was behind him. The troll turned around and saw the little billy goat charging at him, and then…. BAM. The little billy goat flung the troll into the flood water, never to be seen again. Days turned into months and months turned into years and the goats were happily eating fresh lush greener grass.

We are learning how to write a different ending for stories we know.

Our teacher is reading Little Red Riding Wolf. This is an alternative to Little Red Riding Hood.

What I know about Little Red Riding Hood.

1. Little Red goes to help her grandma cause she’s sick.

2. Little Red lives in the woods in a hut.

3. Little Red takes baking to her grandma.

4. The big bad wolf spies on Little Red.

5. The big bad wolf disguises himself as Grandma.

6. Grandma gets eaten by the big bad wolf.

We also watched Coconet’s version too.

This is my ending to Little Red Riding Wolf.

“I am going to my old granny wolf’s house to thank her for the hat and the cape.” The wolf skipped along the trail to granny’s house and when he got there he was surprised to see granny out of bed and not sick. She was moving completely fine like she was never old or sick.

As the wolf walked inside to talk to granny he couldn’t see granny wolf anywhere and started to worry. The big bad girl took a shortcut to granny wolfs house and when she got there she saw little wolf crying on the porch and so the big bad girl snuck around the back of granny’s house and she climbed through the window and dressed up like granny wolf. Little wolf heard a noise inside and he went inside to see if it was granny wolf he walked upstairs and saw the big bad girl dressed as granny wolf and then the big bad girl jumped up and started bullying the wolf. Little wolf started crying and then granny wolf walked in and was mad so she yelled at the big bad girl and scared her off. Little wolf got up off the ground and thanked granny wolf and gave her a hug. And they lived happily ever after.

We are preparing for the end of the year and the teacher read us part of a story.

First, we discussed the 3 Little Pigs story and what we knew about the original story.

• the 3 little pigs who were told to leave, and they are siblings
• there is a big bad wolf who destroys property
• houses were made of wood or sticks, straw or thatched, and brick
• the pigs prosper
• the wolf perishes

Do you know the TRUE Story of The 3 Little Pigs? Well, we listened to part of the story from A. Wolf’s point of view and then we had to complete the story.

Here are a couple of endings the students wrote:

He must be the brains of the family, he built his house out of bricks. 

So as I should, I knocked on his door, but there was no answer, so I called “Mr. pig? Mr. pig? Are you in, Are you in?” and still no answer. Then suddenly, I felt a tickle in my nose, it caused me to huff, snuff and SNEEZEEEEEeeee.. Luckily for the pig, his house doesn’t budge. I knocked again and again and again and again and again.. No matter what I did, the pig did not respond so I had no other option but to try to break in. I looked for the nearest thick object that would be able to break the door apart, so I went on my nose and started sniffing.

Anything? Nope. I was shamelessly standing there until something ran upon me! “Use yoursellfff” said the voice in my head. So that’s what I did. I stupidly charged directly at the door, which created, not a hole, but a dent. Seriously!? Is there anything I can do? Suddenly there was a response; “WHAT DO YOU WANT, BIG BAD WOLF?” the pig annoyingly calls, the response wasn’t so friendly, why did he assume I was bad? And why did he shout? Out of curiosity, I replied back with “Why do you call me big bad wolf? Don’t you know my real name?”   “Your name isn’t The Big Bad wolf?” said the muddled pig. “NO! In fact it’s Alexander T Wolf. May I come in? I need sugar for my Grandma’s Birthday cake!.” “Fine, get inside.” Mr. Pig ultimately said. 

Finally that pig swung open the door, I sensed something strange but still, stepped inside, AND… it was empty. Unhinged, I looked around and called for Mr. Pig “Uh, Mr. pig? Mr.Pig? You’re really good at hiding.” Eventually giving up, I attempted to look for sugar.. nothing.. and then something went flying in the corner of my eye, so I looked, when suddenly- BANNGGGG… A pan went across my nuzzle at a fast pace, missing my head completely. The incident made me shout – “YOWWCHHHHHHHH” – when the pain settled, I looked ahead of me, and there was not one, not two, NOT THREE.. Not even four.. Five large bags of sugar sat in front of me, almost like it was there to tease me. So when I made my move to help myself with a bag of sugar,- BANNNNNNNNGGG… the same pan hit me, this time it popped perfectly on my head. I felt disabled, almost dead, but still, I forced myself to motivate myself and speed crawl out of the house, so I did. 

Once I’ve successfully got out, he menacingly stood upon me. “I don’t care about your grandma’s stupid cake and her birthday!” He said sadly. “Excuse me? That isn’t really nice..I-” Unexpectedly, I sneezed! Without a huff or a snuff, it just came out! I felt so much better after that mountainous sneeze. I looked back up to finish the conversation with the pig, but he disappeared! So I got off the floor, dusted myself and looked around. Sadly, I found the pig on the floor. Dead. So…. So I ate him.. and took the five bags of sugar out of his house. That part is too much to talk about, it was a lot of work I’d admit, but for now, I have a lifetime of sugar! I could make unlimited cakes! – Treyden

I walked up the hill farther than the others. I thought to myself that this pig must be smarter than the ones I had eaten. I knocked on the brick house, but no one answered. I called out, “Mr. Pig, Mr. Pig, are you in?” Suddenly, I heard the pig’s voice from inside.

 “Go away, you little rascal! Get back to where you came from!” I sighed, thinking he probably had a who

le bowl of sugar but wouldn’t share even a tiny bit for my grandma’s birthday cake. Just as I was about to head home and make something else instead of a cake, I felt a chill in the air. Determined, I huffed and puffed again, but the pig’s strong brick house didn’t move, unlike his brothers’ houses of straw and sticks. I started to feel a little defeated when an idea came to me. Instead of trying to blow the house down, maybe I could ask nicely. So, I took a deep breath and knocked again, this time gently. “Mr. Pig, please! I just need a little sugar for my grandma’s cake. It’s her birthday!” I waited, hoping he might be in a better mood this time.

– Kairangiahua

We would love to hear if you have read this story or how you have changed the end of a story