Kapa Haka 2021

 Last week Moana syndicate performed our Kapa Haka bracket, but because of Covid restrictions we couldn't perform to a live audience so we videoed it. 

We started with Utaina, a song about paddling your waka and that song was lead by Zoe. That was quickly followed by Ka Waiata a song about Mary, Jesus mother. Then E Rona, lead by me, that was our Poi song. Afterwards Zoe and I lead Ka Panapana and during the middle of Panapana the girls walked to the back with the boys walking forward. Max and Stavis then lead the Wainu Haka and to bring the the girls back to the front Koka Sue played the starting part of Toia Mai then Zoe and I lead that together and suddenly it was all over! Suddenly all my nerves were gone and I could look forward to the intermediate interview I was going to have that afternoon! 

Ilminster Green team performance

Today the year 6's, 5's and a small amount of 4's went to Ilminster, an intermediate, to watch the Green team perform a play. The play was about half an hour and had an environmental theme. The Green team is a group of people that practices and eventually performs plays that always have an enviro theme. 

The play started with a Grandma crayfish, called Nanny Kōura telling two little crayfish a story. After Nanny Kōura finished telling the story the little crayfish beg for another story, so she decided to tell the story of how she saved the world from aliens. This is when the story really started. Then a group of kids entered on the opposite side of the stage and started playing on bikes, scooters and skateboards. They ate some lollies and left the rubbish on the ground! 

Almost straight afterwards Nanny Kōura heard a strange, rattling and clunking noise ,and a golden brown looking robot walked out and stared at the crowd afterwards two crayfish looking creatures, called Morons came out and started complaining about the oxygen and the gravitational pull of earth. They inspected the skatepark and said " This is a suitable place for the intergalactic space dump. " Out marched a regal looking alien, the King Moron and asked whether this was the perfect place of for the intergalactic space dump, the Morons replied, " Yes, your Moronness. " " I want your answer in dance ! " retorted the King, so the Morons had to dance their answers, but the King kept on asking questions ! The Morons dumped their rubbish including the golden brown robot. 

The next day the group of kids came back to play and were completely shocked, their skatepark was COVERED in strange rubbish. One curious boy reached out and touched the rubbish and got zapped by a jolt of electricity! "Don't touch that guys, I think it's dangerous!" he said. The robot chose that exact moment to reveal himself." Ahhhh!!" The kids shrieked. After calming down the kids asked " Who dumped this rubbish?" " My masters, the Morons" " Can you call them for us?", the robot raised his hand, kind of like the metal from him was acting as a radio transmitter. Shortly afterwards the King, with his Moron minions strode in, like he was in a hurry, and demanded, " Who dares to summon the Moron king?" the kids explained how they wanted them to remove the rubbish from their skatepark. " No" said the king and stalked off. 

"What should we do? " despaired the kids, " I know! Lets ask Nanny Kōura, she always knows what to do." So they set off to the stream with the robot. They asked her what to do and she replied, " Well now you know how I feel when you dump your rubbish that eventually washes down to me! But don't worry I will help you. Call back those aliens! " The robot obliged and called them back. Just like before the king bustled in demanding who dared to call- but  before he finished the sentence he dropped to his knees and said " Your royal highness, forgive me ! " Nanny Kōura was confused, who is he talking to ? Then Kina said " I think he is talking to you, Nanny Kōura ! You do look a lot like them." So she played along and pretended to be the Morons long lost queen, she ordered them to take their mess back to their planet. The kids slowly started sneaking away but before they could go Nanny Kōura snapped " Just where do you think you are going!? come back here and tidy up YOUR mess ! " So the kids tidied up all the sweet wrappers, plastic bags and food containers. Afterwards the skatepark looked a lot more tidy! 

I think the moral of this play is to respect others environments, tidy up after yourself and Reduce, Recycle, Reuse! 

