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.