Week 4 Term 2

Hey guys,
So this week has been really fun.
On Monday morning, I arrived at school at 7:10am to head to Rotorua for National Young Leaders Day. I have been to a couple of these before but this one was definitely the best one I have been to. There were a lot of very motivational things that were said and I'm sure everyone that went will take something out of the day. After arriving in Rotorua we took our seats and we were ready for the day. We were given a notebook so we could write down notes and quotes. There were about 6 or 7 speakers that had some awesome things to say for us. Everything they said had a meaning about some type of leadership. We all learned lots about leadership, and will hopefully be able to use some of the tips with our roles around school. A quote from one of the speakers Valentine, that is really cool and has a really good meaning is “You don’t have to be a leader to be a leader” In other words you don’t have to have a role to be a leader at home or at school. One really inspirational person that spoke was Brylee Mills, she was in a car accident at a really young age and had to have her right arm amputated above the elbow. She is a dancer with a message to never give up. There was a lot of different messages that we all took something out of. The speakers were Billy Graham, Brylee Mills, Valentine Taumiti, Pio Terei, Marina Alefosio, Emily Muli, and we were very lucky to have Avalanche City sing to us. I would like to thank Mrs Shaw and Miss Turnbull for giving us this great opportunity and all the parents that help with this amazing day.

On Tuesday morning, we had Tech Arts in the first block. We are in music at the moment. We learnt some new chords on the guitar, played an Irish Jig on the keyboard and learnt some more about different types and styles of music. For the rest of the day, we did maths, reading, and writing. I am nearly finished my Hectors dolphins report I just need to finish editing. I think I have done my editing really well I have done 3 pages of editing trying to change some of my simple sentences to compound or complex sentences. I have done a little bit more on my reading. I have finished the vocabulary for this part and I am up to summarising the story and doing a character analysis.

On Wednesday, we learnt a new routine at Jump Jam called Freaks. The competition team taught it to us. It's a really fun routine to do, but at the start, it was a little confusing to do. Like Tuesday, we were doing our reading and writing as it is due next week. I think I have done well but I still need to work on some of reading. That's all I did on Wednesday, It may not seem like much but it was actually quite a lot. 

On Thursday, I had band for the first two blocks, It was really fun as we were with junior band for the first block. That was quite cool getting to play with junior band and some of them will be moving to senior band next week! After Jazz band, we had house meetings to figure out which sports we wanted to do for Interhouse Winter games on Friday afternoon. I am doing basketball. I haven't played in ages but ill try my best. In the afternoon we had student assembly, I was a part of this week's assembly doing the game and a National Young Leaders Report. The game that I helped organise was the chocolate fish game which is where you have chocolate fish on a stick and you try and eat them as fast as you can. Then as part of the NYLD report, I taught the school how to do the heads and tails game. This is basically where you flip a coin and choose whether it will be heads or tails.

On Friday, we did a small decimal test then I was on the floor with Mrs Crowe on how to order fractions. I found it hard at the start but then I got the hang of it and I now know how to do it. When you order fractions you usually change them to decimals if they are too hard to figure out just as a fraction. So if you had some fractions that were too hard to order by themselves you change them to decimals then that helps you order them but you still have to order them in fractions, not decimals. Then we had tech arts we learnt more about the blues and started making our own blues song. It was really cool nut we didn't quite get it finished. We were supposed to have Winter Games but because of the weather it didn't happen. So our day went back to normal. Our class played volleyball against room seven we went into it thinking we were going to lose as they are a very good class, but we came out with the win 41-33. This means our class is now undefeated. Maori was quite cool today as we were working on our short stories about the Waikato River.
Thats it for this week guys,
see you next time.
Bye

Week 3 Term 2

Hey guys,
So this week has been crazy!
Monday and Tuesday were normal days. With the usual maths, reading, writing and tech arts. In maths, we have started a new unit, decimals, percentages, and fractions. I'm not the best with these subjects but I'm hoping to get better by the end of this area. In my book, I have been doing to order decimals and the properties of decimal number. When you order decimals there are two different ways to do this. Number 1 is to look at the first number before the decimal point to see if that is the same, if it is you look at the number after the decimal point then you keep going to see the difference. In this example, we are going to be ordering in ascending order. (lowest to highest) This is the first step, you can see that the two top numbers are the lowest so the first number will be 1. something. You then look at the second number and see that the second number is a zero and five, the smallest is a zero so the first and second number would be 1.05
then 1.5. The next this you look at is the next two numbers and do the same wich means the last two numbers are 2.05 then 2.5. So the order in acssending order would be 1.05, 1.5, 2.05, 2.5.







