Wonderful Windy Wellington

Hey again people, hope your week is going well!

Last week we (the Student Leaders) got the amazing opportunity to go to Wellington for the day, it was such an awesome experience. I had never, ever, gone to the North Island, or even flown domestically before, so everything was new for me!

We went to several different places; first of all, Christchurch Airport, then Wellington Airport, Weta Workshops, outside Parliament, had lunch on the waterfront, Te Papa, then back to Wellington, then Christchurch Airport. It was such a fun day! We all learnt so much, not only about leadership but other things too! 

Now don't tell anyone (sshhh), but here's the upcoming article about it written by Zara Dick, Sophia Turnbull, and I:

Now I'm sure you'll want to see some photos! Now I can't show you all as there is too ma- or can I...

Here's a quick collage I made (couldn't quite fit all the photos):

Here is also an example of one of the sculptures:

I hope you learnt something! And thanks for reading!

What do you know about leadership?

Have you ever been to Wellington?

If so what was your favourite part?

See ya later;

Soph   :D

Wonderfully Wicked Wearable Arts

 

Hey people,

Hope all is well and you are enjoying your extra long weekend!

As you may know from my previous posts, over the past term we have been working on our Wearable Arts pieces for inquiry. This has been such a cool experience, my friends at Chisnallwood did it last year and told me all about it (I may have been a tiny bit jealous)!

We had to get into groups of no more than six and select an issue we wanted to be showcased in our art piece that was to do with the theme. This year's theme was issues in our ocean. As you should be aware our ocean is extremely important to our planet, without it we probably wouldn't be alive.

My group selected Seismic Testing as our issue as it is a very big one that goes quite unnoticed (don't tell anyone but I didn't even know what it was either)! If you don't know, Seismic Testing is when a boat sails out to somewhere in the sea they put buoys and this device thing in the water, they then let off big bangs. This is done to detect any oils or gases in the ocean, and also the ground level. Whilst this is useful it also disturbs, injures, deafens, and kills sea animals from hundreds of miles around, it is even loud enough to kill a human!

Anyway, we had to write a speech, rap, poem, etc to be spoken in the background while the model walked and music played. I took charge of this, here is the poem I wrote about Seismic Testing:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-GYYvUC83uccMygTuxkaH5yCRy-A-cJ3720NuEvJz8/edit?usp=sharing

Of course, that doesn't really bother you, what you want to see is our outfit; The Sound of Seismic:

This took us a while to do but it was finally done! Our outfit was made up of the following elements; a hat, salt dough (the fish and boat on the hat [which isn't that easy to see]), plastic and bread bags (for the lines that represent the fish and the boat "talking", fabric and belt (for the dress which represented the ocean), wire and a holla hoop (to make/hold the skirt together), and a trampoline net (for the skirt, which represented the silence and deaths of sea animals).

I hope you learnt a lot from this post!

What was your favourite wearable art?

Have you made them before?

What are you doing for your inquiry?

See ya later;

Soph    :D

Puzzling Probability

 

Hey people, 

Hope you had another great week! Just a quick post today but I really wanted to show you all Zara and I's probability report!

Over the past wee while in maths we have been looking into probability. We were given the task to pick something that we could experiment with and then report. We could either do this in pairs or individually, I did mine with Zara. 

Our report was on Murphy's Law, at the time I had no idea what that was. It basically means like according to Murphy's Law the worst thing will always go wrong (there is a better definition in the report below). Both of us actually struggled quite a bit coming up with an idea, the classic one was to butter some toast and see which way it would land when it was dropped. Murphy's Law would say face down. We did our own version of that, we had a folded piece of paper and put glue on one side.

Here is the report, our results were quite shocking really:

Thank you for taking your time and reading this!

Have you made a report like this?

If so what was it about?

Have you learnt anything new?

See ya later;

Soph   :D

Fabulous Fantastic First Friday & Formerly For Fun Fourth!

Hey everyone, 

Hope you had a great holiday and are excited and motivated for this coming and final term of the year (the best term). Fabulous Fantastic First Friday & Formerly For Fun Fourth! That is just my way of saying Fabulous First Week For The Fourth Term (I just wanted to only use [f's at the start] alliteration).

Anyway, I was going to give you a log today about what I did this week:

Monday: 

• Maths
• More probability work on our investigation (I may blog this once done)
• Spelling
• Reading Recovery Buddy
• Over the last few weeks, I have been helping my little buddy Karlee with her reading, spelling, and writing.
• Literacy
• We continued working on our film scripts (I will blog this once completed)
• Inquiry
• We continued working on our Wearable Arts piece, the show will be held in week 3 (I will blog this once done also)

Tuesday

• Maths
• More probability work on our investigation (I may blog this once done)
• Spelling
• Reading Recovery Buddy
• Literacy
• We continued working on our film scripts (I will blog this once completed)
• Athletics Practice
• We are practicing in the run-up to Athletics for next week on Friday (well in this time I sorted through the recycling bins pulling out all the rubbish [with help from a few good friends]

Wednesday

• Technology
• I am currently learning and working with Digital Technologies (the last cycle of the term)
• Personality Quiz
• After that whilst the other group went to Technology we took a survey and found out 25 traits in order from 1-25 for us. My top 5 (in order) were; Honesty, Love, Perseverance, Curiosity, &  Gratitude. 

