Letter to Curious New Zealander - (UPDATE)

I have changed my mind about sending my letter to John Gully through Jimmy- it's too easy, because John's his uncle! To make things more fun, I'll give it to my dad's friend Brent to make it more interesting, and to see how connected New Zealanders are. Also, I have an idea for Stan Walker's letter's first person- and that is Jonathan Goodall, who has done a lot of technical music stuff for musicians. So, time to do this!

A letter to a curious New Zealander

Our school is part of an experiment to see how connected New Zealanders are.

We have to write a letter to a Curious New Zealander of our choice. Then we have to pass the letter onto a random person with the instruction to pass it on to someone who might know the person who might know the person whom the letter is addressed. After they receive it, getting proof with a selfie, an email or something can be good proof that it got there.

I have chosen John Gully from the Everest Treks as my Curious New Zealander because I am really interested in Mount Everest, and also because my friend Jimmy keeps talking about him. I am going to first give my letter to my friend Jimmy because he is related to John Gully (which is why he keeps talking about John.

John Gully

Since there are a lot of postcards in the pile, I get to send a second person.

For the second Curious New Zealander, I have chosen Stan Walker because he is a cool recording artist, actor and TV personality. I'm going to first tweet him to see if he knows anyone that knows him (idea from Corianna), because I need to find out who knows him. Updates may come soon.

Stan Walker

Aluminium boats with marbles

Today, our goal was to build a boat that could hold the most possible marbles, using a piece of aluminium foil. We had to build two boats, and try to improve our design between our first and second boat. My team consisted of Me, Kyle, and Matthew.

Rules

• You may only use a single piece of foil to build your boat
• You may not touch or adjust your boat once it is in the water
• You must add marbles one at a time

Our plan

Type-up of plan

Make a hat boat and drop marbles in.

• Strength: floats because of air pockets.
• Strength: Sides hold the marbles in
• Weakness: It's tin foil.
• Weakness: Sides could fall apart.

What did the boat do?

Evaluate and Improve

A few common problems between all the tested boats are that a few are too small, or the marbles roll around the boat and unbalance it.

Good ideas are deep bowls, and big flat boats that displace water, especially when there are sections to keep the balance.

Our new design

This design incorporated both good evaluations to see if it they went well together.

They didn't.

Strength: Deep enough to hold a few marbles.

Strength: Has sections to make the weight spread out and balanced.

Weakness: IT HAS HOLES INSIDE IT EVERYWHERE

Weakness: Sections take a lot of the material, leaving only a little to use.

Ironic

Ironically, the blog post I wrote 19 days ago got a lot of views.
Funny.

Room 11

Our school has a room full of musical instruments, and that is Room 11.

I don't really see them get used a lot.

I think that we should find a room that doesn't get used anymore, and take a few of the keyboards, guitars and drums to create a music room.

Now that'll be a place I would like.

Judging

I hope little kids would
stop judging me.
They are everywhere.
I can see
their unimpressed eyes,
drilling
deep into my soul.

That poem tho.

Why I don't want to blog every time I learn a new thing

I got stabbed in the foot by a sewing needle a few minutes ago.
I like Mr Wood's education system, but have a problem with it.
Mr Wood wants us to blog every time we learn something, which is 2-3 times a day.
I think if I actually did blog it probably wouldn't help very much.
But I guess, like what I have been blogging recently, I only really blog when I want to.
Blogging is only one way of communicating.
I like presenting stuff in person more, like with music and talking.
And anyway, my audience is so small it's not really rewarding to blog on this blog.
I hate how the teachers changed us from being blog moderators to authors, unless we ask, and they agree, and then we get to be moderators for a small time. I liked my blog more when I could change the background whenever I felt like it. And also, my description about who I am (located at the top right) used to be a little different, but some teachers changed it to be more of what the majority call 'normal'.
Blogging also doesn't really motivate me to learn more things, just to show people what I can do.
I only do that with singing, dancing, instruments and magic tricks.
I don't really like the 'if one person does something bad, you all suffer' mindset.

