For one of my Main Stars for Term 3 2019, I had to write at least one blog post about something I do outside of the classroom. My first activity that I am writing about is about being in the school production this year.
The school production only happens every 2 years, and it is open to auditions to year 5-8 students. We have already done the auditions and now we only have a couple weeks until the show is on. Our production this year is called "The amazing adventures of Superstan", a play by Craig Hawes. There are many songs and it is a comedy with heaps of jokes and puns. Come along and watch us perform on Thursday 8th of August and Friday 9th of August at 7pm, and Saturday 10th August at 1pm for the matinee. Can Superstan defeat the Candy King and save Megaville city?!
Title: The Hunger Games, Mockingjay.
Author: Suzanne Collins.
Genre: Science fiction, thriller.
Age Recommendation: 12+.
Star Rating: 10/10 stars.
Summary:
Katniss Everdeen has survived two Hunger Games in a row and is still alive against all odds. As her final battle approaches and her one desire burns more and more inside of her, Katniss trains hard ready to go into the final showdown. Can Katniss keep all of her friends and family alive, and can she save Peeta from the horrific President Snow and his Tracker-Jacker Venom? Read the book to find out and remember,
May the odds be ever in your favour.
In the Learn, Create, Share part of our maths workbook for this week, we had to create a screencastify about how to recognise angles. Iris and I made a google slide and then did our screencastify together, here is our video!
At the end of last term, Totara 2 were able to walk down to the the Greymouth High School to look at the Year 9 and 10 science fair that they were holding. We looked around all of the projects and then we voted for the one we thought was the best. I chose to vote for a very interesting popcorn project. It was a very cool fair and the projects looked amazing!
Starting last term, Miss Hines told us to get into groups of 3 and write a piece of exposition writing about "Should cellphones be allowed at school". My group included me, Hannah and Billie, and we decided that cellphones shouldn't be allowed at school. Here is our finished piece of writing!
Cellphones at School
Think, do you really want to be spending your whole school day on your phone instead of learning? You probably said yes, but you will regret it in the future. Kids are easily distracted by phones and social media. which has shortened our attention span.
Study shows that at least 1 out of 4 eye patients come in with the complaint about eye strain from reading text on a small screen. We normally blink 15 times a minute, but it decreases by half when we are on our phones. This can cause blurred vision, headaches, and sore eyes. Electromagnetic fields produced by phones come into direct contact with pupils’ brains and can influence the overall state of the organism. People who use cellphones are several times more subjected to brain tumors and acoustic neuromas. There were other adverse health consequences like leukemia, infertility and different types of cancers. Only imagine how detrimental cell phone towers are!
Kids are easily distracted by cellphones when they are MEANT to be working. They will go onto their phones to check messages on apps like Snapchat, Messenger, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter and many more. Once they are on these apps, they won't be able to retain themselves from continuing to use them. Also if students find that the work is too hard or they can’t be bothered, phones will be one of the first things they think of for free time or to get out of doing work. Sometimes kids will use their phones to answer questions in exams and research shows that 35% of students even admit to this.
With phones at school there is a higher chance of cyber bullying. Alright,I know EVERYONE LOVES Instagram, Twitter Facebook, TikTok and other Apps like that. BUT THINK! Do you know the words bully and cyber and if you put those 2 words together then you will find what is really happening on the life of a child's phone.
If you bought your cellphone to school, it has a high chance of being stolen, especially if you had an expensive or top of the range phone. It would become very desirable to people who don’t have or didn’t bring their phones. Besides, how would your parents react when you came home from school telling them that it got stolen from the super cool school bully? There would be three outcomes, one being grounded for a looong time, two not getting a new phone from your parents and three, both of the above.
In conclusion, we believe that cellphones should not be allowed at school for all of the reasons above including health, cyber bullying, distractions and theft.
By Kyra, Hannah and Billie-Jean
This week in literacy, I have been doing some exposition writing. My topic was on why smoking should be banned for everyone. Here is my writing~
Why smoking should be banned for everyone
Do you have a dark, smoky secret that is hiding deep down inside of you? Something you possibly know isn’t right to do and bad for your health, but you just can’t restrain yourself from it? Is it smoking? Smoking is extremely bad for your health and can be very addictive.
Smoking can affect you all over your body, ranging from your brain, lungs, heart, throat, mouth, skin, bones, stomach, blood circulation and more. The poisons from your cigarette can enter your blood and make it thicker, also it makes your blood pressure and heart rate increase, forcing your heart to work harder than normal. Smoking can cause fatal diseases like pneumonia, emphysema and lung cancer. Your skin can go dull and grey from smoking when there is not enough oxygen coming into your lungs. It also causes your skin to age between 10 and 20 years when you smoke, causing facial wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. Believe it or not, cancers can also be found in your lips, throat, tongue, voice box and gullet, which is often caused by smoking. Research proves that if you smoke 10 cigarettes regularly every day, you have a one and a half times more of a chance to develop kidney cancer compared to a nonsmoker.
Did you know that a pack of 20 cigarettes can cost around $25.45 in New Zealand? Why spend your hard-worked-for and precious money on something that is bad for you, while instead you could buy 3 pairs of Nike socks for the same price or less? In 1865, James Bonsack invented cigarettes. His new hand rolled cigarettes were sold to the soldiers who came back from the civil war, and by 1881, his creation had been spread in many more places. Money is very important in everyone’s lives, but many people choose to waste it on bad substances like cigarettes.
A certain bad habit called littering affects the environment immensely. Most people just think that it is just rubbish and plastic affects the environment, but littered cigarette butts also do this as well. On annual international coastal and urban clean ups, 30-40 percent of the rubbish found is of cigarette butts. Cigarettes are one of the most littered items on earth, and each year, 4.5 million cigarettes are discarded each year. Cigarettes are not biodegradable and can take up to 10 years to decompose. By littering cigarettes, they can play a part in creating, land, air and water pollution.
In conclusion, with the effects that cigarettes give to our bodies, the environment and the waste of our precious money, cigarettes should be banned to make the world and people a better place. We MUST not let the cigarettes litter the environment and our lives!!!
By Kyra
This week in maths we are focusing on recognising different types of angles and what their degrees range from. We had a workbook to do this week and here is mine~
On Thursday last week, I did my class speech. We started doing class speeches in Week 9 and we finished doing them yesterday, on Thursday of Week 10. I decided to do my speech on Pelorus Jack, the dolphin because I have always had an interest in dolphins. This is my speech slide that I used~
On Wednesday at lunchtime, Miss Hines took Iris and I to McDonalds for lunch. We got to go because I won the homework draw for doing my homework, and I got to pick a friend to come with me and Miss Hines.
Last week on Friday at the school assembly, I won the take the cake. Take the cake is an award in which you get when someone sees you doing something kind or nice and then the write/tell the principal. I got the award for giving Katelynn my script at production practice when her script fell apart.
One of my activities for Novel Study is to list 10 new words that I have read in my book, find their definitions and use them in a sentence.
