SLJ: Jean Batten and Amelia Earhart

Kia ora. This is the second day of the SLJ. The activity I chose today is about Jean Batten and Amelia Earhart. Jean Batten and Amelia Earhart were two amazing pilots that had broken records. Here is a Venn Diagram to compare the both of them and show you what they have in common.

SLJ Week one Day one: The first activity I chose

Kia ora. This is the first activity I chose for the Summer Learning Journey. First of all we have to imagine we were invited out to sea by a man named Nainoa Thompson who can travel places using only the stars to guide him. We have to list down 10 (food) items that we would take on the sea voyage he invited us on.
Here are the 10 food items I would take:
1. Peanuts or Cashew nuts. I chose these because they will provide me with protein and won't go off.

2. Pasta. It's delicious, filling and it won't go off.

3. Any type of biscuit. It's delicious and they won't go off.

4. Tinned meat. Tinned stuff doesn't go off for at least a couple of years and I need more than one source of protein.

5. Tinned Vegetables. Same as tinned meat but I need a source of Vitamins.

6. Tinned Fruit. Same thing as Vegetables and tinned stuff is light so I won't have to worry about the weight of my food. I promise that's the last of canned/tinned stuff.

7.  Lime Cordial. Technically it's not a food but I'll still need it because Scurvy is what got to the sailors 200 years ago and that was because of a lack of Vitamin C. I found out that tinned fruit has lost most of its Vitamin C.

8. Crackers. Just something that's filling and it won't go off.

9. Pretzels. Again just something filling that won't go off.

10. 2 minute noodles. If it comes to the point where I'm starting to starve then I've got 2 minute noodles to eat. I won't have to eat them cooked either.

What would you choose for your 10 food items?

Amazing Wellington Camp

Kia ora, the year seven and eights have just been on an amazing trip to Wellington. We were there for a whole school week. We were lucky to have the people who accommodated us, they were very welcoming and kind. The trip was enjoyable and I had learnt a bunch of stuff down there, especially at Te papa and Parliament.

 When we arrived at Parliament we sat down on the steps of the Parliament House. I noticed on the front there were three big letters engraved on the metal in the middle top of the front exterior. They were GRV, later I asked Erin (our educator) what they meant which I learnt what they stood for. King George the fifth (I have no idea where the K came from but the V is Roman numerals it stands for five). I also learnt what a whip does and that the Queen can’t come into the debating chamber nor any place in Parliament with a green carpet.


At Te papa there was an interesting exhibition about the battlefront of Gallipoli in WW1. It was mind blowing because in there, there were these massive sculptures of people, but the thing was, they looked really realistic (these sculptures had been made by Weta Workshop which I will talk about later). They almost looked as if they were real but they were frozen in time. You could see the sweat on their faces and the blood that was on them, one person even had a bullet wound in their arm but the man was still holding his pistol / revolver. The story behind that was, there was a man was leading the Wellington platoon and they had been charging up the hills, then he had been shot in the arm but he was determined to defeat the Ottoman and had lay down and kept shooting his gun at the Ottoman until he ran out of ammo or bled out to death. At nightfall he had been found by a medic and he was taken back to camp. He recovered and two months later he was back in action. He had led the Wellington platoon again and his platoon had captured somewhere up the hills. They had lost it after five days and had to keep retreating. Finally after eight months at Gallipoli and a furious battle he had been shot in the head from a Machine Gun. The bullet that killed him was from friendly fire.


We had gone up Mt Victoria for a view of Wellington and it’s pretty big compared to Paihia (by the way this isn’t in the order of where we went). Another place we went to was the zoo, and I loved most of the animals there, I wanted to take some home as pets but I couldn’t, plus it would’ve been hard to feed them. Before we even looked at any of the animals there was this man that showed us behind the scenes, like what the animals eat, I found out most the animals eat, vegetables. The man who’s in charge of what the animals eat is given about 5,000 dollars a day to feed the animals. Whatever meat he gives the animals it’s always the same thing; Horse meat because it’s cheap and the Horse meat is stored away at - 18 degrees celsius. After we had looked at all that stuff we had gone to pick up two handfuls of grass each and chucked it in a bucket. We had then proceeded to feed the Kunekune Pigs. Once we had finished that we could go and look at the animals.


