12th August

This week I have learnt how to find the area of a triangle. All you have to do is multiply the base and the height then divide your answer by two.

To find the perimeter of a shape you add all the measurements together.

In Extension English we have been doing some work on simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences. In class we have also been doing sentences and we learnt about compound-complex sentences. We have also been learning about conjunctions, FAN-BOYS and AAAWWUBBIS. FAN-BOYS stand for: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. AAAWWUBBIS stand for: After, Although, As, When, While, Until, Because, Before, If, Since.

Simple sentences are sentences that have a subject a verb and an object. Example: He laughed. Subject-he Verb-laughed Object-What he was laughing at. Simple sentences don’t always need to be short they can also be long.

Compound sentences have two or more connected thoughts. I mowed the lawn and I trimmed the edges. It has an independent clause, a conjunction then another independent clause.

Complex sentences have an independent clause and an dependent clause. She could paint amazing pictures although she was only six. Although she was only six is an dependent clause because it doesn’t make sense on it’s own and depends on the independent clause.

My goal for next week is to learn about volume and other things about measurement because I’m not that good at it and I need to practice my maths on Mathletics or in my spare time.

Term 3 Goals

This term my goals are:

• To be more active in school because I haven’t signed up for anything yet because I haven’t found anything that interests me so hopefully something comes along that I will be interested in because I want to get at least three or more badges when I leave Intermediate.
• This term I want to improve my Beep Test score because I think my term 1 score was better than my term 2 score. So my goal for this term is to get 5 or somewhere around 4.8 To achieve this goal I am going to run around and play with my dog more and do my best in Cross Country training and in the Cross Country itself. I think so far that the Cross Country running we have been doing has helped my fitness.

• To stay focused in class, mainly in Maths because right now we are learning about measurement and will soon be doing geometry and I have forgotten a lot of things from the last couple of years and because I haven’t been practicing so I forgot most of it. So after I learn something new or re-learn it I will have to practice it more at home on Mathletics and in my other spare time at home.

Hopefully I will achieve these goals by the end of the term.

Wearable Arts

This term we are having a Wearable Arts. There are several different categories including Night Out, Cultural, Black and White, Cartoon Mask and Down on the Farm. I am doing Black and White. My partner is Emily and we are doing a dress made out of plastic  bags. Our model is going to be Emily. First we got a plastic bag and cut a hole in the bottom of it and Emily put it on, we got another plastic bag and did the same with the first bag and sew them together so we had a second layer, we didn’t cut the handles off because they were going to be the straps. Then we got another plastic bag and cut of the bottom and the handles to create the skirt and sew it onto the top to make our dress. We sew another layer on, then we cut up a black t-shirt and cut up two strips and tied it around the straps and tied a small bow on each strap. We also glued a black button on one strap and a black bottle top on the other.

This is a picture of Emily on our final garment:

25th June

This week I have been doing alot of Maths. I have been learning how to multiply and divide fractions. To divide two fractions, first you turn the last fraction in the equation upside down for example, 1/5 divided by 1/2 You turn the 1/2 upside down and turn the division into multiplication. The sum will now look like this, 1/5 x 2/1 then you multiply the numerator by numerator (1×2=2) which is the numerator in the answer. To find your denominator for the answer you multiply the two denominators in the equation (5×2=10) then you will have your answer. (2/10) To simplify your answer you find out how many 2′s are in 10 (5) so the answer would now be 1/5.

In Tech Arts we have finished our cats. We are now moving onto Woodwork. Yay!

My goal for the school holidays is to keep practicing my maths so I don’t forget everything I learned these past couple of weeks so I don’t forgot everything that I have learned this term because I have never known how to divide and multiply fractions and now that I have learned how to, I have to keep practicing them so I always remember how to.

Maths Work-Fractions.

In Maths I have been learning how to multiply and divide fractions. To divide two fractions, first you turn the last fraction in the equation upside down for example, 1/5 divided by 1/2 You turn the 1/2 upside down and turn the division into multiplication. The sum will now look like this, 1/5 x 2/1 then you multiply the numerator by numerator (1×2=2) which is the numerator in the answer. To find your denominator for the answer you multiply the two denominators in the equation (5×2=10) then you will have your answer. (2/10) To simplify your answer you find out how many 2′s are in 10 (5) so the answer would now be 1/5.

Science Fair

This is my Science Fair board. I did “What surface makes the most effect on a rolling ball?” For my experiment I got a tennis ball and rolled it on three different surfaces, carpet, grass and a mattress. After I rolled the ball I measured how far it rolled and did it three times to make sure the experiment was fair, and I also did the same with the other surfaces. By doing this Science Fair experiment I learned that the surface that affects the most on a ball is a mattress because it isn’t as flat as carpet or grass so it doesn’t go as far. Next time I think I should test it on more surfaces and take more time to make sure I am using the same amount of energy when I roll the ball and making sure my measurements are correct, and I also think next time I do a Science Fair I could start on it earlier instead of leaving it till the last-minute.

3rd June

This week in maths I have learnt a lot about fractions. Including converting fractions to decimals and decimals to fractions. For example 0.25 as a fraction is 1/4 because 1/4 of 1 (1.00) is 0.25.

In our last Extension English lesson we had to write a poem about a place we remember very well. Mine was on Raglan Beach. This is my poem:

“Sunny, Noisy, Fun

Warmth

Tide coming in

Under the warm summer sun

Kids jumping over small waves,

Adults swimming in the water.”

