Monday End Week Reflection

Monday - 

Nothing interesting happened except we started to brainstorm for our Matariki presentation to present to the class and things like that.

My first group we were going to do do Matariki art and then we found out that we would be put into different groups so the group I am in now is doing evaluation skills  and we had to give our opinion on what we thought of the Statement "Should Matariki be a public holiday"? And we nearly all argued with it except one person because she said "it wasn't apart of her religion"

I agreed because as I said on my other blog post it's because we don't have a lot of different cultured and race public holidays but not a lot of Maori holidays except Waitangi day and things like that.

I enjoyed this task because its something new and I never thought that I would have a say in weather we have a Matariki holiday and things like that, plus the holiday will only be 3 days since Matariki is only 3 days and its not a long holiday or anything like that considering we get at least a 2 week break from school after the school term ends.

Photos of Matariki -

Matariki Brainstorm

For the past week we have been doing a Matariki study and my group is doing weather or not Matariki should be a public holiday or not, I personally think that it should be a public holiday and things like that because we have a lot of english and posh holidays and things like that but we only have one Maori/New Zealand holiday which is Waitangi day and that and Matariki and Waitangi both have the same importance.

In the drawing is our different opinions and things like that. 

Music Reflection

Yesterday Room 9 and 10 had a Music lesson, before I get into it let's start from the beginning.

 Yesterday I went down to record out TEAM (together everyone achieves more) chant, I was by myself recording because my group had made the chant up and things like that and I was very overwhelmed and things like that I didn't know what do or how to do it and I was very quiet.

When we Caleb (Music Teacher) said that we could go down as a group I was happy because i'm not really confident with doing things by myself and also because I don't think everyone would be brave enough to do it because it is very overwhelming.

Something I enjoyed about our music lesson was that I got to do it as a group instead of myself because I was very nervous, something that I didn't really enjoy was that when I first did it I was by myself and when we got together as a group we had to do it at least 4 times before we got it right and correct, doing this nearly made a girl lose her voice.

Science Reflection

Yesterday we had an amazing fun science, in science we talked about what we will be doing and what will we being doing next week.

We did a simple task which was where we got some cards with different words we have been learning throughout the time we have been here and things like that some of the words were Weight and Mass, Lunar eclipse, Solar eclipse and so much more these are just a few things we talked about, in this task we had a lot of words and we had to find the definition and put it next to each other. My group did ok we got two of them wrong but other then that we did ok, the two words we got mixed up were neap and spring tide.

Something I found challenging about our science lesson was that I wasn't here for some of the lessons so I had no idea what some of the words meaning were and things like that but my group helped me to get an understanding with some of the words and they helped explain what it was. Something I enjoyed about the science lesson was that I got to learn new meaning about some of the words and my group got a good lesson because when we got some things wrong we learnt something new and what the correct meaning was.    

Photos of some of the things we learnt and talked about -

Matariki reflection

As some of you might already know Matariki have already started, if you don't know what and why we have Matariki let me tell you.

Matariki is a Maori new year and its a time to spend time with family and close friends its also a time to grow any winter crops and to start harvesting food.

This time instead of focusing on what Matariki is and why we have me and 2 others (Monita and Lizzy) have chosen to do the subject of what different types of Matariki art there is, ranging from performing arts to actually making art, art is something that we get all around the world and no doubt we have it here in New Zealand ranging from many cultures and celebrations.

Matariki is again a time to spend with family you can either stay at home and make some art and perform with your family, go out with your family and watch some different Matariki performing art and things like that and you also might be doing some Matariki researching or art at school.

I think for the past few days we will be studying about what different things we can do at Matariki, why we have it, whats important about, Matariki art and so much more, some of the question me and my group have come up with are.

These are just some simple questions we came up with.

What type of Matariki art is there?

How long as Matariki art been around for?

Has art always been involved in Matariki?

Do you celebrate Matariki with your family?

Photo - 

 

Making connections with black holes

Throughout the past 1-2 weeks we have been studying different topics about space, My group has chosen black holes we first chose this because we wanted a better understanding of why and what black holes are we also chose this because it sounded like a very interesting subject and things like that.

Me and my group have gotten an amazing better and good understanding of what black holes are some of these things I will say now and the rest you can go onto the slide to see and look at, some of the things I learnt over the weeks were that black holes have a very strong gravitational field (very strong gravity around it) and that there is up to 100 million of them.

