Te Piringa's Class Blog We are a Year 7 & 8 class of boys and girls at Rutherford Intermediate in Whanganui, New Zealand. 

Amongest all the different things that have been happening in the class this week we have managed to get some more of our Active learning done. We are posting our activities on our individual blogs so feel free to check them out. You can find the links on our Class blog. Here are some of the air dry clay things we have completed.

We have been using Ai in our Cyber Smart time with Maria and we have posted some some of our DLOs on the blogs also. It has been interesting making these as we didn’t know much about Ai to start with. We have been using the Ai generator to make backgrounds for our Pepeha’s which has been part of our Literacy learning this week too.

It’s been a busy week! Next week we are doing some maths testing to see how we have been getting on with our Geometry learning when we have been learning about perimeter, area and volume. Stay tuned!

Wow! with all that has been happening this year, we have decided we need to share more of what we are doing in class, but as I was reminded today “We are so busy doing our learning Miss!”.  We are going to make a real effort to share what we have been doing and learning each week.

SO this week we have been working on our Active Learning. We are being really creative and trying hard to follow instructions to be successful in completing our work. We are also working on Novel Studies this term focusing on improving our overall comprehension skills.

Spiders Web creation                            Cardboard Portrait.                        First Marble Run completed!

We have camp coming up in the last part of this term – we are very excited about going to this! So watch this space in the future.

It’s been a bit of a busy year and posting has been a bit slow to take off in our class these last two terms. Mrs Wilton-Scott is working on making it a more regular thing. We have lots of things going on. One thing that we do in our class on a Monday is Practical learning. We have started by doing a bit of string art! We had to choose a pattern that we wanted to try. Mark out all the places for the nails to go on our paper, then attach it to the boards. We had great fun trying to put the nails in with the hammers, there were lots of fingers in the way and it got a bit tricky to do the dots that were close together. We showed persistance and resilience we got them done. Once we had done that we needed to pull of the paper and start putting the string around each of the nails. The final thing we had to do was the border around the edges. What do you think. We like them and we are going to put them in our rooms at home. Next project is little wooden robots – watch this space.

We have been working in our class on a weekly basis with Maria from Manaiakalani to use our Chromebooks to their full potential. So far we have found out about all the shortcuts we can use, where the different buttons are on our devices and what they can do, created a animation slide using slideshows and also learnt to use voice type. It takes us a bit of time to get all these things done but we are challenging ourselves to get the work completed and up on our Blogs, so go check them out – along with some of our Active learning that we are doing in Math and Literacy.

Wow this term has been flying by and we have been so busy in our class setting up our routines, getting started in our new Math books and just getting to know each other better, we haven’t been posting on our blog, oops. We are going to work on posting more regularly and sharing more of our learning now we have got things underway well and truly.

Here are some of the worry monsters we did in the last few weeks, we have some people that are not worried about anything, but most of us had one or two things – even the teachers. We had to think carefully about what it was that makes us nervous about school or what is happening in our world. We wrote down these and then choose three things that we would like to share with others in the class. We could then put them on our monsters, we discovered that when these were out there they weren’t as scary as we thought or indeed huge and with others help we could get them under control. We also discovered that some people have the same worries as us. 

Welcome back to our Class blog for 2025! We have just started back so please keep checking in with us to see what we are doing in our class. This year is going to filled with lots of learning, Out side the classroom experiences and fun! The big news this year is that we have moved from Room 5 to our new class which use to be Room 10 and is now Te Piringa meaning:  A Place of Shelter and Connection.  The renaming of Room 10 to Te Piringa reflects its purpose as a haven—a place of shelter, refuge, and safety where students feel supported in their learning and well-being. Te Piringa also symbolises connection, link, and association, fostering strong relationships between students, teachers, and whānau. Like a hiding place that provides comfort and protection, this space nurtures a sense of belonging and growth for all who enter.

We look forward to you following our learning journey this year!

I know this blog post a little bit late being posted but it has been a very busy end to the term. We had Camp at El Rancho in Waikanae, End of year Prizegiving assembly practices, Year 8’s leavers dinner, Reports to be put out adn so much more going on that it has taken to the New Year Holiday to get this written.

So we would like to thank everyone for following along on our Learning Journey this last year (2024) and hope that you will continue to do so when we head into the new school year. Big news is that you will see a switch in our Blog name from Room 5 to a new name, as we are not only moving classes but changing the name of our classroom. Really exciting times ahead. Stay tuned to see what’s happening!

The weeks seem to be flying by and we only have about 27 school days until the end of the term! Room 5 has been putting in the mahi these last few weeks and today we had six Wetiweti ana awards handed out in assembly for our class. Braxton – Silver, Isaac – Bronze, Amelia – Bronze and Silver, Freya – Bronze and Manaia – Bronze. We are very proud of these members of Room 5. They have already started working towards their next goals for the end of the term. Kai pai rawe. You make us all very proud.

We have had some cool things going on for other students in our class too. Matthew has just returned from overseas and while in Hawaii his dad competed in the Ironman over there, they visited some historical places like Pearl harbour. Sounds like an awesome time, thanks for sharing the photos and your experiences Matthew and whanau.

Harley and Kingston also travelled to Auckland to compete in the PCT challenge. The boys had a great time and certainly worked hard although they didn’t win they had a great time. Well done boys we look forward to seeing some photos of the day soon on our blog.

This year we had our School Athletics at School. Usually we have held it at Cooks Gardens but we all did well, despite the weather being a bit uncooperative at the start but persistence, resilience and perseverance paid off at the end of the day. Our High Jumpers jumped well, as well as the Long jumpers. The boys Sprints were hotly contested and so were the girls. Well done to all our athletes! The interschool athletics are coming up in Week 5, be sure to come along and support our students.

This week we were able to celebrate Diwali. Miss Singh has been working with a small group of students from the different classes to teach them a dance for the celebration. It was lots of work and they were able to present what they had learnt at Assembly on Friday. It was great to share in the celebrations. Here are some photos from the assembly performance.

A decoration made entirely of rice.

Senior management join in the festivities

Miss Singh welcomes us with a traditional dance.

Girls Dance Group perform their Diwali dance that they have been practicing