Taku Mokai

Recently in our classroom we have been learning how to introduce our pets in Te Reo Maori. Because we have a pet day coming up.  

Kowhaiwhai Art

My Kowhaiwhai Art

In He Kakano (our senior Māori group)we have been learning about
kowhaiwhai and their different meanings. We had to create a piece of
artwork showing at least one kowhaiwhai pattern. 

My kowhaiwhai artwork was based on not the traditional pattern but
the modern style. The straight line going through the middle of  my
pattern represents a jet stream from a plane because I love planes.
The curves on my pattern represent the waves of the ocean and sea.
My pattern is a combination of green,blue,red and black paints. I had
to do multiple coatings of paint on my work so the coat of paint
would not look so thin.

Packing My Bags For Egypt

WALT develop our own poem in response to a model ( packing my bags for…… by James Norcliffe ) use an increasingly descriptive vocabulary to add interest to our writing. Have some fun and be creative with ideas and imagination.

I’m going to Egypt to see the pyramids but I will need to be 

prepared for whatever is waiting for me there. First I will 

need to pack the gear I require in order to be safe in Egypt. 

One set of night vision, heat-seeking thermal goggles with

the ability to see traps and any movement so I can see any

 threats for a 100 mile radius, through walls making them

                                                   transparent.

One steel plated, knife sharpened, comfortable gripped, fire

 bladed, extendable sized, ice katana, as cold as ice, sword in 

                     case I get chased by ancient mummies.

One diamond armour chest-plate fitted with the softest of

 the softest padding, and a sphere shaped force field to pop

 up when I am in danger to protect me from the dangers that

                                                        await.   

One double barrelled electric powered infinite ammunition,

 shotgun with a mounted taser equip t with homing bullets

and no ejecting shells so if I shoot while I am hiding, I will not

                                             make a sound.

And one friend in case I get lonely or lost in the pyramids.

EAsttle Persuasive Writing - is music better than sport

My writing is about an argument to do with either sport or music is better. I think music and sport are both good because they both are great for your health physically and mentally. Firstly, sport is good because it helps your fitness and it also can occupy your time and is a fun activity to do. Sport has a range of choices: from soccer to mountain biking, sports can keep you well and healthy. If you do sports a lot of your life it can help make you live longer because if you are not outside you will not get vitamin d (sunlight) and if you do not do some type of physical activity you will become unfit and you could get overweight. Sport also could be a good career for you if you like sports and you could be a famous sports star.



Music is also a good thing to occupy your time with because you can learn how to play a musical instrument and when you learn to play for example a guitar then you can play a violin because you can read the same music notes but just a different method for playing the device. Music can also help take your mind off something traumatising. Music can also help your brain make your memory stronger and increase your skill of music. Music could be a good career option because you could be a famous singer of a famous DJ.

My Film Review On “The robber”

Today we went to the Toki Pounamu Film Festival. Each school made
little films. It was our first time doing this and it was held at the
Greymouth Regent Theatre. Below is my writing.

          My Film Review On “The robber”

My favourite mini- film was the first one. It was the one that was
about a robber and two sheriffs. At the first part of the film there was a
news report on how there was 2-million dollars stolen and that the
thief got away. On the second part of the film there was a high speed
pursuit between two sheriffs and the thief.

  There were four characters, two sheriffs, a news presenter, a thief and
a camera filming person. The makers of the film added in special
effects such as time lapse and slow motion. The film used props and
costumes. This film was very unique because it was not like the others.
The editing was smooth and I can see they put a lot of effort into this
film. The only problem was the fact that it was not related to the topic
as each film was meant to be about our local environment. However,
I found this film very entertaining.           

My Kiwi Collage

We have been learning to make a collage on Google Drawing. We had to use the explore, mask and arrange tools to get our collage to come together. We had to make a NZ bird and put it into its habitat. It was a lot of fun and I am really pleased with my bird. Have you ever had a go at this?

The Dragonfly

Recently we have been learning about insects and mini beasts as a school topic. We got to choose what insect we were doing for our minibeast writing. I did this information report with my friend Hamish. Go and see it on his blog too. Below is my writing. 

Charlie weta Information Report Planner - Term 3 2019

Recently we have been examining weta and studying them. We had to write an information report for this insect.            Click Here To See My Success Criteria

The Magnificent Weta Of Aotearoa

What Is A Weta?

