Tech Reflection

Today was our last tech session for the year. Today we were trying to finish our so that we can take it home for the year and show it to our family. Unfortunately I did not finish my project, but happy with the outcome of my design. We worked hard this year during tech and had a fun year with Tamaki College. Coming to the end of the year the year 8's is going to leave to their secondary school sadly meaning they will not be able to come tech next year. New year and new journey for the other students who are going to continue the Panmure Bridge tradition and going to tech every Fridays. Luckily for Tamaki college they will receive some students from our school. We had fun this year and will have even more fun going on to our secondary school.

Athletics Day

Today was athletics day, We were spilt into different coloured teams and played activities involving us being active. I was in team green. The first station we started at was called Frisbee. The aim of the game was to throw the Frisbee's into the lacrosse net. We started with 5 minutes to throw as much Frisbee's as we can into the net to win the game. Not 2 minutes into the game my team already threw all of the Frisbee's into the net meaning that our team gained the most points to win the game. We had fun playing the 9 other activities including having a rest and listening to music. My favourite was the sponge relay. The aim of the activity was to go through the obstacles with your sponge, absorb as much liquid into the sponge and go back through the obstacles to squeeze as much water into your team bucket as possible. Lastly we had the sprint finals for the people who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd a few weeks ago. We would like to thank Mr Ogalvie for organising this fun event and picking the right day for this event to be held in this fantastic weather.

Reading - Read Theory Results

Today for Reading we looked back at our results on read theory. We looked at our past results and compared it to other results month by month. We all created a bar graph to show and tell other people our results and the difference there is from when we started and now. Last year February I started on Grade 3 which was really easy. Now on November 2018 I am on grade 8 which means that I have expanded my knowledge by 5 grades.

Reading - Wolves

Today the teacher read to us a book written and illustrated by Emily Gravett. The book was about Wolves and the life that they live. After the teach read the book to us we had to write what we think about wolves then later research it to see if any of our answer were true. We found out that two of our answers were correct which was that wolves eat humans and that they hunt in packs. We had fun learning about Wolves and learnt that they are the largest members of the dog family.

Reading - MeerKats

Today the teacher read to us a book written and illustrated by Emily Gravett. The book was about MeerKats and the life that they live. By listening to the story we took information from there and made a blog post about MeerKats. We have learnt a lot about MeerKats including where they live and what they like to eat. They like to eat snakes and eggs, but they prefer scorpions because their nice and crunchy. They are cute and friendly animals that almost nobody know about. The next blog post is going to be about wolves and we're going to do the same thing that we did with this blog post, listening to the story and creating a blog post about them.

Armistice - Commemoration

Today we had our own special commemoration to remember the soldiers and the great war. A member of the defence force came to show his respect and to answer our questions we had for him. During our commemoration each of the classes had their own poppy with all the pupils names in the class written on it. After that a song was played to pull the New Zealand flag down then raise it back up again. Then we all sang the New Zealand Nation Anthem and left to our classes. The member of the defence force came into our classroom and was free to answer any questions we had about him or the defence force. He explained to us the different army jobs you can do and what he did to get there. We learnt that an infantry is soldiers who stand their grown and fight the enemies and artillery are people who are at the back line firing over the infantry into the enemy territory eliminating them. We all enjoyed learning about World War 1 and the member of the defence force and hope that one of our students one day achieve there goal of being in the army. On Sunday at 11'o clock It will officially be 100 years since the great war ended.

Armistice Collage

Today we remembered the people who died in world war 1 and created a collage about when world war 1 ended. These photos show people and the soldiers celebrating when the war ended. We added photos of the newspapers that came out when the war ended. We learnt that 135 countries participated in the world war and over 500,000 unknown soldiers fell.

Reading - Battle of the Somme

For reading we were learning about the Battle of the Somme that occurred on July 1st 1916. We first read a text explaining what happened during the war and a few facts about it. We read the text and answered the questions. We answered the questions about the war and got to write our own opinion about what we thought about the war. We have learnt that war shrines were like memorials made to remember the fallen soldiers.

Tech - Art

Today at tech we are transferring our designs onto our piece of wood. I have finished that step and are now up to colouring my finish design. After colouring my design the next step is to carve the piece of wood and use wet paint to finish our design. Next week I will be finish colouring my piece of art and will be up to painting it which I am really excited about. 

