End of an era!

We are now into the last week of Term Two and this Language class will be going to study Health for the rest of the year. I will get a brand new class of eager students who may or may not be enthusiastic about blogging.

On behalf of the class, I would like to thank all the people who have had a read of our work. We take a keen interest in our hit counter. The class like to see that people in foreign countries read their work.

On behalf of the world, I would like to thank the class for their hard work and enthusiasm in lessons.

After this post there will probably not be any posts until the new class is up and running, in about 1 month's time.

Thanks once again and ......

Ka kite ano ...... See you later ....... Hasta mastade ....... A bientot ....... you get the message!

Mr Bryan

Myths

In the last few weeks we have been reading myths from around the world. Myths are stories that feature super-natural events, heroes, and gods. They are stories from long ago that tell us something about life. We read a Celtic myth about Cuchilainn who was a great warrior who ended up killing his own in battle. We have read some Maori myths : how Tama Rereti made the night stars and how Maui trapped the sun.

We have also tried to write our own myths. Here are some of the class ones.

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Kahe and her new born son set up themselves for a long journey together through the sea water as there needed to be a high born lady to lead the tribe. Kahe herself was as scared as her son, they set off down the misty beach where her kaumatua set around them to pray for them while they accomplished their tribes dream.
Asking her tipuna to watch upon them selves while passing any creatures, kina spikes while walking on rocks, scary currents as they are changing directions. Entering the choppy waves, Kahe’s skin turns prickly as they start their journey along freezing blue water. Getting half way between the currents, her son almost getting as purple as who knows, Kahe quickly changes stroke and says to her son “Be strong, never fail!”.
Arriving at the final destination where people are still sleeping she sneaks up slowly and grabs a cloak as her baby is not breathing. The people quickly warm him up and she starts to breast feed him. They didn’t know why they went but they needed to accomplish some dream for their special tribe.
By FPK
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Once upon a time in a place far far away lived a king a queen who were very cruel and no one liked them.
When their kingdom needed them they never did anything about it.
But when they really needed them they didn’t do anything and some people invaded them ….
They were at war and the king didn’t send any Knights then most of the kingdom was wrecked.
The king still didn’t do anything so this brave blacksmith stepped up to the thousand of people invading them.
Then the blacksmith killed them all and also killed the king and queen and married their daughter and lived happily ever after….

By CF
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The legend of Tu Whero

Long ago in the time off the gods, there lived a man named Tu whero. He was a quiet warrior but one of the most skilled of the tribe named Wheronui. The tohunga Tukoti
Had dreamed that there would be a great war 3 days later and sure enough the war between Ngatuwhatuako and Wheronui had begun. Tu whero knew the tactics of Ngatuwhatuako as he had fought this tribe before. Tu whero told the chief of Wheronui to take his people to the south east of Kaingaroa and there the people waited as the first half of ngatuwhatuako walked by and found out they had walked into a trap, while tu whero and his men were fighting off the other half of ngatuwhatuako. The war lasted 2weeks before wheronui triumphed over ngatuwhatuako. Tu whero was granted superhuman powers by the gods for his courageous acts and any tribe that had the nerve to even fight Wheronui Tu whero was there to tell them to return to your place or go to the underworld where your soul
Will be tormented for ever.

By JE
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Back in the day there was a man half man half beast and he couldn’t control his powers so he ended up doing stuff he didn’t want to.

One day a man came to his house and told him that he could help him with his mysterious powers. And that he knew all about what he’s done, how to control them and how he’s learnt to control his powers.

When he told his new master what the people in the village called him and how they were afraid.

His master replied”I’ll call you beast man if you’d like and then you can call me Mike.”

Beast man asked “when do we start training so that I could learn to control them before I do more harm to the people of my village”.

Mike said”tomorrow beast man so get some rest because we’ll get an early start in the morning.

Two months later the beast man learnt how to control them and the people weren’t afraid in the end but still was a little bit afraid and still locked their doors in case he still walks at night.

