Gold Attitude CARE Award Activity: Research a New Zealander who has a positive attitude

To do my CARE award I needed to research a New Zealander with a positive attitude, I chose Steven Adams. He's the first New Zealander to be picked in the first round of the NBA draft, is the highest paid New Zealand athlete of all time and is in the top 100 highest paid athletes in the world. 

Gold Attitude CARE Award Activity: Research the role of the SWIS in our school, and tell others how they help us

For this CARE award activity I needed to research the role of SWiS (Social Workers in Schools), I found out that there are different types of social workers that have different areas of expertise. I also found that social workers are all over the world, helping people with their needs.

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 3 Activity 3 (Teaser Week)

For this activity, please think of someone who has had a positive impact on your life. Who is this person? What did they do that was positive?

On your blog, please tell us about this person.

Please remember to be Cybersmart and provide their first name only (unless they are a famous person!).

Someone that's had a positive impact on my life is my Mum, she's encouraged me to do my bet in school and out of it. She pushes me to do well and I try not to let her down. 

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 3 Activity 2 (Teaser Week)

For this activity I needed to ask people that I knew what their proudest achievement to date was, I ask Matthew, Karlos and Victoria. Mathew said that he was proud of getting into a rugby club, Karlos was proud of being confident when speaking to a large crowd and Victoria was proud of her CARE award.

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 3 Activity 1 (Teaser Week)

For this activity, please watch this short introductory video from The Water Project.

On your blog, share what you have learned about The Water Project with us. What is the goal of the organisation? Where do they work? What have they achieved?

For the first activity of the third day I needed to research and write about the water project which is an African organisation that's trying to give young girls in Africa a proper education. After watching the video on the organisation I found out that millions of people go without clean water every day, and many people die to water borne illnesses.

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 2 Activity 2 (Teaser Week)

For this activity, please think about this issue of the gender pay gap carefully. It is quite controversial (some people agree with it and some people disagree with it).
On your blog, tell us what you think. Is it fair? Why or why not? Be sure to explain exactly why you feel the way that you do.

I think that the gender wage gap (at least in sports) is false, the amount of money that a sport receives is based on the attention that it gathers. Football is the most watched sport in the world, and therefor, its players will earn more money than players of rugby. You might say that it's sexist for women to be paid less than their male counterparts but I say that it's just the factor of attention. The main reason why females are paid less than men is because they're weaker. Men are genetically stronger than women, and that's why whenever a transgender man joins a female league, they'd dominate the competition. Tell me, when the male and female rugby world cups were on; which match lineups would you pay more attention to? What team would you care more about? The reason for male sports being more popular is due to their strength, in a sport like rugby it's far more entertaining to see huge guys crash into each other, than it is to watch smaller women do the same thing. 

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 2 Activity 1

For this activity, please create four new similes. You can use the starters below or you can make up your own.

… is as fast as… (eg: The brand new Ferrari is as fast as a lightning bolt)

… is as tall as…

… is as small as…

… is beautiful like...

On your blog, share the similes that you have created with your readers.

For the second activity of the second day I needed to write out some similes and post them onto my blog. 

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 1 Activity 2 & 3

For the second activity of the first week of the summer learning journey I needed to create my own pepeha. For the third activity I needed to draw and describe the BFG from Roald Dahl's famous book. I tried to make him as goofy as possible.

Summer Learning Journey: Week 1 Day 1 Activity 1

 

Today for the summer learning journey LS2, Room 5 and LS1 are working on the teaser tasks, the first activity is on Lorde. I needed to research Lorde and list at least 5 facts about her. This year's summer learning journey's topic is change makers.

Making Room 2's Banner

For last week's school market day, I was asked to create a banner for Room 2. They were selling pencil cases and succulents (Small plants) so I wanted to include those products in the banner. Another thing I wanted to do was include the price, just so that people interested in the items would know how much they were. Although it's a bit simple, I think I did well considering the small amount of time that I had.

