This week we have been making 7 day fitness challenges to keep people fit. Me and Elijah made one with 3 days of strength exercises, 2 days of yoga/stretches, and the weekend is fun activities like sport and dancing. The whole point is to get people more active, and do more stretches and exercise.

This week we have been learning about keeping healthy and the deeper science of which nutrients make up a healthy diet. Our task was to make a poster showcasing the 5 most important nutrients in a teen diet. I picked water, protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins.

For the past few weeks we have been working on our piece in the school production. Our production piece is about the Indian celebration of Diwali, where light triumphs over dark. Our class has been making diyas, protest signs, and rehearsing dances. The actual production gets performed for the second time tonight, after it was on yesterday.

I have personally been making a diya because I’m in that group. Diyas are small bowls with colourful patterns that are just big enough to hold a candle. The two diya groups come on to the stage as mellow music plays, and it symbolizes unity and light over dark.

Overall I have enjoyed making the diya and rehearsing my part, and it was cool being on stage yesterday. I have been showing the RISE value resillience as I had some trouble making the diya look good but got it done in the end.

Today for circle time we looked at this thing called the feeling wheel. It has 6 categories of emotions, split up into further feelings. The 6 categories are: Sad, mad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful. We did a quiz on which two feelings are the same, and we also played charades with feelings.

For the winter learning journey one of the tasks was to make a song that reminds me of winter on chrome music lab. I chose to make the classic Chrisrtmas song Let it Snow.

Have you ever made a song on chrome music lab?

This week we haven’t really done anything notable most days. On Thursday I had my scholarship exam at Shirley Boys’, I made my way to the school, and we got ready to do the exam. There were three tests, Maths, English, and Logic and Reasoning, each one lasting 35 minutes. In the maths one there were different types of questions like simple equations and word problems. The English test covered vocabulary, reading for information, and filling in word blanks. The final Logic and Reasoning test was like an IQ test if you have ever done one of those. I think I did well on the test and if I did well enough I will get a scholarship to Shirley. Today winter sport is cancelled again, so we have dodgeball in the afternoon. This week Mr Redmond announced what teams are being entered into Koru Games, and I’ll be trialling for dodgeball. Overall the highlight of my week was probably the Shirley Boys’ exam and I’m happy that we get a rest in the holidays.

This week we’re learning about poetry, and today we focused on poetry in songs. We listened to Firework by Katy Perry, and had a sheet with the lyrics. First we looked at the imagery and symbolism in the song. An example is the lyric “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind.”. This puts an image in my mind of feeling vulnerable and exposed, Because a plastic bag would be blowing in the wind with nobody noticing it.

After that we looked at the tone in the different verses. In the first verse it uses language like “wanting to start again”, “already buried deep”, and “Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in”. The tone is feeling sad, unmotivated and downbeat, like you can’t even do anything. In the second verse it says things like “after a hurricane comes a rainbow”, and 

The next thing we covered was the similes and metaphors. In the lyrics “Like a lightning bolt, Your heart will blow” it means that you will be bright and get noticed easily like a lightning bolt. And there is a prime example of a metaphor in the chorus, “Baby you’re a firework” Means kind of the same thing, that you will be noticed by people.

Overall I think that Katy Perry puts a powerful message in your head when you listen to the song. She starts with low and downbeat lyrics, and then slowly builds to the powerful chorus. In the verse after the chorus the lyrics are a lot more hopeful. She does this to put out a message that there is hope for people that listen to the song. This reflects in the energy of the song.

This week I have had a few things on outside of the school grounds. On Tuesday I had cross country zones which I qualified for by placing 4th in the school event. We had it at Queenspark School and the course had a few hills and tree roots. I got 14th in the 3km race so I didn’t qualify for the Canterbury tournament but I still did well. We also have winter sports this afternoon, and I’m on the Racoons football team.

We had inquiry a few times and it’s the most fun school subject at the moment. I’m in the sport celebration group and we had to make a poster featuring all the teams from a specific sports league and I chose Serie A, the Italian football league. After that we had to choose one team and write a small summary of them.

We also had tech yesterday, and for that I have hard materials. We designed coasters of native flora and fauna on the computers, and uploaded them to the laser cutter. I got them printed early, so I have them at home now.

Overall this week has been good and I hope we do more inquiry next week.

This year we have started using the Oxford Digital books and website to learn maths. Each student gets a workbook with around 150 pages, and they can access the website on their chromebooks which is where we do the tests.

The book covers many topics and these are a few we have learned so far. Decimals, Fractions and Percentages is the topic we are on at the moment, and we are learning about how to convert between them. It’s pretty easy for me because we learnt a lot of the topics last year. My favourite has probably been polygons and circles because a lot of it is new to me.

The online portal is another new thing this year. We access the website, which has the entire workbook to look at, but the most important thing is the pre-tests and post-tests. We get assigned these by the teacher, and we do one test to introduce ourselves to the new topic, then do the work in the book, and finally do a post-test to see if we’ve learned anything.

In my opinion, the online portal works well and the books are pretty interesting, but the questions are often confusing and don’t make sense. Also, the books don’t have enough room to write your answers a lot of the time. I preferred last year’s maths because we had slideshows we could work through at our own pace and they were actually interesting.

Last week we were writing narrative stories about whatever we wanted. I wrote about a football team’s star player getting kidnapped a week before the cup final. Unfortunately I didn’t get very far, but I’m hoping that I’ll finish it. I was focusing on describing the setting with words like picturesque and towering. For example, here is a segment of my writing where I describe the setting.

The town square, with its picturesque fountain, with its deep blue water shining in the sun. and the local church in all its beauty, with the stained glass windows and towering steeple. has been unchanged architecturally since the day it was finished over 200 years ago. It becomes a buzzing community meeting place every week for the weekend markets, run by the produce farmers and local small businesses selling novelty trinkets and baked goods.

I think I did well in describing the setting but I could’ve done better. Next time I’ll try and use more words to describe the setting to put a better picture in the reader’s mind.

In my opinion I’ve started quite a good story and I’m hoping to continue it.