Writing - Author Study

 We have been writing Author Reports in class for the past week. We have been learning how to link between paragraphs. We had to use idea links, use the same word towards the end of one paragraph in another, and start paragraphs with things like “As well as… He also”.  

Author Study

Full Name: Terry Pratchett        

Date of Birth: 28 April 1948

Place of Birth: Beaconsfield, UK

Famous for: Terry Pratchet is famous for writing many books, some of which are: Wee Free Men, Hogfather, and a Hat full of sky. As well as being famous for those, he is also famous for writing The Carpet People.

Childhood: Before he wrote any of those stories, Terry Pratchett went to Holtspur School where he was bullied because he had speech difficulties. He also had a principal who thought that he could tell how well you were going to do in adulthood because of how well you could read or write. The principal kept bothering him because of this. When Terry Pratchett got his first book published, it was called Business Rivals.

Adulthood: A while after writing Business Rivals, Terry Pratchett married a lady named Lyn Pratchett, and they had a daughter named Rhianna Pratchett, who is now 44 years old. Terry Pratchett died at the age 66. He died of Alzheimer’s disease, after a long struggle with it.He has written many amazing stories, and a lot of them are very well known.

WOW Facts:

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The Assumption of Mary

 For R.E/Religious Education we have been learning about the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, mother of Jesus. The Assumption of Mary is when she died, and Jesus sent his angels to come and raise her to heaven. They had laid her in a tomb, but when the disciples came back to visit her body, she was gone. 

For our task we had to create a Word Cloud and for the words we had to use words that described Mary and were about her life. I used a lot of words, but had to delete a lot because of the template. It took a while, but I’m satisfied with how it has turned out. I found it tricky to think of a lot of words to use, but luckily I had an example to get inspiration from.

Since we are in lockdown right now, I had to do the work on my own, because I can’t see anybody else. I was lucky because before I started my class and I had a google meet on our chromebooks with the teacher, Mrs Naden. She explained all about how to do our tasks, and answered our questions.

I enjoyed customising the Word Cloud and finding different words for it. Next time I think I’ll change the word colours. Here is a screenshot of my work on Word Cloud:

Reading - Robots

 This week we have been reading about robots. We have been learning to infer. To infer is to read between the lines to find an answer to a question that is not in the text, but there are clues that the author has left. 

For our create we had to design a little robot to solve a problem in the world right now. It didn’t have to be real, it could be made up. We wrote down the problem, then ideas about how it could solve that problem, and then draw it and write down a description of it. 

My robot's purpose is to help with returning more native flora and fauna to their native habitats. We put all this on a slide show, and they were pre-designed by our teacher, Mrs Naden. We just had to fill out the pieces about our robots.

I found it tricky to draw the robot, and to write down the solutions. I really enjoyed designing what it looked like, because I got to make it cute. Next time I would colour it in, but I left my colouring pens at school, and I can’t get them because of lockdown.

Puriri - Report

For the past few weeks, we have been learning to summarize. Summarizing is when you tell the main point of something in your own words in a shorter version. 

We had to choose a Maori medicinal plant that is native to New Zealand. Then we had to research about how they can heal injuries etc and how to use them. I chose the Puriri, and I had to learn about what it does. We had a slideshow with information on some of the plants and I got some of my information on there. 

The Puriri tree has very green leaves, and those are the things that you need for the healing. in my picture that I'll put below, I explain how to use it. It was quite tricky to find out all the information on how to use it and what to do with it. I really enjoyed designing the poster. Next time I that I would change how I drew the flower in the corner. Later on we are going to paint them on signs and stick the signs next to the plant in our school Rongoa garden. 

Rongoa means Maori healing, so we have a Maori healing garden.

Here is a picture of my poster:

Bruce Goodin - Olympics Report

For the past few days, my writing group was learning to link paragraphs. Our success criteria was that we had to use phrases such as "As well as... He also...". We had to choose a New Zealand Olympian competitor to write about, and I chose Bruce Goodin.

Bruce Goodin is a 51 year old man who does equestrian (horse) show jumping, and cross country. He does it individually and with a team. He was in the New Zealand equestrian team for the Olympics this year. The reason why I chose him was because I do horse riding myself, and I wanted to find out about the people who are actually riding to compete in the Olympics.

It was quite tricky to find the information, because most sites didn't have much of the stuff I was looking for. I enjoyed writing about him because I learnt about his techniques, and about his horses, but next time I would change the order I wrote my paragraphs in.

Here is my report, and I hop you enjoy reading it:

Bruce Goodin

His name is Bruce Goodin. He was born on the tenth of October 1969. His hometown is Huntly, Waikato District, NZ. He is fifty one years old. When he was younger, Bruce Goodin went to Te Kauwhata College. 

As well as being David Goodin’s son, famed show jumper and cross-country competitor, he is husband to Ulrika, who represented Sweden in equestrian jumping. They also have a nine year old daughter named Elizabeth, who grew up on their farm.

Bruce Goodin also grew up on a farm, and started riding at age seven. His father was a rider, and always had horses and ponies around him. At first he didn’t like the sport, because he didn’t think he was any good. But when he was in his mid-teens he started to really enjoy it.

He in fact started to enjoy the sport so much that it grew into a real passion. He went on to become a horse breeder, equestrian athlete, coach, and horse trainer. His ambition was to compete in the Tokyo Olympics, and he got to be in the team. One of his most memorable moments was when he won the team competition at the 2018 Nations Cup in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. His hero was the British show jumper, John Whitaker. Both his father and his wife have competed in equestrian events.

Bruce Goodin’s personal philosophy is this: “It is about personal development, not a quick fix. It is about things being right for the horse, not for the rider's ego.” He has now competed at five different Olympic games. Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, Sydney 2000, Barcelona 1992, and Tokyo 2021.

Japan

This week we have been learning how to skim and skan. We were given a slideshow to make a copy of and fill out the slides to make it our own. We had to read a bunch of different texts to find the information we needed. Here are the links to some of them: Japan - EPIC , It's Cool to Learn About Countries: Japan , Nintendo Video Game Designer. They are all on epic, so if you have an individual epic account from your school, you can read them.

We had to change the background, font, and text colour of each slide. I didn't end up finishing my entire slideshow because I kept getting distracted, but I will post an update on them once I am finished. It was quite challenging to finish the slides that I did do. I really enjoyed learning about different things in Japan. Next time I would change how much I did on my slides, so that I could get them done. My digital learning object shows that I can embed a slideshow onto my blog. 

Here are my slides:

Gamefroot- 2

 Today we had a cybersmart lesson, and we continued with our GameFroot. We had to continue making it. I had a bug where you couldn't move and if you clicked the up arrow the background flied off the screen, but I got some help from one of my classmates and the problems got fixed. It was hard to fix it, and I'm not finished. 

Play my game here.