Market Day Evaluation

Last week was Panmure Bridge's market day, every class made 1 or more products that they'd sell on the day. LS2 melted old crayons together to make rainbow crayons, LS1 made photo frames and the junior classes made things like pet rocks and Christmas cards. Before the market day, students had the chance to purchase "tokens" they'd use real money to buy them, but they wouldn't be using real money on the day. Every product was $1, although some stalls offered 2-3 items to make it a better deal. LS2's total profit was $88, because although we'd made $96, we had $8 worth of expenses.

Romeo And Juliet Animation

This week for inquiry Julian, Nevaeh and I needed to translate lines from the English that we use today, to the English that people of the Shakespearean age used. After we'd finished that, we then needed to read out what we'd written to the rest of the class. Our next task was to create an animation on a scene of our choice from Romeo and Juliet, because we ran out of time we needed to cut it short.

Descriptive Writing

Today for writing Aung Naing and I needed to write a story from a shoes' perspective, the thing is, we couldn't talk. It got confusing at times because we both had ideas but they were nothing alike. We also needed to use the some of the senses to describe what was happening to the shoe. After that, we listened to the other group's stories and then we presented our own.

As my tired, soggy and worn out body slowly scrapes across the muddy concrete floor, I think back to what happened this morning. 

Just as I was about to fall asleep, these 5 wrinkly, cheese smelling things are shoved inside me. Their sharp tips scratch my innards and get caught in my fabric. I angrily chafe this intruder, and it responds by smacking me against a wall. As I’m unwilling to be torn on any sharp objects, I relent and let the smelly thing be. After an hour or so of running, my friend and I are forced to watch as the giant goes straight through a puddle of mud- with us still attached! It only groaned as a huge amount of water started flooding through my skin. 

Boy do I hate being a shoe.

Reading Presentation

Today for reading Jack, Aung Naing and I needed to present our DLO on the history topic that we'd chosen. We picked the medieval times. After creating the google drawing on our topic, we also made a kahoot. This part was a bit harder because we wanted to make pictures to go with the questions, so we spent a lot of our time on those.

Helping A Room 6 Student

Last week Room 6 and 7 came over from their classrooms to create a blog post with us, the people from LS2 needed to find their buddy from the Maniakalani film festival, and then help them make a DLO. I needed to ask my buddy (Jaiksyn) about what happened during the film festival, and what he thought of the films.

FoodPrint

Yesterday a woman named Michal came in and talked to LS1 and LS2 about business and enterprise, as she has created her own business which is called FoodPrint. She told us about the different factors that come in to play when you create your own business, like the logo, name, and how you manage your workers. Her business is an app, all you do is download it, and you can then buy food that restaurants would otherwise throw out for a lower price. After purchasing whatever you want, you only need to go and collect your items.

Maniakalani Film Festival

Yesterday was the 12th annual Manaiakalani film festival, on the bus there, LS2 needed to look after the younger students from rooms 6 and 7. Once we'd gotten to the cinema, we needed to drop our little partner off in one of the lower seats. There were lots of funny movies from all around the cluster, but my favourite was from LS1.

Care Award: Silver Excellence & Innovation

For one of my CARE award tasks, I needed to complete the 4 Xtra Maths subjects. For Xtra-Maths you need to answer questions on either addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Completing this was slightly hard, since I'd put the wrong answer every now and then.

Teaching Younger Students About Firework Safety

Today Learning Space 2 got into groups and each created a presentation that gave 5 rules about safety when it came to fireworks as it is Guy Fawkes day (or fireworks night). To do this Jack, Aung Naing and I needed to make the 5 safety rules short but entertaining. When we'd finished, we presented our slideshow to Room 1. I liked doing this because we were able to create pictures.

Budgeting Activity

Last week for maths LS2 needed to plan a menu for an entire week with only $200, I managed to do that with a bit less than $10 to spare. I worked with Taheesha, Nevaeh, Florence, Haylee and Chavda.

