Blog Comparison

 This week we are comparing our old blog posts to our new blog posts. We are doing this to see our improvement in our posts. We chose a blog from one of our first ever posts and then chose another one from our more recent ones. Once we had chosen which posts we were going to compare we put them next to each other on a slide. After that we used arrows pointing to what we were different about them. I chose a  blog post from 2017 as the one I wanted to compare to this years. Here's a picture showing how it turned out. 

Angles

For the past couple of days we have been learning about angles. Today we learnt about acute angles, obtuse angles and right angles. Acute angles is when it is below 90° and obtuse angles is where it is above 90° but less than 180°. Right angles is where it equals just 90°. The way you measure the angles is using a protractor, the bottom line on the protractor is a little intersection,  you line it up with the base line of the shape and find the answer by lining up the lines. 

Once we knew what acute, obtuse and right angles were, we got given a worksheet with different angles that we have to measure and figure out what the degree and angle is. After that some of us drew angles for other people to measure. Once we had finished that we hoped into groups or buddy's and looked around outside for different angles to measure. Here is a picture of what a protractor looks like.

Pyramid Puzzles

One of the tasks on our contracts this week is pyramid puzzles. The only clue we were given was that it was addition. In the pyramid is some numbers and then the rest of the spaces are blank. what we have to do is figure out what the numbers are in the blank by adding them together. Lets say there was a seven at the bottom of the pyramid and a sixteen in the next row above diagonal from the seven, you have to try and solve what seven plus something equals sixteen. Once you have found your answer you put it in the space that is also diagonal below the sixteen. Now that we have put the answer in we have to try and figure out another number that goes in the blank. But if there is no more numbers on the bottom move up to an equation that you can do. So lets say diagonally up from the sixteen is twenty one you have to now count how many more there is to get from sixteen to twenty one. Then when you have found the answer you put it in the other spot diagonally below the twenty one. Once you keep finding the answers it will give you more equations to solve until there is none left. Here is how my completed pyramid puzzles look.

Planting

 Yesterday  my class  went to Lake Gem to do some planting. We were  planting with  Summit Forest.  When we got there we gathered around, and were told about what we were doing and what plants we were planting.  We planted on the top and sides of this hill. The plants we were  planting were mānuka, kānuka, harakeke (flax), cabbage trees, karaka and houpara. All of these plants are native to New Zealand. A way that we were told how to tell mānuka and kānuka apart, was that mānuka was spiky and kānuka was softer.¨Mean mānuka¨ and  ¨kind kānuka. After that we went over to where we  were planting and got started.  At first one of my friends would dig a hole and I would plant. But after a while you just looked for a hole and planted a plant there. It was sometimes a bit hard to get the plant out. You also had to be careful when you were walking around cause there were lots of plants everywhere and they were also small. Once we had finished planting we were given ice blocks from Summit Forest. They were delicious! Then we had a little picnic in front of  the lake which was super cool. Once we finished our nice little picnic it was time to go home, so we got all of our gear, packed up and gave Summit Forest a big thank you. It was a great day!

Local NZ Legends

 For the past couple of weeks we have been learning about new Zealand's legends and Heroes. We then had to find a New Zealand legend that we would like to do our work about. I chose Kate Sheppard. Once we had chosen our person we had to research things about them like, why are they famous, what did they do and things like that. The next thing we had to do was design our own cover for that person. On the cover we had there name, there face and little pictures that may represent them or stuff like that. We then were given this graphic chart with questions that we had to answer. Here is the questions and my answers.

place of birth: Liverpool, England 

Date of birth: 10th March 1848

Early life: Her full name was Catherine Wilson Malcolm but is now call Kate Sheppard. She wrote the white ribbon which is a newspaper and it was the first women operated one in NZ. When her farther passed away she stayed with her uncle while the rest of her family stayed in Ireland with relatives. She moved to Christchurch at the age of 21 and married Walter Sheppard.

What are they well known for? Kate Sheppard is known for fighting for the rights, to give women the right to vote. NZ was the first country that let women vote all because of Kate Sheppard. Kate Shepard is also known for being on the NZ $10 note.

What are some significant moments in their life? Kate Sheppard wrote the first NZ operated newspaper called the white ribbon. She gave women the right to vote making NZ the first country letting women vote. She is also on the NZ $10 note.