Today we shared our poems with the group and the teacher gave us some advice on how to improve our poem. We also went over a poem called “The Highway Man” My favorite verse in the poem was the first one.

“The wind was a torrent of darkness

among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed

upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight

over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding-

Riding-riding-

The highwayman came riding,

up to the old inn-door.”

I liked how they described the moonlight as a ribbon over the purple moor. We now have to write a story about some things a person has c0llected.

My goal for the rest of the week is to do more on my Science Fair so I can get it out of the way and not leaving it till the last minute and worrying about it then.

26th May

This week in Maths we are finishing off decimals and starting on fractions. The past week in Maths I have learnt how to add, subtract and multiply decimals. The teacher has also taught us how to divide decimals but it still hasn’t really got to me yet.

Last week we did a report on Elephants. This week we are going to be doing a report on Cheetahs. We got a double sided piece of paper with information about Cheetahs from the teacher. For the Elephant report we only got one small piece of paper with not much information on it. This time we got more information. After we got our sheets of information we had to take notes from the sheet and not writing down sentences like “Cheetah is Hindi for “spotted one” Instead you could write “Cheetah-Hindi-”Spotted one.” and instead of “Adult Cheetahs have yellow fur with solid black round or oval spots” you could have “Adult-yellow fur – solid black- round.oval spots.” Then we can start on our draft report. Our Learning Intention is “To make brief notes and use these to write a report with a topic sentence for each paragraph.” A topic sentence is a sentence that tells you what the whole paragraph is about. For example my topic sentence for my Appearance is “Cheetahs are often mistaken for leopards.”

On Tuesday I went down to Room 1 with Emily and Josh and we did the ICAS Computer test with some other students. Some of the questions were really easy but some questions I didn’t really understand. Some of the easy questions were “Which icon should Alice click to centre the highlighted text?”and “Jack also wants to use bold font for the title. Which icon should he click?” some of the hard ones (for me) were “Henry used a spreadsheet to record the results of a survey. He clicked Insert Cells. What will happen when Henry clicks OK?” I didn’t get it because I didn’t know what “Insert Cells” really meant.

My goal for the rest of the week is to learn how to divide decimals and practice so I can finish decimals knowing everything that Mrs Crowe taught me and not having un-answered questions about dividing decimals. To do this I will have to focus and practice a few to get the hang of it.

Book Review-The Music Of Dolphins

The Music of Dolphins.

Author: Karen Hesse.

Genre(s):

Publisher: Apple Signature.

Pages: 181

Mila is a young teenager who was lost at sea when she was just little. A mother dolphin raises her as one of her own until one day; some men in a helicopter find her on an island and take her back to Miami. She is looked after by some Doctors who teach her what it means to be human, the doctors think she is a girl called Olivia who has a father in Cuba. Unfortunately, Mila doesn’t understand that she’s a human girl not a dolphin till she learns how a television works. When she does she yearns to go back to the sea more than ever.

I really enjoyed reading this book because I’ve never read a book like this. It didn’t take me long to read because I was so into the book and I really wanted to know what would happen next. I don’t think there would be anything I’d change about the book. I recommend this book to any girl aged 10 and over.

My favourite character in the book was Mila because she tried really hard to please the doctors and she also tried to help Shay learn when they were working together.

I don’t have a character that I didn’t like because everyone played a pretty important role in the book.

My favourite part was at the end when they let Mila go back to the sea to see her dolphin family because Mila had been wishing to go back to the sea for so long and it was a pretty good ending to the book.

I have chosen to put this book review on my blog because I really enjoyed reading this book and this book review has helped me retell what happens in the book in my own words which has helped me understand the book better than just reading the book and moving onto another one. Although this book review wasn’t exactly 400 words and was a bit short than what was expected, it was better than my first one because when I got it back from the teacher I only had two mistakes. Next time I will try and give my bets book review on a different genre of book to challenge myself. I hope my next book review will be better because this was obviously not one of my best efforts.

20th May

This week in Maths we have been adding and subtracting decimals. This is the statement I have written in my Maths book.

Adding Decimals.

Something easy like 2.5+0.03, just by looking it you can see what the answer is but if you need to work it out your working would looks like this:

2+.5+.03

then you add the .5 and the 0.3 which makes .53 and add that onto the 2 to make 2.53.

Subtracting Decimals.

4.1-1.3.

First you make them into full numbers, 410-130=280. Then you find where the decimal place would go 4-1 wouldn’t be 28 but would be more likely to be 2. So the answer is 2.80.

In Extension English we have been doing poems about a place we remember really well. My poem is about Raglan Beach. We need to have three adjectives abot our place, mine are noisy and sunny (still working on the third adjective). We also need a participial phrase. A participial phrase is a word formed from a verb e.g. verb-flow=flowing. We need an abstract noun (warmth), which means something you can’t touch. We need two more participial phrases and a preposition phrase. A preposition phrase shows time, place and means (still working on that too).

My goal for the weekend is to start on my Science Fair project. To do this I will have to start thinking about my question. “What surface effects the most on how far the ball rolls?” To do this I will have to think about how a ball rolls, how rolling a ball on grass/carpet/concrete affects how far the ball will roll. To do this I will have to make more time in the weekend and do some research for my Science Fair.

My actual goal for next week is to learn more about decimals so I can become better at decimals because I used to be absolute rubbish at decimals. To do this I will have to focus more in class and practise subtracting a few decimals because I had some trouble subtracting some decimals that the teacher gave us.