By T J

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Language Girls

Here are some of the girls who are in the Language class. They are playing normal chess.

Games

For the past few weeks, we have used the lesson on Tuesday afternoon to play games. Pupils can choose from a selection of Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess and Draughts.

Games are a great way of interacting with each other, communicating rules and practising conflict resolution. In addition each individual game builds different specific skills. Chess is a personal favourite because it strengthens strategy, preparation and teaches cause and effect in a brutally effective way. For example, if you leave your Queen unguarded, your opponent will take it. Once you have lost your Queen, it is very difficult to win against a player who still has his/her Queen.

Anyway what has all this got to do with literacy?

I can justify Monopoly and Scrabble quite easily, but Chess? There is no reading and writing going on. As an aside, the most popular games in the class are Chess and Monopoly. I decided that we could try writing the rules for the games in Thursday's computer lesson. I was keen to encourage new variations on the old favourites, so check these out.

As always your comments are much appreciated. Welcome to our new readers in the US and Portugal. Whilst not forgetting all our old readers, "Hello to you all".

Mr B

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4 way chess

1) Set up your 4 boards.

2) Starting from the back of the board on the squares
· 1 Rook at each end
· 1 knight on the inner squares
· 1 Bishop on the 3rd inner square
· 1 queen on the next square
· 1 king on the next square(middle)
3) Next row up
· All eight pawns on every square.

The aim of the game is to work with your partner and try getting your enemies out of the game.

WHAT TO DO

If your player loses her king on his/her board all the remaining pieces go to his/her ally.

by FK
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Dirty Harry

Instructions…

· Grab a chess board
· Grab five chess pieces for each side king, queen, 2 bishops and a pawn.
· Use any piece to try take out the opponent’s king but also try and protect your king as well…
· You can only move forward 1 and diagonal 1.
· You cannot move backwards…

To win must know how to strategise and get to know your opponent’s next move.

(Note you cannot take the opponents pieces except for the king)
The winner is crowned dirty Harry…
GOOD LUCK!!!

Game by JE
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Deadly Pig Hunt

· Its like snakes and ladders but better because its to do with pig hunting guns and all
· You can have 6 players. Its got 200 spaces at two hundred you finish if you win you get something good
· But there’s some traps on the way. One of the traps is going back 25 spaces and there some goods things too. The best one is getting a gun and moving up 50 spaces.

Game by PW

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Snakes and Ladders


It’s really easy all you need is a dice and a snakes and ladders board.

All you need to do is roll the dice and move the counter forward whatever spaces that the number on the dice shows. However if you land at the bottom of a ladder that’s in your box you go up it, but if you land in a box that has a snakes head in it you have to go down the snake.

The winner is the first person that gets to the 100 sqare.

Game by TJ

Short Stories

This entry features one completed piece of work. The class was asked to write a 200 word story. They could make up their own theme, or they could use one of two given starters.

Here is what JS wrote:



THE INTRUDERS

As the smoke cleared I could see a gigantic pig with space technology was walking towards me with a alien space gun ready to shot. The gigantic pig had a crew with space guns. They was a gigantic duck, flea, milliped and a roster. They all aimed and
shot luckily I could do matrix I dodged all the plasma ballets but one it hit me right in the nuts man it hurt so much. I went flying back and landed in some white sticky staff.
I got super powers and gave them all a hiding and got me a hot girl friend. 2000000 weeks later the gigantic pig and his crew came back but he had backup this time. He had venom and sand man with him this time so I called up Spiderman and black goblin then the gigantic pig called up green goblin blue goblin and same 100 more gigantic ducks then I called up super man super women and super dog and cat and duck and pig. I went super sayin and done a spirit bomb. “ ha ha I won you suck so just (go back) to your own plant you gigantic pig and other smaller things.


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As always your comments are welcome and invited. Nothing is put on this blog without the permission of the student who wrote it. Some pupils do not want some of their work published, sometimes because it is personal. Others are keen to have their work reach a wider audience.

Mr B

Making Gases

Here are some of the male members of the Language class.