We went to the National Library which holds special artifacts like the real Treaty Of Waitangi, New Zealand’s Declaration Of Independence and Kate Sheppard's Petition to have the right for women to vote. Did you know the suffrage petition was 270 m long? We had to go to the National Library twice because when we first walked there, the treaty was a replica but on Thursday the real one was there.


The Cable Cars were pretty cool especially in the tunnel because there were all these fairy lights that were going different colours every three seconds. After we had our little trip up the hill we walked into the Cable Car Museum. The Cable cars were made in 1902 but they were operated a lot differently from what they are now. Everything now is automated where as back then the driver had to be strong and have good grip. After we had learnt a bit we were then split into two groups, the groups were either making badges or making simple machines (like the pulley machine) with stuff that looked like Mechano. When we went to make the simple machines we were in, where the Winding Room was back when the Cable Cars were in the early stages of being built (the Winding Room is the control room basically but it doesn’t take full control of the Cable Car).


My first impression on the Westpac Stadium was WOW it’s big. We got to sit in some places we will probably never be able to go in ever again, like where the media reporters sit or where the TMO’s sit. The Westpac Stadium can hold up to 35,400 - 40,000 people. It can hold up 40,000 only if they bring out the foldable chairs. The Westpac Stadium was gifted a Springbok head because a few decades ago if the Springboks were beaten they gifted the team they were beaten by, a Springbok head. The place I enjoyed going the most, in the Westpac Stadium was the going down into where the players run out onto the field. We also walked into the changing room all I can say is, it stunk; badly.


On Tuesday night we had a student from the University that was right across the road. Her name was Tayla but she preferred to be called Aunty Tay. She gave us a tour of the University but before she did we played a ice breaker sort of game. We formed a circle and said our name with an action. My action was shrugging my shoulders because I didn’t know what to do, so that’s what made me choose that. She told us the story about Rata and why they had named a whole science research lab Rata. She had shown us her office and she felt very honoured to have a statue of Queen Victoria right outside her office. The University was named after Queen Victoria.


We had gone to Weta Workshop. It’s just amazing, mind blowing. They spend months upon months just making things for movies or something else like the giant sculptures at Te Papa. The designs they make may take longer because the director of the movie might change their minds and choose a different design. Weta Workshop has been invited to help in many famous movies such as, District 09, Avatar, Lord of The Rings and two of the Narnia films. When Weta Workshop had first started it wasn’t even named Weta Workshop; it wasn’t actually named anything, it was just a little workshop at the back of the founders apartment. The suburb that Weta Workshop is in, Miramar. Miramar is probably the only place in the world you could complete a really good movie within a mile and that’s because there’s other companies around Weta Workshop that do good editing and arranging and that sort of stuff also Weta Workshop.


Capital E! The exclamation mark isn’t out of excitement. It’s named that. What happened at Capital E!? We made a movie. The movie we made was about Parliament, and Jacinda Ardern banned the internet. I was a political forecaster. I don’t know why but it was really nerve racking for me and we had one practice run then we made it for real. I mucked up because of how nervous I was. Our end result is pretty good and I think it’s better than our ‘dress’ run.


Zealandia was a cool place because we saw cool things like an endangered skink, two Tuatara and even some Weta that were hiding inside of a tree which you physically had to open. Zealandia is also 98% pest free and that’s only because there’s some type of bird that keeps meaning to eat mice but they end up leaving them behind. How they keep all the pests out of Zealandia is the use a giant metal fence that goes underground and it has a little cap that prevents cats climbing up and jumping over. We heard a lot of Kiwi calling but sadly we didn’t get to see one, I don’t think we were ever going to see one anyway because Kiwi can pick up vibrations and because there were about 13 of us, our vibrations would’ve been pretty heavy for a Kiwi (or however Kiwi sense vibrations).


That’s everything that we had done. We were very privileged to go on this trip. We only had to pay $50, which is nothing to what the price of the trip was; 14,000 dollars. Our principal prepared a lot and put a lot of time and effort into making the trip work. Us year seven and eights basically did nothing except fundraise a bit of money, plus we had a generous donation of $10,000 from the Board Of Trustees.


That is all from me. Thank you if you read the whole post. Bye.


Here are some photos





Capital E!





Cable Car Museum





Beehive





Springbok Head





Treaty Of Waitangi





Tasmanian Devil (Zoo)





Te Papa Gallipoli Exhibition


Ok, in the photos they don't look realistic but in person they look real.

