Production

This term the Kaupeka hub for PBL is doing a production. For the production we have to create 2 to 3
dances. We are doing the dances about the Maori belief the creation story.

The story that we are doing goes something like this: Rangi (The father of the sky) and Papa
(Mother of earth) meet and fall in love. They had 6 children, Tawhiri the God of wind, Tane the God of the
Forest, Rongo God of Peace, Haumia God of the wild, Tangaroa God of the Sea and Tumatauenga God
of war.
Since Rangi and Papa were so close that the sun would not shine through and nothing would grow.
The children where traped and they were not happy about it. So they thought about it and discussed
what to do. Tu (The God of war) suggest that they kill their parents. Tane (god of the forest) suggested
that they separate their parents, everyone agreed to do that but Tawhiri (God of wind),  he loved to see
his parents together and in love.
Everyone tried to separate their parents. 
First was Tu, he tried with all his strength but failed. 
Next was Rongo, haumia how tried to combined there strength but also failed. 
Then  Tangaroa had a go using the strength of the sea, but also failed. Then the brothers try to convince
Tawhiti  to have a go but he refuses to. 
Next Tane tried. He became very small to slip in between his parents, he lay with is back on Papa and put
his feet on Rangi and pushed with all his might and succeed. 
The parents were very sad, Rangi would cry and cry. The children turned Papa around so he would not
see her face. Rangi’s tears got less but you can still see them in the morning as the dew on the ground and
the mist in the morning is Papas sighs 


We were put into groups of 10 people. The groups are each a God, the God that my group is Tu the God
of war. In my group is Will, Ruby, Claudia S, Claudia W, Matthew, Luke, Olivia, Joe and me. 

The first dance that we had to choreograph and was the introduction of the war God. the dance had to be 30 sec to 1 min long. For the music we are doing 'The Eye Of The Tiger Instrumental'. We had to make sure that all the actions were strong and sharp and that everyone new the dance.

The second dance that we are doing is when Tu ( God of war ) tries to separate the Mother of earth and
Father of the sky . The music that we are using is  'Humble instrumental'. So far we've got the music and
an idea of what to do, but we''l get back the the choreograph as soon as we can. 

For the costumes we get to choose what we wear but the budget for each person is $7. so far we've got
an idea for the first dance, we are thinking of wearing black t-shirt and pants and then paint some of it
red (For blood).   

After we finish our second dance we will get our third dance to choreograph and then THE

PRODUCTION!!

The production was so much fun! For the first performance I was a lead, I played the roll of Tu war god.
I was in 9 dance’s two with  my group ( Tu group) and 7 as a lead. For the second performance I was only
in two dance’s the two that my group did. At the end we did a dance with everyone on the stage. The
teacher’s choreograph this dance and it was so much fun.


Have you ever done a Production on anything? 

swimming

This term SFOA is doing swimming in weeks 7 and 8. I love swimming and so far I’ve had a great time swimming. We swam in Graham Conden pool.

For swimming we went in dance groups , 3 dance groups in each groups going to swimming. I was in the third group.

Before we go swimming we go to the kakano hub to be partnered up with one of the little ones.  My buddies name is Honor she’s a very nice girl, then we have morning tea with them.

Once everyone had had there morning tea we got ready to go on the bus.
After we hoped back off the bus at Graham Conden we got ready to swim.

We had three teachers each teacher taught a different level of swimming 1 is the lowest and 3 is the highest. I was in level 2.  I’m with two of my friends.

In week 7 somethings that we have been doing is backstroke, freestyle, Breaststroke and survival backstroke. Backstroke is when you swim on your back, freestyle is when you swim and every three strokes you take a breath. Breaststroke is when you swim like a frog and survival backstroke is when you do Breaststroke on your back.
We also have been diving and practicing those.

In week 8 we did water safety starting on Wednesday. on Wednesday we did all sort's of stuff with life jackets.
on Thursdays we we where split into 2 groups. my group went to learn what to do when someone is stuck in a river. then we went to learn what you would do when your boat was seeking.
on Friday we had to swim in out PJ and it was SSOOO fun.

