Senior Sport

Every Wednesday we have a sports afternoon which includes the Year 5 and 6 students. We play a variety of sports either on the field or the courts.  The sports we play depends on the season.  At present our sports rotations include mini ball, volley ball, softball, cricket, a game called Bombardment and tennis. My favourite one would probably be Bombardment because it's like all the sports in one. 
  We usually go through two rotations every Wednesday. My worst fear about playing after lunch time is that I will be exhausted after playing all my energetic games with my friends and being too tired and grumpy to be positive to play the sport games.


The best part about sports is you get a break and get to relax your mind about all the worries at school. It helps us get fit as well. As a matter of fact I think this is very extravagant and is fun to do straight after lunch. The teachers get a break from school work too - well it's not really school work.

written by yours truly Jed

Food at MOTEC

      

Since week 1 of Motec we have been learning how to cook delicious food such as  sushi, pizza, wedges, corn fritters, muffins, kebabs. We also made up our own recipes and then made them the following week.

The hard part of food technology is the clean up at the end and the best part is to scoff down your food once you get back to school.

Once we get to our cooking station we have to check that we have all our items. If we don't, the others get to start and we have to go and find the ingredients or we have to borrow some from the teacher.  Next we start getting our ingredients for our type of food, in this case its sushi. We had to get sushi rice and mix it up with sushi rice vinegar and sugar and table salt. After that we start making our divine meal.  Sadly we can't eat it on the bus and have to wait until we get back to school.

Our teacher also teaches us about hygiene, nutrition and how important it is to eat healthily, not just your McDonald's,which is very helpful to some people who need a wake up call from over eating that type of food.

 Personally I think there are no bad stations at Motec but this is the most fun and the yummiest. 

written by Jed

Nikky Nakky Noo

                  Since Week One of Motec, we have been doing a radio show  called Nikky Nikky Noo. 

First we had to learn about the copyright law in our booklets on the computer because if we stole any songs we would have to pay royalties for it with the price range around about $500 to $1000 - even for a Justin Bieber song.  

Next, we started thinking of the qualities of a good radio show.  Things such as good songs, commentary, quizzes and interviews. It was quite hard to get non copyrighted songs that are the same quality as the ones on the top 10 on MTV but after a while we managed to get some songs that are up to standard.

After preparing the list of songs we're going to do, we started doing our parts in the radio show like being the host or doing the quizzes  and the other jobs like music, intro/outro, etc.

Next Zak and Max edited everything and put it together before we shared it with our teacher on Google Apps. She published it on the Parkland School  website with all the other classes radio shows.

If you want to listen go and click this link--Mapua Radio Show 
written by Jed 

Google Apps

In Room 13, all the students have a login on something called Google Apps. That's its official name but some people call it other things (for example: I call it Google Drive).
Instead of using the shared folder to save our computer work, we save it onto our Google Drive, which is a thing where you can create word documents, spreadsheets and slideshows. You can create folders to keep your work in, too.

I (Georgina) asked some of the Room 13 students for their opinion on Google Apps. Here's what they had to say:

"Google Apps is really easy to use and I can get work done on it" - Max
"You can share and edit work with other people, which is really cool"- Jade
"Google Apps a good thing to use if you want to get work done" - Zak
"You can save work without it getting lost" - Brydie

On the whole, I think Google Apps is a success. If you have any cool websites you want to talk about, please comment!!! I (and the rest of the class) love hearing all your ideas.

By Georgina

Maths Rotations in Room 13

In Room 13, we have a maths interchange with Room 12. This means that some students from Room 12 come into our class, and some students from our class go into Room 12. The maths sessions are a lot of fun.

Before we get on with our work, we see which rotations each group are going to do. Each group has different tasks on each rotation. My group (the Equals group - that is the group name) began with Study Time, then Mastering Maths Facts, and lastly, "Mathletics". Our group didn't do Teacher Time or Hands On today.

Study Time is when you are given a topic (for example - investments) and you have to learn about it and record it on the computer. My groups topic is the Share Market, so we are studying that at the moment (don't worry - we don't have to finish all our work in a day - we get several weeks to finish it!).

