On Tuesday, 23rd July we walked down to do some tree planting with our buddy class, Room 5.  We acted as tuakana to our teina and worked with our buddies.  It was fun working with a junior class and encouraging them.  We also made sure they stayed safe when we walked there and back.

This explanation about the area we planted in was gifted be Te Ākitai Waiohua:

‘Hīrea and māhia are both words meaning ‘indistinct sound’. Te Hīrea is in reference to the Māori name for  Weymouth (Waimāhia) where the harbours muffled waters didn’t quite sound like how one would expect water  flowing in a harbour should sound.’

This year a group of eight Rangi students have taken on the challenge of Project Wy.  It is a leadership programme that students take on alongside their whānau.  The early morning trainings culminate in the completion of two events –  10km and later on a mud run both of which are held in Rotorua.

Akomanga 20 had four students take part this year – Finn (his second time), Tony, Bere and James.

Congratulations boys on stepping up to the challenge and good luck with your training for the mud run!

Akomanga 20 has enjoyed reading month and the challenges it has bought with it.

We collaborated and designed a ‘book cover door’ – we used Maui and Other Legends by Peter Gossage. The class knows all of these legends now and some of these we have read more than once. We were lucky enough to win a new board game for our class – ‘Wordle’ which requires code-cracking skills to guess a word.

Our next challenge was to design a book mark – we decided to create double sided bookmarks using Google Drawing that save your page with a magnet joining the two sides. Azima’s impressed Mrs Miers and she received a Duffy Book.

Our third challenge was to design posters to promote New Zealand authors. Dahlia Malaeulu’s book Grandpa’s Siapo is a favourite after her visit to WPS next year and a large group of students loved copying the Pasifika designs. Maryjane chose to re-imagine the cover of Mophead by Selina Tusitala Marsh using similar designs from her art session with Whaea Cheryldene and Mr Walker.

The Hells Pizza reading challenge is where Akomanga 20’s competitive spirit shone. The race was on to read seven books… however sometimes we were sent back again if the book was too easy or if our review wasn’t thorough enough. The whole class is almost done and we look forward to our Pizza Party celebration in Term 2.