My Comment To Soloia

 Today I wrote a comment to Soloia who goes to Edmund Hillary School in Papakura, Auckland, NZ. The blog post I was commenting on was the Teaser activity for SLJ, (Summer Learning Journey) the teaser activity was coloring in a famous drawing digitally. Soloia colored in the same one I did, the Watermelons.

I think my comment was positive because I said what I loved about it, that the watermelons were similar to the real drawing but not close enough to be copyright. Another thing I liked about Soloias blog post that I forgot to put in the comment was how she said I hope you guys have a great holiday to all of the people viewing her blog in her STEMS 

I think my comment was thoughtful because of how I made the connection between me doing the Watermelons drawing like her! Even though as I mentioned in the comment my Watermelons drawing was not even slightly like hers in colors I chose! 

I think I made my comment helpful because I gave Soloia some feedback on her STEMS. Which I did because her stems were only three lines long.

Maori Shapes

In this lesson of Inquiry we have been learning about the names of different shapes in maori! Which was a follow on from learning all the colors in maori.

Some of my favourite things that during that lesson include the fact that it was so much easier than what I thought it was going to be.

The challenging for me in that lesson was once again finishing it. But because I don't want to be really repetitive another thing that was hard would probably be finding all the different colored shapes on the explore tool then getting the translation for it.

Some things we learned about were obviously the names of shapes in maori. A individual lesson for myself was that if you want to get the latest task done quickly you should finish the last one even quicker. 

Maori Colors

We were learning about all the different colors in maori and had to make a slideshow about them. I did a slideshow with a cartoon girl in a striped yellow t-shirt and striped red, gray and black skirt. She takes you through all of the colors in english and maori, giving you tips on how to remember the names.

I found it easy to spell the maori color names because at my old school (Whangara) we did a lot of things around maori and even did a whole term of maori designs.

I found it challenging to finish this slide because I kept on getting new work to do

Next time I will make this my priority

The Twelve Days of Kiwi Christmas

 We were learning about the twelve days of kiwi Christmas book/poem/song. We listened to the twelve days of Christmas song that Mrs Barker had found on Youtube, here is the link to one of the videos. We were then to get into groups and go onto the slide deck that Mrs Barker had prepared for us. On the slide we had to create our own "Twelve days of kiwi Christmas."

I found it easy to copy and paste the words once we had done our plan slide, which we deleted so don't go looking for it!

I found it challenging to finish on time because at the beginning my group did not work well together. Tania and Amy-Lee had both made a copy of the slide so it took a bit of time before we got started. Burt in the end we all managed to get our blog post finished.

Next time I will take five before I lose my concentration so things don't get even worse than they already are.

Summer Learning Journey Teaser Activity

We were learning about the Summer Learning Journey (the SLJ). On the slide about the SLJ there was a video explaining the teaser activity and a link to it, Mrs Williams did not give us that many instructions about what we were doing, she just told us to watch the video then to do the activity. The activity was a art book with famous artwork in it. This is the link to the site.

I found it easy to color the art book in. I did two drawings it was that easy! The first drawing I did was the watermelon coloring then I colored in the castle drawing. The finished product for both drawings (especially the watermelon coloring) was quite a lot different to the original one

I didn't find it challenging to do anything really but if I had to choose something then it would probably be finding a hard enough drawing to color.

Next time I will choose a much harder drawing and use the template provided in the instructions to put the project in.

A Moment In Time

We were learning about writing a moment in time, this moment in time was based on a video that Mrs Barker had put on our site under the writing button, the video was about a hunt between a hawk and a squirrel. We had to write from either the squirrels perspective or the hawks, I chose to write from the hawks. 

I really enjoyed writing from the hawks point of view because I like bird of prey (birds that hunt other birds) or just any animal that hunts. But my favorites are big cats but anyway another thing I liked about this writing session is that I managed to publish it really fast and on only two slides!