Speeches ! :-)

 The year has come around to the time of year when speeches are starting up again ! The topic is " Going for gold " and I am writing " Does everyone see things the same way? " This connects up to going for because once someone realizes that they see things differently they might get glasses to whatever they need to release their full potential and can go for gold ! 

This is my speech so far.

My speech is about going for gold, or is it yellow or orange ? How do we know that we see things the same way as the person sitting next to us ?

There are like 1, 2, 3, 4, ( counting off on fingers ), Whatever! Thousands ! Of reasons why people all see things differently, but I will only be sharing 3 reasons today otherwise, you will be sitting here for 3 hours and will be fast asleep. 14% of the population has Irlen Syndrome, What I have the coloured glasses thing. 46% have reading or learning difficulties including dyslexia. Now that I have got the hard numbers out the way, let's break it down.

That means out of all of us there are most likely 4 people who have undiagnosed Irlen, 3 counting me because I KNOW I have it. Irlen is just one of many different ways people see things differently, most commonly it’s diagnosed as ADHD or Dyslexia, because not many people know about Irlen, or other kinds of things like Irlen. My point is that there are so many people who have trouble doing things because they don’t know  that the words on a page aren't meant to float or move. My cousin didn’t know that the lines on the netball court were straight. She thought they were wavy. Things like this happen to EVERYONE.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty, how does Irlen and other things like Irlen work ? You would think that finding it hard to read  would mean that the problem  comes from the eye. WRONG. For Irlen the problem actually comes from the brain.

People with Irlens, brain just can’t handle some light waves, kind of like it’s allergic to some lights. It can cause headaches, problems with depth perception and tiredness. The part of the brain that is affected is the visual cortex ( the part that sorts through what you see ) and incredibly the only thing that sorts it out is coloured overlays or coloured glasses. The colour of your glasses and overlays changes as you get older. I had orange lenses, then pink, then berry tea, the colour I have now ( I called it berry tea because I couldn’t decide whether it was pink or purple. )

I still have to work on my intro, last reason, explanation and conclusion. So far I think I have done kind of well, what do you think ?

Life Education

 On Wednesday we did our last Life Education lesson. Life Education ( LE ) comes each year and teaches about different things.  This year it was about change; change in your body, change in you life and things like that. LE comes in a big bus, kind of like a school bus but with the school inside !

 The first session we did was on Monday and we wrote on a white board who are our " Superheroes "; who we can go to when things get tough. We also learnt a bit about neurons. Neurons are cells in our brain that make connections about things. For example you learn a new times table then your neurin would make a connection with another neuron, that knows about that sort of stuff and each time you practise that new times table your connections get stronger. If you are wondering how this all connects up to change, I will tell you. When you are going through a time of change your neurons are going CRAZY !! Making an uncountable amount of connections !

Then we watched a video on change. There was a boy called Billy who was moving from the country to Wellington and we saw how he dealt with this change. Fast forward to our second and last sesion. We learnt about characteristics that make a nice person to go to if you are struggling with change. After that went on a journey to  a newly discovered plant via rockit. Just kidding ! We actually watched a video that made you think that ! We were the first class EVER to watch this video and see how good it was. The planet was a place were there was no change at all, and we saw pictures of their daily life. The video was in animation so it wasn't that realistic but when we were taking of the camera shook and I started feeling like I was actually in a rockit. So all in all Life Education is a fun experience !

Cross country

 Our class had been preparing for cross country for weeks on end, and today we finally could do it ! In practises I had been coming second most of the time, so I felt kind of confident. Year 6 girls were first up, so I lined up with my friends ( more like rivals ! ) and tried to loosen up my muscles because I was cramping up I was so nervous. 

Koka Sue took a picture of us in our starting poses and then counted us in, On your marks, get set , GO ! I sprinted up ahead with Charlotte M ( a very fast girl who usually wins sprints and cross country and things like that ), Charlotte A ( my friend  rival ) and Kale'a my other friend  ultimate rival ! Soon we had blown the pack apart and the people who weren't up front with the sprinters had already sort of tired themselves out trying to catch up with us. 

