Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

From me (Destiney) I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope you had a successful year and all went well. Happy Holidays to everyone and a prosperous Christmas and New Year. See you all next year!

Giant Cockroaches!

The Giant Cockroaches are 3 inches long. They live in the Australian Outback in the Dry Soil. Giant Cockroaches live up to 10 years but other Cockroaches live up to 2 years. Unlike other bugs, the Giant Cockroaches don’t lay eggs they give live birth to their young. When it rains the Giant Cockroaches come out of their burrows to mate and meet with each other and move on.

Athletic's Day!

“Thump!” as the Softball hit the ground. We all cheered for Helen Tui as she had won 1st place.

The hot beautiful day had began and our whole school was busy competing in our age groups to see who was going to be the Supreme Athletes of the school. This was an annual event which is held on our school field. We were all excited as we got told that we had a new event which was the Javelin.

Us (12 year old girls/ 11yr old) set off to our first event which was the Softball Throw. We headed towards the bottom field to get started. I was feeling nervous as I walked up to the line ready to throw. “Ahh!”, as I threw the ball. Sadly I had not won a place in the top 3. Helen Tui won 1st place, Mauina won 2nd place and Tracey won 3rd place.

My favourite event was Javelin because this was my first time doing this event, it was also the first time this event was being held at our school. We had to see how far we could throw a long pole with a pointy sharp end. The pointy bit had to land straight into the ground. This was very hard at first but then it got kind of easier. It was very close with the placing but Gabby had come out on the top with 1st place.

The last event of the day was our final relays. All of the leaders and teachers of our House Colours ( Takitimu -Yellow, Tainui -Blue, Mataatua - Green and Te Arawa - Red) had to pick the fastest 8 people to participate in the relays. I was racing for my house colour-Te Arawa. It was a race between everyone to see who the fastest House Colour was to finished. It was a very close race between all of us. Takitimu had come first, Tainui came 2nd, Mataatua came third and Te Arawa came fourth!

I really enjoyed Athletics this year. We had lots of events to participate in like The Softball Throw, Javelin, Discus, Shot Put, Sprints and High jump. Now the Supreme Athletes move on to the Inter Zone Athletics. Hopefully they try their best and come out on top as the Best of the Best Athletes.

Explain Ready Task!

Mrs Nua had given us an Explain Ready Task which had to be completed by a certain time.We all got given a word which had to do with an insect. My word was Omnivore and I have done a Little animation to show an example of what an Omnivore is and the definition of an Omnivore.

Hope you enjoy!

Netbooks

Today we had finally got given a chance to try out our new netbooks. We are the first in our cluster of schools to get these, so we are very lucky. We really appreciate all the help that everyone has done for us to get these.

This is a photo of Paulitia and I taken on my new Netbook.

Riding on a real Loader!

I was bursting with excitement as my uncle was starting up his digger. "WOW!" It made such a huge noise.

My heart was pumping because I hadn't been on his diggers/Diggers in ages. We started to move slowly. My cousin and I were holding on tight making sure we weren't going to fall.

We made our way to a big truck which had a dozen logs stacked up. My uncle's job was to pick the logs up and stack them on top of each other.

"Brrrr!" The Loader roared as it picked up half of the load. I felt a lot of pressure as the Loader lifted the logs. It was very bumpy and we stacked them up really high.

My uncle had finally finished and on the way back we did a few rarkies and skids. It was a very cool experience.

Reflection on MI results

Today we had to do an MI test which was a test about our smarts or Multiple Intelligences and which one was our strengths and weakness. This is my results and what my strengths are and my weakness.

Obviously my strengths were Interpersonal(People smart) and Intrapersonal(Myself smart). My weakness is Kinaesthetic (Body smart) and Linguistic (Word smart). I think I need to improve in my Linguistic(word smart) and more. I can improve this by learning my words smart in my spare time and at home.

My goal for this term is to build up my Kinaesthetic (Body smart) and Linguistic (Word Smart).

Maungarei Animation!

Our class was given a task which had to be completed on time. We had to do an animation about a Volcano we knew information about. We had to show others what we knew about this Volcano. I have chosen Mt Wellington.

This is my movie. Hope you enjoy!

Information Report about.....

Volcano Report

What are Volcanoes?

Volcanoes are coned shaped and erupts lava. They are mostly found on the edge of the Tectonic plates. Volcanoes are found in Hot Spots. It also erupts hot ashes, Rocks, Steam and lava. Most Volcanoes are found underwater. They can cause Tsunami's.

How are they formed?

The magma builds up the magma chamber below the vent. It creates enough pressure for the magma to erupt. As it releases it causes clouds of ash and fountains of lava to explode. Then the lava turns into molten rock.