I didn't find it difficult to do anything really but if I had to choose something it would probably be that I found it hard to chose which hawk I wanted on the title page and what background I wanted for my second slide.

Next time to improve I think I will add more detail about the chase rather than getting to that part and skipping quite a lot of the exiting parts. 

What Christmas means to me

We were learning about writing a letter to the Gisborne Herald for a competition. The competition was, in the whole of Gisborne a few schools were chosen to make a piece of writing about what Christmas means to you. Ten people are going through and getting to have their writing put into the Gisborne Herald newspaper, I hope that I will be one of those people.

I enjoyed doing my getting creative part. After we had finished, checked and the teacher had printed our writing we could do anything to get creative about our writing. I made a scratch game with my family, a fruit platter and a roast chicken in it.

I found it challenging to find all the right things to make my scratch game, eg the fruit platter, my family sprites and I also found it challenging to make the roast chicken. I had to get the chick sprite then remove the legs and the beak after that I had to get a bowl sprite to put the chicken in then I put tiny half oranges around the chicken so that it looked like veggies.

Next time I make a scratch that is not just information but fun as well. To achieve this goal I will make my game a quiz or a real game, I could make there be roast chickens and fruit platters, stockings or Christmas trees and that you had to click a certain one or answer questions that my sprite has asked.

Fireworks Acrostic Poem

We were learning about Guy Fawkes and his story, we also were learning about writing Acrostic poems. My one was about fireworks, I tried my best to make all the ends of each line rhyme to make it more interesting and attractive.   

I found it easy to publish it on to my slide once I had found the words that made the most sense and rymed in a way that was the most mysterious and moving.   

I found it challenging to find the best words for my acrostic poem. Like I said above I wanted my poem to be mysterious, moving and make the reader feel how it was then.  

Next time I will choose an easier word to base my acrostic poem on because it took me one session and a half just to finish my draft. 

Fake postcard no.2

 We were learning about what is fake and what is real on the internet.

I found it easy to I found it easy to do the writing in the postcard

I found it challenging to make the photo look real.

Next time I will choose an easier background for the photo.

Fake Postcard no.1

We were learning about what is fake and what is real on the internet. Mrs Williams put a slideshow, two videos and a postcard template. She told us to open the template, make a copy, change the background to any place in the world that we would like to be and take a photo of ourselves then take a screenshot of it. After that we clicked onto a link that Mrs Williams had put on the Team Toroa site, it was a website that allowed you to remove the background from a photo for free! Then we uploaded it to the template and put it in the place that we thought would look the most realistic. We were then able to fiddle with the format like dropping a shadow or changing the lighting. We then had to write in the other part of the template about how we were in this country we were visiting. (Obviously not really!)

I found it easy to do the writing in the postcard, it really felt like I had been visiting Ireland for three weeks. This is the first part of what I wrote: To Mum, Dad, the Boys and Pania, I miss you lots and lots. It is amazing here in Ireland, I have been to lots of lakes and villages. You were right not many of them have those lovely thatched roof cottages. I hope things are going well at home, have the boys been good? I absolutely love it here in Ireland, the photo of me on the other side is me at one of the many castles that I have been to in these past three weeks.    

I found it challenging to take the photo.

Next time I will get a buddy to help me with the photo sooner.

The Top Ten Most Important Things In A Recount

We were learning about recapping about what a recount is, then with our writing buddy we were to make a blog post about what we thought are the most important things to have or do to make a recount a recount.

I found it easy to write the top ten things about recounts once I had started, (the starting part was hard.) This session was not the easiest so I don't have that much on the I found it easy to... paragraph.   

I found it hard to think of the top ten things that are most important to include in a recount in the first sesion, my head must have still been in weekend mode! But fortunately in the next sesion I managed to get my head around it. The only other thing that I found hard was working with Manaia.

Next time I will sit beside Manaia (my writing buddy) and try to corporate more thoroughly with her. Another thing I will need to do next time I am with my writing buddy is to not give up on working with her so soon, even if she is not doing the same thing as I am. I will just have to show her the top ten things I have made.    