Duffy Theatre

Paihia School had a good show put on by actors. The actors names were Anya, Dylan and Emma-Rose. The show they put on wasn’t really aimed at the year seven and eight age group, so I wasn’t really interested in the show.

The show was about a boy named Duffy. He was driven to his aunty’s house. When he got to his aunty’s house he tried getting his cousin’s attention but she was too busy playing a game that both of them usually played together online which was named Magic Bricks. Eventually Duffy gets bored and puts on his nana’s glasses on and does a dance. He notices that his hands were starting to pixelate and then is sucked into the game. Then Duffy’s cousin realises that Duffy isn’t next to her and she looks for Duffy but she can’t find him. So then she goes back to play Magic Bricks and she sees Duffy sucked inside the game.

A few more things happen then a person monster thingy majig came out. Her name was the Dismantler (she was programmed to pull apart anything shaped like a cube and tried ripping Duffy apart  because the skin he chose had cubes on it). Anyway that’s beside the point. Duffy had thirty minutes to escape or he would get pixelated forever. You already probably know what happens next he figures out what to do because his cousin gets sucked in. Last second they find out how to get out of the game and Duffy’s aunty is afraid because the timer had got all the way down to one and it took awhile for the game to render that they had got to Earth again. Also when they were trying to get out of the game they found out that their nana was the inventor of the game.

When they had got out of the game they asked Duffy’s aunty if they were rich but she said they weren’t really because their nana didn’t believe in, in-game purchases but she had made a bit of money and her will was to give the money to Duffy and his cousin. I think the moral of the story is listen to people because they might end up doing something stupid.

Ki O Rahi Tournament

 Kia ora. For the past few weeks we have been practising Ki O Rahi. We had about two practices then we were in a tournament. This tournament started off a bit later than what it  were supposed to. The first game we played was against Taipa School, they were pretty tough and they had practised a lot more than what we had; the final score was 6 - 3 to Taipa. The second game was against Motatau. The final score was 8 - 0 to us. The third game we won 9 - 3. Finally we made it to the semi-finals! We were so excited that we had made it. So we played, and we put up a good game but we were beaten by Taumarere, they were very good and had won last year’s tournament. The final score was 13 - 6.  We had been knocked out of the tournament but I was satisfied that we had made it to the semis and most importantly we all had fun. I think I really need to improve on my catching skills. 

There are no photos unfortunately.

No communication maths activity

Kia ora. In Te Ngahere we have been doing this maths activity.  For this maths activity there were 16 cards per group. We were in groups of four and each person in the group got four cards. On the cards there were fractions, dots, shaded tiles and something else (I forgot the last one). The rules are you’re not allowed to communicate with each other which includes non verbal signs, you can give cards but you can’t take them, if you only have two cards you can’t give any more. The most frustrating thing was not being able to communicate to each other, especially if the person you gave the card to didn’t know why you gave it to them.  I learnt that needing to communicate is a lot more important than I thought it was.

Your Life or Your Money?

Kia ora, in Te Ngahere Whaea Tracey came in and taught us about water safety. Usually Whaea Tracey teaches us the same thing every year just to remind us, but this time she taught us some new things. For this lesson that just passed she taught us about flares and an EPIRB (Emergency Positioning Indicating Radio Beacon or Emergency Beacon). EPIRB’s send a bright light into the sky but you have to call Coast Guard so they can search for you. Here are a fews things I learnt, the flare that sends up a orange cloud is seen better at night time; flares also have a flaw though, that is they’re not waterproof. The reason they’re not waterproof is because the longer you hold them the hotter they get, so to cool them down you need to dip them into the water. An EPIRB however is waterproof and it sends a bright light up into the sky (not high enough to interfere with planes the same with the flares), but they come at a great price, $500+ however your life is worth a lot more. Another thing that’s costly is, you have to pay Coast Guard for every hour they go searching for you (this includes them preparing and getting their equipment on), the price is $250 a hour.

So what would you rather? Paying a lot of money or keeping your life?

STEAM challenge

Kia ora, in Te Ngahere we did a STEAM challenge. We were learning how to make a free standing tower using limited materials. For the STEAM challenge we were given two sheets of newspaper and 30 cm of tape. The challenge was, we had to build the tallest free standing tower with the materials we were given. Another thing that made this challenge difficult was, we were only given 20 minutes to complete it. The group I was in kept coming up with ideas but we couldn’t really choose what idea to use because there were so many, but in the end we just made a tower because there were only six minutes left. It was pretty frustrating because when we had started making the tower it wasn’t balancing properly. Next time I think I will help my group a bit more. Do you think this would be difficult for you if you tried this challenge?

