Week 3 and 4 - Term 3

Other the last two weeks we have been doing a short story analysis on a short story we chose. We have been doing blues in music and Jess and I wrote a blues song about having no friends. I have also participated in the Hamilton Gymsport festival, Band festival, Waimaths and Band Quest. My band did quite well but unfortunately our drummer dropped his sticks at the start of the song so one of the backstage crew had to come help him get them back. The other band, Bass Booster, got third overall.

Week 2 - Term 3

Mrs Crowe came back this week as she was feeling better. I finished my Student led conference and its ready to share with my parents on Monday. I finally got the last two including others signatures I needed for my silver so I am getting that on Monday too. Over the last two lessons at music tech we have done Reggae and Blues music. We had the 2017 Bandslam on Friday night. Lots of people from our two bands got placings: Hannah got third best keyboard, Reuben got third best guitar, Ethan got best male vocals, and the Bass Boosters got second best original song. We have another competition on Friday of week four where we play both our cover and original. After this we are going to do Smells like teen spirit by Nirvana for when we travel around to the primary schools. I have pretty much finished my speech I just need to do a little bit more editing.

Week 1 - Term 3

We had Mr McCabe in our class this week because Mrs Crowe was away. I have almost finished my speech on lower portion sizes. We have started music for tech arts and so far we have played on the keyboard, drums and guitar.

Week 4 and 5 - Term 2

The last two weeks we have been carrying on with the Holocaust. We have been doing our reports on the Holocaust. I have also started my book review and inquiry. In food we designed our invites for the cafe and found our recipe. I'm going to make a brownie but I might change my mind. They have to contain a starch, minerals and vitamins, protein and fat or sugar. We learnt today that a kiwifruit contains more vitamin c than a orange In maths we have been doing decimals and fractions. I found out that I was doing decimal division algorithms properly. We finally played our original all the way through in rock band and for our cover we are doing Kids in America by Kim Wilde. We had Inter House Winter Games on Friday on week five. I played volleyball but we didn't do very well.

Week 3 - Term 2

For the last three weeks we have been learning about the Holocaust. We have also switched from science to food. We are doing algebra and have learnt about expressions and equations. At the moment we are learning to find the unknown in equations.

So far his term we have done a letter to the editor and argument writing. Our argument writing was about whether all schools in New Zealand should have to same uniform. I chose for because in had the most ideas about this side.

In rock band we have wrote two verses a chorus and a bridge so we are almost finished, we just need to keep practising playing it all together because at the moment we are not very good. In extension art I have finally started painting my canvas.

Week 10 - Term 1

This term I have learnt lots especially in maths. The thing I have enjoyed the most this term was our camp because we went to Wellington and I had never been there before. So far in tech arts we have finished sewing and are halfway through science. I am enjoying year eight science and I think it is funner and we have been learning more than we did last year. We have been learning about atoms and molecules.

I have already been to a few out of school activities including the triathlon and the young leaders day. I also enjoyed having a Japanese student for two weeks. Shiori taught us a lot about Japan and the culture there.

The weekend before camp Brylee, Emily and I travelled to Auckland to audition for one of the Jump Jam 18 videos. We had a short workshop and after lunch we auditioned to see which line we would be in. Brylee and I both got a place in the middle block and Emily got a place in the last block. The song that we did was "Shake it off" by Taylor Swift. Hopefully later in the year we can teach this routine to the rest of the school.

Next term I am going to be involved in a few out of school activities including the Tough guy and gal challenge and the Lit quiz. I did both of these last year so I know what to expect. I have been involved in lots of activities in school and hopefully next term I can trial for some of the sport teams like Belmont netball.

So far this term we have had three Inter House events, Waikato is winning at the moment because we came first in Minor Games, second in Swimming and second in summer games which we had last week on Friday. Next term we have Inter House Winter Games.

I have enjoyed being part of the student council so far this year and I am looking forward to organising discos and mufti days next term.

Camp Week 9 - Term 1

This week we were on camp in Wellington. We had to leave early on Sunday morning and arrived in Lower Hutt around 6:00.

On our first day in Wellington we went to Zealandia bird sanctuary. We split up into three groups and went on a tour around the sanctuary. We had a competition to see who could find the most birds. Some birds were worth more points because they were rarer. We saw four ducks that were worth 300 points each so in the end my group won. After Zealandia we went to the Holocaust center. We learnt about what happened in the second world war. One of the ladies at the center was actually in a concentration camp when she was young so we got to hear her story. Our last activity of the day was Weta Workshop. They showed us some of the actual props that they used in the movies. We learnt how they made lots of light plastic copies of props because they real thing would be to heavy to use in a movie. We watched a video explaining how Weta Workshop was started and how Weta Workshop is connected to lots of other places in Wellington.

On Tuesday we went to Space Place at the Carter Observatory. We were taught a bit about our solar system before we were given questions that we had to find the answer to. After we had answered as many questions as we could they showed us a short video about the Milky Way and after that we were allowed to look around on our own. The last thing we did at Space Place was watch a movie about how space connects everyone on earth and how the same technology that is used in space is also used on earth. They then  showed us the stars and constellations that you can see from Wellington. The cool thing was the movie was played on the roof of a big dome shaped room that we were lying in so it was easy to see where the constellations were in the sky. Afterwards we took a cable car to Lambton Quay and walked along the road until we got to Parliament.  While we were waiting outside we got to meet Andrew Little. We had a tour of Parliament and they took us into the debating chamber and one of the conference rooms. We learnt a lot about laws and how the Government works. The last thing that we did on Tuesday was the Museum of Wellington where we learnt about the Wahine Disaster. I think that I only learnt a little bit while we were here because I already knew about the Wahine Disaster, although we got to watch some actual footage of the Wahine sinking.

On Wednesday we went to Capital E. We split into two groups, one group went to ONTV and the other group went to the Media Lab. I went to ONTV first and we got taught how to use the equipment we needed for our jobs. We then had a practise rehearsal of Once upon a Crime. We watched our practise and decided what we needed to make changes to. We then filmed our real thing. We decided that our rehearsal was better than our real thing so we put our rehearsal on youtube. To find it you need to search  Capital E Te Awamutu Intermediate Once upon a crime #1. The other group's is the same but it is #2 instead of one. After lunch we swapped over and the other group went to ONTV while we went to the Media Lab. At Media Lab we learnt how to create a Virtual Reality world using an app called Unity. Jess and me did our world as a pair because there had to be one pair because there wasn't enough computers. First we shaped our terrain so that it had mountains instead of just being flat. We then painted our world and adjusted where about the camera was. We had to change the camera around quite a lot so that we could see everything that we wanted. After we had the camera in the right place we adjusted the light and started adding props like houses and trees. The last we did was add some animals, we put Cows, Pigs and Chickens in our world.
After both groups had finished at Capital E we walked down to Te Papa and went to the bug lab. At the bug lab we were allowed to look around on our own. Most of the stuff there was interesting but a little bit gross. The last thing that we did on Wednesday was H2O Xtream. Most of the time we went of the hydroslides in trains, we had to make sure that we got out really fast at the end so that we didn't get hit by the rest of the people in the train.

On our second to last day in Wellington we went to the zoo. We went around in our parent groups. I think everyone's favourite animal was the giraffes or the emus. We were allowed to walk through the kangaroo and emu enclosure so we got really close to the emus. In the afternoon we went snorkeling at Island Bay. We saw a lot of fish but it was really cold so we got out early. We saw paua shells that were really big.

We had to get up really early on Friday morning and we left when it was still dark. We arrived back in Te Awamutu at about 2:30.