Moment In Time

 On our contracts this week we had to right a moment in time based of a video. A moment in time is when we write a little piece of writing based on a picture or video. You can write from a persons point of view, you can do it on whats gonna happen next, you can write it however you'd like. The video that we were writing about was a person sky gliding. Here is my moment in time.

Scared but excited, i'm getting ready to jump. I take a deep breath and go for it. Whoosh, I glide down the mountain and all of my fear suddenly melts away. The wind shoots past my face as I start to speed up. woo hoo! I shouted as I couldn't hold back my excitement. I pull out my parashoot as I safely make it to the end and land.

What the brain does

 The brain is a very important part of the body. It is protected by the skull and is located in the head. The 3 main parts of the brain is the brain stem, the cerebrum and the cerebellum. 

The brain stem is vital to the body. It sends messages without you even realising that controls many different things. Such as making your heart beat, It helps you to breath and helps you to swallow food.

The cerebrum is another important part of the brain. It is also the largest part. It is responsible for letting you see, talk, hear, think, learn and read.

The cerebellum is found behind the top part of the brain stem. It is responsible for coordination, movement and balance.

The brain is a very incredible part of the body. Sending messages to help you move and do things. Helping you to think, learn, see, talk and helps you with coordination and balance.

Recount about my school cross country

Yesterday on Thursday out whole school jumped on to 2 different buses to head to our school cross country. It was held at the Cutler's farm.

I was super nervous that day. When we got there we all went to this area where we were going to be sitting. After that my teacher talked to the whole school about what was going to happen next. Then all the helpers that were going to be on the track, went to their places. 

Once we were all ready, we started. The year eight's went first. By this time I was getting even more nervous because it was getting closer and closer to my race. After the year eight's it was year year sevens then year six's, which is my year level.

We lined up and got shown us the track. we then stretched and the boy's went first. We waited a bit for them and then we lined up. Go! and we were off. The longer I was running the more tired I got. We were running 3 km. The track was mostly dry but there was this one spot where we got wet. I got closer and closer to the end and finished in first place, I was super happy.

After the race I had a drink of water and some food and cheered on the rest of the runners and the other races. My favourite part of cross country was hearing everyone cheer you on and finishing the race.

A peek at my week

    

Words of the week

Words of the week is where we are given 4 different words and have to right a definition, synonym, antonym and a sentence for that word. We do the definition for the meaning of the word. A synonym is a word that means the same. An antonym is a word that means the opposite and for the sentence we try to put the word in to one. Here is my words of the week.

My Holiday Trip

In the holidays me and my family went on a trip. Since we are not allowed to travel out of New Zealand we went on a trip in New Zealand. The places we went to were Auckland, Queenstown and Christchurch. Some of the reasons we chose to go to Queenstown and Christchurch was because me and my brother's had never been to the South Island. We also chose to go to Queenstown because we have never seen snow before and we chose to go to Christchurch to see our cousins that we haven't seen for a long time.

In Auckland we went to the sky tower.  My parents say that we might have already been there before but we couldn't remember anything. When we were going up I was a bit scared because I don't really like going in elevators but it was worth it, cause when we got to the top the view was amazing. You could see so many different things.

I was super excited to go to Queenstown because we got to see the snow and ski. When I first felt the snow it was super cold but nice and soft. Skiing was my favourite it was super fun and I really enjoyed it. We also went in the gondolas one day up to the luge which was super fun but also a bit scary for me. 

We decided to drive to Christchurch from Queenstown, the ride was about 6 hours. When we got to Christchurch I was super excited to see my cousins that I hadn't seen in years. For most of our days in Christchurch we spent time with our family. It was a great trip.

Thinkers Keys

This week one of our tasks on our contracts was to make up our own thinkers keys.  Here is how mine  turned out.

 

What if... the world was always day?

    what are the advantages and 

   disadvantages there would be. 

Advantages                                                                      Disadvantages

 More time to do things                                                            Hard to sleep

 Easier to drive and travel cause it will always be day             Lose track of time easily

                                                                                                 You would never see the stars, moon and the

                                                                                                 night sky.