Research Tme

This week for inquiry, we were given a small challenge to complete. In this challenge we learnt the definitions of a need and want, the difference between them, how have they been met through a product or service, and how do we know when someone needs or wants something. With this knowledge we needed to get into small groups and create a DLO that fully explained everything we learnt. For this activity I worked with Jack, Te Pounamu, Joseph and Jonathan.

The Real Cost For Adopting A Dog

For maths this week LS2 needed to research the cost of adopting a dog in groups, the people in my group were Aung Naing and Joseph. The final lifetime cost for adopting the border collie that we picked was $44,027.79. After finding how much it'd cost, we needed to present our DLO to the rest of the class.

Tech

This week at Tech the year 8 group was working on their projects, some of the things we're making are cars, tow trucks and boxes. I'm making a bird house. I needed to cut a joint in a wooden plank, chisel out the rest of the wood, glue another piece on, glue another bit onto that after it'd finished drying and glue the sides on. While I was waiting for the glue to dry, I started sanding the hole in the front. I now only need to drill a hole in the front to stick a small wooden pole in.

Current Events: Summarising The Main Ideas

This week for Current Events, our challenge was to search the internet, and find an article that we found interesting. With this information we then found keywords, 20 important words, 6 of those words that are most important, and then make a 5 sentence summary about the text. Once we had written our summaries the final challenge was to turn those 5 sentences into 5 10 syllables sentences. I worked with Jack, Joseph, and Karlos for this activity. This was an interesting challenge, and I enjoyed learning about this new found organism. If you would like to read the article I have linked it below.

Link To Article Here:

The ‘Blob’

Keywords from the title	Keywords from  sub- headings	New words I need to look up
Blob, Organism and Solve.	There are no sub-headings.	We didn’t find any words we didn’t know.

Write down 20 important words from the text	Blob, Organism, Solve, Yellowish, Scientists, Paris, Zoological, Park, Animal, Fungus, Memory, Maze, Form, Searched, Regenerate, Slime, Merge, Behaviour, Consumes and Researchers.
Chose the 6 most important words.	Blob, Researchers, Memory, Regenerate, Animal and Fungus.
Use your words to write a 5 sentence summary.	Researchers in Paris have discovered a blob. They aren’t sure if it’s an animal or a fungus. They don’t even know if it’s in between. It has a memory and can regenerate from being cut in half in two minutes. The Blob has such an interesting behaviour.

Now using the words you wrote down summarise the text in 5 sentences. Once you have done this turn each of your sentences into sentences with exactly 10 syllables.

People in Paris discovered a blob. - 10 syllables

Is the blob an animal or fungus. - 10 syllables

They don’t even know if it’s in between. - 10 syllables

With memory it can regenerate. - 10 syllables

The Blob has got such a weird behaviour. - 10 syllables

Values Explanation

For writing this week LS2 needed to write an explanation on why respect, empathy and tolerance are necessary in anything.

Showing Values In Sport

To be a good sportsman, you have to show values like respect, tolerance and empathy on the field, court, pitch or whatever you’re playing on. If players didn’t show those values, games wouldn’t very fun to play, would they?

In order to respect someone, you need to treat them how they’d want to be- no matter how different the two of you are. To show empathy and tolerance you need to think about how someone is feeling or how they’d feel if you did something, and tolerate anything that’s happening no matter how far they go.

Think about how the referees in sports feel, they get yelled at, argued with and sometimes hit, but they have to tolerate it. If players on the same or different teams might not like each other much, they need to tolerate and respect one another during matches.

Players also need to show empathy, they need to think about what they’re doing and if it isn’t a smart thing to do, they should decide not to do it. When someone gets injured badly, empathy is something that players and fans alike could do to encourage that person to get better soon.

It’s not just players that need to respect each other either, fans from both teams need to accept that the other person’s opinion isn’t the same as theirs, and make their peace with one another. After all, there’s no point in playing sport if you can’t enjoy it.