But this is just MY view.
Peace out - Kyle

Chinese class with Wendy!

Every Tuesday, Wendy (from China) comes to school to teach us Mandarin/Chinese, and the traditions of the Chinese. The first week Wendy came, she taught us how to use chopsticks, and then we played a game where er picked up small objects and put them in a bowl. Last week, We learned all about the Dragon Boat Festival, and Wendy played a song about it. Then we made rice dumplings, and I helped write Chinese names for everyone. Then, this Tuesday, Wendy made better names for everyone, and we practised writing them. I already have a Chinese name, so I just used that. After practising, we used colouring pens or Vivids to write them onto pieces of rice paper. It was a great time!

Hanmer Poem

It's 3:36.

Mr Wood told us to write a poem this week, and I finished it the day after.

Here is my poem.

--------------------

Have you smelled Hanmer?

Of course you have.

Remember that time when the rotten egg smells of the sulphur pool

went in your nose until you walked into the hot pools

and the heat made you forget about the smells?

Remember the first time you went down the superbowl

and it was dark at first but then you go around the bowl hoping

you didn’t get stuck or fall to the last hole backwards?

That was Hanmer.

Remember the time when you saw everybody go up the rock climb

and you thought it looked easy but when you actually

tried it it was hard but you still climbed nearly to the top on the hard one

and all the way to the top on the easy one?

That was Hanmer.

Remember that time when you walked into the Lolly Pot

and saw all the delicious candies

like Warheads, BeanBoozled and Pear drops

and feeling the excitement of taking your pick?

That was Hanmer.

If you try really hard

can you remember that time

when you didn’t want to go mountain biking

because you wanted to go to the pools

and the expected time to finish was two hours

but your small group finished it in less than

45 minutes?

That was Hanmer.

Piggbook Metalangauge

Today we started learning about a story by Anthony Browne, called Piggybook.

As you can see the cover a has puns and metaphors.

Mrs Piggot is piggybacking Mr Piggot, Patrick and Simon, SUPPORTING them.

And this book is about how they turn into pigs when Mrs Piggot leaves.

Here is the work I have done on this book, explaining some of the words.

Piggybook Metalanguage

Metalanguage	Dictionary Meaning	What I Think that that means!!!	A picture
Representation	The act of representing	Showing someone or something and explaining it
Construction	The act or art of constructing	How the book is put together and how the words are connected	This picture does not help
Stereotype	Sociology. A simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group	A widely held belief about types of people that are cliches, with a simple understanding. An example is: If you wear glasses, you are a nerd. If you are Asian, you are a bad driver.
Discourse	Communication of thought by words; talk; conversation	Talking about things.
Feminine	Pertaining to a woman or girl	How people think girls should be like.
Masculine	Pertaining to or characteristic of a man or men:	Muscular looking people.

The Wild Deer Debate: Locating

This week we are doing some reading comprehension. It is on a debate about if deer should stay or not. Here is the PDF file version: drive.google.com/file/d/0B2crh7K1KlPJVkFqTG84Y3J4SXFVQWRqMU5VRXR2ZExoQzFr/view

Here is my locating work.

The Wild Deer Debate

In this article there are two sides to this debate-those that want deer to stay and those that don't Four opinions are given. Use this organiser to locate those for and against deer, with their reasons.

For	Against
Buck and Luke don’t think the small damage by deer is a big problem. They like it when they have healthy, lean meat in their freezers. They think that deer should be able to breed freely so people can keep hunting them.	Mike thinks aerial hunting is the best way of getting deer. He also thinks 1080 would also work well, but would be controversial. He thinks that if he had the conservationist job before they came, he would have said NO to the import.
Warren thinks that deer hunting is a good sport adults and children can do together. He thinks that hunting is a good job to have. He also thinks that hunting is not just killing deer, but the whole experience.	Debs and Michael think that in a perfect world, there would be no deer in NZ. They think that if there were no deer in NZ, the flora and fauna could live safely. They think poison might not be a good approach, since people will probably rebel more.

