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.

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.

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.

Kiwi Sport: Gymnastics

Yesterday at gymnastics LS2 was learning how to do dive rolls, to do that we needed to jump onto the mini-tramp and put our arms in front of ourselves to roll forward. The three circuits that we work through have different activities that require you to use different parts of your body. My favourite circuit is the spring circuit since there's a jump board and a spring pad in it.

CARE Award: Silver Confidence | Sleep Survey Responses

This was a task for my confidence CARE award, for it I needed to create a survey on a topical issue so I chose sleep. In my survey I asked questions like how long (On average) people sleep for, if technology (Phones, computers etc) stopped them from sleeping properly, if they liked sleeping and when they usually went to sleep. I used a pie chart for this because although I could've used a bar graph I wanted to see exactly how much of the class chose this or that. Another thing in this DLO is my opinion on the options and reasons why, I answered the survey as well.

CARE Award: Confidence - Teaching The Class Animating

On Friday two weeks ago and last week Jack, Miki and I worked with a group of the class to help them improve their animating skills, the first thing that they needed to do was choose an image that they liked off of the internet and then use either the poly line or curve tool to trace the outline of their chosen image. Depending on whether the image had straight lines or curved one they'd need to use a different tool. Since many people are at different stages of drawing the class was split into two groups, one for people who were new to google drawings and the other for experts. Jack, Miki and I worked with the class really well and everyone's skills were definitely improving by the end of the session. Everyone likes doing animating so I hope the we can keep doing it.

Comparing Myths And Facts About Wolves

 

This week has been book week. We have had quite a few challenges based on the stories we read as young children. Our teacher Mrs Anderson has also set us a few challenges based on a few books that she read as a child. This one being Wolves. It is written by Emily Gravett, and illustrated by her too. This book explains and gives a few facts about wolves, and includes lovely images to paint a picture into your head. Our challenge, was to come up with around 5 myths about wolves, and then research them and see if they are true or false. This task could be done alone, or with a partner, so I chose to work with Fraidoon.

Sky Tower Trip

Today LS2, LS1 and Room 5 went on a trip to the Sky Tower, since it was sponsored nobody needed to pay anything, the person who sponsored our trip's name is Douglas Bates. during our trip there we were given a challenge; on this piece of paper different locations were shown, and we needed to write the name of the location. There were also clues on the bottom of it to help us figure out which was which, another thing to help was the fact that we were on the 51rst floor. Before that though, we'd watched some videos that told us lots of interesting facts about the Sky Tower, some being: It weighs around about the same as 6,000 elephants, it takes 40 seconds to get from the bottom floor to the top, it would take 29 minutes for someone to reach the top floor by only using stairs (If they walked) and that the glass walls and floor in the observation deck are as thick as the concrete floor.

Scale Drawing - Maths Week

Last week was maths week, and for it LS2 students were doing scale drawings. We needed to first, find an image that we liked off of the internet, after that we then needed to try and enlarge that image using a 1:2 ratio for enlargement. The next step was to colour the picture, and then frame it. Since this was my first time doing scale drawing I'm pretty happy with how mine came out. The best part of this activity was the colouring in, since I could then play around with different colours to see how each of them looked on the picture. The part that I found hard was the drawing since I'm not very good at copying one thing to another. Next time the only thing I'd like to improve on is time, since I took 2 days to get it done.

Lung Capacity Measurent

To compare the lung capacity of students in LS2 we used one breath to blow up a balloon, then we measured the circumference of the balloon in cm. Then we could graph the results to compare them. The person with the largest oxygen output was Julian because he made his balloon grow to 68 centimetres, and the person with the smallest output was Avalon who only managed to get hers to 48 centimetres.