During term three, we had a number of children form teams and submit entries to the RoboCup Junior NZ online competition. This was a nationwide competition that required students to explore the field of biorobotics and design a robotic creature. They had to submit a video of their creature and screenshots of their programming. The students' robots were then judged by a panel of independent, expert judges on their ideas, subsequent build and their programming skills.

I’m very happy to share that two of our teams finished first and second in the senior division (yr 5-8) in this highly competitive competition!

In second place were Ben O and Conrad H, both from Rakau 5. In first place were Talita S and Celia C, both from Awa 3.

This is a huge achievement and well done to these students. They have won the school a brand new Lego SPIKE Prime robotics set that can be used by students in our school to further develop their interest and engagement in robotics and coding. Ka rawe!

Also, a massive thank you to Shane and Sarah H for their wonderful mahi assisting our students to take part in the competition. Your knowledge and expertise has been instrumental to our students’ success and they could not have done it without you. Ngā mihi nui for your excellent mahi! I look forward to even more students taking part next year.