                                                                   It would mostly be hot    

                               

              The answer is paper 

1. What are book pages made out of?  Paper
2. What is something that tree's make starting with p? Paper
3. What do you print on? Paper 

 

What are 3 things you can't live without

1. Water
2. Oxygen
3. Food 

Term 2 Reflection

Taking Action

Today we read a text called Global Action. We discussed how there is so much plastic in the oceans and how we need to do something about it. Yesterday we read another text and talked about the sustainable business's and the non sustainable business's. One of the non sustainable business's we thought of was McDonald's . We said McDonald's because there straws are still plastic and some business's have changed to paper straws. So we want McDonald's to change to paper straws as well. McDonald's isn't the only unsustainable business but it was just one we thought of. Because of this we are going to write letters to McDonald's about the amount of plastic they use and they are a popular business so the more people that go there the more plastic there will be. We also thought about the sustainable business's that use less plastic weather they use compostable bags or paper straws. We want to promote those business's and support them for what they are doing.

Once we had read and talked about the text (global action) we watched some videos about the pacific garbage patch and the amount of plastic in the oceans. The pacific garbage patch is a big amount of plastic that is about 1.6 million square kilometres in size and is bigger the double the size of Texas. Others videos we watched were about inventions people are making to help get rid of the plastic in the oceans. That is also a task on our contracts. We have to design a way to clean up the plastic in our oceans.

After watching some videos we looked at some sites about it. We found one that when you go on to it, it counts how many pounds of plastic that has gone into the ocean while you've been on that site. The sad thing was that the numbers were moving really fast and it only took around about 5 seconds to reach 1000 pounds of plastic.

Contracts

In my class we do contracts. Contracts is where we have a piece of paper that is glued in our books with about 10 to 15 different tasks to complete. We get the whole week to complete and finish our contracts. Some of the tasks are must do's and some of them are can do's. Must do's are things that are a higher priority and we aim to finish all of them by the end of the week. Can do's are task's that are a can do so we don't have to complete them and we normally only do them if we finish all our must do's. So we usually do can do's towards the end of the week. On our contracts there are more must do's then can do's. There is about 10 must do's and around 3 to 4 can do's. Each week there is always a couple of new things that haven't been on the contracts as well as some of the same things from the previous week. But when we have some of the same things from the week before it is not the exact same, for an example when we do words of the week we always get 4 different words each week. So it is the same task but different words or questions.  During lockdown before we went back to school. We did a survey. The survey was about if we wanted to keep our contracts integrated or 1 maths contract and 1 literacy contract. The reason we did this survey was because before lockdown we had one maths contract and 1 literacy contract but during lockdown we had our maths and literacy all on 1 piece of paper. And we choose to keep our contracts integrated, so now we have the maths and literacy tasks all on one page. On our contracts there is lots of different learning and we don't work on our contracts all day we only work on them for an hour or 2 and then we move on to other work. Here is a photo of what our contracts look like.

Rainforest Research

For the past couple of weeks we have been learning about rainforests. We have learnt about the different rain forest birds and leaves. We have learnt why they are important and how they help us. And we have also done artwork and slides about it.

Last week one of the tasks that we had to do was write down why rainforests are important. You could present it how ever you'd like.You could do this by yourself, with a buddy or in a group.  Jaymee and I decided to work on a slide together. We first started off by researching and finding ideas to put in the slide.

Once we found the information we needed, we started on the slide. My first slide was about how the rainforest is home to animals and how the trees give us oxygen. While I was doing this Jaymee worked on reasons why we should stop cutting down the rain forests. The other slides I worked on was how rain forests provide food, how the help the water cycle and how some of the plants there give us medicines.

Once we had finished writing our slides we decided to decorate them. We made the background green on all of the slides and added pictures to each slide the goes with the topic. For and example for the slide about food we put pictures of the food that rain forest give us on that slide. Once we had decorated it and checked it we were done. Here's how it turned out.

