Inquiry

This week Bridget and Matt came over to help us progress with our eel activities. For my activity I am working with my friend charlie. Charlie and I are working on writing a letter to the Enviro Minister about having copper free brake pads. so far we have finished our research and have started our letter but we still do some research so we can back up facts.

Matt and Bridget have been really useful because they have telling us what facts we need.I have enjoyed learning about eels because normally I'm really scared of them but now I'm not-

Storm



 

South Sudan refugee story

LIVING IN A REFUGEE CAMP

Every morning I wake early in the morning by the noise of people setting up stools for selling things to raise for their family. Although I wake early I’m still grateful I can sleep at all because my family and I have such a small tent my father has to sleep outside. My father wants to teach me to defend myself for when I might be able to leave camp, my mother wants me to focus on school first and because we are so poor we might not be able to leave at all.

I find it so hard to pay attention in class because my sister is to young to collect water for the family so I have get water. But if other women are already there sometimes they will collect water for my family because the camp is so small and cramped everyone knows everyone. So I sneak my foot ball on the way to the pump incase my friends are their.

Most of the time if  weather is okay I just run in barefoot but when it gets really hot I have to my shoes one because the dirt is so hot and dry. After the pump I go and line up for the sacks of rice for the family My mother cooks while I wet the mats with water to cool them down. When the rice is cooked we eat, then I do my self defence lesson then after that I go to sleep. And then it repeats all over again.

Korfball

This week we learned and played Korfball.
Korfball is a mixture of netball and basketball leaning more towards netball though (you can't move with the ball but you can intercept). In korfball the hoop is called a korf and it is not on the baseline because you can go 5 metres behind the hoop. When we played boys could only mark boys and girls mark girls.

I enjoyed playing Korfball because its a very fast pace sport and you have to make quick decisions.
For example if someone was marking me with their hands blocking my shot I have to pass. I can not shoot otherwise it's a hand over.

LEARNZ video chat

On the 19th March we had a video chat with LEARNZ. We were talking about our waterways in Canterbury. Our water comes from the rivers and aquifers. One thing they talked about was desalination. Desalination is when salt water is turned to fresh water through an expensive and complicated process.

Another interesting thing was when they explained fossil water. Fossil water is when there is water deep, deep, deep under the ground, when is taken out it cannot be filled again. Where as ground water never runs out because of the water cycle is on going. One thing that I never knew was that there's a minimum flow for rivers. I found the video chat with LEARNZ interesting. 

Thank you. 

Te tuna o taone trip

On Thursday the seventh of March the Batten team and the Hillary hub went down to the Heath cote river The two groups were split to into five, there were five rotations one was learning about the habitat and generally just about the long fin eel, another was learning about the bugs in the water and how some can live both clean and dirty, some dirty, some can live in only out things we could find in the are no paint just natural things; sticks, grass, water dirt. we also did a storm-water  scavenger hunt trying to find a vessel of zinc,sediment, paint etc. and we did a thing with a sheet of paper drawing how the river flows.


it was very interesting learning about about the bugs in the water, because for me personally I never knew there were bugs in our waterways let alone know that they could only live in clean water.

South Sudan - Phil and Janet's visit

This morning two missionaries from South Sudan came to talk to the Batten team about life in South South Sudan. The two missionaries were Phil & Janet. Janet was working on translating the Bible into a South Sudanese language. And Phil works for MAF: Mission Aviation Fellowship, in the ground control department. the first thing they taught us was how to greet someone, the first person would say Salam Alaikum. Another thing I found interesting was seeing the South Sudanese coins and the cash. Some people were were given coins if they answered a question.

Learning about eels

Don showing us the size of an eel he caught

Last week on the 22nd of March Don an eel scientist came to talk to the Batten team.
We learnt that there were three different types of eel in New Zealand.
There is the Longfin eel the Shortfin eel and the Australian Longfin.
Most of the stuff he told us we already knew but he was just confirming
# the facts that we had learned.

Eels don't need to eat everyday because they eat (inhale) large chunks of food.
Sometimes young ducks only have one leg because eels have arrow sharp teeth
facing backwards.
Not only do they not need to eat but nor do they have to move to
get water through their gills unlike
other fish.

Australian Long Fins are only found in the North Island.
Eels go to Tonga to breed. The female eels lay their eggs
and the males fertilise the eggs.
They can between lay 7 - 50 million
eggs.
The biggest eels can grow to two metres LONG, and can live to 112 years old.

The way you can age them (after they have died) is by cutting the head in half
take out the ear bone and count the rings.

science in a van

                                       science in a van

on the 20th of February was the day science in a van came to our school to teach us about SCIENCE. we learned about gravity and balance in the first session. there was a trick was Emma(the lady) had a broomstick and then she balanced on her fingers without holding it with her whole hand. And then there was another one where there was a stall and a bit of tablecloth or whatever it was and a cup of water Allen the man in the group of two ripped the tablecloth and the cup stayed still. the first session was now finished but it was not morning tea yet so we went back to class and tried some balancing ourselves as you can see. After that morning tea started so twenty minutes later it was our individual sessions year fives and up. we learned about force and mass and the three laws of motion.
and there was a chicken called Steve and they tied it to an L&P bottle pumped with air to make pressure and then when there was to much pressure the bottle went flying along with Steve the chicken then they put him in a KFC bucket how lovely,


thank you for reading.

global play day

Global play day was an amazing day 15th of Feb. We brought a cardboard box for a cardboard box fort. It went really well, we got bored and made Marshmello masks(he is a famous DJ) out the remaining boxes. it was amazing. Now we're planning on doing a live concert in school, and we might do another play day this week not too sure what day though probably Friday. and once we finish the masks we're going to make DJ desks and paint our masks. Manu and I were the people who came up with the fort and masks. we came up with names for ourselves as well, Manu's Marsh and I'm Mello. together that's MarshMello.

My first post for 2019

Kia Ora

welcome to my blog! this is where I'll put my work so that you can read it, and comment on it.
please enjoy, and please comment.

Thanks for reading,

Storm

Just a PMI

this week all I have for you to read is this PMI,
hope you enjoy.

This week I felt positive about was math because(well yes I must admit it was hard) it was a challenge and it definitely got my brain working.

this week I found boring/negative was P.E because we did touch but I did not learn anything.

this week I learned that I should be happy for my friends because next year we will probably be split up for talking too much and I learned not to take anything for granted.