Wednesday 30 July 2014

Student Council - RDA Gingerbread Horses

Today in part one of a two part process the 2014 Auroa School Student Council prepared for tomorrows RDA Gingerbread Horses Fundraiser.  The aim of the process was for the student council to bake 200 Horses to be iced and then sold at School tomorrow.  The project was initiated by Will who planned and oversaw the process.  Tomorrow we have the second half, when the school will celebrate this day.  Photos by student council.

Sunday 27 July 2014

Commenting for Week Two

Over the last week or so, since school has come back we've had some great comments coming in from some new sites around New Zealand. Students from Room One need to visit both these sites this week, choose a piece of work created by one of the students and leave a comment on the post. The first site is Te Ahurutanga Room Seven from Whakatane Intermediate. You can click on the link to the page here. We've just celebrated Maori Language Week at Auroa Primary School and this class has some amazing resources relating to their students Mihi.

Havelock North Intermediate have a class page and in addition to this there are, like ourselves, individual student pages listed from the side bar.   They've been visiting our site and leaving comments since the end of last week.  You will need to log onto one of their individual student pages, choose a post and leave a comment to that student.  You can click on the link to their class blog here.


AKO: Room One Business Plans

Later this term the students of Room One, and the senior school at Auroa Primary School in general, are holding a market day where they sell products that have been created as part of this terms AKO investigation. These business plans are some of the examples that have been created by students in the class.



Mr Chittenden's Feed Back

  • Don't hide costs
  • Can't use your parents or home as an excuse
  • Our product is exciting
  • To think about our straws

Friday 25 July 2014

Buddy Maths with Room Eight

On Fridays for the next few weeks the students from Room One are very lucky to be working with a buddy Maths classroom, Room Eight. We are helping the students of Room Eight with their counting, addition and subtraction. They are helping us to understand learning styles and strategies better and to be reflective learners. These images are from the first session which took place in Room One on Friday 25th July 2014.

Thursday 24 July 2014

AKO: Business Plans and Ideas from Room One

This term the students of Room One have a business to run, culminating with a market day at the end of term. Each of the students has been busy working on an AKO (investigation) into their product and have posted about them individually on their blogs, they are also looking for feedbacks in the forms of Polls, Surveys or Comments about their product. We look forward to hearing from you. This presentation was created by Thomas, Riley M and Keifer.

Monday 21 July 2014

NZAIMS Seven Weeks to Go!

We're very excited to be back at school and in class for Term Three, 2014.  We've a lot of major events this term.   On the sporting side we have our School Cross Country later this term.  We've also got our Taranaki Trophy, where we have a home and away competition against other Taranaki Schools in Netball, Rugby and Football.  We've also got a special national event in September.   The NZAIMS Tournament is featuring 225 Schools and over 7,000 students who will be competing in Tauranga in over 17 sports.   Auroa Primary School will be competing for the first time in Golf and Girls Basketball.  You can follow the build up to this event here as we prepare for our adventure.

Wednesday 16 July 2014

Haua Piko Matariki 2014

These images are part of Aura Primary Schools Matariki Celebration for 2014 which took place on Friday 4th July 2014 at School.  Our school is divided into four Whanau who represent four famous and important Maori identities in our local area.  For Matariki (Maori New Year) we met in our Whanau group and each completed a themed activity.  Footage from 4th July.

Thank you for your visit to our class page.  Our students are currently on their term break and will be back at school on Monday 21st of July.  We look forward to hearing from you then.

Monday 14 July 2014

Haua Roa: Matariki 2014@APS

Last term Auroa School Celebrated Matariki, the Maori New Year. All the of Whanau groups did an activity. My Whanu, Haua Roa made fried bread (called paraoa parai). We got to make it, fry it and learn about how to make it, and how it tastes. We made enough to give it to all the school a piece overall. It was a fun day and the fried bread turned out good, the fried bread tasted yum.

Highlighting some fanatic Rm1 Holiday Work

Thank you for your visit to our class page. Currently students in New Zealand are on the second week of their two week break between term two and three. Our students will be returning to school on Monday 21st of July for class as normal. In the meantime theres some fantastic work from our students to highlight in the meantime. Emilys Blog continues to go from strength to strength and soon she will reach the 7,000 pageviews mark. You can keep up to date with her fantastic postings, including her review of the New Plymouth Phantom of the Opera here.

We've been successful during these holidays with our Basketball team winning the Langton Cup, a local competition you can read a report about it by the tournament MVP (Girls) Isabelle here.  We've also had students completing work independently in the holidays.  Have a look at Alyssa's review of Frozen here.

Gemma played in the Taranaki Development A Team - you can read this recount of her tournament here.

Alice has just returned from holiday in Fiji.  While she was there she took a number of photos and has since created a slideshow with some amazing images from her time away.  You can click on this link to view her work.

There are also some other fantastic Auroa Primary School Class Blogs Ongoing.  Mr Spice has just celebrated a fantastic achievement - 15,000 page views this year! Room Eight have posted some great pictures from the snow, which you can see here.  Mrs Ericisson Class produced some outstanding examples of our Ako, Repurposing.  You can see their amazing planter boxes here.

To those of you on holidays, in New Zealand or in the Northern Hemisphere about to experience a new school year, please don't hesitate to drop us a line or get in contact shortly.  Look forward to seeing you next week.

