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

Spectacular Superior Superhero Slides

 

Hey people, 

I hope you are enjoying being back at school 1/4 of our way through a brilliant Term 2. In literacy, we are focusing on the Superhero Initiative, about what superheroes/villains are and what climate they live in. 

Over these past 3 weeks, I have been working on a set of slides explaining a lot about superheroes. This included watching the introduction of a film, looking into a lot of the superheroes home towns, and finding out how superheroes have changed. Here is my work:

 

One of the first superhero things we had to do was to research about a hero and a villain and write about the

good and bad things they did. This was a challenge for me as I knew absolutely nothing about superheroes, I decided to go with Black Widow and Loki. I wanted to look at both male and female just to get a feel for how they are different or similar. These two slides will tell you the good and bad things about them.  

Another thing we had to do was to research any superhero. The aim of this was to see they have developed as a character over the years. I found this task both fun and difficult, since I didn't really know much to do with this topic I decided to search up a few different ones and to see which one was the most interesting (I decided Captain America). Once we had selected our superhero we then had to find an old and new trailer and then compare and contrast them (finding the similarities and differences). Here is mine:

 

If you want to watch the trailers here is the original Captain America one, and here is The Falcon and the Winter Soldier one. 

Later on we had to pick any superhero we wished and write about why that is. I took it a different way and had a look at Captain Marvel. Curiousity sparked inside me, wanting to know why in DC he is so different to how she is in Marvel. The slide below will tell you a brief explanation about her/he.

The following slides are talking a bit about how superheroes fit into their cities. The second one will give you an example of this shown with images and similarities. 

Last but certainly not least, actually this is probably my favourite superhero activity I have done so far. we had to create our own superhero city from scratch. It had to be 100% unique, it had to be somewhere that a superehro could live in and achieve things. After we had done that Mr Shaw would pair us up with a random person and we would have to create each others superhero for their city. I was paired up with Lucinda who had an amazing idea for her city, but then also had an amazing superehero idea for mine! The two slides below are; 1 my superhero city description, and 2 Lucinda's superehro she created for me. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this long blog post! 

Until next time...

Soph   :D

Dreadful Dropping of the Goods!

 

Hey people, 

I hope you are having an amazing week! On Wednesdays, Toroa students have technology at Christchurch East school. Half of the hub goes before lunch, and the other half goes after lunch. While not at technology the teachers set some fun tasks for the students. 

This Wednesday just been, we started doing a bit of S.T.E.A.M (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) work. Our first experiment was to do with dropping the goods (the problem is stated in the slide below). To represent this we had to get into groups of around 5, each group was given the following equipment:

• 3 sheets of A4 photocopy paper
• 1 plastic bag
• 1 metre of string
• 1 sheet of A5 thin card\
• Cellotape
• Scissors 
• Something to write with
• Paper to sketch design on

We were allowed to use these things, and only these things, no exceptions. Along with this we were given 1 egg. The aim of this was to create something so that the egg could be dropped in it without breaking (from upstairs in the makerspace, approximately 3 metres high). 

As soon as we had shown a teacher the sketch of our design we were given an egg, just one. We had to look after it until it was time to put it in its package and get ready for the drop. There were no exceptions (although ours broke before we even had completed our package, we got another one, sneakily). 

Below is a slide going into further detail about how our drop went and why it was successful or not:  

I hope you learnt something!

Have you done something like this before? If so then how do your drop go? Do you enjoy learning about S.T.E.A.M? 

See ya later!

Soph  :D

Trailing Timeline of Te Tiriti o Waitangi

 

Hey people, 

Hope you have had an awesome day, 

Today we have yet again been looking at Te Tiriti O Waitangi. I am so far finding this topic very interesting and informative. I enjoy looking back into the history of our country and finding out about how our country was formed with all the different people, plants, and creatures. 

Waitangi day is about looking back into our past and seeing how the culture of New Zealand was created. About the Declaration of Independence, The Treaty itself, and the Waitangi Tribunal. Also, the 27 year-long series of battles (the NZ Wars) about how the treaty was not translated correctly and the tribes were both thinking different things. 

Our task today was to make a timeline on Canva about what happened over the last couple hundred years. We had to include; all the different years' key events, a small description of what happened in each event, and a few images. Here is mine:

Did you find Te Tiriti O Waitangi interesting? Do you like history?

Hope you learnt something!

See ya later;

Soph   :D

Te Tragic Tiriti O Waitangi

 

Hey people, 

Hope you have had an amazing weekend full of fun!

For inquiry, we have been looking into our New Zealand history and what happened. So far we have learnt about Te Tiriti O Waitangi (the treaty of Waitangi). I now know about what happened between the Maori and Pakeha, how the treaty was translated incorrectly, and the war between the two tribes. 

Our task was to create a digital presentation on Voki. Voki is a website where you choose a character to be talking, then pick a background, then clothing or accessories for that character. You then paste in some writing no more than 600 characters long and then change the voice/language to something that is suitable. 

We did this about Waitangi writing from either the Pakeha's perspective or the Maori's perspective. I did mine on the Maori's. Here is my presentation: 

Hope you learnt something!

See ya later;

Soph  :D