Here are some photos of my swimming:
This is me:


This my friend Tamera:


This my friend Joanna:


do you like swimming?

Sundials

This week on Thursday (23-8-18) half of the Kaupeka hub went to the Canterbury winter sport tournament, the other half of the hub was at school making SUNDIALS! Making the sundials was so  much fun, now at home I can look at the sundial and read the time easy Here is the link to the instructions of how to make one:  Create a sundial.pdf

Have you very made a sundial?

how to have a great blog for a simple persone

Hi, today I'm going to be talking about 6 step's for a great blog. In my cyber smart lessen I've learnt 6 step's to make my blog even better then they are now, and I'm going to share these 6 step's with you so your blog post a great.


What do you think of the 6 step's?

Teacher’s Strike

This week St francis of Assisi teacher’s went on strike on Wednesday.

This is because the teacher’s are not happy with the government. The government is not paying the teacher’s enough money, and a problem with this is that there a less people becoming teachers.

The teacher’s are also stating that they want more time in the classroom. They have said that they want the time to talk with the student’s about things like their weekends. Teachers have also said that they have 40% in the classroom and 60% on paperwork. They think that the government should give them less paperwork so they can do things like talk with the student’s about there weekends.

So on Wednesday the teacher’s refused to work, so the government refused to pay them on that day. That is why my school and maybe your school if you go in New Zealand would have had Wednesday off.

If you had Wednesday off, what did you do on Wednesday?

New Zealand Book Awards

New Zealand Book Awards

This week I went to New Zealand Book Awards for children and young adults. We went and listened to Sophie Sires, Gavin Bishop and Alison Balance. We listened to them talk about one of there books and I enjoyed it very much.

Sophie Sires talk about a book she wrote called “The Gift Horse”.

Sophie said that she lived on a farm and that was where she based the home of the main character Olivia. How she came to right this book was she went to a library that she goes to so she can sell her book and the lady and that worked there said something like this: “Sophie could you write a book about grief. There has been no books about grief lately”. She tock on the challenge for it was hard to make a book about grief and she made “The Gift Horse”. It is a good book at I recommend that you read it.

Next was Gavin Bishop. Gavin wrote a book called “Aotearoa New Zealand”.  He talk about how he came to writing this book and he said that there were some people that wanted him to write (and draw) a pitcher book, but they didn’t want it to be the normal size pitcher book, so instead of it being 32 page's long the wanted it be 64 page’s long. So the next day He started to research and sketch the beginning of the book. Something that he said to do was to do the title and front cover last witch was a really good idea because when you do those things it could the opposite of your story which would not be good.  

Then the last person we listened to was Alison Balance.  The book she wrote was “New Zealand's Great White Shark’s”. She talked about how a Great White Shark was born. For the first half of its time in the mother's womb it would eat eggs, lots and lots of eggs. Then in the second half it would digest all the eggs.

As we in New Zealand thought that the Great White Sharks like cold water, and that was why New Zealand had Great White Shark’s they were wrong! The Great White Shark’s went to australia and back!! She also said that The long’s Great White Shark was 6 feet long!!! A Female Great White Shark are 5 and half to 6 feet long, and the Male Great White Sharks are 5 feet long, so the female where bigger Shark than the male!!!!  

I really enjoyed listened to these authors talk about their books. And I do recommend them to many people.

Have you ever read an Award winning book?

Novels

This term we are doing novels. For novels we were put into our homebase where we had to choose out of three books which one we would like to read. The four books that I got to choose from where: Greyhound Of A Girl , Oracle, Jenner's wave  and Drover's quest.

I choose Drovers quest, the book is about a girl who's father found a nugget of gold as big as a man's fist. one day her father went missing, so she went on a drove to find her father. so far it is a good book and I can't wait to start reading it again.

I choose this book because when I read the blurb the story really stood out from the others. Also because I like a good adventure book.