Rainforest Art

This week we have been learning about rain forests so we did some art about it. We first had to research and find one rain forest leave that we liked. Then we practised drawing our leave on a piece of paper. Once we had practised drawing our leaves and were happy with the one we choose we were given a A3 sized piece of paper. When we got our paper we lightly drew out big leaves on it so if we made a mistake, we could rub it out and we wouldn't see where the line was. We made sure to draw out big leaves on the paper so it would cover most of the paper but not all of it. When we had drew out our leaves and we were happy with them we were given wax crayons to colour them in. The reason we used wax crayons was because we are using dye and wax crayons go best with it. When we were colouring in our leaves we tried to make them as detailed and realistic as possible. If we wanted the leave to look like it was far away we made it darker and then if we wanted it to look like it was closer we made it lighter. We also made our leaves coming in from different sides of the paper and making some over lap each other to make it look more realistic. Once we had coloured in all of our leaves, it was time to use dye for the background. There was lots of different colours we could use but I decided to use a light green. When we were doing our back round we also put the dye over our leaves to full in any spots we might have missed. Then after that we let them dry. Now it was time for the bird. We researched about different rain forest birds and choose the one that we liked. I choose a Scarlet Macaw. When we had chosen the bird that we liked we had the choice if we wanted to do our bird on an A4 sized paper or an A3 sized paper. The reason we did this was if we liked our background lots we could draw our bird on an A4 paper so it doesn't cover much of the paper or if you wanted your bird to be big you could do it on a A3 sized paper. I choose to do mine on an A3 piece of paper. Once we were given our paper we drew out our bird lightly on to it. Then when we were done and happy with it we coloured it in with wax crayons. After that we went over each colour with the same coloured dye. Then we let them dry. After that we cut them out, then with our left over paper, we cut out a strip of it then folded it and glued it on to our leaves piece of paper. Then we glued the bird on top. And after that we were done.

Level 1

We are now in level one and I am super happy and excited. All the way back on March 26th was when we went into lock down. We stayed in lock down till April 27th, then the next day we went in to level 3. We stayed in level 3 till may 13th, then on the 14th of may was when we went in to level 2. On the 8th of June was the last day of level 2 and a couple days ago it was the first day of level 1. For 18 days we have had zero cases of covid-19 and when level 1 was announced we were also told that there is zero active cases in the whole of New Zealand which is amazing.

In level 1 we can do a lot of different things. We don't have to stick to our bubbles, we can travel domestically and we don't have to social distance anymore unless you want to. We are now allowed to hug our friends and see family.  But even though we don't have to social distance any more we still sanitise and wash our hands to keep clean. 

Powerful Paragraphs

Recently we have started doing powerful paragraphs. Powerful paragraphs is where we are given an image and then we have to right a detailed paragraph about that picture. We don't just have to describe what we see, we can also write what we think is going to happen next or we can write as if we were there or if there was an animal in the picture we can write as if we were the animal. When we are writing our paragraphs we try to add in some similes and metaphors to make it more interesting. We have been doing this to help us improve our writing and learn about similes, metaphors and other things like that. We normally do them in the mornings as a starter activity and they are also really fun to do. We normally get around 10 to 15 minutes to write our paragraphs and then in the middle of that time we will stop writing even if we haven't finished and some of us will share what we have written so far. We have done about 3 powerful paragraphs so far but here is a photo of one of the pictures I have written about and also the writing I did for it. For this one I wrote what was happening and what I could see.

I can see the beautiful sunrise the sky's lighting up and all of the trees growing above. " What a great way to start my day ". There is bright green grass, chocolate brown trees and marshmallow looking clouds in the sky. I see the bright yellow sun blinding my eyes as it slowly rises.

Emotional wheels

One of our tasks last week was to make an emotion wheel. The emotion wheel has lines that make 6 even triangles. In each different triangle there is a different emotion. We have to colour and do patterns to that represent that emotion and we are not allowed to use words or people we can only use patterns and colours. The emotions that we used were happy, sad, angry, proud, excited and scared. You have to picture what patterns and colours you think goes best with the emotion.

Here are the colours that I thought went with each emotion. For sad I did blue, angry I did red and orange, Proud I did light and bright colours, for happy I did rainbow colours, For scared I did mostly grey and for excited I did blue and yellow.

I first started with a draft and then published the things I liked from it as well as adding some new ideas. I drew out my ideas lightly with a pencil and once I was done I coloured it in. Once everyone was finished we put them up on the wall. Here is a photo of mine.

Fitness Circuit

This week we had to come up with our own fitness circuit to do. You can have star jumps in it, high knee's, running you can put whatever you'd like. Everyday when we are doing our fitness circuit we try to beat our time from yesterday or complete more rounds.