Thursday

• Orthodontist Appointment
• I wasn't at school in the morning as I had an appointment although I was back in time for:
• Reading Recovery Buddy
• ICAS Writing
• I missed Literacy as I missed ICAS in the morning.
• Athletics Practice

Friday

• Tickets
• Zara and I counted the tickets and did the weekly draw for who won the ice blocks. If you don't know these tickets are points for each house.
• Cultural Live Stream
• It was the cultural day when everyone dresses up in their culture, some people made presentations and talked about their country (we watched through the TV because alert level 2 restricts the whole school from gathering.
• Maths
• We just finished off some work for only 15 mins before:
• Kiwi Buddies
• We all have one (some 2) buddy(s) that we help, read to, they read to us, or play with them for 30-45 mins.
• Inquiry

I hope you enjoyed reading about my week. Please leave any feedback or questions in the comment below.

What did you do last week?

Have you taken a survey?

If so what were your top 5 character traits?

See ya later;

Soph    :D

Fantastic Fantasy

 

Hey people, 

I hope you are surviving lockdown. Finding things to do, avoiding boredom, and helping your family are all great things to do during this tough time. Fingers crossed we come out of it soon!

As I have mentioned in my previous post my literacy group is diving deep into different genres doing fun and exciting tasks. So far we have looked at; horror, sci-fi, and now, fantasy. Fantasy is possibly my favourite genre it is so extensive and there are copious different cliches that make it what it is. 

Yesterday we were focusing on the different cliches in fantasy, a video helped us identify the following. They are pretty much displayed in all fantasies, there is/are:

1. The Chosen One
2. The Prophecy
3. The Dark Lord
4. The Wise Old Wizard
5. Mythical Creatures
6. Magical Items
7. Different Races
8. Magic Spells]
9. Old English Accents 
10. Haunted Forests

These are listed from most common to least common, of course, there are other things too like; Strange Spellings & Fictional Languages, A Bumbling Idiot, and so on. Anyway, let's get to the task. Our task was to choose a fantasy series, film, novel, short story, etc, and to write in-depth about how the cliches are shown. Then we had to create our own character and try to fit it into the story. Does it change the whole storyline? If so in a good or bad way?

Here is mine:

Thanks for taking the time to read it, here are a few questions:

What is your favourite fantasy novel, film, etc?

How about your favourite task you've had to do in lockdown?

What did you learn from my post? 

See ya later! 

Soph  :D

The House of a Ghostly Tale

 

Hey people, 

I hope you aren't suffering too badly from this lockdown, remembering to get some fresh air and try to relax as much as possible. But also putting in the effort and letting yourself enjoy the tasks that have been set, and make sure to stay in contact with friends and other family.

Yesterday Toroa students had the day off but today we got into distance learning by starting off with a zoom call with our home group teacher. He/she told us what and where our tasks were for the next couple of days and we started cracking into them. 

I actually really enjoyed my literacy task, we are currently doing Genre Studies, the genre we are focused on is horror. I'm not a huge fan of it but I really like writing horror stories, which was pretty much our task for today. We had to write a ghost short story that was about a page long (mine was 601 words) then we had to make a book cover for it (on something like Canva). I also decided to put the rest of the story on my Canva as well along with the blurb. 

Here it is: 

If that is a bit unclear then HERE is the link to the document!

Hope you enjoyed it here are a few questions; 

1. What is your favourite genre and why?
2. What kind of tasks are you doing, and what is your favourite one and why?
3. How are you entertaining yourself during this lockdown?

Post any feedback in the comments below!

See ya later!

Soph   :D

Capsulating, Creative, Captain Marvel Website

 

Hey people,

Last term (term 2), we focused on Superhero Studies where we looked all over the many ways of how this can be/is presented. As you may have seen in my last post, there was a lot of work; comparing Marvel to DC, creating new heroes/villains and cities, and loads more. But of course, after all of that, we would have had some main project to do.

Aaaaaaaaaa... WEBSITE! We got to pick a hero/villain of our choice (I chose Captain Marvel) and had to study deep into them and their universe. Information had to be gathered for the following things:

• Describe their setting, city, or home
• What are the colours and why?
• Talk about the sounds in the examples
• Talk about the imagery and how it's presented
• Talk about how the character fits into their world, are they symbols of something? 

Once we had done that it is put into TEXAS-formed writing (Topic sentence, Evidence, Example, Analysis, Summary) and onto a website! I also added a couple of my own things like the comparison of DC to Marvel, and a dictionary explaining some more complicated words. 

We have a set time to do all this (around about a term) and once that is done then we will receive a mark. For mine I got a 6B which is 42/44, that  was the best mark I have ever gotten for anything! Anyway this is what you will want to see:

CLICK HERE!

Post any feedback in the comments below! 

See ya later! 

Soph   :D