We carried on our work on Science Language by making 3 common gases. Here is how the class described it:

Experiments
On Tuesday we did some experiments on making gases.

We mixed hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide and it made oxygen. We put a relit splint in the oxygen and it went into a fire again

We mixed magnesium and hydrochloric acid and it made hydrogen. We tested for hydrogen and it made a little pop when we lit it.

We mixed sodium carbonate and hydrochloric acid and it made carbon dioxide. We tested the carbon dioxide and it put the flame out.

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First we got a test tube and then we got some hydrochloric acid and put some magnesium
Then we put our thumb on it and the pressure
Build up was were hard to keep your thumb on.
Then we put some more hydrochloric acid
With sodium carbonate and it was the same
Result as before I think.

Then we put some hydrogen peroxide and
Manganese dioxide which made oxygen
The End.

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On Tuesday we did some experiment on making gases


We made hydrogen by mixing magnesium and acid together.

We made oxygen by mixing hydrogen peroxide
and manganese dioxide.

We made carbon dioxide by mixing hydrochloric acid and sodium carbonate.

The test for each gas is
Oxygen relit the splint
Cabin dioxide puts out the flame
Hydrogen exploded.

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As always we appreciate your comments on our work.

Bob Marley or Elgar? Who should we listen to when we work?

Sound Experiment

In the second term we are looking at some of the keywords used in the Year 9 Science course. We started off with the words used in experiments:
Experiment
Variable
Control
Fair Test
Plan
Results
Conclusion
Evaluation

The class said that they wanted to do an experiment on music or cooking. So we looked at the effect of music on our work. I include here samples from the classes work unedited. They were asked to write up the experiment using all of the keywords.
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ON TUESDAY THE 24TH APRIL WE DID A EXPERIMENT ON MUSIC, I DID A VARIABLE WORK. I PLAN SOME OF MY WORK, MY SECEND TEST I MADE IT A FAIR TEST. ONE OF US WAS THE CONTROL AND NOT LISTENING TO MUSIC. MY RESULITS WAS TEST 1 38/40 AND TEST 2 35/40. MY CONCLUSION WAS VERY GOOD AND I DIDN’T NEED A EVALUATION.

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On Tuesday we did an experiment to see what music we work better on.
First we planned it and this is what we did….
For Test 1 (Bob Marley) then test 2 (Elgar).
We did the test then got the results and the conclusion.
To see what music what was better we had 2 math test with 40 questions on each and 7 min listening to each music.
We had the control which was S______ (didn’t listen to any music) and we saw if it was a fair test and what the evaluation was.
The results told us that we worked better with the Bob Marley music.
5 people did better in test 1.
2 people did better in test 2 than in test 1.
1 person did the same in both tests.
The control did better in test 2 than test 1.
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We did an experiment on music and how it affects us doing work like the variables of our work.
There are two different kinds of music there was reggae and backing music
We had a plan to see the effect on the music had on our work.
The results of the experiment are here….

5 people did better in maths test 1 than test 2
2 people did better in test 2 than in test 1
1 person did the same in both tests
The control did better in maths test 2 than test 1.

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We done an experiment on music and how it effects us doing work and also to see the variables
of our work. We had two different types of music, the first type was reggae and the second type was Elgar. The results of the experiment were
out of a maths test which was made up of two math tests.
The results were;
5 people did better in test 1 than in test 2.
2 people did better in test 2 than in test 1.
1 people did the same in both tests.
And the person on control did better in both tests.

We had a plan to see how the music effected our work. The whole experiment was a fair test because we only changed one thing and kept the rest the same. My conclusion was good so I didn’t need an evaluation.
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On Tuesday we did an experiment about music to see how we had an effect on music
and the different variable are some people change on different types of music even people that don’t listen to music.
First we planed our music.
The results were 5 people did better in test 1 than in test 2
2 people did better in test 2 than in test 1
1 person did the same in both tests
The control did better in test 2 than test 1.
Conclusion kids work better listing to bob Marley and kids don’t work better than elgar.

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