What Should Be In a Quality Blog Post?

Kia ora, we have been learning about making a quality blog post. I learnt that I need to have better titles for my blog posts because most of them are pretty boring.  We had to read some things so that we fully understood what the six qualities were. When we had read about the things that should be in a quality blog post, we answered some questions about what we had learnt, and why the things were so important. The things that are important  are a title, an introduction, a DLO, a reflection, the sources and a question to top it all off. A title is important because it makes the reader want to read your post, but it has to be catchy.I think this helped me because I didn’t really think titles mattered as much as everything else but it’s one of the most important parts of a blog post. I hope you enjoyed my blog post. What is counted as a quality blog post at your school?

Beach Clean Up

Last Friday Te Ngahere did a beach clean up, because there are very ignorant people and they pollute our beach we also cleaned the beach up because the rubbish will most likely go into the ocean. My group stayed at the back, and we were only picking up all the tiny bits of rubbish. What I found a lot of, was pieces of timber with rusty nails on them; I found it very confusing how no one else had seen them. At one point I found two wooden stakes that were pretty old and they had grown Oysters on them, they also smelt very bad as if someone had chucked fish into a bin and the fish had been there for three months (I used my shirt as a sort of gas mask because it stunk so much). Apparently the most common thing people from the front picked up were cigarette butts, alcohol cans and beer bottles. In the end I learnt that there are a lot of lazy smokers who chuck their cigarette butts aside. How do you think we could stop smokers from chucking their smokes aside and polluting our beaches?

How to reuse and attribute an image

 In Te Ngahere we have been learning how to reuse and attribute images from the internet. We have been learning about this because when we make animations we take a lot of images off the internet but we don’t check if they’re copyrighted or not, which can get us sued. There are some people who are fine with you taking their image off the internet, but you might have to attribute the images, there are also some images that are only alright with you using them if it’s for educational purposes only. If a image has two white lines through the image it means you can’t use it because it’s copyright. To attribute an image you have to show what licence the people who took the photo use to find the licence and who took the photo you have to click the image and then there will be a link in the top left corner you will have to click it. There you will find if you have to attribute or not. Also you have to say who took the photo (sometimes it doesn’t say who took the photo or which licence they use).

Duffy Assembly

Kia ora bloggers. Today Paihia School had a Duffy Book Assembly. Paihia School is very fortunate to be a part of the Duffy Books programme. The Duffy Books programme is a company that gives books to schools for free. Our special guest for the assembly today was Rebecca Brothers. Rebecca Brothers was an Olympian and competed in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Her sport was swimming. Rebecca Brothers has now retired from swimming and is a police officer which she has been  for 10 years. Something I learnt from Rebecca Brothers is that becoming a Olympian isn’t easy and that I wouldn’t want to be one (because of how early I would have to wake up).

After Rebecca Brothers talked to us a bit about her life, gave out some books to a few students and then we had to sing the Duffy Kids song. Then the assembly ended, which meant we got our books. The two books I got was one about a New Zealand Army officer during D-Day and the other book I got was about a plane crash and something was on it that’s after a kid because he knows the truth. The books that I have got are sound very interesting so I look forward to reading  them.

Project Energize

Kia ora bloggers. Today we had Whaea Gina in. Today she taught us about healthy drinks and unhealthy drinks.. Whaea Gina put out  three cards (not literal playing cards). On the three cards there was one colour per card, they were green red and orange. The green card meant it was a drink you should consume 3 - 4 times a day (if not more) under the green card there was water and milk. The orange card meant only drink it about once a week or if you’re sick (I meant Powerade if you’re sick ) also under the orange card was chocolate milk and flavoured water. The red card meant only drink it once or twice a year some of the drinks under red was Monster, V, Coke, Coke Zero, Coke Diet and E2. The reason Whaea Gina is teaching us about this stuff is because there are a lot of families members that haven’t been educated about this and have ended up getting diabetes. By the time they have been educated or have got diabetes they’re already too addicted and say they’ve done the damage and keep on drinking it. That is all and unfortunately there are no photos.

