Kayak Adventure

 Today in our writing lesson we were learning about creating a very descriptive recount about a moment in time. I finished my draft at home because my first session on this piece of writing was cut short because me and the rest of the house leaders had to go to the salvation army to give them our cans.

I found putting lots of description into very little words rather difficult but I think I did pretty well. I only wrote four paragraphs using 238 words. That might sound like a lot to you but some of the recounts I've written without restraining myself have used around 586 words.

Choosing a worthy moment in time to write about was the easiest part of this activity for me because the saturday before we started this writing piece Me and my family had gone to the river by the marine reserve to do some kayaking. So naturally I chose to write about that because I love kayaking.

I quite enjoyed remembering the moment in time I chose so I could spill my feelings onto the google doc, publish it then post it to my blog where it will be red by people like you!

Something I could improve on for the next time I do this would be to take a closer look at the example then follow its lead. For an example I could use more descriptive words to make the reader feel like they are really there watching me. What else do you think I could improve on?

Reading Webquest

For week six the task for Mrs Gomms reading group was to do a webquest about the olympics and the paralympics. A few of the tasks I did in the slide below include: The olympic and paralympic logos, the history of the flame the torch and the relay and the history of the olympic rings.

I found it rather difficult to get an even balance of facts and images. But in the end I remembered that the words are the most important part of any presentation, so I narrowed the amount of images down to two on slide two and one on slide four. The other hard thing was finding a Athlete from Canada that competed in diving.

The easy part of this webquest was following the instructions even though it was a bit confusing because Mrs Gomm called it a Paralympic webquest but the actual activity had nothing to do with the paralympics except the side about the paralympic and olympic logos.

If I ever do something like this again I reckon a good way to improve would be if I found something difficult and it was making me frustrated or confused I should either give it a break and come back later. Or another way would be to take a step back and look at it from a different angle.

Brain Box

 This science lesson my group did an activity using the brain box. The brain box contains lots of little electronic pieces. I was absent the day they did this activity but Naiya had written about it in her science book so I know basically what they had done. 

The first activity they chose to do was the smiley face light. According to Naiya they put it together using seven pieces, including a switch, four batteries and some smaller pieces. When they flicked the switch to the "on" position the smiley face would light up in blue and red.

With the blue and green light came a annoying beeping noise that wouldn't turn off until the batteries were unattached or the switch was flipped to the "off" area.      

Next time I would like to make something with the brain box that was a bit more creative and unusual eg something that used a lot of pieces and a lot of different variables.

100 Meter race

 Today we were publishing a piece of creative/imaginative recount writing. The writings topic was about the hundred meter olympic race. Mr Barclay was the teacher conducting this lesson, he created an example of the piece of writing we were meant to be making during the first lesson before lockdown. I had already published my writing to a slide so all I had to do was add some images and post it to my blog.

I found it rather challenging to do my mote because when I attempted to use the mote app it kept on making me do the sign in process again and again. Mr Barclay helped me solve this problem by letting me use his computer so I could do my recording properly.

The easy thing about this lesson was probably adding lots of emotion to my writing because to know what it would have really felt like I just had to imagine I was there so that is what I did. I think in reality it would be really hard to be an olympic competitor.

I enjoyed doing the whole thing because it was something different to what we normally do and what I'm used to. I also enjoyed trying to get my writing standards as high as possible, especially since Mr Barclay was writing a story too.

In future I think a way I could improve would be to end on a more excited note and to put more of the emotion from the story into my voice when I am reading it in the mote.

Spring Limerick

 For this learning at home activity we had to either write a recount about our bubble life, or you could do what I did, create a poem, an acrostic poem, a haiku poem or a limerick. I chose to do a limerick. No matter what poem you chose it had to be about spring. It took me a while to make my limerick but it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

The thing that was slightly easier than the rest was deciding the first line, I knew I was going to use it because that is what I wake up to every day. Because I have my own room and it is close to the top of my family's house. The other easy thing was understanding the rules behind the limerick. If you want to learn them click here.

The thing that challenged me most in this activity was making my limerick sound cool. In the video explaining limericks it doesn't say anything about the syllable structure. So I ended up adding too many syllables into my limerick. The syllable structure goes like this: The first, second and fifth line have eight or nine syllables and the third and fourth line have five or six.

To improve my limericks next time I will follow the syllable structure that I mentioned just now. It might be a little bit difficult but I would manage. 

Magnetic Car

 This science lesson we got to choose what type of experiment we had to do out of trying out some electronics, creating a lemon battery, making a battery powered car and the one my group did, the magnetic powered car. My group had me, Naiya, Liam and Lucas S. We had to do the hardest part out of the groups that had to do the magnetic car because we had to screw in all of the tiny, 3/4mm screws onto the bottom.

I observed that it was rather difficult once we got the car moving to make it go that far because the magnet we were using to push the car along kept on slipping to the side of the magnet that was attached to the car. The back wheels were also quite tight and reluctant to move.

Some advice for the next people to do this experiment is to make sure that the magnets are lined up perfectly behind each other so that they don't slip to the side of each other. I also think that it would have a better outcome if you made sure that the wheels weren't as tight as how we had them.

(It was a magnetic car not a battery one)

Cotton Ball Launcher

 During this science lesson we were learning about how different variables can change the thing you started out with originally. To test this we created a cotton ball launcher. To find out how to create one watch the video bellow. We put some tape down on the carpet then marked a line on the tape every thirty cm, we then lined up at the beginning of the tape and shot our launchers and saw how far we got along the tape. The highest I got was one hundred and twenty cm. The highest scored in the class was one hundred and fifty cm, which Carter and Ruby got.

I observed that a good way to make your cotton ball go further was to make the inside roll longer that the outside one. Another good thing to do was to put tape or a piece of paper across the part that you would put the cotton ball, that way the cotton didn't get stuck on the rough edges of the paper.

In future I think a good way to improve the result that I got would be to point the cotton ball launcher a bit higher instead of pointing it horizontally across the room. I think this would improve the experiment because the higher it gets the further it will have to fall and when something falls it doesn't fall straight down it sort of falls across. What other way do you think I could improve?