Papa Ra's warm welcome

Papa Ra visited the school for a week and in the time he was here he got a great idea of what our school was like and how it worked. The main difference he noticed was the learning environment. One thing Papa Ra said was "Most of our teaching is outside in the real world". The main language has become, over the years, English, and a strong focus of some of his work is encouraging Cook Island Maori. There is even a Maori speech competition!

He not only visited the school but also had an opportunity to go to the Rippa Rugby Tournament in Motueka. He was noting down the rules as rippa had recently been introduced in his school, Nikao Maori School in Rarotonga. After seeing the game in action he thought he would have to tweak the rules to make the game faster for his pupils.

Papa Ra was warmly welcomed at school and the farewell was very sad. When his two week visit was cut short to one week following a death in Papa Ra's family it was still a valuable experience.

Poetry - Room 7’s first thoughts

Poetry can be virtual or reality. Poetry sometimes bends reality and sometimes breaks it.
Fabian, Kynan, Michael

Poetry are words that rhyme and make you think deeper.
Hayden and Lucy H

People need poems and they picture them differently. They aren’t always about the same thing and poets have different points of view.
Storm and Lucy S

Poetry is like the leaves of a sunflower, they are beautiful like poetry itself.
Nikau, Jeanine and Patrick

Poetry is rhyming and expressing yourself and it is fun
Zara, Keegan and Rosie

Poetry is using your imagination to form rhyming words that represent your feelings and emotions.
Renee, Cacilda and Lydia

Poetry is about expressing your feelings and stuff that comes out of your mind.
Thomas and Laura

Poetry is a way of expressing your imagination, describing feelings through rhyming song and words and letting emotions free to crawl across your page
Dan and Eden

Poetry is about letting your imagination free and describes how you feel. Some poems make people feel proud of themselves.
Jake and Alice

Poetry rhymes and it flows off your tongue with imagination
Hana and Hayley


Poetry can be a whole lot of feelings put together to sum up your emotions or it can be describing words in different ways
Ellie, Jordan and Sam


Check out Kynan's poem by clicking on the image below.