During writing, time we are doing we are doing note taking. I have chosen to do it on the Hectors Dolphin. We have started taking notes from a sheet of paper with some information on our chosen animal. We then had to put our information we chose and put it into paragraphs. The paragraph's I have chosen are size and color, predator, food, and habitat.
In reading time, we have been doing, a character analysis. My group read the story 'Mrs. Flowers'. We then had to go through the story and change the words highlighted to something that we could understand more. We then analyze the main character/s.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we had band camp. This is where Cambridge Middle school and Matamata Intermediate come together with Te Awamutu Intermediate. During these two days, there were choir, Junior, and Senior symphonic band, and drumline. Over these two days, I learned lots about my instrument and some new songs. I made lots of new friends and had heaps of fun. During these two days, we learned nine new songs to play on Thursday night at a concert for parents and anyone who wanted to come. I learned about dynamics in songs, timing, and heaps of other stuff. The tutors that helped us over the two days were amazing. I'm in senior band so our tutors were Mrs Ward and Mrs German. They are really good teachers and everyone learned a lot. Thursday night was really cool. The concert was awesome, it was a cool experience and everyone had heaps of fun. I was sad at the end as our new friends that we made left to go back to their schools. That was it for the two days.  It was really fun.

On Friday, it was quite an easy day. Before morning tea for some of us, it was a finishing of time. I finished a lot of my maths that I had missed but I'm glad I finished it. The next block we had Tech arts. We have started our new tech art and that is music. It is a little bit boring at some stages but so far I like it. Friday sports time, I started 'training' for the Junior Tough Guy and Gal challenge, this is a 3km event running through mud, water and heaps of other.

So that's it for this week,
Bye for now.

Week 2 Term 2

Hey guys,
This week has been a hectic week,
During Monday, we had the typical Monday morning assembly. It wasn't as boring or as long as usual, so that was good. My favourite part of Monday was when we got to try lacrosse. I have never tried to play this sport so it was a cool experience. Lacrosse is played with a stick, with a 'head' on the top of the stick. You play with a ball. The ball is held in the stick as you run around the field passing to your teammates trying to score. I found some parts of this a bit hard to do but other than that it was fun.
On Tuesday in science, we made bath bombs with citric acid, lavender scents, food colouring and baking soda. We had to do this very carefully as we didn't want the citric acid and food colouring to neutralise and if that happened, the bath bomb wouldn't work. There were about five different colours and we were allowed to put as many colours as we wanted. I made mine like a rainbow. After science, I went over to the food room because my friends class had their cafe and I asked if she had any leftover food and she gave me a massive cupcake with marshmallow on the top. It was delicious. I played volleyball at lunchtime and it was our classes first game and we won by 20 points. Tuesday was also Mrs Crowes birthday, she doesn't like people finding out, so we decided to sing her happy birthday before the end of the day.
Wednesday was a finishing off day for some of us. We had the chance to catch up with writing, maths and anything else we needed to have done. We had our second lot of jump jam for the term and It was fun. I made a few mistakes, but I just laughed it off and kept going with the song.
On a Thursday I am usually only in class for the last block as in the first block, I have symphonic band, then Jazz band. Today at the band we practised our songs for the concert next week. We are playing with Matamata Intermediate and Cambridge middle school. At the concert, there will be symphonic band, junior band, drum line and choir. All three schools will join for two days to practise, then a concert on the Thursday night. School signing is always a fun time for me. Caitlin and I always have a good time. We also had our first RI assembly for the year. The message was about how sometimes sorry can be deceiving.
On Friday, it was our last lesson of science and we got to make sherbert. We used citric acid, icing sugar, and food colouring. I found this really fun to make because it was like the bath bombs it it nuetralised it wouldnt have worked. My sherbert is really sour but its also really yum. We had another game of volleyball today and won again by 20 points. I think that this year our class will do quite well at volleyball.
Well thats it for this week guys,
see you next time.