My fitness circuit is 20 star jumps, 10 burpees , 20 second plank, high knees and jogging on the spot. I also run up and down my driveway. I try and go at least 3 times through and up and down my driveway 3 times as well.

When I am done with my exercise I sometimes take a walk and run around the house with my dogs which is super fun. I like to do my exercise in the afternoon because by then I am not as tired as I am earlier in the day and it has been super cold in the mornings recently.

Concrete Mural Art

This week we made concrete murals. A mural is a big creation of your own on a large surface. It could be little drawings put together to be a big drawing or it could be just one big drawing you can make it how ever you'd like. Since we are making concrete murals we used chalk or chalk paint to colour over the concrete. I started my concrete mural yesterday and finished it today. Here's how I made mine.

I first found a concrete place where I would like to have my mural. Then I got out my chalk and thought about what I might draw. I first started by grabbing a dark pink chalk and drawing and outline of A flower. Then I filled in the outline with a light pink. Once I had done that I grabbed the green chalks and started drawing a stem for the flower. Then I added a leave to the stem and I was done with the flower. I only have small chalks and the flower was big so it used up 2 light pink chalks to colour it in. Once I had finished the flower about 30 minutes had already passed by. Then I moved on to the words I wanted to write and then I added some more pictures. Once I added some pictures I did some colourful dots all around the mural and that was it for that day.

Today I decided to add some more pictures to it. I first started with drawing a donut, then a rainbow with clouds and lastly some lollipops. Once I had done the lollipops I did some colourful swirls around them, then added some colourful dots around the new pictures. Once I finished doing the dots and swirls I did a swirly boarder all around the mural. Once I finished the boarder I was done. Here's how my concrete mural turned out.

Poppy Art

On Saturday this weekend is Anzac day, so some of our work is about it. One of the tasks that we have to do was make some poppies out of the things we have at home. I made mine today and here's how I made them.  

The things I used for the poppies were red card for the petals, green card for the stem and I used black card to go in the centre of the poppies. Since I didn't have any red card I painted some white card yesterday with red paint on both sides. I let the paint dry over night so it would be dry and ready for me to use today. I first used a pencil to draw an outline of a poppy on the red card so I would know where to cut. Once I had cut the outline of the poppies out I moved on to the green card. I first counted how much poppies there were so I would know how much strips of green card to cut out. Once I had cut the strips of green card I moved on to the black card. For the black card I needed to cut it in to little circles so I folded the card in half and cut the card out like I was cutting half of a circle but when I unfolded it, it was a circle.

When I had all the bits I needed I glued them in place. First I grabbed a red piece and used a glue stick to glue the black circles in the middle on both sides of the red piece. Then I grabbed a green strip and glued it on to the bottom of a red piece and i did the same to all of them. Here's how they turned out. 

Home Schooling

Back in March, we found out that we were going into lock down meaning that we would have to be home schooled for a week. I have never ever been home schooled in my life but because of the coronavirus we have to stay home. The first day I was home schooled was on a Tuesday It was sad that I couldn't work together with my friends but we did face time lots. Everyday for home schooling I got up and started working. After the week of home schooling it was the holiday's but we didn't do much because we had to stay home. The holidays have now finished and we are back to home schooling. Today is my second day of home schooling this term. I got to see all my classmates on a call which was really cool.

kindness letters

On Monday we wrote some letters to jobs thanking them for everything they do. We had to write at least two letters to thank those people. I wrote mine to Pak'nSave and the Hospital.

The reason I wrote one to the Hospital was to thank the for helping people and going to work during this hard time cause of the coronavirus.

I also wrote one to Pak'nSave to thank them for providing food for us and still going to work , when they' d probably want to be with their family's.

We wrote these letters to spread a little kindness.

Confessional Poem

Last week we got read a confessional poem by William Carlos Williams. What we had  to do was write a poem confessing something using the same structure and format but we took out some of the words to make it our own poem. We had to use the same sentence starters as William Carlos Williams used but all the other words were taken out and we changed them into our own.

Once we thought of a confession, we got given a piece of paper that had Williams poem on one side and the start of his sentences on the other side. Once we had wrote our poem, we edited it, we showed it to our teacher and then we published it on a shared slide. Here's how mine turned out.

Welcome to my 2020 blog