Paihia School Cross Country

 Kia ora bloggers. Paihia School have just had Cross Country at Bledisloe Domain. I was excited for the Cross Country because I enjoy Cross Country. We didn’t start Cross Country straight away, it kicked off at about 11:30 so we were able to fit in some learning.  We all ran in our age groups and gender e.g 5 year old boys ran together then 5 year old girls etc. When it got to the 11 year olds they ran with the 12 and 13 year olds. Right before my race I was quite nervous. By the time I had finished running around the field my legs were already tired. After I had finished running the field there was a gate which slowed me down because I had to climb over it. I found the hill the hardest but easiest part (if that makes sense). What made the hill the hardest part was, there was a giant patch of mud mixed with Horse faeces mixed with water so when you ran through it, you got a bit stuck. What made the hill the easiest part though was my legs just got used to it. The race was very tiring for me because I had a cold. The entire track was approximately 1.5 km long. Overall I was very tired but I wanted to run the track again because I enjoyed it that much.

Here is a photo of me running up one of the hills. (I think).

Steps

Kia ora bloggers, in Te Ngahere we are measuring our steps. The reason we are doing this is because Whaea Becks and Whaea Chrissy have ordered pedometers, (things which count how many steps you’ve taken). With the pedometers we’re going to add all our steps together after one day. With all our steps added together we’re going to see if we could walk the distance of New Zealand.

First we had to measure how long our steps were (mine are 80 cm). Afterwards we had to estimate how many steps it would take us to walk 10 metres. My estimation was 12 and a half steps. When we had estimated how many steps it would take us we had to measure something outside. My group and I measured te Whare Kai which is 10.31 metres long on the length of te Whare Kai. Once we had finished measuring the Whare Kai. We took turns walking the part we measured; it took me 16 steps to walk the part we measured. Now we’ve finished making a digital poster. On the poster we had to take a photo of what we measured and put a bit of a summary in it.

Everything that we’ve been doing so far I’ve enjoyed. Something I could do better next time is take a better photo of the Whare Kai.

Science Fair

In Te Ngahere we’ve continued with our science fair (not that we had a break). My group’s question is, What is the best material for insulation? The reason we’re doing this (other than science fair) is to carry out a scientific experiment. What we’ve done to carry out our experiment is we’ve wrapped 5 materials around 5 ice cream containers. When we had done that we boiled water and poured it into the ice cream containers. We checked the temperature with a water thermometer every 20 minutes for two hours. After we had finished that experiment we did the same thing except with cold water. Last Friday we had to present our experiments on a board and they were judged by Mrs Lindsay and another judge but I forgot her name.

The NED Show

At Paihia School we had a NED Show. NED means Never give up, Encourage others and Do your best. The NED Show has a lot of important messages in it. The person this show is about (Ned) has to go on a mission. The mission he goes on is him trying to find his mindset. He has to fly to Mt Everest using a Hot Air Balloon once he gets to Mt Everest he gives up trying to climb Mt Everest because he has a Brain-freeze (not from eating an ice-cream). Then a Yeti  appeared out of nowhere. The Yeti’s name is Yet. Yet the Yeti told Ned that he can’t climb Mt Everest YET (this was one of the messages). When Ned climbed Mt Everest he found another envelope with another riddle inside of it. I don’t remember the riddle but I remember the answer, it was a zipline. Ned ziplined down Mt Everest all the way from Nepal to the Caribbean. When Ned landed, he landed on a X. Then Ned spotted a pirate and she was coming towards him. She encouraged Ned and gave him courage. After this she told him to dig down on the X and Ned dug down. In the hole he found a treasure chest but when he opened it all there was, was a treasure map. Ned looked up at the pirate and said “I have to go through a JUNGLE!?” The pirate encouraged him more which made him go and find the treasure. When he found the treasure and opened the treasure chest he found rocks. Ned was mad at the pirate because he walked all that way for rocks. Nicole did a bit of a magic trick and made the rock a Ruby the pirate had also done this as well Ned had found 2 thirds of his mindset now.  Ned saw something in the air, at first he didn’t know what it was then he realised it was a UFO. The UFO was heading towards Ned and then it abducted him. Ned was prepared to fight but then he looked up at an alien and they were so much taller than him. Ned started stuttering and then the aliens asked Ned if he could fix the UFO. In the end Ned fixed the UFO and he found out the problem. The aliens knew too much so they kept saying “I know.” You have to let go of I know so your brain can grow.

