Today I am writing to you to tell you about my learning adventure through Pangarau / Math’s. This week during Pangarau the year sevens have been learning about regular and irregular 2D shapes. This might sound kind of easy but it is a lot harder having to name some crazy looking shapes and then figuring out whether the shape is regular or irregular. My favourite part of this was figuring out whether the shape was regular or irregular because it really made me realize that there were a lot of shapes that had the same sized sides and how many didn’t, it also really helped me learn different types of shapes. I will explain more about my learning journey in the next paragraph.

During Pangarau our teacher has to teach three different year groups so while we are waiting we play Matific, which is a Math’s game where you have to do different Math’s challenges to move on, other times we will do work in our Oxford Math’s book. When it is the year sevens turn we get our Pangarau book and learn how to answer the questions in our Oxford books or we just learn about the Math’s subject we are working on.

In conclusion, I think that during Math’s I have learnt a lot about 2D shapes, for instant names of different shapes, how to tell whether they are regular or irregular, I also learned about how to describe different shapes and a little bit about how to find shapes angles. Overall I think that this week I learnt a lot whether it was in Pangarau or Tuhituhi and I wouldn’t change anything if I could.

Today I will be writing to you to tell you about my learning in Handwriting and Spelling in Tuhituhi this term. This term I have done a lot on the subject Tuhituhi and I have got different words to everyone else except for two other people which I think has really helped me extend myself. At the start of the term I found it easy because I was doing spelling words that I already knew.

This term I found Tuhituhi enjoyable because I pushed myself with my spelling and I got to do cursive which I have already learnt at home which made it fun to practice it at school. I also found Tuhituhi enjoyable because in Handwriting sometimes we have to write our spelling words in alphabetical order which I enjoyed doing, because it helped me learn how to work out the correct order, if the first letters are the same then you look at the next letter in the word.

This term I found spelling (tataki) challenging because my teacher gave me harder words to extend my learning which helped challenge me. I also found Tuhituhi challenging this term because we had to do syllables and I find this challenging because I did not know how to find the exact time the syllables change, but I learnt that the syllables change every time your mouth moves when you say the word.

Overall I think that this term was great because I pushed myself with my learning and I chose to get given homework by my teacher. I also think that this term was great because I have gone up in my spelling words each week and I have learnt how to do much more in Maths like dividing and multiplying decimals.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog about this term.

Recently we have finished participating in Winter Sports. Winter Sports is where the year five to eights from our school compete with other schools in a variety of winter activities.

My chosen activity for this year was ‘Capture The Flag’. I did Capture The Flag every Friday for the last two blocks of the day. We would walk to Rawhiti Domain, which is by Thompson Park and my team is called ‘The Rippers’. I chose this activity because it is my second year doing Winter Sports and I didn’t want to do the same sport again (last year I did gardening). I am not really interested in sports so I chose the one I thought wouldn’t use that much energy which was Capture the Flag.

Imagine you are walking to the hall for Winter Sports on a cool, crisp day with the weight of your bag on your back, wanting to stay in the warmth of the classroom. You sit down in the line for Capture The Flag, opening your bag to get your shoes and then you put them on, slowly tying them up as you day dream about how you are going to do on the field that day. You have finished putting on your shoes now and the teacher has started to do the roll, you call out as he says your name. Once he has finished doing the roll he makes everybody stand up and you begin your walk to the fields where you play Capture The Flag.

You walk next to your friends that do Capture The Flag too and you talk with them trying to get over the noise of the other kids as the dry leaves crunch under your feet. Finally you have started to walk across the playground and grass to the Capture The Flag fields. You are so tired and your legs feel as though they are going to collapse underneath you. You have made it to the fields and you sit down relieved to have the weight of your bag on your back as you wait for the teacher to lead you to your first game.

A couple of minutes later your team gets called to field 4 (there are 5 fields). You step onto the field feeling ready to face anything as you take your place at the flag waiting for the game to begin with the blow of a whistle. The game has started, the other team has swarmed your side and two people make it into the box containing the flag (the flag is actually a ball in a bucket.) You are fully focused on the people in the square now. Suddenly someone has escaped with the flag, not wanting them to score by getting our flag in their square, so you sprint after them just grabbing onto the end of there rip… you rip them and the flag is sent back to the square where one of the other people that has made it in there, picks it up and sprints to their side to try and score their team a point.