Mastering Maths Facts is (for most groups) an activity where one person flicks up some basic facts cards. Everyone else in that group has to answer the questions. After the card person has gone through all the cards, another person in that group flips the cards until its time to change rotations. The other groups go on the computer and create a document about divisibility rules.

Mathletics is a computer programme where you can play maths games, connect with friends (and do maths activities together), and you can complete maths tasks set by your teacher! Everyone loves this rotation.

I'm sure you can guess what teacher time is! You catch up with the teacher on your rotations, and the teacher asks how you're going with it.  It is also the time we get to learn new things such as integers and how to add and subtract negative and positive numbers.  Hands On is where you do your bookwork and activity sheets.

So, now you know what we do in our awesome maths rotations, do you want to join in?

By Georgina

Wow!!!

 In our class, we have a special wall, where everyone in our class can share quotes, projects or cool pictures they have taken or seen on the Internet. Everyone is allowed to put up something small whenever they want, but each week, a student in the class has to put up something that interests them, and they can put it in the "Wow!" frame.

Even up close, its hard to see him. Can you spot the man,
in amongst all those cellphones?

 Last week, it was Max's turn to put up something on the Wow wall. He found some images of a man who camouflages himself by PAINTING himself!!! We all went over to the wall, trying to find the man. It was quite easy to see him up close, but if you stood about two metres back, you honestly couldn't see him! We were amazed.

 This week, Connor has put up some pictures of funny - shaped letterboxes. Some look like animals. Some look like people. Others are things that we don't know!!!

 If you want to come and have a look at our "Wow" wall, you're more than welcome. All of the displays that have been in the frame are still up there. Come and have a look!!!
                                                                               
  By Georgina 

Ready... Set... Blow!!!

This probably gets you thinking, "What do you mean, ready, set, blow?"

Brydie's monsters have lots of colour.

In Room 13, we made some fabulous "blow ink" monsters. Each one is unique, and we are very proud of them. They are up on our class wall. Whenever I look at them, I always feel happy and unique, because their expressions and features make me smile.

This is how we made them:

• First, we watched Stefan Bucher (the person who invented the ink monsters) videos on his website, and we got lots of inspiration PLUS the videos made us laugh (A LOT)!!! 
• We got out some newspaper (to protect our desks) then we got a sheet of A3 paper, ink, an art pen, a pencil, a straw and a paintbrush.
• Then we painted some ink onto our paper.
• After this we blew through our straw and our boring ink puddles turned into unique ink blobs!!! This was my favourite part.
• To make them look like monsters, we added on arms, legs and facial features with our ink art pens. 



Gus's monster has lots of sharp teeth!!!








• Some of us added in colour to make our monsters exciting!

They were a lot of fun to make, and the process was very exciting (and very messy!). Everybody loves their monsters, and I'm sure you'll love them too!!!

By Georgina 



   

Learning about Learning

Since Week 1 of Term 1, we have been learning about our brain - how it functions, the uses of it and how it learns. Every living thing has intelligence. Most people would think that intelligence is how smart you are. Well that's not exactly right; intelligence can be for music, art, sports, problem solving and other stuff other than school work

Everybody is born with intelligence because if you didn't have intelligence would you be alive? No you wouldn't.

Have you ever wondered, if your brain was cut in half, would you survive? We watched a video clip and discovered that you can survive and most likely will have multi-talents such as if you were a right-hander you could write with your left hand.  We also learnt that if part of your brain becomes damaged then the other areas of the brain can help to carry on the task that the damaged part used to. The brain is able to adapt and improve its functions.

You have two sides of your brain ( right and left ) the right and left sides are completely opposite to each other with their different attributes

The right is artistic, creative, imaginative

The left side is logical, mathematical, linguistic ( language ) 

basically the left is for school work and problem solving and the right is for art and music and creativity.

 

So to sum it all up our brain is phenomenal and the most important organ in our precious bodies without our brain we would be a lifeless body. 

Written By Jed