Hear is  Summarise of some of the part that I have read:

CHAPTER ONE

-/

The main point the author is making is that Joseph is from America and has come to New Zealand to get away from the war. The Chapter is mostly about  Joseph coming to New Zealand and trying to find a job so he can stay in New Zealand and not go somewhere else in the world because he doesn't like boats.

If the chapter had a name I would call it “My first friend in New Zealand”    

The bit of information this story couldn’t be without is “But even as he drifted off to sleep he’s last thoughts were, as always, of gunfire and war.

The book has started of ruefully like I thought. I thought that when her dad went missing she would go looking for him as soon as possible. Then I thought that she would meet Joseph and feel comfortable around him. That was sort of what happened.

This term we have been using a Literacy circle method. The method is when you choose a book (I choose drover’s quest) and you are in the group and you discuss what you think about the book and and more. For the Literary circle we do a job for the week. The jobs that you choose from are:

Word Master, Summarise, Illustrator, Discussion Director, Connector and Passage Picker. At the end of the term you should of down all of them at least once.

I can’t wait to do Illustrator and Connector, and can’t wait to finish the book.

What type of books do you read?

My Holidays

For the Term 2 holidays I had a great time! For the first week it was a bit boring and I was at home either watching TV, playing my iPad or reading my book. But in the second week was much  more fun because some friends from Australia came and visited us hear in New Zealand. Some of the places that we when to were the Antarctic Center, Cocopellis, on the tram and punting on the Avon River. 

In the Antarctic Center we when into the snowstorm, which was so cold!, on the Hagglund ride (the ride was scary and my and my friend screamed). We saw the 4D movie of  'Happy Feet' (where you have the 3D glasses and the seats move and you get sprayed with water!) and we learnt some things about the Antarctic which was COOL!

For dinner on one of the nights we went to Cocopellis which is at The Palms. It is a great place and I do recommend that you go there. They do great food (especially the pizzas). Cocopellis is a great place and can't wait to go there again.

The first day that they were here in Christchurch we went on the trams. We showed them some of the old buildings and important things to Christchurch. We hopped off the tram at stop 12 and walked past the museum and past the Gardens all the way to the Avon River.

When we got to the Avon River we walked down to the boat shed to go punting. When it was time for us to get on to a boat, we hoped on to a long boat that had four seats and each seat could fit two people. As we sat in the boat waiting for the punter to come we were handed a blanked to share and a hot water bottle. I sat next to my friend and my sister and her sister sat next to each other in front of us.

I had so much fun while they were here but then they left to go to Queenstown and then they went back to Australia.

What did you do in the holidays?

Life Education

This week Life Education came to talk St Francis of Assisi about being and leader.



here is a photo of the time we had.

Have you done Life Education?

Book Review

Last week I finished a book called "the school Of Good And Evil, A World Without Boys". The author of this book is Soman Chainani. In my last Book Review I did it on the first book in this series and this is the second book in the series. The main characters in this story are Sophie, Agatha, and Tedros.  I do have some spoilers. In this book it has it has romance, action and adventure.

This book is about two girls Sophie and Agatha and one boy Tedros. Agatha and Sophie are in there village and Agatha makes a wish that opens the gates to the world of fairy tales. As they find their way back to the school of good and evil it is not that any more and it has changed to the school of girls and boys. Agatha tries to get back with Tedros and Sophie does not want them together.  As the girls fight in the end Agatha goes to Tedros and Sophie find a love with someone else. I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone that likes romance and fairy tales, but it is a scary book. I rate this book 4/5.

have you read a book that you enjoyed and when you were reading it you could not put it down?

Book Review

Not to long ago I finished a book called "The School Of Good And Evil".  It is a good book. The author is Soman Chainani.  I do have some spoilers.  The main characters of this story are Sophie and Agatha. Sophie loves the colour pink and tries her hardest to be good and kind to others. Agatha on the other hand likes the colour black, lives by a grave and does not like other people. In this book it has  romance, action and adventure.