Something I found challenging about this was with some of the questions I couldn't find any good answers and things like that so I had to change my question up and I had to try make it a bit more specific so I could try get the answer im looking for and there were no books that we could find that were about black holes, something I really enjoyed about doing this was that I got a better understanding of what black holes are and what they do, I also really liked finding out facts and researching about this topic because I personally really like researching about things especially if I don't know what they are and if my group doesn't know what they are as well.

Tai Chi Reflection

Today we had our normal Tai Chi lesson with Mr Gordon our teacher,

We did our every week usual moves such as tiger form, crane form, monkey washes face, open channel, full body, drawing from the earth this is only some of the positions and forms we did today, we also had our normal negative, positive and random act of kindness.

 Our power word for this week was courage, he gave us an example and things like that and he told us that to him courage means being brave have the braveness to ask or do something, the example he gave us was when he was 7 years old there was an old lady that lived right beside his school and students and kids would jump over her fence and steal fruit, she had so many different fruit trees and vines she had a grape vine, pear tree, apple tree, peaches, nectarines, tangalo, big and small plums and students always jumped over her fence to steal them. One of his friends told him to go steal an apple for him and because he couldn't get over the fence and he simply said no lets go around to her door and ask her, they walked over and he knocked on her door and she opened it giving asking him what do you want angeryly and he asked her if he could have just one apple and she gave him a huge smile. He was the first kid to ask her for a piece of fruit.

She kindly let him and his friend in and she gave him to big bags worth of apple and for the next 10 years he would go visit her and she would give him different fruits and veggies and he was so thankful for that every year on christmas they gave her presents and parcels, sadly she died when he was 17 but till this day he is still thankful.

Something I enjoyed today was listening to his life stories because he has so many amazing stories from so many different places and I just really enjoy listening to his different life stories and things like that, something I found challenging about this weeks Tai Chi is the crane pose because he was going a bit fast but other then that I had an amazing time at Tai Chi.

Have you ever done Tai Chi? If you have did you like it?

  

Inquiry Reflection

This week we have been investigating our chosen inquiry topic, my inquiry topic my group (Me, Aja, Lizzy, Taonga) have chosen black holes. We chose black holes because we don't know a lot about black holes and I think we all wanted to learn more about it, I wanted to chose black holes because I only have a small amount of understanding about black holes and my understanding is very basic like all I know is that they are black, big and they have a good amount of gravitational field which I have just learned recently.

Something I think I find challenging is that some websites may not have the correct information that i'm looking for and they might not have the correct information like they may state something and it may not be entirely true so you have to look at a number of websites to make sure that everything is correct.

My next steps for our inquiry topic will to be start answering some of my questions because we all have 2 questions each and everything but our main one is what is a black hole and things like that because I think I should start focusing on answering my questions.

Tai Chi Reflection

Wednesday we had our again normal Tai Chi and we went through the same things we always go through like some of our positions and stances are drawing from the earth and tiger form, this is just a small number of what we did for this week. I always love going to Tai Chi because it's a time to relax and stretch your muscles before heading back to class, something I found challenging was that this week he wanted to see if we had remembered everything off by heart and I have bad memory when it comes to certain things and I had forgotten some things in certain moves and positions. So I think my next step for Tai Chi will to try and remember the moves he teaches us because he may ask us next week so I think remembering them will be really helpful but im not sure if I can remember all of them.

Have you ever done Tai Chi or anything like Tai Chi?

Photos of Tai Chi -

End of week reflection

Monday -

On Monday we had our usual kiwi sport which is volleyball and I had so much fun because our home groups have changed and I got to play with new and different people, the thing that made this weeks volleyball fun was that me and my buddy were having a really good time while we were spiking (hitting the ball with your fingertips),another thing that made it even more fun was that I one a game that we played. The thing I found challenging about kiwi sports was that we had to be really alerted and I think because I was tired and it was Monday I wasn't really alerted and things like that, my next steps for next week's kiwi sports is to be more focused and more alerted because I felt like I was lacking that in this week's kiwisport.

Tuesday -

I wasn't here this week for Tuesday because I was still really sick and needed to go to the doctors for more medicine.

Wednesday -

Wednesday we had our again normal Tai Chi and we went through the same things we always go through like some of our positions and stances are drawing from the earth and tiger form, this is just a small number of what we did for this week. I always love going to Tai Chi because it's a time to relax and stretch your muscles before heading back to class, something I found challenging was that this week he wanted to see if we had remembered everything off by heart and I have bad memory when it comes to certain things and I had forgotten some things in certain moves and positions. So I think my next step for Tai Chi will to try and remember the moves he teaches us.

