Quick Writes

Today for writing, LS2 did some quick writes. They are six sentence story's that can be written quickly. The first sentence that we write is a starter (Like once a upon a time). The first sentence also introduces the main character. The second sentence describes the place where the character lives. The third sentence describes the characters special talent. The fourth sentence describes the character's problem. The fifth tell why the character feels that way, and the final sentence tells how the character solved the problem. Here are some examples that Cyrus and I made. We worked hard as a team to complete these. We had to be creative and imaginative to make these short narrative's. We used the Harris Burdick pictures to prompt our writing.

Maths Quizzes

Today LS2 had a maths quiz competition. We competing in a online website that involves maths. We did a few quizzes to warm ourselves up. They were easy questions but the longer you took to answer them, the less points you got. Everyone tried there best, even if they got a questions wrong. Though most people got them all right, which made some ties. Mrs Anderson also played a game against us.  

Panmure Library Visit

Last week, on Friday, the year four to eight went on a bus to the panmure library. We went there to meet with Stig Wemyss who is a voice artist. He does the audio books for Andy Griffiths books. He also introduced something called borrow box, which is a app that allows digital book borrowing. He hooking the audience (Us) into his talk by using his humor and giving out prizes. He gave out prizes for things like being the person with the loudest and biggest burp. Here is a link to his site: www.stig.com.au. 

Pourquoi Story

This is my Pourquoi story about how Ngatu (Tapa cloth) came to Tonga because last week was Tongan language week. After I wrote my story, I had to work with a critical friend who used DRAFT (A writing framework) to make my story better.

How Ngatu Came To Tonga

Somewhere, some place, beyond the Seven Seas lived a small village. Now, they were not an ordinary village, they were fierce and known around the country to be undefeated and bloodthirsty. In this particular village, there was a boy who did not want to follow the way of his male ancestors or other men in the village. He did not want to be a warrior. He was quiet and peaceful, unlike the other boys in his tribe. His father, who was the battle commander of the village tried to train him to be like him, but gave up quickly.

The boy was lonely, he had no friends. The other boys were either wrestling or practising with their spears. Usually, he wandered around in the beach throwing rocks and shells or he strolled through the forest. The whole tribe thought he was a coward because he refused to even touch a weapon.

He liked to muck around with clay and bits of tree bark. He found out that the clay could be used to draw pictures on the tree bark. The boy used the paper mulberry tree most of the time because it mixed well with the clay. He mostly lay quiet, spying and stalking the birds and other creatures, drawing them till the sun went down and dusk approached.  

One day, he stayed late and worked with the moon shining down on him. Meanwhile, his father went looking for him and found him. Soon the whole village knew what the boy did when he disappeared for long periods of time. The boy was locked in his room and the door only opened when someone brought him food. After awhile, another village declared war, and this time there was no escape for the boy. He found himself walking with other men and boys his age, with a spear in his hand. The raid was bloody and awful, with men shouting war cries and screaming in pain. Men fell left and right with blood pouring from their wounds. Still, the warriors kept charging at their foes. Of course the boy’s village won, being the best fighters in the valley.

After the raid, the boy ran away to his secret hiding place a drew for what seemed like days and nights. He drew so much that his fingers bleed and were very sore. He drew flowers, fish swimming in a ocean, his village and himself. He put all of his effort into creating this extravagant piece of what is now called art. He used lots of clay and a whole tree to make this painting, which was meters long.  

When the boy finished, he took his piece of art and showed the villagers, who were awestruck in amazement. They were all thinking things like: how could this useless and cowardly boy, create something that looked as pretty as that.

After that, the villages learnt three things: that everyone had a skill that they were good at, that they could not expect people to do the same as others and the villagers learnt how to make their very own drawing. They called the drawing Ngatu after the boy that created it.

Reading Can Do's

Today I did a reading can do about a article on kiwi kids news. It was about a group of people who robbed a bank in India. They cut a hole in the roof of the train and took the money, even though there were police officer's in the next compartment. The money belonged to a bank. Here is the link to the article if you want to read it: 

http://kiwikidsnews.co.nz/indian-train-robbers-nab-1million/ 

Duffy Assembly

Today we had the duffy assembly. Two visitors also came. One person worked for duffy and the other person worked for main freight. Each person got two books from duffy. I got a book called spirit animals and a book about the Boer war. The visitor from duffy was called Henry Tuipe'a and he was on Maori Television. He told us about how reading changed his life.

Cross Country

Today Panmure Bridge School did their cross country. At a bit past one o'clock the whole school went across the road to Dunkirk. First the juniors ran. It rained a lot and it was very cold so when they finished, the juniors went back to school. Next were the seniors. My younger brother came first out of the year fives and my older brother came second out of the year eight's. I also came first out of the year seven's. It was very hard and when I crossed the finish line I was puffing. I had a awesome time running in the cross country.  

Maths Session

Today, during maths, Mrs Naicker's maths group worked with decimals to solve word problems. During this time, I worked with AJ. We had to use our addition and subtraction skills to solve word problems that were in decimals. They were very hard but we eventually got most of them done. For a warm up, we did a thirty question basic facts test ton see how good we were. I got thirty out of thirty. They were really easy. After that the group had a competition to see who could win in a maths game called hit the button. On hit the button there are several subject, this time we did division. I did alright but I wasn't the best. The decimal word problems were high numbers like 672.80 + 180.76, though we managed to solve them. 

Read Theory

Before reading time, LS2 has read twenty. It is basically read theory that we do for twenty minutes. Read theory is a website that provides lots of story's (Called a passage) and some questions to do after it. It is really easy, once you finish a passage, you can press a button and go onto another. I have to read the questions carefully though, some of them are really tricky and difficult. Sometimes, I have to look at the text and the questions several time before I can answer one.

CARE Awards

This is my CARE award task that I did. I made two DLO's. One of them was hot to be cyber safe and how to stand up to bullies. It is important to make sure that you stay safe while online and it is also important to make sure you won't get bullied. 

Sketch notes

This week LS2 has been learning how to use sketch notes. They are basically notes that help you understand the learning in your own words/pictures. Sketch notes don't matter if they are messy and don't look interesting, they just have to make sense to you. Sketch notes are meant to be more pictures and less words. They help you make connections and tell a learning story in your words. I liked doing sketch notes because you can be really creative and draw what ever you like (As long as it is in the topic, of course). We looked at some examples and then we made our own. First, we started with a topic we knew, which was questions. Next we did athletics and yesterday we did Rio De Janeiro and the Olympics. 

Here is the questions sketch note:

Here is my athletics sketch note:

Here is my Olympics sketch note:

Finally, here is my Rio De Janeiro sketch note

Cross Country Training

For the past two weeks, LS1 and LS2 were practicing for the cross country next week. We focused on our endurance. We tried to do as many laps as we could so we could build up stamina and so that when the actual cross country came, we didn't walk. First we had to warm up, we did star jumps, high jumps and jogging on the spot. I had a really great time doing cross country, even though it was only training.