We soon settled into our normal pace and continued on. After the second hill Josie had caught up to me and passed me and I made a mental note to pass her once I caught my breath. Turns out Josie was faster than I thought or I took longer to catch my breath but anyways she finished in 4th. The run was as groeling as user well but there was a light drizzle so I didn't over heat that much. 

It was a race for 5th between Charlotte A and I. She would gain a little ,then slow down, I would pass her and then she would catch up to me again. This repeated a few times before she had to stop to tie her shoe lace. I took this opportunity to try and catch up to Josie. I failed. Charlotte caught up to me but then had to tie her shoelace, AGAIN ! I tried to speed up a bit to make the gap between Josie and I smaller. Nearing the end I heard panting and a slight stomping of feet I looked behind me to see Charlotte A,  AAHHH !! I sprinted to the finish to get 5th place,  Charlotte close behind me. 

Charlotte M got 1st, Kale'a in second, Lola in 3rd , Josie 4th and me in 5th. I think that I ran as hard as I could and had fun. My favourite part was the big hill because there was a downhill and then the uphill and I love pushing myself up the hill. 

Lockdown Learning. Again !

 I have been doing lockdown learning for a week now. LL ( lockdown learning ) is almost the same a last year, but instead of just having whole class google meets we have been doing Maths, Reading and Writing google meets. At some points during the day I feel bored, even though there is so many activities for us to do. Speaking of activities I have been doing some Duolingo and I have been learning Dutch. Dutch is very similar to Flemish, the Belgium language which is were my Dad is from. 

Link to my P.E slides

Term 3 !

 Term three started with a bang and already I feel like I have been at school for weeks! The timetable hasn't changed much for me, so it is quite easy to get to workshops on time. I have moved up from writing Early Level 3 ( EL3 ) to Level 3 ( L3 ) which is great because I have been in EL3 for ever. 

Quick writes have changed a little, instead of having heaps of different topics now there is just story starters.  I quite like writing in narrative style and using lots of creativity, so the story starters are perfect for me! I wrote an interesting quick write yesterday, and the story starter was, There was smoke everywhere, so I thought I would put it in my blog. 

There was smoke everywhere. I HAD been reading  peacefully in my bedroom, but now my peace had been destroyed. That younger sibling of mine is a real handful sometimes. No, I change my mind ALL of the time, but this time she and my parents had gone too far. For starters who in the world would trust a pyromaniac seven year old to set the bonfire alight safely? Now because of my crazy younger sister all of Mum's prized Dalias are burnt to a crisp. Well done little sis, even I couldn't do that at your age plus blame it in me. 

I had to put out the fire, wash all of Izzy's ( my sister )  soot stained clothes and explain to Mum why her prize Dalia's are as dead as a dodo. I really had a good day to day! ( NOT! ) 

Do you like the story? I like how it is short, sharp and has humor and good ideas.

 

Speeches and Interschool Athletics

Yes, I know I have already done a blog post on speeches but this is about speech finals. So yes I did get into speech finals and I was super nervous because the judge was Bevan Chapman who works on the radio. Spoiler alert : I won the year 5 category ! :-). I was really surprised because I  thought that Rio would win, she did a speech on Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda  Ardern is New Zealand's Prime Minister. As you know I did my speech about Kate Sheppard, (I am assuming that you have already read my blog post about speeches, BUT if you haven't I would recommend reading my blog post about speeches so you know what I am talking about) 

So interschool athletics. Have any of you been to interschool athletics ?  Well I went to interschool athletics in week 4 and didn't get into any finals but came 3rd in the 100 and 200 meter sprints, Wainui also came 2nd or 3rd in the girls relay. ( Wainui is the school I go to it's full name is Wainui beach school ). Interschool Athletics is when the top people from your school compete against all the schools in your area. I think that as a whole the school did quite well because everyone did well, had fun and were good sports.