During the first half of Term 3 Te Kura o Paeraki/Mt Pleasant School participated in the Epro8 Problem Solving Competition. Epro8 requires students to work together to solve challenges involving engineering, problem solving, mathematics and innovation.

Each task has to be broken down into small parts in order to be solved. There are rigid guidelines for the students to follow and points are given if their end structure meets the given criteria. Maths and Science concepts are an intrinsic part of the challenge and many problems have to be worked out along the way. The students get a real buzz when they work together to make something, like a lift that actually works! 

All Year 5-8 students participated in class heats which involved teams of three to four students working on a series of set challenges at school using one Epro8 kit. They scored points according to how many levels of each challenge they successfully completed. The top scoring teams from each class competed again in a team final run the following day.  The top two teams for Year 5&6 and Year 7&8 won the right to compete in the inter-school competition.

Epro8 is an amazing way to learn how to engineer and problem solve. It is a good time to work together in a group and find your strengths. You can show off your building skills, and your electronic skills. 

I would highly recommend trying this if you like building and playing with electronics. We built things like a barrier arm that detected a car coming, opened, then waited for the car to go through, then went down again. We also made a shopping trolley, that you could motorise, drive around the hall, and have races with it. We could’ve also built a target board, and a foosball table but we didn’t have enough time to make them both.

In conclusion, Epro8 is a fun, challenging, collaborative activity you can do in years 5-8. Now in a few weeks our team, the minions, will be competing in the semi-finals. Wish us good luck! 🤞 

By Jackson V and Jeremy F

Congratulations to the following teams for their success in qualifying for the inter-school competition and for competing with amazing perseverance and determination. Our two TRS teams have also qualified for the semi finals! We wish them good luck with this competition which is happening later in August.

Team at the Top

• Louis, Oscar M, Miela, Elsa 

• Evelyn, Zan, Angus, Kiki

Team Rock Solid

• Jeremy, Jackson V, Elliot, Aida(1st place)

• Siena, Poppy, Rafie, James D (3rd place)

A big shout out to the Kiwi Gaming Foundation for helping us make this happen!