The Highway Man

For reading we read a famous poem called Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Back in the day a Highwayman was basically a burglar. We read this poem because if we were to learn this in college we would have full understanding about the poem. After reading the poem with the class and discussing what each verse meant Ofa, Sankyaw and I created a google drawing summarising the poem to make it easier for other people. We had fun learning about this poem and have learnt that back in the day the police were the kings soldiers.

Term 4 - Tech Reflection

Today we had our first tech session for term 4. We were onto moving our drawing from our papers onto a piece of wood. After putting your design onto the piece of wood we had to scrape the blank spacing with a chizzle. I have finish drawing my design and up to putting it onto a piece of wood. Our design had to relate to our culture so I decided to draw the Tongan flag and some simple Tongan patterns. Next week I'm excited to finish my wood piece and move onto using the chisel

Writing - Why people build bridges explanation

For the past week we have been learning about structures. Our task was to write a explanation about why people build bridges and reasons why bridges are used. In my explanation I have explained why people build bridges, The materials used when building bridges and why the first bridge was constructed. I found this take very helpful because I learnt that before bridges people used canoe's and ferry's to get across rivers.

Kiwi Can Reflection - Week 8

For the past week at Kiwi Can we have been learning how to use perseverance in normal life situations. Perseverance means trying your best, not giving up and trying not to get frustrated. During our activities we used this quality by playing the game even when some of us didn't want to. When we got tagged or were in the opposing team we didn't get frustrated or give up, But we did continue with the game had a fun time. We learnt how to persevere in activities and have learnt what the quality meant to us.

Maths - Exponents

Today in our maths session our new topic was about exponents. Our challenge was to answer questions about exponents from a google slide and pick three of them that you want to make a google presentation about. In our google presentation we explained why that was our answer and why we put the numbers there. Mataio and I have enjoyed learning about exponents and learnt that squared refers to 2 when its on top of the big number.

Writing - Colons illustration

For the past week we have been learning about colons and how to use them in a sentence. To build our knowledge on colons we watched a video and completed a challenge where we had to fill in the colons where we thought it would fit. I found that challenge a bit difficult, but received help from my friends. After that activity we had to pick one of the sentences and illustrate it explaining why the colon is placed there. I found this task very helpful and know that I have expanded by knowledge about colons.

Tongan Language Week - Assembly

Today we had a special assembly because it was Tongan language week. For assembly Viva and I wore the traditional Tongan clothing because we were presenting this week. We presented because we had to be able to translate English into Tongan so that we can include our language in the script. Viva and I had fun including our culture into this assembly and are looking forward to the MMT rugby games this October.

Kiwi Kapers - Orchestra

Today LS2 were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to the Kiwi Kapers Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall. After settling into our seats we listened to 3 pieces of music. Not only did we listen to them perform we also learnt about the different sections of instruments. The sections were the: brass, woodwind, string, keyboard and percussion. The part that stood out of this experience was when the talented man with the long beard known as an opera singer made a unique sound with his voice. Lastly the students from St Kent's performed a dance along with the instruments being played telling story using the movements of their body.  We all had an amazing time and are very grateful for the opportunity we received.   

Inquiry - VR Research

Today we had a special day because we got to use the VR systems to learn more about bridges. Yvonne and the research team came from the Augmented human lab at Auckland University to run some tests and use the VR systems to help us with our learning in the future. There were a majority of use so we got split into 2 different groups and got to do 2 different activities. The 2 different activities was using the VR cardboard and the magic window. The magic window was a fun activity and was something like a optical illusion. You are suppose to see a hidden image that's impossible to see with your eyes, but is possible through these special glasses. We were lucky enough to receive this opportunity and had an amazing time.

Writing - Sensory Verbs

Today for writing we completed a quick activity learning to use sensory verbs. This activity gave us a sentence and blanked a word out. We had to find the right sensory verb and fill in the blanks. On my first try my results were 10/11 because I went too fast and picked a verb that didn't make any sense. From this activity I have learnt to take my time and read each question carefully.

Reading - Alfie Bloom and the Talisman Thief

During reading for the past week we have read the books we chose from the library and been doing fun activities to explain what our book is about. My story is about a boy named Alfie Bloom who lives in a  big castle and has a flying bear that no one knows about  To clear his mind he usually goes on a ride to the clouds and comes back, But one night he came back to the castle while his butler was being kidnapped. Now Alfie Bloom and his friends have to find his butler before he gets killed. So far I am writing a descriptive paragraph about Alfie by using evidence from the text to find out what kind of person he is.