Meanwhile three people from your team got into the enemies square meaning they only had to bring the flag back to our side to score a point for us. The enemies are guarding the square well, your team members make a run for it, one of them is holding the flag while the other two run with him. Your opponents are chasing after your team members trying to rip them, one of them gets close but just can’t manage to get the grip they need to rip him. He makes it to your square and scores a point before the enemies can score!

A couple of scores later your team has scored 6 points and the other team has scored 2 points. The weather has now changed from crisp and cool to warm and sunny. You go to congratulate your team members on their last score as the teacher blows the whistle to end the game. You crowd around in a circle and talk before you line up to congratulate the other team. You are puffed and after the game has finished you sit down by your bag to relax before having to take the long walk back to school. The other Rawhiti team has now come back looking puffed and tired and you begin the long walk back to school with the weight of your bag on your back again.

The grass feels gentle and soft under your aching feet as you make your way across the fields and toward the rough gravel footpath that leads through the forest to the streets. The walk is long but you make it back to the school, whole body aching now you sit on the fake grass with everyone else and wait for the teachers to give certificates out to the players of the day (which are given to players that they think did really well that day.) For Capture The Flag a girl named Pearl gets the certificate and a boy named Tom and you clap loudly with everyone else and finally it is the end of the day and you are allowed to go home.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog.

Kia ora, today I am writing to you to tell you about what has happened so far this term.

Something I have really enjoyed so far this term is handwriting and spelling in Tuhituhi. I enjoyed handwriting and spelling because I love writing and Tuhituhi is my favourite subject. In handwriting we are practicing cursive writing so we have to write the letter we have for that day on an angle. In spelling we have ten words for the week, we have to do different activities using the spelling words each day, at the end of the week we have a test to see if we have learnt the ten spelling words and the next week we get a new list of ten words and all the words we got wrong the previous week.

Something I have learnt so far this term is working with decimals in Pangarau. I learnt that if you are multiplying a decimal number by ten or one hundred, you just move the decimal point right for every zero when multiplying  and if you are dividing any number by ten or one hundred you just move the decimal point left for every zero. I struggled with doing decimals because at first I did not understand how to multiply the decimals or how to divide them. I could answer the questions but it would just take me a while. Then I got taught to move the decimal point right or left for every zero and it made answering the questions much quicker for me.

Something I have disliked so far about this term is winter sports, which happens every Friday unless it is too wet or raining. I disliked winter sports this term because I did capture the flag, because I could not get into the gardening club.  I got put into a capture the flag team called ‘The Rippers’ and in my team there are none of my friends.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and I will see you next time.

Kia ora, today I will be writing to you to tell you about my week.

One thing I really enjoyed this week was when we made patu in Kaupapa Matua. I really enjoyed making the patu in Kaupapa Matua because we got to shape the patu by using sand paper and I shaped at least four patu. I also really enjoyed making the patu because we were making the patu for the competitive Kapa Haka group and I am in the competitive Kapa Haka group which means that I will get to use the patu we made. A challenge I faced this week was reading because we had to try and read as many words as we could in one minute and I only read 156 words and I think that next time I could better. I also found reading challenging because I find sometimes I don’t really have enough time to read the whole story and then my reading group has to talk about what the book is about but I have not read the whole book so I don’t know the whole story.

Something I felt proud of this week is the Oxford pretest in Pangarau. I felt proud of my Oxford pretest  because I got 100% in the pretest. Next week, I want to get better at my Handwriting because I think when I write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” a few of my letters I could write better. Some of the letters I think I could write are my g’s, y’s, and z’s because they seem to nearly always come off the line. If I could change one thing about this week, it would be finding the root word in Panuitia because I find that we need to make some more fun activities that involve having to find the root words or something like that because I find that some of the kids in our class are not learning much because they think that it is boring so they do not listen.

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, see you next time.

One thing I really enjoyed this week was when we had to draw a taiaha and a patu in Kaupapa Matua. I enjoyed drawing a taiaha in Kaupapa Matua because when we drew the taiaha we had to label the different parts in english and maori and I learnt new maori words from doing that. I enjoyed drawing the patu in Kaupapa Matua because we got to design it and put our own carvings and patterns.

Here is a picture of my work:

A challenge I faced this week was learning different strategies in Pangarau because I found it hard to remember the names of the different strategies so when a question said use the jump method I would have to go back in my Pangarau book to see what the jump method was.

Something I felt proud of this week is when we had to write a story in Tuhituhi. I feel proud of the story I write in Tuhituhi because I think that I was really descriptive and I also liked the cliffhangers that I put at the end of every chapter. It made me really want to keep writing the story so that the readers could read what was going to happen next.