How does an eruption occur?

An eruption occurs when the heat pressures the magma to come out of the vent. High pressure causes the magma to be gooey, sticky and thick. That is how an eruption occurs.

Types of Volcanoes

There are 3 types of volcanoes. One of them is the Cinder Cone Volcano. When a Cinder Cone Volcano erupts it flows in fiery clouds of ash. This volcano is very explosive. It is coned shaped and it has steep sides. The pieces of this volcano flows as high as the sky. There are varying sizes. Some are as fine as the sand and some are the sizes of houses.

Another one is Shield Volcano. Shield Volcanoes have shallow shield mounds. This volcano got its name because it is shaped like an ancient warriors shield. This volcano has flat bottomed craters.

The biggest Volcano?

The biggest volcano round the world is Mauna Loa. Its name means long mountain. It is one of the most active volcanoes on earth. Mauna Loa last erupted in 1984.

Mauna Loa is one of the largest volcanoes on earth. It is so big that its slopes cover a large part of Hawaii. It also is 4170m above sea level. This is one of the volcanoes which is a largest of a chains of islands.

Volcanoes are cool to learn about because there are many around us. We have 48 volcanoes around us and they are very fascinating.

Personal Shield Reflection

Today we had to fill out a reflection form about our Personal Shields we had done last term. We had a time limit for finishing this and I had finished it on time. So here I am going to explain what each section means and why I chose them.

Left Top: This represents my culture which is Maori and it also has my name written. I had cut my name out with magazine letters.

Left bottom: This part of my shield represents my hobbies. I like playing with the rugby ball, I like listening to music and I like watching t.v.

Right Top:This part represents where I come from and where I live. Obviously I come from Aotearoa.

Right Bottom: This part represents what I'd like to be in the future. I would like to be a Musician because I like music or I'd like to be a Flight attendant.

My overall comment was good because it had detail and the background was really good. I also finished it one time so that was good too. I would of changed my left top and added in more detail so that there wouldn't have been any gaps. So I would give this a 9.5 out of 10.

Five Fabulous Facts

We had to make an animation or 2 pictures of a volcano. We also had to have Five Fabulous Facts about Volcanoes because this term our focus is about Volcanoes. I chose 2 pictures.

This is my Five Facts:

1. Lava erupts from volcanoes and it is formed into Molten Rock.

2. There are 3 types of volcanoes which is Shield, Cinder Cone and Stratovolcano.

3. The biggest Volcano in N.Z is Mt Cook.

4. The maori name for Mt Wellington is Maungarei and it erupted 9000 years ago.

5. Mt Versuvius erupted in 79ad and covered Pompeii with hot ash and Lapilli.

We Finally win!

My heart pounding excitedly while waiting for our game to began. We had done a few exercises before our game.

Mrs Nua gave out our bibs and amazingly I got given GS. I was GS (goal Shoot) for our team. Usually I was given WD(wing defence) . I was so amazed and I quickly hopped into my place before the beep went off. The game had began.

April had started off with the ball and it got all the way to me. With my partner defending me I quickly got away and Leni passed the ball to me. Helen was free so I passed it to her. She scored and back to the centre the ball went. With Great defending Mauina got the ball. "Here,here!" I quickly passed it to Helen Tui,my heart was pounding and all of a sudden we got another score. "Wooo!" I said under my breath.

Everyone cheering on the side line were from our other team and school. They were supporting us like other teams should. They were supportive and encouraging for us on the courts. The ball headed back to the centre and the opposition team had the ball. They were very good and they played as a team. They pass the ball to each other and suddenly Maunia defends the ball. She passes it all the way back to our score and with my heart pounding we scored again.

The overall score was 13-10. We had won. We were so excited because this was our first win out of our 3 games so far. Every week our coach Mrs Nua gives out points to the best players. This week April got 3 pts, Mauina got 2 pts and I got 1 pt. I felt very proud of myself.

Here is a quick snippet of our Netball game.

First game of Netball

There are two Year 7 teams that play Netball.Our Ace team (Year 7's) played a very tough game last week down at Morrin Rd Netball Courts. We played Auckland and lost by 9 points. My position was the WD (Wing Defence). I found it tough in places and easy in some because this was my first time playing Netball. But in my team there were quite a few experienced people. Our player of the Day was April.

The overall score was 16-7. We lost but hopefully we'll win next week.

Our team called the Crew 2 also played Netball down at Morin Road. They played St Cuthberts School and came a draw. The scores were 8 all. Their game was quite challenging because both teams were very good at playing Netball. There were also quite a few experienced players in that team too. They played a good game and hopefully they'll win their game this week too. Their player of the day was Rachael

First Day back at School!! Term 2

I left home excited to be coming to school. " I wonder what this terms topic is", I said to myself. I entered the school gate heading towards our classroom.

