Last term, twenty-four students took part in the 'Brain Busters' programme at Rāroa.

The programme presented the students with an open-ended challenge to solve creatively and critically: We no longer have letter U in our spoken or written language. In teams of 6, you have to create a 10 minute presentation on why the letter U has gone, why it should be retrieved, and how. You will include a conflict, a resolution and a sense of U’s character during your presentation.

The students had 6 weeks to complete the challenge which also required that many complex criteria be met, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, no help, advice or feedback could be given to the students by anyone, staff included. The finale was an evening where the Brain Busters shared their solution to the challenge with judges, family and friends in a dramatic form.Congratulations to the students for their time management, focus and openness to develop many new skills over the term: Soumya Tyagi, Lucy Simmonds, Evie Heath, Nina Ross, Zoe Cursons, Jasper White, Lincey Jiang, Madeleine Caylor, Ruby Easton-Smith, Iris Polaschek, Frederick Wragg, Francesca Layburn, Ezra Shaw, Jasmine Harvey, Oliver Stacey, Jack Podmore, Ivy Guo, Luca Lavigne, Miki Inoue-Palmer, Mitchell Jenkins, Theo Verkade, Valeria Kostynchuk, Thisaja Ariyasinghe and Bee Tran.

Huge thanks to our judges: staff member Jimmy Steele, and Year 11 Onslow students Alex Hay & Louis Reynolds (pictured below). A few of the students' reflections on their learning are below:

• We showed and further developed our skill of collaboration. We did this by starting out as pretty much strangers to each other. After a couple sessions of spending time together, we became somewhat friends, and better-yet, true teammates. Sharing our ideas and opinions, we worked together and improved from it.
• One other skill we used is creativity. In fact, it was a crucial part to make our plan work. We came up with ideas, built off those ideas, then improved them even more! Each and every thought was amazing and original.
• I improved my confidence throughout by sharing my ideas
• I had to work outside my comfort zone a lot during this experience. This has helped to develop my courage.
• Being in Brain Busters has definitely helped my problem solving and critical thinking skills because it brought up a lot of challenges that I had to solve.
• Sometimes my curiosity definitely took over as well and it really helped when exploring the aspect of an idea.
• I certainly asked lots of questions and explored all of the parts of a problem. I asked around all the flaws and errors, and tried to improve them.

• We also had to develop our teamwork skills as we hit a few roadblocks during the idea planning phase.

• We developed the major skills of initiative and independence because we had to keep track of where we were at and take initiative to finish something in our own time. As well as timekeeping as we had to keep track of where we were and where we needed to be

Lynne DunnG.A.T.E. Coordinator/Learning Support Teacher