Next week, I want to get better at descriptive writing because I find that sometimes when I write a story I don’t describe it enough that you can make an image in your mind of what is happening.

If I could change one thing about this week, it would be the one block a day where we have to do Panuitia and Handwriting because I find I don’t have enough time to read that much of the book other than that this week was amazing.

This amazing fun week I have learnt more about percentages in Pangarau. I learnt how to find the 10% from a number. I also learnt about the patu in Kaupapa Matua. I learnt that the hardest thing you can make a patu out of is pounamu and that the patu was made in the North Island of New Zealand.  Another thing I learnt about the patu was that patu used to be made from stone when people did not have the resources we have today to make the patu or the tools to carve the patu.

I found Handwriting challenging because I have to work on my x’s and I found that whenever I wrote my x’s they would go off the line or they would be really wobbly. I also found Handwriting because we have to write a sentence using the word we choose that had the letter we were practicing in it and I found it hard to think of a good sentence to write.

One thing I want to do differently next week is to use the new Pangarau books a bit more in Pangarau because I have found that lately we have not really been doing anything in the new Pangarau books.

Kia ora, Today I will be writing to you to tell you what I have been learning about this week.

One thing  I really enjoyed this week was learning to tell the time in Maths. I enjoyed telling the time in maths because I really enjoy telling the time even though I already know how to tell the time. One of the activities I enjoyed most was when all of the year 6’s had to try to turn a 12 hour analog clock into a 24 hour analog clock and it had to make sense.

A challenge I faced this week was having to answer the questions on the app Grok. I found it challenging because on the app Grok there was a fake phone with lots of different apps you could click on and on the other side of your screen there was a question and a place to type the answer. You could only find the right answer by going through the apps on the phone and because I had never used a phone before I had no idea what apps on the phone to look at. The main Idea of the app Grok was to show people what other people could find out about you if you put certain things on the internet.

Something I felt proud of this week was Handwriting because my writing is getting better from doing Handwriting. In Handwriting we have to write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” and then we had to circle our two favorite letters in blue pen and our least favorite letter in red pen. Next we had to take our least favourite letter and write it in higher case letters along the page, then write it in lower case letters along the page, next we had to write it in higher and lower case letters along the page. Once we have done that we need to think of a word that starts with the letter you did not like and write along the page. Last but not least you need to take the word that you thought of before and put it into a sentence.

Next week, I want to get better at writing my z’s in Handwriting. I want to get better at my z’s because when I write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” I find that when I write my z’s they come off of the line.

If I could change one thing about this week, it would be learning about the Patu in Kaupapa Matua. One thing I would change this week would be learning about the Patu because I found it boring just researching about the Patu.

Kia ora, Today I will be writing to you to tell you what I have been learning this week.

Rua things I have enjoyed this week were Pancake Day posters in Kaupapa Matua and making a topping graph in Pangarau. Pancake Day posters were where my teacher put us in groups and gave us a type of pancake to research about, Once we had researched everything we had to write it down on a poster and decorate the poster. I enjoyed Pancake Day posters because we got to work as a group to research and make a poster with a border, color, title, and information. The topping graph that I made in math was where we made a graph about what toppings everyone in my classroom chose, The options were butter, maple syrup, and golden syrup. I enjoyed making the graph because I like making graphs.

Kotahi thing I found challenging was Pangarau because we had to do dividing and subtracting but there were two numbers and I did not know at first what number I was meant to subtract and divide.

Next week I would like to do more on pancake day.

Kia ora, Today I will be writing to you about Waipara Camp.

Rua things I enjoyed at camp was the shelter building because I was in a group with Aria and Eden and we made a shelter with a kitchen, A bed/chair, A fire (not a real fire) and a couch. I also enjoyed the shelter building because once we had finished making our shelter rua buckets of water were tipped on top of the shelter me, Aria and Eden made  while we were in the shelter we built. Our shelter was built so good that we did not get a drop of water on us when the water was tipped on top of the shelter. I also enjoyed kayaking because after we had kayaked out to a big area of water, we played a game of tag on the kayaks, I only got tagged rua times because I have been kayaking before so that meant that I was really good at kayaking.

Kotahi thing I found challenging was the giant swing because I do not like heights. There were toru levels but because I am afraid of heights I only went up to level kotahi. I would like to do shelter building again because I enjoyed working as a group to make a shelter strong enough  to stand without letting any water inside the shelter when rua buckets of water were tipped on top of the shelter.

Thank you for reading my blog.