Early Maori Enterprise

This week for inquiry my group and I needed to write down some notes on early Maori enterprise, after doing so we then summarised those into 5 sentences with 10 syllables per sentence. The last thing we did was stand up in front of the class and read out the sentences syllable by syllable.

This is our summary:
Maori enterprise started with trading. They traded items like food and clothing. Soon British travellers came wanting food. The British also wanted to buy land. Then Maori sold too much, they lost their land.

Water Filters

 

This week and last week for inquiry LS2 was learning about water filters and how to make them, we needed to find out what water filters need to work and how we could put the filters together.  All of the groups used plastic bottles, sand, rocks and charcoal to try and dilute dirty water. Although none of the groups completely filtered the water, some of them managed to get lighter coloured water.

Rugby Pitch Sizes Maths Challenge

 

This week for maths another challenge was to answer questions on rugby pitch sizes. Some of the other questions were: What is the perimeter of a maximum size of rugby pitch? And, what is the area of a maximum size rugby pitch? After finishing all of the other questions, my group needed to create a DLO on how we found our answer.

Rugby World Cup Maths Challenge

 

This week LS2 has been learning about the rugby world cup. We needed to answer maths questions like; What is the difference in seating capacity between the largest and smallest stadiums and, what the the total combined capacity of all the Japanese rugby world cup stadiums is. The question that my group made the DLO on is if all the stadia are sold out each time then what will be the total number of spectators for all the pool matches combined.

5-7-10 Favourite Cultural Celebration

Today as a 5-7-10, LS2 needed to write about their favourite cultural celebration. My favourite celebration is Christmas because of the presents, food and family gathering. Our learning intention for this was to use commas more often and in better places.


5-7-10 | Favourite Cultural Celebration (Christmas)

Let me tell you about my favourite cultural celebration. Christmas for me usually happens at my Granny’s house, she lives in Pukekohe, Auckland. We drive there on the day before Christmas and sleep over for the next few days.

Since my brothers and I aren’t allowed to open our presents until everyone’s awake, we usually have to wait a while. When everyone is awake and we’re unboxing our presents by the tree, there’s either a lot of, “Yay, I got something cool!” or “Uhh, what’s this?”.

The lunch on Christmas is always the best. There’s nothing like having a whole table full of delicious food, and being allowed to eat heaps of it. Big plates of beef, chicken, cake, trifle, pavlova and other dessert items are quickly wolfed down. My brothers, Thomas and Daniel, are like vacuum cleaners when it comes to food. My favourite Christmas was last year on Tuesday the 25th of December, 2018 because I got a remote control helicopter.

Current Events Map

This week for reading Aung Naing, Joseph, Jack, Julian and I worked together to fill out a google map with international events. We needed to search through different news websites to find stories that fit the current event criteria. Our story for oddity is twin pandas being born in Belgium and for impact, bush fires.

Provocation And Opinion

 

A provocation is an action or speech that triggers strong feelings about a topic. Recently a major supermarket chain announced that it will no longer sell energy drink to people under the age of 16. My group's opinion is recorded in my DLO that also shows both perspectives. What is your opinion and why?

Exploring Our National Current Events

News editors make decisions every day about which current event stories they will run. We explored the different types of current events that are happening in New Zealand, thought about why the story made the news and plotted the location on a google map. For example; we needed to find a story about an oddity, and that was wellington's new sculpture.

Explanation: Should NZ Ban Plastic Straws?

Banning plastic straws in New Zealand is a ridiculous idea, we’ve used them for years, why should we get rid of them now? Plastic straws are far better than their more expensive but less effective competition. Would you rather have a feel good item, (something that people say could save the lives of sea creatures because they’re biodegradable) or a plastic straw that doesn’t literally fall apart in your mouth?

