This term, we are doing action stations. It’s where you go to a station and perfect skills for 5 sessions. I chose art, and we worked on shading in different versions of shading. We had fun and I enjoyed the session.
During math, we have been trying to identify different triangles by their sides and angles. We have also been identifying the direction of triangles using degrees. I worked with Sophie, and we programmed a sphero to do a right angle triangle. The most difficult part was getting the angles correct because our angles were too small. We had to debug the programme by changing the angles. It took about 8 times to have success.
For passion projects, I added to my story because my goal was to widen my vocabulary. It was fun, and I got a bit done. I think that my overall goal this term is to finish this story, as I have never finished a story before.
Today, we worked on drawing isometric shapes. I worked with Tui and we exchanged block shapes to draw. I found this quite easy and enjoyed it a lot.
Kia Ora, Mark Mitchell.
My name is Addison Godfrey, and I am a student from Rawhiti School. I would like to raise my concerns on aligning the school hours to New Zealand parents. I really am worried that it will affect the students in our community.
We spend 30 hours a week at school. If we raise the hours to 9 – 5, we then have an extra 10 hours of learning in our hands. Imagine if we get up around 8 AM, go to school, study for eight hours, get home around 5:10 – 6:00, depending on how far away we live, and then have half an hour to an hour to work on homework. This amount of stress is not benefiting us in any way.
Speaking about benefiting parents and jobs, think about all the people in the after school care business. The amount of job loss around the country would be immeasurable. People will lose their jobs and might not be able to support their families with good food and a roof over their head. The average job takes around 5 to 6 months, so what about in between then? What will they do? So are we really benefiting everyone?
Lastly, I would like to talk about the amount of pressure you would be putting on the children of New Zealand. School causes a lot of stress, and sometimes even depression, from bullying, academic pressure, and peer relationships. This amount of change in our hours will mess up our sleep schedule. We will be tired, unwilling to go to school, and I don’t think our education will improve. This affects teachers and colleagues too. They already wake up early to get here, and stay late, so this will be a problem. This may ruin friendships with my friends and the teachers with their colleagues.
These are some of the many reasons why this is not good for our society. Please do NOT let them do this.
Kind regards,
Addison.
This is my letter. We had to make a letter to send to the MP about the hours being changed from 9 am to 3 pm, to 9 am to 5 pm. My friends gave me feedback, this is what Emma said:
Good layout, Gets to the point. Nice.
For many people, Matariki is a very important part of their culture. It is a time where your family can gather together, celebrate the future and appreciate the past. Today, I want to look into some of the things you may not know about this holiday.
The stars of Matariki rise in winter because it signifies the start of the Māori new year.
It is a time to acknowledge the dead, and to release their spirits to become stars, to wish good luck on the year before us, to celebrate our culture, and to spend time with your family and friends.
Celebrations were quite popular, but it largely stopped in the 1940s. After many years, it revived in the 2000s and has all sorts of celebrations for the new year.
For Matariki, we were given 4 tasks to do. A fiction piece, a nonfiction piece, other, and one of your choice. I would like to share the fiction one I did.
“Hello?” She called, searching for any sign of life.
“Hello!” Her voice, now shaky and desperate, echoed around the place. There was nothing left in the demolished house around her.
“Hey there” She looked back at a tall, toned man. His face was chiseled, and he had a calm, unsettling expression. His brown wavy hair fell just to his eyes, and he looked like he could be around the age of 30.
“What do you want with me?” She asked.
“Nothing, don’t flatter yourself” He remarked. His voice was quite orotund, but it was steady.
“No, I’m looking for a man called Stephen Lanford, do you know him?”
“That’s what you wanted to ask? Then why the hell did you ruin my home!” The woman yelled.
“I needed to make an entrance” He replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“Well, I don’t know him,” She said. He sighed.
“Then you are no longer of any use to me” Before the woman could reply, the man pressed his palm up to her forehead.
“When you wake up from this slumber, you will forget everything that happened today, including me” He said, lifting his hand which caused her to fall to the floor unconscious. He then dialed a number in his phone.
Say the message after the beep.
“Hey Daniel, call me back. We might need a plan B”
“There’s yogurt in the fridge,” Dan told me. I open the fridge, grabbing the half open low calorie yogurt.
“Man, you gotta get your life together” I roll my eyes.
“Well, I will, once you find freaking Danny DeVito over here” He said, nodding at the picture of Stephen Lanford on my phone. I can see the resemblance, he was quite short with a bigger build, and you could see the receding hairline from a mile away. He laughs for a while, but stops as he realizes that I wasn’t laughing with him.
“It’s not working,” I said. Daniel isn’t serious very often, and neither am I, which told him I wasn’t kidding. He’s always cracking bad jokes, and getting distracted every second. He looked at me confused.
“The plan. Its not working”
“Why not?”
“Because”
“Imma need more than that, Micheal”
“It’s taking too long! I have waited too.. Long” I drag out the last bit like it’s hard for me to say, it is, but if I sound too relaxed, I don’t get listened to.
“Okay, okay. I’ll alter the plan”
“No. You need to make a new plan” He falls off the chair dramatically.
“This took me ages to make!” Dan said in a whiny tone. I rolled my eyes. I hate whiners.
“It took you like, 2 hours”
“That was 2 very long hours!”
“My sister is missing! She’s gone!” I yell. He gets back on the chair. The look on his face tells me that he’s starting to realize how serious I am.
“Okay. Alright, I’ll remake the plan” His voice is strained.
“Micheal, how do you know Gabby’s alive?” Dan asked. He asked quietly, obviously thinking I’ll snap again.
“I just know it,” I say, taking a bite of the yogurt. I immediately regretted it, spitting it back into the pottle.
“That’s disgusting!” I yell as he laughs hysterically.
If only people understood what it’s like to lose a sibling. At first, there is anger and denial, but soon it dies down to incessant pain. It was really hard to comprehend, and I spent days in my room, interminable hours scrolling through social media, trying to distance myself from any reality I could possibly manage. At some point in the stages of my grief, I ran away, making a pledge with myself that I would find her and bring her to safety. My parents didn’t look for me. To be honest, they probably didn’t even realize I was gone.
I really enjoyed writing this story. We got a prompt, ‘write about someone or something that was lost’ and this is what I created with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put the whole story in because it was quite long and some of the themes are inappropriate for younger audiences.
For the past few weeks, Emma, George and I have been working on a project. We made soap, and learned all the chemical and physical reactions that happen within. Today, we went down to the hall to the science fair, the place where ours and many other projects were put on display. I had a lot of fun making the soap and display board, and also looking at all the other projects others had made. The one that interested me the most was the elephant toothpaste and how it reacted to the different chemicals. I found this whole experience really fun and hope to do this again next year.
Today, I would like to work on widening my vocabulary and using longer words in the stories I write. I will try to use at least 5 new words in my writing.
2/7/24