This book is about two girls Sophie and Agatha that get taken from their old home to a world full of fairy tales. The girls though that Sophie would go to The School of Good and that Agatha would go to The School of Evil but they were wrong and then they went to the opposite school.  As the girls tried to get home they have to face challengers and at times they hated each other only to at the end find there way home and be good friends.
I rate this book 4/5.

What books do you read?

Caritas Challenge

In Week 3 the Year 7/8 Hub did the Caritas Challenge. As you already know from my last blog what we did was the Live It Challenge. We slept outside at school in a cardboard box. We did this challenge to fundraise for Caritas. It started at 9:00am on Friday the 18th and ended at 9:00am on Saturday the 19th.
 From 9:00am to 9:15 we did the roll and got started on the great fun day planned. From 9:15 to 10:00 we had mass because that's what the people in Timor-lest do on a Sunday.
10:00 to 10:30 we had an Anti-bulling Assembly with the rest of the school.
Then we had a break. At 11:15 to 11:30 the City Missioner came in to talk to us about homeless people in Christchurch, NZ.

Next we did a Move It Challenge where we completed 3 hours of non stop sport. We invited  Mairehau Primary School. I did non-stop sports on the netball court. I enjoyed doing this and got very thirsty too.
For the next session of sports I did yoga and played some balloon volleyball, it was fun.

After that it was time to start building our shelters. I was with my friends Roza, Becky, Joanna and Tamera. We made our like a tent and it was a small space so through the night we would be closer to each other and warmer than the people the had theirs spaced out. Hear is a photo of our shelter

We then did a reflection on the experience we'd had. In my last blog is the Questions and my Answers of the Reflection.
The next day we took-down the shelters and had a game to 9:00 when we had finished the challenge.
I had lots of fun. Have you done the Caritas Challenge?

Blog Profile

Hi here is my Profile:

What does your blogger profile look like? If you don't have one what would yours look like?

Science

This term we are doing a science experiment. I'm doing "How salty does the sea have to be for an egg to float?"
  Here is my background research:

When you put an egg in tap water it sinks, this is because the density  of the egg is higher then the density of the tap water. But if you add enough salt the egg will float, this is because if you get the right amount of salt in the water the salt gives the tap water more density so water is higher in density then the egg.   Water has a density of one. An egg has 1.031 g/cm3   density.                             

Credit:

Salty Science: Floating Eggs in Water - Scientific American

How Much Salt Does it Take to Make an Egg Float in Water? | sciencing

How much salt do we need in water to make an egg float

Here is my Hypothesis:

Increasing the density of the water through adding salt will mean that the egg will float.

Here are the materials that I will need:

What I will need for my experiment:

1. 5 eggs
2. Salt
3. 5 cups
4. Water
5. Measuring cup

Here  is my Method:
I will have 5 eggs and 5 cups of water. The 5 cups will be numbered 1 - 5, in the 5 cups of water 1 will have no salt, 2 will have ½ a cup, 3 will have 1 cup of salt, 4 will have 1 ½ cups of salt and 5 will have 2 cups of salt.

I will leave them in the water for one hour.

When one hour is done I will see out of the 5 cup which one is floating of not.

I can't wait to start my experiment.
Have you done an Science experiment? If you have what was it?  

Caritas Challenge Reflection

Hi last week, Week 3, St Francis of Assisi participated in the Caritas Challenge. In the Caritas Challenge we did some reflections and here is mine.
Q:  Describe your experience of our Kaupeka Caritas Challenge so far. What does “1 day of difference for a lifetime of change” mean to you?
A: I've loved it so far, it means a lot to me to know that the money that we have raised is going to people that need it most.
One day of difference to me is a lot. One day of seeing and feeling like the people that are out there today living with less that we have.
Q: What has been a challenge for you so far during the day and/or what might be a challenge for you during the night? How did you or how will you overcome this?
A: During that day the challenges have been easy for me, the biggest challenge was building the shelter it was wasn't easy to work out what we were going to build, how it was going to stand up, how we were going to fit in the shelter and how warm we can make it. During the night the challenge that I think will be hard for me is go to sleep in a cardboard box cold. I hope I can get as much sleep as I can.
Q: What connections can you make with the people of Timor-Leste/ those living in poverty from your experience in our Caritas Challenge so far?
A: I could give money, food and more to the Caritas to give to people that can use the money and food to say as healthy as possible and trying to live in a house, get a job and more things that will help them.
Q: What could you do to help those living in poverty in our local community? (Think back to our City Missioner visit this morning).
A: To give all the things that I wouldn't use to the City Mission to help the people that need a better job, a place to live, clean clothes and more.
Q: What have you learned about Social Justice and Empathy while participating in our Kaupeka Caritas Challenge?

