Te Rau Pou Manawa o Kawakawa

This weekend our kapa haka group, Te Rau Pou Manawa o Kawakawa, competed in the Te Tai Tokerau kapa haka regional competition. They performed exceptionally well and came 3rd in the competition, securing them a place at nationals next year.
Words can not express the pride we have for these students and the effort they put into their bracket. If you would like to see their performance go to this link:

https://tehiku.nz/te-hiku-tv/maranga-mai-e-te-iwi-2018/8674/te-raupo-manawa-o-kawakawa

Here are some pictures of our roopu and their beautiful new kakahu.

Swimming in Term 4

We are pretty excited that our pool is open for the remainder of the year. On Wednesday we had our first swim for the summer, although there wasn't many of us, we had heaps of fun. We will be learning swimming and survival skills and are looking forward to cooling down in there as it has been pretty warm lately.
 

Library Opening

Today we had our long awaited opening of our school library. We started our day with a blessing of the building and a walk through. The teachers dressed up as crayons and read the story "The Day the Crayons Quit" to the school. We then had a small parade of the students who dressed up as their favourite book characters then we joined up with a junior class and read stories to them and vise versa. It was great to see tuakana teina happening within our school and they seemed to enjoy reading to our juniors. The teachers also swapped classes to read a story too. It is so good to have our library up and running again and we look forward to getting our own books out next week.

An Outstanding Piece of Writing by Mase

Last week we had to do our final writing sample for the year. We had to explain one environmental issue and what could be done to reduce this problem on our environment.

Mase (a Year 7 student) wrote the following piece and did an exceptional job. When it was moderated by other teachers from different schools he ended up with a total score of 38 which puts his writing at a level 5b! That is pretty outstanding!!! We are so proud of you Mase and love the way you write. I look forward to seeing where you go next year!

Rubbish and It's Impact on our Planet

Rubbish is a complete biohazard to the sea,the land and earth itself. It has become such a problem,millions of plastic bags are aimlessly floating out into the sea for another animal to become a victim to it. The epidemic is getting worse,but there are still many,many solutions to wipe the plastic out of the sea for good. Since all the ideas people have thought of,such as the upgrade of technology,the banning of plastic bags and the possibility to find an alternate solution are such common theories to help with the rubbish problem,people should keep looking into those ideas more.

1.The Technology: Technology is advancing very quickly,so it is very likely that tech could help with the problem of rubbish in the ocean and land. There are already inventions in the works such as a multi-million V shaped machine that traps all the rubbish in it,a vacuum sort of machine that sucks up rubbish and transports it somewhere (such as a dump) and a machine that sorts out recycling and landfill rubbish. Although they seem helpful,they’re still not perfect,Such as the V idea,If it’s going to trap the rubbish,is it also going to trap animals in to? So they’re is probably some work needed to the machines,but if done correctly,it could help a lot.

2.Ban Plastic Bags: The idea of banning plastic bags has been an in-and-out sort of question for years,But it is now already being used throughout NZ shops and supermarkets. Some stores require you now to bring a reusable bag to do your shopping,when other stores give you the option of bringing a reusable bag or using plain ol’ plastic bags. It could be a great idea to stop using plastic bags to reduce the amount of plastic going into the ocean,but it still doesn’t get rid of the plastic bags,so that idea may still need some thought into it.

3.Using a substitute: Some food shops are starting to now use substitutes to plastic cups and containers such as coffee cups being made out of plants and using different sorts of containers and wrappings made out of organic things,although supermarkets should start to use more recyclable tin cans for there food,they are still selling chips in plastic,biscuits in plastic and still all of there meat products are wrapped in plastic,so the supermarkets still need work.

In conclusion,Plastic is still a worsening epidemic,but with all the ideas of getting rid of rubbish over the last decade,it seems that people are finally catching on to the problem itself, so there is still a shimmer of light and hope that the plastic can finally just die off.

By Mase

Term 4 Assembly

Today we had our final class assembly for 2018. We had a bit of a Halloween theme since it is the 'Day of the Dead' and Halloween was this week too. We only had a couple days to prepare for this so Mrs Henare and Mrs Cowles are extremely proud of the fun and entertaining assembly our class put it on. We hope you enjoy watching these clips.