Thursday -

Again something that we do every week is technology, this week for technology we were starting to get into our necklace projects and things like that, I really liked this because I got a good amount of work done and I think I should be starting my work next week. Something I found challenging about this weeks technology was that because we had left for camp we had missed out on a session because we went to camp and everything, my next steps for next week's technology I think is to start my project and focus a bit more because I feel like if I was a little bit more focused I would've just started.

Friday -

Today is currently Friday and so far its been good it nearly 11:00am which means its nearly morning tea time and everything, this morning we had science/inquiry and we had small arguments about,

is there gravity in space?

Can gravity exist without air?

For the first question I said yes there's gravity in space and the teacher and one other student said there isn't because astronauts and space technology float and she also asked us why don't the solar system planets float away? When it came to my table I told her I said yes there is gravity in space because the Sun has a strong gravitational pull or field to keep the planets around it in place and even black holes have an extremely strong gravitational field and its so strong not even light can come out. With the last question I said yes gravity can exist without air because in space there is no oxygen and no air but gravity still exist around the Sun, planets and black holes.

Photos of Tai Chi -

Photos of Technology -

Photos of Science -

Technology Reflection

Today we had Technology and we are finishing off our workbook that our teacher has shared with us, so far I think technologys really fun because we are going to be starting our projects and everything and I can't wait to start everything.

I really liked technology because I am nearly to the point where I can start creating everything and taking my project home, I am still not there just yet but I am nearly there and I can't wait.

Something I think I need to work on is focusing a bit more because I did get kind of distracted and things like that so I think maybe my next steps will be to moving when I think I am getting to distracted so I can finish everything off and get all the work completed, I did complete the work but I do wish I started drawing and cutting everything out today. My next steps are going to be moving when I get distracted and focusing more because I do think if I did do these today that I would of started everything today but unfortunately I didn't but I will be surely doing these steps next week Thursday.

Have you ever made a necklace or had someone make you one before?

Here are some photos of my work -

Making Connections with Black holes

13th June -

Our WALTS -

WALT - categorise our questions into groups.

WALT - Re craft our questions so that they are thoughtful and specific.

Today the two classes room 9 and 10 got into groups of fours and picked a space topic to investigate and research about and the topic we have chosen is black holes because we don't know a lot of black holes and my group wanted to learn about it, some of the things we already new about black holes were that it was big, its a hole, its black and basic things like that, some of the questions we came up with were "has anyone ever searched a black hole?"

"Who was the first to discover and name the black whole?"

"When was the first recording of the black hole? did they find anything?"

"Are there any recorded searchings of the black hole?"

If it has been recorded and searched when was the recording? Did they find anything?

Those are just a few questions we came up with we have so much more but these were just the basic questions we have.

14th June -
Its the next day and we will be starting our researches and things like that we will be using different books and websites to accomplish these things, we also have gotten a small better understanding about what a black hole is this is only a small description as we will be adding on ideas and things like that as we get further into our investigation. 

18th June -
It's been 5 days since we started this project and i've gotten this good understanding of what black holes do some of the things they do include sucking in dying stars, there are at least 100 million of them, they can be up to 100 million to billion times bigger then our sun. This week we will start creating a poster,video or something to present our work.

Orienteering Camp Reflection

When the year 7 and 8's went to Camp Raglan we all knew we had orienteering, this was not one of the things I was most excited about but I was still farley excited for it.

Right before we went to orienteering we had to do abseiling and walk in water for so long!!! I really didn't want to walk  up and down to mountains because I was so tired and the last thing I felt like doing was orienteering.

When we arrived at orientering I was so dead I had no energy and we were kicking it off by walking up a huge mountain and it also didn't have any trails at all, when I was walking up the first mountain I nearly slipped off half way up there so I had to crawl all way up there.

After they explained everything we went off and I couldn't handle walking up the same 5 mountains 10 times so at one point a small group of students and helpers sat on a different mountain.

Even though I didn't enjoy myself that day I think it was just because 

Abseiling Camp Reflection

Abseiling was my favourite task about camp week it was challenging and it was really fun as well, I really enjoyed abseiling down the small waterfall and I really enjoyed walking around 1-3 hours in the water, I also really enjoyed doing this with some of my friends.

Even though it was really fun I did have some challenging times because one I nearly fell off a big boulder and we had to walk across rocks and I kept on slipping over and we also had to climb up a very very small little waterfalls and it was challenging because I was really tired and we still had another active to do after abseiling.