If the government does ban plastic straws in New Zealand we’ll have to bring our own straws to fast food restaurants like Burger King and McDonald's. Also, every replacement for the plastic straw has a flaw; Paper straws break apart in your drink, metal straws can rust and bamboo straws need to be cleaned and dried. Not only that but all of the other options to a plastic straw cost more. Another thing is, if the government did ban plastic straws, what would they do with all the leftover ones?

Even though some environmentalists may say that getting rid of the straws could be beneficial to the health of sea creatures, the truth is that the majority of the plastic pollution in the ocean is from other larger plastic items. The main reason why plastic is so common is because it’s easy to make, and getting rid of the straws would use up different materials. Those different materials would come from things like trees and bamboo forests, and if they use the trees and bamboo, where would the birds go? What would pandas eat?

Although sea creatures might get injured or killed by the straws, pollution isn’t limited to just plastic, far worse pollutants like oil, sprays and chemical waste kill far more fish. So leave the poor straws alone, if you don’t like plastic straws, don’t use them. Don’t get rid of everyone else’s convenience just because a few people are throwing theirs into the water.

Inter-school Netball

This week on Wednesday the year 7/8, 6 and 5 teams went to the inter-school netball tournament at the AMI netball centre. The two positions that I played were Wing Defence and Goal Defence, whilst Aung Naing played Centre and Julian played Goal Keeper. Altogether we lost 4 matches and won 2, the year 6 team won 4 matches and lost 1 and the year 5 team won 2 matches, drew 1 and lost 2. There's a short video of all the teams playing here:

Tech

This week at tech was our last, and for it we needed to finish off our movies. Our teacher, Miss Munoz was giving out prizes for the best movie and, my group (Aung Naing, Nevaeh and myself) won the first place prize. Our movie is basically just a showcase of what you could make your robots do. Thank you to Miss Munoz for teaching us.

Should New Zealand Ban Plastic Straws?

 

This week for writing we needed to create a point of view poster with a partner on whether or not we should get rid of plastic straws. Jack and I needed to show both sides of the argument as well as write down our own opinion on the issue. We both had the same opinion which was that we shouldn't get rid of plastic straws because they are more efficient and cost less than paper, bamboo and metal straws.

STEAM Catapult Challenge

Last week for STEAM our task as a group was to create a catapult out of paper, tape and blu-tack. My group: Aung Naing, Sela, Karlos, Matthew and myself worked together to create a trebuchet. After rolling around 15 pieces of paper tightly, we taped them together to build the body. We also used a small plastic container to hold the object we were firing. Once our catapult was finished my group tested it out on a target.

Persuasive Speeches

LI: To write a speech that persuade other to think the way you do.

Last week was the annual speech competition for Panmure Bridge School. When we presented our speeches we needed to: give eye contact, show expression, hook our audiences in with persuasive language features and speak in a non-monotone voice. The people that wanted to try out for the speech competition said theirs to the class, and those who didn't said theirs to groups or friends.

Hi, I’m Alex, do you think that kids should be allowed to spend their parent’s money on video games and online websites? I don’t, here’s why:

Paragraph 2 – What is your first point?

Research shows that games and online websites can pressure or persuade children from 5-15 to purchase items, 17% of kids in the UK have accidentally bought something and 50% of children from 4-7 in Canada prefer to buy things online instead of using cash.

Paragraph 3 – What is your next point?

Children that can’t spend money on online things could learn to accept the fact that they can’t always get what they want. I also think that kids that aren’t allowed to spend money on video games would be smarter with currency. 

Paragraph 4 – What is your third point?

There have been many times when kids have clicked the wrong thing, unintentionally signed up for something or even been tricked into buying an item. All of those situations end up with a loss of money that can’t always be refunded and an upset child. Imagine, if the child spends all of their money on a video game, how are they going to buy their favourite toy? How could they buy new clothes or go to the movies if they’ve already spent all of their money?

What is the final point that you want your listeners to hear from you?

I’m not against kids playing games because they’re fun, interactive and engaging, I only think that children shouldn’t be allowed to spend any money on them until they actually know what they’re doing.

