The EPro8 Challenge is an engineering and problem-solving race. Every year over 9000 students from 800 schools from throughout New Zealand take part. This year was the first time Mapua had sent teams to take part in this competition and what a result!

"Our blood was pumping, adrenalin was rushing as we started searching the EPro8 folder to find a problem that we could solve". This was how the Mapua Y5/6 EPro8 team described their feelings as they commenced the competition on Tuesday, 21st August.

The EPro8 Challenge is a national engineering and innovation problem-solving competition and nine other teams from different schools in the Nelson region were also feeling the pressure to solve as many problems as they could at the event on Tuesday. Everyone wanted to be a winner.

Mia, Hector, Ben and Casey, known the Newtons, all went to the EPro8 challenge held at Nelson Intermediate. They had practiced over the last two weeks with Clive Donnison at lunchtimes.

This preparation paid off and helped the team to work together cooperatively. Larisa Lye and Sally Hargraves attended the event and were very impressed with the team.

“I must say I am very impressed and proud of how the team worked together and they were such good representatives for Mapua School. All team members contributed equally, collaborated well and were focused the whole time on achieving the goals and tasks they selected. Their concentration didn't wane for the whole three hours! They were very strategic in their thinking and all communicated ideas and jointly made decisions. I was blown away by how well they worked together, they were so cohesive and operated as one unit.

They really did work at a level together that I would not have expected for their ages. Very impressive! They did gain attention from other parents and teachers (due to their skills and collaboration) and the gentleman running the event commented that they were so amazing to watch he didn't want to have to go off and judge the other teams as he was fascinated watching them work together.

They should be so proud of themselves and they were very excited about their win....they absolutely had fun and loved the challenges.” Larisa Taylor

For each challenge, they had to complete a series of tasks. Every challenge had one criteria (one thing that you had to have in the design) and 5 or 6 semi challenges that added value to the final product once you had fulfilled the compulsory criteria. 

Towards the end, the Newtons were told that the Year 5/6 EPro8 record score in New Zealand so far was 350 pts and they were on 310 pts so they raced to finish two more tasks to bring them to a total score of …. 370 pts! Winning the challenge with a new NZ high score! The top 4 teams will go to the finals in a few weeks. Watch this spot for news about that.