I think my next steps for abseiling is having a bit more to drink and eat because you get really thirsty and hungry because its a lot of walking and climbing and you get really tired fast and things like that.

Wait have you ever gone abseiling?

Here are some Photos of our Abseiling - 

Kayaking Camp Activity Reflection

One of the camp activities we did was Kayaking this was very funny and fun because me and my buddy were laughing at each other because I was getting angry at him because he wanted to tip the Kayaking and he thought it was really funny as well. Something I found really challenging with Kayaking was that we were floating out into the deeper end where the current was stronger and it was harder to paddle and we kept getting stuck on the rocks and it was really hard but it was still really fun to do it with my buddy because he was making it funny. 

 Here are some Photos of our Kayaking -

Camp Book Activity Reflection

WALT: finish off camp book activities and reflect at a good and high standard. 

This Morning Room 9 and 10 have been doing some camp activities in our camp booklets/camp book, the activity I have chosen to do today was Task 3 A-Z camp vocabulary this task you have to go A-Z listing some camp words and vocabulary. I didn't really find this task challenging but I did find the letter X and U hard because I couldn't find any word that relates to camp that starts with X and U. My next step for the next time I do a camp booklet task which will probably another time sometime today is to make sure it's up to a bit higher of standard it was a good standard but I think I could've done better, in general I really enjoy this type of task because its simple, easy and you can include your friends and they can help you figure some of the words out if you get stuck.

P.S let me know if you know any words that start with X and U that relate to camp.

My list of Words -

A- Abseiling, Archery,Activities 

B- BMX Bikes

C- Confidence Course, Compass, Cows
D- Dorms, Dogs
E- Eating, Exercise
F- Food,Frog, Fiafia Night, FlashLight
G- Games
H- Humor, Hammock
I- Insects
J- Jungle Gym
K- Kayaking
L- Low Ropes, Learning
M- Map, Milo, Marshmallows
N- Navigating, Nature
O- Orienteering, Outdoors
P- Parents, Participating, Pools
Q- Quiet
R- Running, Rooms, Rifle Range

S- Sharing, Sleeping, Sheep
T- Trail, TEAM, Talk, Together
U-
V- Volleyball, Values
W- Water, Walking
X-
Y- Yelling
Z- Zumba 

This is my list of the words and letters I worked on and completed!

Mary Janes - Iain Sharp Poem

Mary Jane Poem 

 Mary Jane is a bag with a slight hang filled with colourful clothes 

 Mary Jane is an Albatross diving in on fish and krill 

 Mary Jane is a story you need to continue reading to find out more 

 Mary Jane is a Mirror Shiny and Bright

 Mary Jane is a rope tied to the things around her 

 Mary Jane is the wind changing all directions all the time

 Mary Jane is a Lion loud and strong and passionate of what she is doing

 Mary Jane is a flower beautiful and shows love to everyone 

 Mary Jane is a book filled with knowledge and information 

 Mary Jane is a box who hides away when it comes to problems 

 Mary Jane is a paint brush painting her path to the present and the future, I am Mary Jane and this is my poem

End of week Reflection

It's the end of the week and I thought that I would do an end of the week reflection about how this week has been going.

Monday -

On Monday it was the Queens birthday so obviously its a public holiday and I wasn't doing so well because I was getting a cold. Me and my family didn't do much we all just chilled out and did our on thing throughout the day. 

Tuesday - 

I didn't go to school on Tuesday because I was still really sick and I needed to get medicine so I called recover and get back into school and start working again, just like Monday I didn't really do anything important or interesting.

Wednesday -

On Wednesday we had our normal well being program where the girls went to Tai Chi and the boys went to a different one and we did our usual Tai Chi lesson and moves, later on in the day in the middle and last block we did our writing and reading test I thought that the writing and reading test were kind of fun because they were interesting to do even though we get writing and reading test every year.

Thursday -

Thursday was a very fun and good day because we first started off with our again usual Thursday technology where we split off into our 3 groups (graphics, hard materials and cooking) but this week we changed groups my old group was graphics and now im in hard materials where I will be making something very interesting. In the afternoon we had our shared lunch and when I say we had a lot of chips I mean we have a lot of chips we still have chips leftover today.  The last block of Thursday was my favourite part because we got to either say in class and eat or clean or we could go outside and play basketball or play on the bouncy castle that was here for the day, I really enjoyed Thursday because I went on the bouncy castle with my friend Biana and we raced to the end and I won by 1 second.

