Eva, Sahmara, Rebecca: in-class Media Studies video

My 'Lost Thing' story- Cassia

For writing Room 13 watched “The Lost Thing” movie (based on the picture book by Shaun Tan). Mr Birnie gave us a task to make up our own Lost Thing story. This is my story.... 

The lost thing

Let’s just face it, i’m lost. Nobody wants me. I just get ignored like i'm nothing. Humans just walk past me as if i'm invisible. I feel like I don’t belong here in this city.

I start to cry. A little girl picks me up. She pats my head and says, “it’s okay you will be alright”. I ask her what her name is but I don’t think she understands my language. We are playing ball now, it’s really fun. We spend hours playing but then it starts to get dark and she leaves me.

I felt so lonely once she left. A garbage truck drove by and a piece of paper glided out and stuck to my face. I peel it off and start to read it. It says ‘walk to the left’ and has an arrow that points that way. I decide to walk to the left because I have nothing better to do. I walk through the night.

In the morning I come up to a huge building. and the arrow points to a door. I knock politely because I don’t know what’s going to happen. A little colourful mechanical mouse peeps his head out. He goes back in. I start to walk away, but then I hear loud clicks. I look behind myself.

The door opens and all I see are lost things just like me. I walk in. All the lost things are playing and having fun. All of a sudden I feel like I belong.

Tijuana's observational writing.

We have been dissecting lamb hearts as part of our 'Healthy Bodies, Strong Minds' Inquiry unit. Then we had to write our observations as we cut into the heart and explored the interior.

Tijuana:

General description:

Size- 13.5 cm / Clenched Fist

Shape- Big Slug

Colour- Maroon with white patches

Texture- Surface is slimy and smooth

Some parts look rough

Smell- Meat

The heart is just the size of a clenched fist, but I also measured it and it was 13.5 centimeters. Inside is basically just red and white patches, the red parts are just muscles and the white patches are fat. If you go close to it, it only smells like meat.

As you are cutting open the heart you are cutting a thick muscular wall of the heart. When you touch the inside of the lambs heart the major blood vessels are strong but smooth and have a creamy colour.  

If you cut open the lamb heart inside are ligaments inside the ventricles that look like spider webs.  They look really thin but they are really strong and hard to break, and it helps contract the muscles during heart beat.Their colour is white.

Observational writing- Rebecca (a little bit melodramatic, maybe?)

Observational Writing

The Heart

Become keen observers of your world!  You should learn to see things not in isolation, but in relation to other things. How do things affect each other? How are they connected? This piece of writing requires you to use your senses – seeing, touching, smelling, to write an accurate description of a prescribed object (that means it is chosen for you).

Assessment Criteria:  

You are to write an accurate description of an object based on careful observation.

Success criteria:

• you note the colour, texture, and shape of the object
• you use adjectives to describe these features in greater detail
• you have a clear order in your finished writing- an introduction, the more detailed information, and a conclusion

General description:

Size- The size of a grown mans clenched hand

Shape-  There is no particular shape of the object. It is blob like. It is like a oval gone wrong. A lumpy egg
Colour-  It is a very pale pink with splashes of light brown and patches of dark red blood sitting on the edges.
Texture- It is slimey. It looks almost rubber like. Shiny, it looks almost wet. It looks rotten.
Smell- It smells like old gone off ham

Detailed description:

What’s it like inside?-  gooey, slimy, soft, smooth, hard, tough, fat was like bone, bloody,

The oval gone wrong shaped heart lay as dead as a statue on the blue table. It would be the size of a fully grown clenched fist. At first look you would think it was wet. But it isn’t. A slimy substance wrapped around it like an outer shell. It’s blood vessels poked out of it. The hard lumps of fat blanketed the object. It’s pale pink skin had splashes of rotten brown and dots of blood covering it almost completely.