A: I am very lucky we are to have a warm bed, a roof over my head, a warm house, a car, clean cloths and so much more then what people have that I do and don't tack as an advantage and will now.

Here is a photo of us writing our reflection:

A Way That Will Make It Easier To Get An Assessment Done

Hi,  I'm going to tell you a way that will make it easier to get an assessment done. This will come in handy when it's an assessment that you would like to  get a better mark. Before we get to know how to plan out the assessment you need to have a plan. Know what the requirements are, like how long you have to do the assessment, what it must have in it, what it needs and how it is planned, why you are doing it and when it is due.

It is a way to spread out your assessment over the  time you are given. If you had 3 weeks to write a story, in the first week you should do half of your story (50%). Then In the second week write the next half of your story (the other 50%). Then you can edit and make it better in the third week.

What Assessments do you like and dislike?

Math Maintenance

In term 1 & 2 that year 7/8 hub has been doing math's Maintenance where we've had four levels to choose from. Green is easy, Blue is median, Yellow is hard and Purple is extra hard. I'm doing blue, in blue there are questions like 15% of 70 and 3/6 of 36, those are the harder ones. The easier ones are like 7 x 8 and how many hundreds are in 234,643. We are given 10 Questions and one week to complete them, we must mark and hand them in at the end of the week. I enjoy doing math's and I can't wait for next weeks Math Maintenance.
Do you do  Math Maintenance? If you don't what do you do instead? 

Cross Country

In Week One St Francis of Assisi ran the Cross Country. The Year 7/8s ran 3 km around Walter Park and the Year 5/6 ran 2 km. I came 13th and one of my friends (Joanna) came 3rd and she will be going to Zones. I'm very happy for her and wish her good luck. I'm very proud of myself, know I really want to do more things outside know.
Did you do Cross Country? If you did did you place?

The Books I've Bean Reading

This term the books I've bean reading a series called The Hero's of Olympus. It's a good story, I would recommend it to people who like adventures, monsters and scary things. The books are about a group of 7 kids traveling from America to Rome.  They fight demons and creatures that are terrifying. The characters in the story are brave and are always ready to fight more to save the world. The books are written by Rick Riordan, he also writes Percy Jackson, Kane Chronicles,  The Magnus Chase, The Trials of Apollo and more. These books are so good every time I have to stop reading them I just want to open it again.
What books do you read?

Bridle Path And Ferrymead

On Friday of week 8, the year 7/8 hub went up the bridle path and then to ferrymead. I was in the afternoon group, witch means that I went up the bridle path at 10:00 am and then went to Ferrymead to see what it was like in the 1950s to the 1960s to 4:30 pm. My favorite was the bridle path because I love to walk and I love it even more when it's a nice and warm day witch it was. I also like it because I feell like I'm in one of my favorite books going on an adventurer.  On the bridle path we walked up it then we went in the time tunnel, then we came back down in the Gondola then we went to ferrymead. at Frerrymead we learned what it was like in the 1950s to the 1960s, the first thing I did was baking scones, we baked scones because that is what they baked back then  and they had them for tea party and when they invited there friends over. Next we went to the toy store to see what toys they played with. some of the toys were: hula hoops, fishing games, a go cart and more.  Lucky last we went to school! the school and how it worked is a lot different to what school is know. They had a row of seats for girls, a row of seats for boys, they didn't have groups or a uniform. The play grounds were a lot different to today. I had so much fun, I think that you should go. Have you?