Friday -

It's currently Friday the last day before we go off onto the weekend and I am writing this nearly at 12:00 pm this afternoon, we started off with our inquiry and camp reflections we also catching up on our blogs, now we are still doing catching up on our blog and camp reflections and later on today we will be having a whole school assembly.

Alphabet Keys - Word Keys

This Term I did a little task called word keys where you picked a task and did it and the task I chose was Alphabet keys because it sounded fun,quick and easy and it was, the words I had to choose had to relate to this terms topic of out of space and as you can see I have listed as many words as possible but unfortunately I couldn't find a word for I.

Something I enjoyed about this task was that I got to work with one of my friends so we could figure out words together and I think we did a good job, something I found challenging about this task was when we were trying to figure out some words that started with the letter I that involved space.

I hope you enjoy my blog post.

Old Writing Reflection

A while ago the two year 7 and 8 class got a small lesson on basic writing skills and writing like as you see similes, metaphors and so much more, im not going to write a lot because the actual reflection is in the book, I hope you enjoy!!

Samoan Language week Reflection

For those who dont know it was Samoan language week last week while we were at camp and we had a little task where we had to chose a topic about Samoa and write and present it to the class, I chose the topic of food and I thought it was really fun because I know a lot of the food people eat in Samoa a lot of other Islands like Fiji, Tonga and Cook Islands eat as well.

Here is a short slide about the food I found out people ate in Samoa - 

This weeks Tai Chi

This wednesday we had our usual Tai Chi lesson with our amazing instructor Mr Gordon, if you didn't know he does Tai Chi because when his daughter was a new born baby she had heart problems and a very nice man came and did some very simple Tai Chi lessons and moves with her.

Did you enjoy Tai Chi this week?

I indeed enjoyed Tai Chi this week well I always like doing Tai Chi because its a chance to get out of class and try something new and practice these amazing moves here are some of the moves we practise in Tai Chi one of them is monkey washes face, crane (bird) and tiger crane pose this are personally kind of my favourites because they are really easy and fun to do.

Did I find anything challenging this week about Tai Chi?

I dont really think I found anything challenging because its a simple and easy going class and activity to do but sometimes I get confused about what side im supposed to be doing because in this Tai Chi class we do all moves 2 - 4 times 1-2 on each side of the body and sometimes I do get confused on which side im supposed to be doing.

Photos - 

  

Technology Reflection

Yesterday we started a new technology rotation where we have to go to a different rotation aka class for technology the last group I was in for technology was graphics and now I have swapped to hard materials where we will be making a type of necklace made from a tin like metal called pewter and we will be using silhouette designs to create our necklace designs.

Do I like this new rotation?

I do enjoy being in different classes trying new things and at the moment I am enjoying this class very much because I dont think I will ever make a necklace ever again because when he was explaining how to do it, it sounded really hard and confusing and then he explained it again so we called get a better understanding. He also showed us some of the process of doing these things like mounting the tin and cutting the shape out of your design.

Did I find anything challenging?

I didn't find anything challenging because it was the first day and he was just introducing what we were doing and what the rules were when your in his class because he doesn't want any of us to get hurt because there are a lot of dangerous tools in there and hot tools as well like electric wood,tin and metal cutters and a hot tin and metal mounter.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos so I will insert some similar photos -

Camp Blog Reflection

Last week the year 7 and 8 students of Tamaki Primary school went to an amazing camp called Camp Raglan, I enjoyed so many things there and I really wished we stayed there longer because it was a time to bond with friends and others it was also a time were we made stronger, longer and new relationships with other and I really couldn't have asked for any better.

Something I enjoyed about camp?

I overall loved basically everything at camp but my two highlights were probably going to the beach with one of the teacher aids and one of the parent helpers and a few other students because it was a time that only we could share and only a time where we called say we went down to the beach. The other highlight for me was going abseiling with my friends it was very hard at one point because we were really tired but we still got there in the end, this was a highlight for me because I would never imagine myself going down a small waterfall with a rope.

Something I didn't enjoy at camp?

I had very small things I didn't like about camp just because I was very tired, the activity I didn't enjoy was orentaring because I had just finished doing abseiling and walking at least 2 hours in fast moving water and I didn't really have the patience or energy to walk up the same mountain 4 times, I also didn't like orentaring because yes we had to walk up the same mountain at least 2-5 times.