Author visit: Katarina Lee

Kia ora bloggers. An author named Katarina Lee came to Paihia School. Before her visit we researched her and found out what books she’s written so far. Katarina had made a presentation about her career and what she was going to ask us. On the presentation she also had a few birds on it and asked if we knew what kind of birds they were. She has published two books so far but is planning to release a few more books. One of her two books she has published is a picture book named Omri and friends which is about an octopus named Omri. The other book she has published is named The Boy King which is a lost in time series and is set when Tutankhamun is about to be the pharaoh in 1333 BC. The part I enjoyed the most was when we voted for a teacher to do an Octopus Dance unfortunately only Mrs Pou did the Octopus Dance. The part I didn’t really like was when we all had to stand up and do the Octopus Dance because it was kind of weird.

Scientific Method

 Today in Te Ngahere we have been doing a infographic for our science fair. Our infographic was about the scientific method but before we could create our infographic we had to read about the scientific method. There are 6 steps in the scientific method they are, 1. Ask a question, 2. Research your question 3. Make a hypothesis if you don’t know what a hypothesis is it’s an estimated guess or a likely geuss. 4. Test your hypothesis 5.Analyse your results, in other words take your results apart and find out the answer. 6. Present a conclusion which means show everyone the answer. I enjoyed making the infographic and learning about the scientific method. 

Here is my infographic.

Animation

In Te Ngahere we did an animation about people's journeys to NZ, they could be in the past or in the present. We got the information  about the NZ Land Wars was by looking at a whole bunch of people’s journeys and one of the texts in there was a book about The NZ Land Wars. I learnt a lot about The NZ Land wars like why Hone Heke cut down the flagpole because before I thought he did it because he didn’t like the British putting up their own flag up but not the Maori. Another thing I learnt was that Hone Heke didn’t die because he was killed by the British but by another Maori pa and they had a lot of rules/laws of when they invaded. Mine and Tawhiri’s  animation was about the New Zealand Land Wars. We were only going to do it from the Maori perspective but there was no one here before so we couldn’t do the journey for them meaning we had to do the British perspective for the journey.

At first we were struggling to create people because we had to make weird humans on our  Google Slide but then Whaea Becks told the whole class a site that we could make people. The sites name is Funko Pop Yourself. It’s kind of weird doing people in the past though because they only have modern nice clothes. I enjoyed making most of the animations because it didn’t feel like we made as many slides as what we did. What I didn’t like was when we had to change our bullets to musket bullets on 88 slides which were actually moon png’s just shrunk but it looked like a musket bullet. It was annoying so when we completed it I was so happy I can’t even explain  how happy I was. Here is mine and Tawhiri’s animation.

Maths DLO decimals

In Te Ngahere we have been learning multiple maths strategies for adding and subtracting decimals e.g 6.4 + 7. 2 or 9.7 - 5. 9. When we had got the hang of all of these strategies we made a maths DLO based on it. We were trying not to use Place Value on a few strategies because that is most of our go to strategy. The strategies I used for my DLO was Rounding and Compensating, Equal Additions, Jumping the Number Line and Place Value. Equal Additions only work on subtraction which I think is weird because subtraction and addition are the complete opposite of each other. So how Equal Additions works is if the question is 5.8 - 3.9 = you would add .1 to the 3.9 making 4 and because you did that you have to d the same to the 5.8 making 5.9 so now the new question is 5.9 - 4 = 1. 9. I enjoyed doing this DLO because I’ve now got the hang of DLO’s now because it usually takes me ages to complete a DLO. What I didn’t enjoy was one of the activities we did which was us having to do an exercise (not physically). The exercise was we had to figure out how many ways a boy could walk to school and how many kilometers are. When we had done that we had to add up all the kilometers from each day and double that because he also had to walk back.

Quick Rip Tournament

In Te Ngahere if you wanted to play and you signed up you could play Quick Rip. We only had 3 days of practice and drills until we had to play in a tournament at Kerikeri Rugby Field. We had arrived at the rugby field at about 10ish but our first game wasn’t until 10:30 so we did some passing drills and waves. Every team had 3 other teams to play. Paihia School’s team played Kerikeri High School 2, Rawene and Kaikohe. We won against Kerikeri High school 2 and Rawene but Kaikohe was too good and it looked like they had practiced nearly everyday and had played games in the weekends they also won every game they played. After we had finished all our games we played passes because we were waiting for peoples parents/grandparents to arrive so they could help with transport back to school. Near the end of us passing the ball I kicked the ball and it went onto the roof and got stuck until Fonz got it out of the gutter. I was really embarrassed when that happened. I enjoyed the entire day playing but I think I need to sharpen up my catching when the ball is passed to me. I think I was good at ripping people in the first two games but not the last game because I couldn’t keep up with the team from Kaikohe but that didn’t matter because I enjoyed the match. Here is a photo.