Me and my writing buddy Manaia think that these are the top ten most important things to have or do to make a recount a recount:

#1. It has to be a recap of a recent event.                                                                                                    

#2. It has to be in past tense.                                                                                                                      

#3. It has to have paragraphs.                                                                                                                      

#4. Sizzling start and clever conclusion                                                                                                      

#5. Punctuation.                                                                                                                                        

#6. Descriptive language.                                                                                                                        

 #7. Language features.                                                                                                                              

#8. Senses (smell, see, feel, hear and taste.)                                                                                               

#9. Nouns/Adverbs.                                                                                                                                    

 # 10. Rich words.

My goal for this term is to be recognised as a leader for being the perfect Awapuni kid, eg: Wonderful manners, Correct uniform, A bucket filler and a lid fitter.    

Tui Flower Feeder

We were learning about like I said in my previous post we are learning about the different types of birds. But along with this we were also learning about two different pests to them. The instructions I was given this time were to make a copy of a document that Miss Mororankon had made for us, (Team Toroa yr 5's) it had some activities that we were to do on it. The very last one was that we had to make a google drawing about how we could attract Native and Endemic birds to our school. That is the post that I am making right now.

I found it easy to make the polylines for the base of my Tui flower feeder but unfortunately it was to small so I had to make it bigger so that slowed down my progress a little bit. While I was doing that I added on some extra details, (the little lines on the orange nectar and the little lines in the sugar water.) I spent a lot of time thinking it over and creating it, I am proud of the results even if it is not the best polyline I have done ever. It is probably the most detailed.

I found it challenging to write all of these stems! I got up to here and started to get a little nervous, okay a lot nervous! I am probably not going to finish it now and going to have to do it at home. From the beginning of this sentence in this paragraph I am now doing it at home on the couch, Dad has just walked in and sat down on the couch opposite me. Anyway back to the point, the other thing I found challenging was to get everything fitted back into position after I had made it large.

I achieved my goal from my Puriri slide stems, I have achieved that goal many times now but I have forgotten to mention it is my latest stems. Next time a thing that I really need to work on is to spend less time looking through the google images when I already have a faint idea that I like. I need to get onto the next post now so I'm going to stop now.

New Zealand Birds Slide

We were learning about the different types of birds in New Zealand, the Native birds, the Endemic birds and the introduced birds. Our instructions were: working in your 'Morere' groups, complete the activity about NZ birds using the website and video below. Below it was a link to a website that had a lot of things about NZ birds, here is the link: Native, Endemic & Introduced birds. The slide I was working on was the one about introduced birds, I got most of the information from the website.

I found it easy to meet the deadline for finishing my slide, and doing the polyline was easy too with some help from Vinny. We also created a slide to display all of our polylines, the one I made was a blackbird (an introduced bird)

I found it challenging to get all the names of the birds to fit in the place that looked the best. First I started with them on the side then it took me about fifteen mins approx to get them beside the photos of the birds (Pheasant, Peacock/Peahen, House Sparrow, Blackbird, Starling and Mallard.) Then I decided that it did not look quite titleish enough so I underlined them but it was not a good look to have it beside so then I made it above the photos. That was covering the heads of my birds so I made it below and thankfully that did look nice so I kept it until just now when I made it bold and un underlined it.

Next time I will use the builders saying my Dad told me in my learning because it will definitely help. The saying is: Measure twice cut once. It basically means check or rethink twice and do it once. It will help with the part I thought hard and I mean to use it next time.

Persuasive Writing

 We were learning about creating an amazing piece of writing - not any piece of writing but a piece of persuasive writing. We had to create a plan that Mrs Bava had created on a slide, we had to finish the slide with quality planning and once we had done that we needed to start our draft writing. The draft had to be amazing because it was going into our PFA (portfolio for assessment). As soon as we thought we had finished it we had to show the teacher and she would tell us if we needed anything else. If she told us that our writing was good then we went onto publishing then our good copy (we needed to post it our blog clearly). After that there was some fast finisher activities that we could do.               