Weekly reflection - Week 10!!

MATHS

This week Harry and I have worked on a mall for about two days, and still haven't passed the 2 million dollar budget. To see our mall, click HERE (There are links to click on in the project!). Mr Woo also showed us a Top 10 biggest malls video before doing this project, and to see that video click HERE.

BANQER

On Banqer this week, I bought a house named 88 Rhodes Street. Weeell, technically the bank still owns it. But through persistence and failure, I will succeed and make this house mine. But right now I only have 1000 dollars. At least my house gives me an extra 1500 a week!!

Weekly Reflection - Week 9

Good morning, residence of planet Earth.
And welcome to... Week 9 reflection!
So today, there is actually a family fiesta, where people come to school after school,  have a bit of a party, and eat food.
NOW FOR THE REFLECTION!

Literacy

For literacy this week, Mr Wood told us to write a post-apocalyptic story. Here is my story plot.

ZERO Draft

FIRST PERSON VIEW

Exposition

Outside, raining lightly, sneaking around with 2 people (Casey-somebody, Matthew-from school), on the lookout for Skywatchers and Landroamers. Talk about trying to take down The robot overlord, Felix Kjellberg. Sky is orange, sun is setting. We are all wearing the normal clothes from when this started, but painted dark green for camo. We each have a walkie talkie watch, and a spare battery.

Inciting Incident (event that causes conflict)

We move slowly around a fallen Landroamer. Its one hypnotic eye is moving around, trying to find motion.

Rising Action

It hears our footsteps, and looks right at us. A warning signal wavers through its rusty sound outputs. The Skywatchers come after us, we run as fast as we can and dodge the exploding laser beams. We hide in the city for a few weeks, waiting for Felix to show himself. We stock up on weapons, and slowly eat the dehydrated potatoes.

Climax

Felix comes. We have a sneaky fight, but Omar gets shocked by Felix’s charge. I stab Felix straight in the forehead. He keels over… and gets up again. He is a robot. I stab him in multiple places as Matthew shoots a laser beam from a zapper we stole from the Landroamer before it alarmed the Skywatchers.

Falling action

Felix is finally dead, but of course there are more bots in this intelligence circle. We find people who have been chipped, but haven’t passed the point of no return. We unchip as many people as we can.

Resolution

We have nearly rescued all the people in this small city, and so many of them have already made weapons with the tech from the Skywatchers and Landroamers.

Art...?

For art this week, we made our learning maps. Here is a link to my video explaining my learning map.

http://kyleh112015.blogspot.com/2017/03/my-learning-map-relationships-and-how.html

I have also baked a few cupcakes for Family Fiesta, and they are just normal flavoured with green icing.

And that's about all I can think of.

BUH-BYE!

My learning map - relationships and how much I learn

Utter Nonsense

The little girl few around the bee movie spellchecker and the curtains pet grobart said : “YOU'RE WELCOME” And then the heart shaped batroom flew across time and time again and room five arrived at the tart stopper then he walked into a hill and saw a few little goblets of rabies which threw bananas at his orange face. So he scaled the wall and killed the prized pigeon frog of Australia which tried to run into the next red house, which was supplied with fifty dog babies and shocker men and bears. And then the world was deleted and became a corrupted file inside the brain of Harry Potter. So they took Harry’s cat and used peanut butter to hit the baseball in the yellow orange made of turtles and Jellyfish biscuits. But it was sad that seagulls loved five dogs and they were all made of stony innards. Then they found a rip in the curtain of haggis that the butterfly men bought using 5 dollars and their eyes. And then the chicken bell rang and that made the clouds go to school and think about the making of the universal studios. Then he few into a blue waterfall made of water but then it became a bear with ptero-wings, and they cooked the dinosaur and drank the saddles of the juicy elephant.