Science fair

In Te Ngahere we have been entered into a science fair. First we were told that we could do life related problems and how they would help us or someone else we knew. Afterwards we could work by ourselves or we could work in pairs and I paired up with Tawhiri. Once we had got into pairs we had to put down our ideas on a padlet, mine and Tawhiri’s idea was: What was stronger a hydraulic robotic arm or a normal robotic arm? The reason we chose that was because a normal robotic arm was more expensive than a hydraulic arm but that doesn’t mean it is better or stronger. We realised it wasn’t a real life problem though so we scrapped that idea. Now our idea is what cheap material is the best for insulation. I think the best material will be blankets but it’d take too many blankets and the cost would be quiet high (depending on the size of the house). I’m excited to see what happens next.

Technology cooking

The year 7 and 8’s went to technology but now we’ve swapped over so the year 8’s are doing woodwork and the year 7’s are doing cooking. In cooking we made a very healthy but delicious Macaroni Cheese. The first thing we had to do was choose what we wanted to make Macaroni Cheese or Potato Bake. Then we wrote out some written work we were handed, about our Macaroni Cheese. The sheets of paper had a few instructions on it like when our Macaroni Cheese had to be cooked by which was 12:40 pm 10 minutes before lunch or what our Macaroni Cheese had to taste like, so for mine I said it had to taste delicious. Whaea Dot (the cooking teacher)  also gave us another sheet of paper which told us how to make a white sauce. We were then told to get a buddy and we would have to work with them to make our meal. We had to have had at least six vegetables to make it healthy. I think my buddy and I cooked our Macaroni Cheese quiet well and I enjoyed eating the Macaroni Cheese the most because I got to know what my Macaroni Cheese tasted like. Something I could do better is wait until the pasta is cooked instead of getting Whaea Dot to check it every two minutes.

Historical explorers

In Te Ngahere we are doing a panui activity about 4 historical explorers and how they made an impact on New Zealand. The four explorers are Kupe, Nukutawhiti, James Cook and Abel Tasman. Firstly we had to research about all of them and couldn’t pick a person we wanted because they liked the photos of the explorers. After we researched about them we had to choose something to create about them my group chose James Cook and we are doing a slideshow. What I enjoyed the most was researching about these explorers like how Kupe found Aotearoa. I think I did well researching about the HMS Endeavour. I think something I could do better is explain things clearer to my group when they need help.

Quick Rip with Boeden

In Te Ngahere and Te Maunga a man named Boeden (I’m not quite sure how to spell his name) came in and taught us how to play quick rip which is sort of like rippa rugby but it sets you up for tackle rugby or rugby league. The year 5 and 6’s had to play rippa rugby. When we started we played a quick warm-up game where one team was defending and one team was attacking. The problem was when you were on the defending team Boeden might call 3 attackers and 2 defenders and the defending team would never get more players than the attackers but they could get the same amount of people. After each team got to be the attacker and defender twice we started playing quick rip. To start the game off, red tags (my team) kicked off at half way, I didn’t kick off in the entire game. I was mainly a halfback for scrums and lineouts. The game was 30 - 45 minutes and will take too long to explain so I won’t explain the whole game. Once red tags had kicked off blue tags had run for the ball and caught it. When blue tags had caught the ball most of the red tags were already where blue tags were. Then the person with the ball was ripped. That’s how the game started. In this game there was nothing I disliked because it was very entertaining.

Sphero coding

In Te Ngahere we coded a robot named Sphero. You had to be up to date on your work if you wanted to code Sphero. As you can tell by its name it was shaped as a sphere (it kind of looked like BB-8). Coding Sphero was harder to code than normal coding on a website like Tynker or Code.org because you had to put how fast it should go and how many seconds it should continue moving for. Then you had the angle it should move on. So if you wanted Sphero to move forward for a while then come back you would have to put the code for it to make it go forward (0 degrees) then coming back would be 180 degrees. After we had managed to code Sphero to do that, we coded Sphero making it do a colour maze. I enjoyed coding Sphero  the whole time but it was quite annoying when we had to sign in to code with Sphero. What I did well was figuring out what angle Sphero should move on. Something I need to improve on is figuring out how fast and how long Sphero should go.