The thing I most enjoyed about this particular writing session was the fact that we were writing about something I was so sure about my opinion on. The topic we were doing this writing about was: Is the environment our responsibility? I am 100% sure that the environment is our responsibility and will be forever or as long as we walk the earth which might be until it is destroyed. Which will be sooner than we think if we keep on polluting the the world like we are at the moment. I bet you are saying: "I have never done anything like that in my life," you might not have actually dropped a piece of rubbish on purpose but, here comes the big but have you ever done anything to make a change to how much rubbish is in our world today? If you have I shake you warmly by the hand, clap you on the back, thank you and congratulate you. If not try to do something - it might be a little thing eg: picking up the old juice packet that you saw on the side of the road this morning, but please do something. 

For me it was challenging to get enough hard, firm truthful evidence to support my main points. I kept on going to Mrs Bava thinking that I was finished but when she saw it she said that it needed more evidence! I did that two times until she looked at it and said that it was ready to be published, but she was right, it is a lot better now than when it was when I first brought it to Mrs Bava. If you think that I am lying take a look at my writing and make up your opinion, (you do not have to make a persuasive writing post about it though!) and go on with your daily life like after mindfulness.

Next time I think I will add more facts the first time I am told and keep on going until I have got at least two links in the references. this will help the readers (you) believe me more than if I just put in a tiny bit of not truthful facts. Just think please if you agree with that statement or not, now I need to stop writing before I do too much instead of not enough or the right amount.                                 

Puriri Cooperative Team Screencastify Slide

 We were learning about making a collaborative slide. The things we had to include in it was: we had to have it in portrait form, we had to have our title bigger than our name, our name had to be in word art, it had to include our screencastify about how to do something on scratch and it had to have a explanation about our screencastify.

 I found it easy to create the name once I found out how to find and create the word art, the  title and explanation was also a breeze along with commenting on somebody else's screencastify. I commented on Rylan's slide, his screencastify was about how to move your scratch sprite up, left and right, he didn't know how to make it move down yet though.

I found it hard to understand what we were going to do when Mrs Williams explained it on the mat. But once I had gone off to the classrooms I was told to go to after I had gotten my headphones I listened to the screencastify instructions that Mrs Williams had made showing us how to put the things we needed in our slide in I totally understood.

Next time I think I will not talk until I have completely finished everything I was told to do or even better not at all. Another thing I could improve on is not hesitating before going onto the next step and asking the teacher whether I should go onto the next step.

Scratch Screencastify

We were learning about doing a screencastify about doing something on scratch. 

 I found it easy to check if my screencastify was quality or not. 

 I found it challenging to make the screencastify quality, I had to keep retrying. 

 Next time I will find a more quiet place to record.

Scratch Commenting

 In this Scratch Game it's just a quick quiz about comparing my life to yours, it's really easy! I have not done Scratch before so I just learnt the basic things about Scratch Games this time but it is really fun! I would definitely do it again. The only problem was that I deleted my cool original one so I had to start from scratch!      

My favourite time of the day

We were learning about writing great, descriptive recounts.  

I found it easy to publish my recount to a slide. 

I found it challenging to give my moment the right mood.

Next time I will publish to a slide as soon as I'm finished writing in the doc.

Reading Challenge

We were learning about Voice typing.

I found it easy to get on to the Voice typing.

I found it challenging to correct the typing on time.

Next time I will do more of it at home.

Wildlab Recount

We were learning about writing a recount 

I found it easy to create the slide for my writing to go on 

I found it challenging to finish on time 

Next time I will save all editing at the end

Quality Blog Comment

We were learning about Quality Blog Comments 

 

I found it easy to make the comment 

 

I found it challenging to find my blog because I did not know I had one 

 

Next time I will worry about making it pretty at the end

Nau mai, haere mai