Cybersmart Comment by Liza

We have been learning how to write quality blog comments for the Manaiakalani Film Festival.

A fantastic film festival

Room 9 was very fortunate to attend the 2016 film festival. We got comfortable red seats in front of the gigantic extreme screen at Sylvia Park. It was so exciting! Sitting in our seats, it hit 1pm and the lights went dim. Who was presenting first? Mrs. Grant! Our cybersmart teacher... She was just talking about the film festival. Anyway, we watched films from Glen Innes Primary, Tamaki College and Te Kura Kaupapa Puau. Created by students and shared with the world. It was awesome to see that room 9 can create something to go on the big screen as well. Well done Ruapotaka for the awesome films!

Walking the famous red carpet. We had to take a photo near on the carpet all the famous directors and actors walk on. 

Ready to watch the awesome manaiakalani films. Our big red comfortable seats. We were ready for an hour of awesome films, especially the ones created by Ruapotaka. It was great to see our friends.

An awesome display created by Mrs. Buchanan and her helpers. Right in the middle of the theater. 

Learning how to write quality blog comments

Room 9 has been learning how to write quality blog comments. 

Here is what one of the room 9 students learned.

It took a lot of practice but now  I have written  up to 6 quality blog comments. I have shared them with the creators of the awesome videos I watched for the film festival. It is important to write blog comments because people who share their work enjoy reading feedback and it is a way of sharing our appreciation for people sharing their learning. We write comments to tell people what they need to improve on as well.

Here is my comment I posted. Tristan.

Fun at the Botanic Gardens

Ruapotaka was very fortunate to visit the beautiful Botanic Gardens. We enjoyed a peaceful walk through the colourful garden. Different scented flowers everywhere we turned. It was a wonderful experience.

We spotted our beautiful native Pohutukawa tree in the garden. We talked about what they looked like and how they smelt and felt. We also learned that this is our native Christmas tree. Aren't we lucky?!

We admired some of the unique sculptures. This one is of a tree. There was a whole field of tree sculptures like this scattered right around the grass field.

We had to stop and take a picture under the pink cherry blossom trees. Wow they were just spectacular.

Then we stopped at the rose garden to sketch and draw our choice of a rose. It was nice a quiet so we were able to take our time drawing.

Mary-Ruths facts about polar bears

This is my presentation about polar bears. I wrote some facts about what they look like, where they live and what they do. We had a chance to change our font for our writing and be creative. My favourite fact was learning that female polar bears weigh 150 - 250 kgs. I don't know anyone who weighs that much, do you?

Ruapotaka Mini Olympics

 An eventful afternoon full of learning and effort. Every spot at Ruapotaka had a fun sport happening. A lot of excited teachers and eager students.

 We started with our opening ceremony just like the big Olympics. It was definitely a awesome tradition where the country who created the Olympics (Greece) led the march. The country who hosted in 2016 (Brazil) entered last.

 We found out what we needed to do to make sure our Olympics went smoothly. We welcomed the lovely Ruapotaka families who came to watch us and then we went to play our sport.

Our medal ceremony went excellent. There were gold medals for two people. One person who showed excellent sportsmanship and one person who did their best.

Representing a country in the Olympics

 We learned a lot about our countries that we were put in for our mini Olympics. Countries like Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Cook Islands and so on. 16 countries in total.

 We split into our countries and then four countries went to either room 9, 10, 11 or 12. We coloured in our flags for our opening ceremony and we created a presentation all about our special country.

 We don't usually work with the older year levels but it was an awesome time for us!

A lot of researching different things like what the meaning of our flags were, special foods from our country, special traditions, different languages and many other things.