Sunday 13 July 2014

Matariki@APS 2014 - Hinengakau

Last term Auroa School celebrated Matariki, the Maori New Year of the Seven Sisters. My Whanau, Hinengakau, made instruments that were made out of card and string. It was an instrument called a purerehuia. The trick to this instrument is that you swing it really fast. It can also attract Moths and lizards. It was fun learning about this instrument and showing how it works to the school. This video was created about the process by Tamara from Room Two.

Tamaras Purerehuia Video from Myles Webb on Vimeo.

Friday 11 July 2014

Auroa Primary School Kapa Haka Matariki Performance

As part of our Matariki (Maori New Year) Celebrations at Auroa Primary School, the Auroa Primary School Kapa Haka Group performed several items at our special assembly to celebrate Matariki. The students in the assembly are in our students Whanau Colours: Auroa (Red), Haua Roa (Yellow), Haua Piko (Green) and Hinengakau (Blue). The Kapa Haka group is being led by Mr Tai. Filmed on Friday 4th July 2014.
Matariki 2014 - He Honore from Myles Webb on Vimeo.

Thursday 10 July 2014

Auroa Whanau Matariki Celebration 2014

On Friday 4th of July 2014, Auroa Primary School celebrated the start of Matariki, Maori New Year.   We had a special day at school when students held special celebrations in their Whanau for Matariki.  This slideshow shows the celebration for Auroa.  

Auroa Primary School in the News



In Todays South Hawera Star the Cover Story is a feature on our Whanganui Regional Winning Robotics Team of Lucas, James, Michael and Tom. As well as being a local paper, with it being delivered locally its also featured online on Stuff.co.nz. You can read the original article by clicking on the link here.

The team is extremely excited with the Robocup Nationals coming up in Dunedin in September.

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Auroa Primary Schools 3d Printing Project

Thank you for your visit to our class page. Students in New Zealand are currently on their term two holiday breaks and will return to school on the week starting Monday 21st July. Our students have continued publishing in the meantime and you can see examples of these from the students blogs on the right hand side of our page. One of our most popular posts that occurred from last terms work was our 3d Printing Project. We've had a group of students working independently on a problem solving project. The students have identified the problem and moved through the problem solving process. The slideshow about the project has been updated and reflects the students progress. The project has undergone twelve or so prints that have detailed the significant changes in the project as the students have continued to adapt their production. The best part has been the students who are the ones driving the project. They are also responsible for creating this video detailing the progress: Where to next? On the first week of the term the students from Room One are going to mount the hinge on the door and ensure its completed and works. This will involve further testing and checking, and possibly more production. Our students will continue to document this process and post it online. Stay tuned and see you from 21st July.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Victory at the Langton Cup 2014

Today for the first time in its eight year history, Auroa Primary School were successful in winning the Langton Cup for Basketball.  Held at the Opunake Events Centre, in Opunake the team played against four other local schools.

Auroa defeated Opunake Primary School 33-12 and defeated St Josephs Hawera 22-11.  They then beat runners up St Josephs Opunake 30-16 before in their final game they defeated Rahotu 27-6.  

Not only was the team able to remain undefeated by MVP for the Boys in the competition was Riley P. and MVP for the Girls in 2014 was Isabelle.

Congratulations needs to go to the coach, Chris Cook and the entire Auroa team: Riley P, Isabelle, Gemma, Lucas, Michael, Will, Ben and Caleb.

Thursday 3 July 2014

3d Printer Design Classroom Project

During the past several weeks a group of Auroa Primary School students have been working on a design project with our 3d Printer.   As mentioned in the original post it centred around a broken latch for a classroom cupboard in Room One.

Today was an exciting day in class as the students believe that they have solved the problem.  The latch has taken many designs and many forms from its original incarnation to the version that has been printed in the last day.   You can see details of this in the video created by the students.  Michael and Logan, with the assistance of James, who is currently overseas have driven a project from the start.

They have identified the problem, created the design on paper (in their own time), designed it virtually (using Tinkercad), printed versions of the latch, re-designed the latch several times (currently in its eleventh version) and continued to re-model and redesign the latch.  They are at the point were they have created a 'ball and joint' mechanism, modelled on a socket design, that fits perfectly and will tomorrow be attached to the cupboard to solve the problem.


3D printer project: cuboard clips from Myles Webb on Vimeo.


A student solution to a problem with a great process and we couldn't be more proud of them.   This video below was created by the students and detailed the entire process.   The students are currently re-working a Google Presentation about the process which will be posted shortly.  This video created by Michael and Logan on Thursday 3rd July, 2014.

QR Codes at Auroa Primary School in the Library

At Auroa Primary School, Mrs Kinaston our Librian, has a blog. She's also putting a QR Code on every new book that arrives at Auroa Primary School. She's taking a book review, interview with the author or other related material to do with the book and created a QR Code to match, then sealing it on the books! Eventually every book in the school will be tagged this way and it will be fantastic because everyone will be able to learn more about books. Today Lucille and Dayna created a video showing the use of the Auroa Primary School Library.
QR Codes at Auora Primary School from Myles Webb on Vimeo.
If you want to see what our library looks like, then this tour of the school library was completed by Dayna at the start of the school year - in February.

Wednesday 2 July 2014

Room One''s Business Survey: Tom and Lucas

For our AKO inquiry this term, and next term, we are looking at Repurposing. As part of that the students of Room One have formed businesses and are currently looking at surveying their potential customers. We've used Google Forms to create survey questions for our customers. The first group to create the Google Forms are Tom and Lucas. You can click on the link to the students blogs.

Electives@APS: Kiddie Karts Part Two