Ki-O-Rahi Champions - By Sally Matene

Ki-o-Rahi Champions

Last Thursday my team and I went to the Ki-o-Rahi tournament in Kaikohe at Lindvart park. The people that were in my team were Armani, Taonga, Tamaiti, Andy, Kohl-lee, Angel-Rose, Marta and me. When we started the game we were versing Waima school.

It was my first time playing against other schools.  I was super nervous because I was one of the youngest in my team and I didn’t want to let them down. The captain of our team was Andy.  Waima wanted to be kia oma, so we started off being Taniwha - that’s the team that hits the tipu and stops the other team from getting tries.

I was starting to get frustrated.  It didn’t help that the referee was confusing me. He wasn’t making sense.  He didn’t even know the rules which was annoying because
the other team was fending and having two tags on one side.  Matua Matt said “you can’t do that! That’s cheating!”  He ended up explaining the rules to the referee which made me and my team feel better and not as frustrated as before.

This game was a little intense because they were Kia-Oma and we were Taniwha. So kiaoma has 2 people guarding the tupu. The ki starts in Te Marama.  They have to throw the ball to their teammates who are the kaitiaki standing in Te Ao by the tipu. Then they look for people that they can see from their team to throw the ki to. The aim is to hit as many pou as you can before you get ripped.  Anyone can run around trying to get the pou but as the Taniwha it was our job to double rip them so we can get a hand over for our team. We’re also trying to stop them from scoring tries.  The number of points depends on how many pou you can tag.

So my job was to rip tags from the other team.  I thought I did good.  I got one double rip for my team which helped Marta, Helam and Andy hit the tipu and get us points. When we were ki-oma my job was to hit the pou.  I hated it when they were chasing me because I was scared they would rip me or get the ki off me.  I still got the try which was cool.  “Shot Sally!” I remember hearing Matua Matt yell out.
We ended up winning. The score was 11-1 to Tautoro.

I enjoyed playing Ki-O-Rahi.  It was an awesome day out competing against other schools.  I also liked working with my team.  We ended up coming first overall.

By Sally Matene

EPro8 Challenge

Four of our students (Kohl-Lee, Tyrone, Chace and Shalom) competed in the regional Epro8 challenge.  There are roughly 7,000 students around New Zealand that take part, and funnily it was the first time it had come to Northland.

The ePro8 challenge focuses on engineering, problem solving and coming up with innovative ideas - hence how they got its name.  It was an amazing event that the children thoroughly enjoyed being apart of.  They had to option of completing 4 challenges each with their own set of criteria.  Their aim was to complete as many tasks or criteria as possible, accruing the allocated points for each task.  The team with the most points would qualify to compete in the semi-finals and finals the following week.

The tamariki loved every aspect of this event.  They learnt a lot along the way - the importance of communicating and listening to each other, working as a team, reading and following instructions, planning and following those plans, even working to time constraints.  

This event has motivated our classroom to learn more about electronics, circuits, constructing 3D objects to suit desired goals, coding, electricity, coding....

If you are interested in learning more about epro8 here is the link.

 Here they're trying to attach a light to shine on 'uncle' who struggles to wake up in the morning.  They've set the light to turn on when the sun rises and alarm goes off.

 Each team were given their own workstation with all the gadgets they'd need to complete the tasks.  These included batteries, cogs, wheels, screws, joiners, wingnuts, pulleys, reels, axles, gears, buzzers, multiboxes, solar battery, magnet sensor, lights, switch boxes, push buttons...

This is them learning how to construct a bed that was at least 45 cm wide and 1.2 m tall.