Math DLO

In Te Ngahere we have been learning how to double and half hard multiplication problems e.g 18 x 7. Do not do doubling and halving on basic facts you should know them. After we had completed a practice sheet we had to plan and create a math DLO. For this DLO we had to explain it clear so everyone could understand the DLO. Some of my DLO had arrays because they helped us work out the problem if we couldn’t quite figure the equation out and it also made it clear to understand, but some of it was writing and I had to fix it up a few times until I made it better and I still am. We also had to create another DLO that was trebling and thirding. The point of doubling and halving, trebling and thirding was it made the hard equation easy. Something I enjoyed about this whole strategy was when we had to fill out the practice activity. I think I need to improve making the DLO’s, and speed up making my DLO’s. I think I did the practice sheets well and planning of my DLO.

Marble run project

In Te Ngahere we did a project on a marble run. We had to create a ramp that we thought would make our marble roll 1.1 meters away from the end of it. If we got 1.1 meters once it was a fluke so we had to roll the marble 10 times and see how many times we were close or got 1.1 meters. If it was nowhere near 1.1 meters away then we had to modify the ramp to make it roll closer or roll to 1.1 meters. My groups ramp was a chair with a piece of cardboard which was sellotaped to the top of the chair and at the end of the ramp was a part that the marble could jump but sometimes it failed because it got stuck doing the jump. We are now going to do a competition in our school in about three weeks. I enjoyed recording how far the marble went but sometimes it was hard recording the distance because sometimes there was a misreading then we had to do it again. I think me and my group could do better at modifying our ramp because of the times it failed to roll and wedged itself on the jump. After this we made a variables DLO.

Ki O Rahi tournament

Last Friday some of the year 7&8’s competed in a Ki-o-rahi friendly tournament in Kaikohe. All of the games we played were really hard but it was fun. The games were hard because there were schools who had played Ki-o-rahi a lot more than we had. Another thing that made the games hard, was we were strong at playing Ki oma and not Taniwha. Because there were so many of us that wanted to play we had to be split into two teams Paihia tahi and Paihia rua. The first game I played I was in Paihia rua but afterwards I was swapped into tahi (It wasn’t usual to swap only me and another person swapped). The first match rua played was against Kaikohe Christian School which we just won by a point. Then I was swapped to tahi which we lost a lot of games, but it didn’t matter in the end because we still had fun. If there’s something I learnt it was I have to pass the ball a lot more than what I did, and I enjoyed playing Ki oma the most. Also something I could do better would probably be passing more and looking at who’s the closest to me that’s open so that when I pass the ball to someone that actually gets us points, another thing I could do better is catching the ball when it’s passed to me.

Here is a photo

Technology

In Te Ngahere we went to technology at Moerewa School. The year 7’s went to woodwork and metalwork while the year 8’s cooked lasagne. We had three tests in woodwork, one about safety, one about how well we listened, and the last one about hand tools. After we finished the tests we got to use the tools and see what we could do with them. The part I enjoyed the most was sawing a piece of wood and making it into a wood hook like maui’s hook with a coping saw which was a hand tool which was small but not small then it had a handle on top of the saw, then on the bottom of the handle there was a saw it kind of looked like a semi circle. I also think I could try using the power tools more like the power drill which had a massive drill on it as it says in the name but you had to have chuck key for the chuck. The chuck was a metal part where you got a key and unlocked it I wasn’t quite sure what unlocking it did.

Marshmallow Catapults

In Te Ngahere we made Marshmallow catapults. We were put in groups my group was Aj, Ricardo, Taliesha and me. Every group got given limited items; they were 12 skewers, 9 marshmallows, 2 rubber bands, a spoon and unlimited masking tape. The reason we built these was to see who’s catapult fired furthest. The part I enjoyed the most was the competition at the end of the 45 minutes of building the catapult.

Dry safe swimming

In Te Ngahere we had a swim-safe lesson with Whaea Tracey; we had to put everything we knew together. The activities were chucking out a rope and we had to make sure they caught it and the person who threw it had to tell them what to do. There was also the huddle and lastly the chain. A lot of us forgot our togs and we had to do the dry safe-rope catch and throw. I enjoyed the dry safe-rope catch and throw the most.