Blood drops sat on the outer edges of the heart but as you opened it up it was like a dried river of blood was sitting inside. Tree branch-like muscles hid beneath the fat and blood. If you stuck your finger through the aorta you would be able to find the end of it if you kept trying and cutting through. Blood splashes covered your fingers as you keep on cutting deeper.

If you get close enough the smell of rotten meat will fill your nose, staying in there until you move back.

Observational Writing- week 10's writing task (this is Eva's)

Observational Writing

Become keen observers of your world!  You should learn to see things not in isolation, but in relation to other things. How do things affect each other? How are they connected? This piece of writing requires you to use your senses – seeing, touching, smelling, to write an accurate description of a prescribed object (that means it is chosen for you).

Assessment Criteria:  

You are to write an accurate description of an object based on careful observation.

Success criteria:

• you note the colour, texture, and shape of the object
• you use adjectives to describe these features in greater detail
• you have a clear order in your finished writing- an introduction, the more detailed information, and a conclusion

This is Eva's planning and writing (she is very descriptive)

General description:

Size- You could say it is the size of a grown man's clenched hand.

shape- There is no particular shape to this object it is more like a blob. There is a mixture of a rectangle, circle and oval. gone wrong, egg shaped

colour- It has a very pale pink lines separating  Dark red, and a grey almost white brown. There is a big blob of the pale pink with a reder pink down the bottom. shiny,

texture- Slimey, gooey, blobbery. shiny , looks almost wet. creases where blood vessels were.
smell- I can’t smell it

Detailed description:

What’s it like inside?- Gooey, slimy, smooth, hard, tough, fat was like bone, bloody.

Three paragraphs:

Sitting in front of me is a blob of gooey meat. You really can’t tell what the exact shape of it is but it is kind of like a rectangle, circle and an oval mixed together and  gone wrong. In another way you could say it looked like a red, pink, grey and brown large smooshy egg.

Like the shape of it, you can’t really tell how big it is but if you want to describe it in some way you could say that it is the size of a grown adults clenched hand. It is about that size in length, width and depth. It isn’t something particularly nice to say have in your room and if you are squeamish you won’t want to look at it. The outside is like what I just described but the inside is a whole new story.

When you cut it open it is blood and more blood everywhere. It is gooey, slimy, smooth and tough all at the same time. The fat is like bone. Tree branch like muscles fill in the inside.

Statistics

Our Statistics programme is covering Mean, Median and Mode averages.  As these terms can be confusing, one way to lern the differences is through Rap!  Here's one from the internet,

Sophie Jackson- Room 13's winner at the HB Regional Science Fair

Last term, students had an opportunity to plan a scientific investigation as part of a Science Fair project.  This term, Room 13 had three entries, from Mankaran Kooner, Eva Collier, Sophie Jackson progress through to the HB Regional Science Fair at EIT.  A morning was spent being interviewed, presenting their investigations and demonstrating their scientific thinking in front of scientists from many different fields. 
Sophie's project, 'Worm Wee-  How Much is too Much of a Good Thing?' advanced to the final judging stage, winning the NZ Society of Soil Science Prize and receiving a Highly Commended in the Year 8 category.  Sophie's prize was a book on NZ soils and $150.  Sterling effort, Sophie.

Mathletics class competition- Year 8's

A short video of today's Year 8 Mathletics competition in the Hall.  The questions came fast and furiously as the many teams of three from each class battled to find solutions- here are some tasters:

1)  Emma is a teenager.  Her age is divisible by 3.  This time next year her age will be divisible by 4. How old is Emma now?

2)  Mr Lenz has 5 children.  Last week he took photos of them, with 3 in each photo.  If he took one photo of each possible choice of 3 children, how many photos did he take?

3)  Cinema tickets for one adult and one child cost a total of $18.  An adult's ticket is one-and a half times the price of a child's ticket.  How much does each ticket cost?


(Answers-  1-  15years old;      2-  10;      3-  child $7.20,  adult $10.80)