I peeked through the window and saw a Volcano poster hanging on our white board. Suddenly I knew our topic this term had something to do with Volcanoes.

As usual when the 2nd bell rang we quietly walked to the hall for an Immersion Assembly. An Immersion Assembly is when all the teachers dress up in costumes

that fit with our topic. I was right. Our topic for this term was Active Earth. All the teachers were announced in teams to do their scene. Team 4's scene was funny because they played a show called "Who's Smarter than a 10 year old". The winner was Cinder(Ms Squires) because she got most of the questions right.
In our Year 7 team there were only 2 teachers which were Mrs Nua and Ms Tito. Mrs Nua was dressed up as Lady Lava aka Lady Gaga. She looked really hot and fiery because she had VERY hot colours on like Red,Yellow and Orange. She also had a fiery mask on which covered her face kind of. She looked like lava coming out from volcanoes. When our teachers had finished Mrs Tele'a quickly announced who she was. My favourited costumes would have been Mrs Nua dressed as Lady Lava and Mrs Vaafusuanga dressed as Maggie Magma.

The Pt England Way

This term we are focusing on the Pt England Way as well as the Korero's we get

given on Fridays. The Pt England Way means to Wear it with pride, obey

the school rules and be kind to others. Our koreo's are also part of the Pt England

Way too. One of our korero's are Stop, Look and Listen. Stop, Look and Listen

means that when the teacher says Stop, Look and Listen you Stop what your doing,

Look at the teacher and Listen to what she has to say. So Stop, Think and Do Pt England!!

"Dunker"

"Splash!" As I dropped into the tank full of cold water. Tamati got me out by throwing the ball at the target which was connected to the seat I was sitting on. "That was so much fun!" I said to myself. They got 3 people out of my team so we swapped over. It was now Team Spirit's turn to be sitting up on the seat. I threw a ball at the target and Splash, Tamati got Dunked. Out of the whole game I think I got 3 people Dunked. I reckon that Tamati had the best aim out of his team. There were two more activities but this activity was my Camp Kindness Highlight. Hopefully we get to do this activity again sometime. Thanks a lot Rock Up for organising this activity for us Year 7's.

Graphics at Tech!

This week we had Tech on the same week as we had Camp. But we still attended Tech though. I really liked this weeks session because we got to go on Tamaki College's new computers. Their keyboard was way smaller than ours.

Our teacher Miss Ferguson had told us about a new thing called Adobe Illustrator. I found it very cool because we got to play around with shapes and colours. This session was very fun. This is what I had done.

Our Group "Korero" Comic Life!

This term Mrs Nua had given us a project to do. We got put in groups of 5 and we had to take a picture of the "Korero's" we were given. Mrs Nua had given us one Korero and we had to choose 4 more. Each person in our group had to be in at least 2 photo's. The Korero's our group chose were Sop,Think & Do, Play sensible games, Bin It, Be nice to the Grass and Gardens, Play in the Right Places and Use Your W.I.T.S. These photo's were taken all around our school. The Korero Mrs Nua had given us was Use Your W.I.T.S. Take a look at our Comic Life!

Swimming!

For the last two weeks us Year Seven's have been going down to our local swimming pool to practice our swimming.

As we were swimming Mrs Nua watched us and gave us something that was wrong with our swimming to work on. I had to improve on my freestyle technique and work on blowing bubbles underwater.

This is a quick snippet of me swimming:

I am the one on the far left hand side.

Trampoline Jump

I took a peep over the edge as I was about to jump off. I was scared because I hadn't done this before. I was really freaked out. I suddenly jumped. "Boing!" I bounced a few times on the trampoline. I landed safely. "That was cool!" I said to myself. So I did it a few more times.

My First day of Intermidiate

Yes! School has finally started. "How would this year be now I am a year 7" I thought to my self. This was the first in history that Pt England went up to Year 7 & 8.

We had a assembly on the first day of School to see which class we would be in for 2010. Mr Burt said 'WELCOME BACK PT ENGLAND!" Hardly anyone replied because they were still tired from their holidays. He started calling the names and classes out.

Mr Burt started from the Year 7 classes then made his way down to the New Entrants. Room 20 was first. I heard him call my name so I left with excitement waiting to see who my teacher was. Mrs Nua hopped off her seat and walked towards us standing in our line. Mrs Nua was our teacher for 2010. We walked nicely back to our classroom.

We're Room 20 but for now our class is in Room 5 for now because our new classes haven't been built yet. Its still in Progress.

Thanks for reading my Writing.