Week 1 Term 2

Hey, guys so wow its term two! Last term went so fast, especially for an eleven-week term.

On Monday, we had a powhiri for the new Japanese teacher, Etsko, and a new teacher in room six, Miss McLaughlin. The powhiri was an excellent start to the term. I'm glad it wasn't an assembly as the assembly would have been long. We also got told about science fair which is happening later this term.

During Tuesday, I did some more maths. I did to find unknown angles (including parrell lines). This is where you have an angle, and you find the angle opposite to it. While I was away, the school had a speaker, Mike King, came to talk to us about his story and going through depression and anxiety. While I wasn't there, I asked some people who were there about what they thought. Most of them said that he was an excellent speaker and amusing, but he didn't have a message as such. Tuesday mornings are always tech arts and our tech art that we are doing at the moment is science. We did P.H testing and the P.H table. I found out a lot about this as I had never actually known/heard of P.H testing. This is where you have a piece of paper blue or red and you dip it into acid if it stays the same colour then it is dipped into the same type of acid that the paper was soaked in. If it turns a different colour, then it means it is dipped into different acid to what the paper has been soaked in.

Wednesday I was away sick, so I'm not to sure what everyone did.

On Thursday, I had my first block of band for the term. We have started learning new songs for the band camp in a few weeks. We have been practising for a while now and I'm quite excited for this activity. Jazz band we are still practising the same songs. I don't mind when we do this as it allows us to practise more and get things better. During lunchtime this day I trialled for the Belmont netball team. This exchange happens every year with Belmont Intermediate in Auckland. I think I did my best but you never know what happens.

On Friday I was relived as I had made it throgh my first week back at school! Friday was a normal day maths in the morning before us year 8's went to french with Mrs Shaw. We did a little recall test I scored 11 1/2 out of 20 so I was pretty happy about that. I need to keep practising my french as later this year I am going to Noumea a French speaking country. During Friday sport time I had another trial for Belmont netball. I think I trialled pretty hard and did my best Im not to sure if I got in yet though so Im quite nervous to find out.

Well guys thats it for this week.
See you soon.

Week 10 Term 1

Hey guys

So I missed out on writing week 10 blog post so I am going to do that now.

Week 10 was alright it was mostly just a catch-up week as we only had two days the week after before camp. So during week 10 we did maths. At the moment, we are doing geometry, angles, and shapes. During this time, I did interior and exterior angles of a triangle. I find these quite fun but when we are given only 1 or 2 angles and we have to find the rest that's usually when I get confused and stuck. Exterior angles are when there is a triangle with a line on the outside and that is where the exterior angle is. Interior angles are angles inside the triangle.

We also have been doing descriptive writing. This is where we had to write about a 15 min time at a place. We then went through and highlighted ll the to-be verbs (boring verbs) this was surprising to me as I only had a few. To be verbs are words such as is, have, sounds, like feels and more. This writing is quite fun and I enjoy it. This is my piece I wrote it is not completely edited but I am still quite proud.

Matarangi

L.I To write descriptively by using precise/specific nouns and verbs to describe a place.

Hot sand blends through my feet, sea breeze tingles down my spine, sea spray splashes my face, and seagulls chirp in my ear. The hot sun beams on the sparkling sea below. The boats in the distance as still as a statue. The foam above from a plane slowly disappears. People trotting past on their afternoon jog, sweat pouring down their faces, but pure happiness with their effort. Towels lined up all down the line. Surfboards in the sand, and the bright smile on everyone's faces brings joy to the beach. Cold turqoise waves crash down on surfers below. The salty  spray lands everywhere, although the disgusting taste makes you want to vomit, it brings happiness to the people near. The roaring of tractors dragging their boats out of the water, getting stuck in the wet sand and laughing all the way down the road is there all afternoon. Green slimy moss rocks crowd the surface edge of the beach. Joy spreads across childrens faces. As the beach clears out the sounds of tractors seagulls and laughter dies down to a still. The boats in the distance have gone and the surfboards and towels have disappeared. The tide is near full and the sun is now gone the only thing left is the glistening moon. In the distance the lights of coromandel sparkle over the dark sea. Everything and everyone is gone, the peacefulness is gold.