Polynesians Panthers

For the past week in reading, Rakino group has been reading a text that all revolves around the story of the dawn raids and the Polynesian Panthers. If you did not know the Dawn Raids were evacuation protocols which involved the police going to Polynesian homes and forcing them to show their passports that stated whether they were allowed to live in the country. If demands were not met, they were locked up and later kicked out of the country. Our challenge was to read the text and answer questions. With this new found knowledge we needed to create a DLO that showed both perspectives of the issue. 

Swimming

This week at swimming we were floating on backs and fronts, at first we used noodles but afterwards we didn't have anything to help us stay up. We also practiced doing streamlines to and from the two platforms. After that we did more exercises with body boards.

Tech

This week at tech my group was trying to make their robots follow lines and instructions, we needed to make our robots spin in a circle when they got to a shape, make a song when they reached another and stop when it got to the X. Our word for this week was BINARY, BINARY is the code that robots or mechanical lifeforms use to decide whether or not they do something.

HIIT

Today in HIIT Learning Space 2 were doing upper body focused circuits, the three rotations that we had were mountain climbers, pull ups and push ups. As a warm up we needed to get into partners and then try to tap our partner on the shoulders, the next warm up was the same but instead of their shoulders, we needed to tap their knees. After that we needed to get into partners again and do the three rotations. At the end the whole class needed to squat up and down to the song flowers by Moby. Only 13 people managed to do the whole song.

Decimal Word Problem Maths Game

This week Learning Space 2 has been working on their own maths game on a subject of our choosing, I chose to make my game on decimal word problems. We also needed to create a character out of shapes and tools without tracing any images and make a gif out of it. I made my character jump up an down when you get questions right, and cry when you get them wrong. After we were done we needed to show the games to our friends so they could give us feedback and test things out. I learnt that I needed to change some links and different things from doing so. I enjoyed doing this because I got to create a game as well as a character and images. We also needed to present our games to the class.

Rhythm Interactive's Visit To PBS

 

ZSM/CCBy 3.0

Today a man named Johnny from Rhythm Interactive came over and taught the entire school some drumming sequences. The theme of his lessons were "Together we can make a change". Johnny would drum a beat and then we'd need to copy what he'd done, he said that his teaching method is "If you can said it, you can play it". LS2 was helping the junior students keep to the beat. Johnny gave us all small djembe to drum with and at the end because we answered some questions correctly, our school won seven drums. I enjoyed the session because I got to play some music on a drum for an hour. If you'd like to see Rhythm Interactive's site the link is here.

Ballet

Yesterday a woman called Chloe from the Royal New Zealand Ballet company came over to teach LS2 how to dance. We started off with some foot stretches and were then taught a dance sequence from the show Black Swan, White Swan which is a take on the classsic Swan Lake. Our teach Chloe told us that we should "Commit to the movement to get the best effect". For one of the parts that we did we needed to lie on our backs with our legs and one hand in the air and pretend to be a swan. Thank you to Chloe and Fiona for teaching us and setting this whole thing up.

Tech

Last week at tech my group was learning about algorithms, tinkering and creating. Algorithms are rules or steps that our robots needed to follow, we needed to tinker with the code to achieve the objective and we needed to create the different things that we wanted our robots to do. Our challenges that week were to make our robots move in a square and a circle, I finished both quickly and then spent the rest of my time making the robot move smoothly. The program that we used to code our robots is called mblock.

Drawing Session

On Friday last week after tech Jack, Nyjah and I went over to Summerville Special School to teach teachers there how to do google drawings and animations. We showed them the DLO that we'd created to help teach them how to draw and animate as well as some examples of drawings and animations that we'd done.

Waltzing Matilda

Today during reading Matthew and I were working together to find the main idea of and summarise the story Waltzing Matilda, it's about a swag man or worker who steals a sheep and gets chased by policemen only to jump into a waterhole to escape. We were unpacking the language and learning about what life was like in the 1890s.