Weta are an insect that inhabit the bushes of New Zealand. Weta punga is a Maori word that means god of ugly things. Weta are invertebrates which means that they have an exoskeleton and do not have a spine.  Weta are commonly seen in bushes or in swampy areas or possibly decaying things like a tree that's rotting. Weta usually don’t live in groups and usually never live in a family. Tree weta, a different type of Weta species  however live in big groups/families. Weta have antennae and weta have poor eyesight in the day. Weta have sticky feet which helps them climb up things such as trees and walls. Weta have eyes on their legs to help them climb things. During the daytime the eyes on the legs of weta are much more effective than the eyes on their head because weta do not usually use the eyes on their head for anything more than extra vision. Weta are half nocturnal because weta  don’t usually stay up during the day however tree weta and giant weta are the opposite to normal weta because the tree weta and giant weta can stay up during the day. Weta are an ancient species because they were around since the dinosaur age. Weta are classified as an insect. All female weta lay eggs. 

What Kind Of Weta Species Are There?

The most common species of weta is the seven species of tree weta. Weta are not pests or aliens or monsters they are in fact a very important part of our nature society. If weta and other insects such as bees die out then we would not be able to survive however if humanity died out then weta and other insects live, they would carry on with their life. There are five main species of Weta which include: Tree weta, Giant Weta, Ground Weta, Cave Weta, Tusked Weta.

Where Does A Weta Live?

A weta lives in the bush/ground. And weta spend hours if not days searching for the perfect home that suits the weta. The habitat has to be: camouflaged to disguise the home from humans or other predators. A perfect weta home has to be strong and able to last a long time. A perfect weta home must be waterproof and it must be to small for bigger animals and predators to fit inside. Tree Weta mainly live in holes in trees or rotten wood. Ground Weta live in holes in the ground. Cave weta live in sea coast caves. And tusked Weta live on the ground.

Weta Social Behaviour?

Weta are not social and do not live in groups apart from tree weta. Tree weta live in big groups/family’s. Weta can communicate by scraping their legs on a tree trunk.

Threats:  What Kind Of Threats Are They Up Against 

 Weta live a hard life that is full of threats and dangers such as humans, cats, rats,birds and other insects such as spiders and weather events like floods. However the one main threat to weta is humanity. Humans are destroying the weta habitats and killing them thinking they are a  pest. Humans need to stop recognizing weta as a pest. There used to be a lot more weta than there are today, however the amount of weta is rapidly decreasing because weta are getting hunted down from introduced animals. Another reason as to why the numbers of the weta are rapidly declining is because humans keep killing the weta instead of letting them go free. The main reason weta are dying out though is because loss of habitat. Humans need to protect the native bush areas for the weta to live in. 

by charlie

My Insect Writing.

Recently at school we have been working on a topic about insects and mini beasts. above is my work I have been doing.

Area And Perimeter D.L.O

To Build A Bot And Emotional Robots- Reading Work

Recently we have been working on an Emotional robots-AI and about kids building robots. We did this for our reading work. Below is the link click on the link to see my work.

                                                                  Click here to see my work                        Click here to see my robot I designed

The Break In

Hello my name is Charlie and I created this for a tech project for a senior rotation.

Transformation D.L.O

Hello lately we have been doing translation, rotation and reflection for math, here is my work

He Kakano Term 2 2019 Location and Direction

Hi everyone below is my He Kakano Term 2 2019 Location and Direction work that I have worked on for the previous three weeks. I worked on this work with Hamish after looking at my work go to his blog and see the work there too. I hope you enjoy my work thanks.

Abandoned places

Abandoned Places writing

Our learning goals are to:

-write a description, using powerful words and phrases

-include some Te Reo Māori

-carefully check that our sentences make sense and have correct punctuation and spelling.

Choose one of the images to prompt a piece of descriptive writing

My Abandoned Places Writing

I climb out of my 1410 Kitty Hawk. I put on my radio signal backpack and grab my 23kg first-aid
kit  and run out into the dark moist forest full of big tall evergreen pine trees. Marking the ground
I rush through the bushes and through the long trees stumbling over the long twisted tree roots.
I try to stay as quiet as possible because I know that the enemy is lurking around here. I can
still hear  EU 5651 Apaches above me scanning the ground for any signs of the enemy. 

Then all of a sudden SMASH, BOOM, CRASH!!! One of the EU 5651 Apaches comes tumbling
out of the sky and crashes through the thick tall trees. It is on fire and thick black oil is trickling
out of the nose of the helicopter. The windshield is smashed and the whole helicopter is dented
and damaged. Then BANG!!, BANG!!, BANG!! I can hear the noise of gunshots. My heart is
pounding out of my chest. Suddenly I saw the kakariki green bushes start moving and out of
nowhere.

 Two panzer army tanks drive right out of the bush. I start shooting the tanks but it is useless it
only makes one tiny bullet hole so I grab a grenade from my gun strap and climb up onto the
tank. I open up the hatch and use all my force to chuck the 11kg grenade into the hatch. The
driver and the gunner both jump out in fear. They both aim guns at me then all of a sudden a
douglas dc3 flies above me and drops a huge cylinder shaped object. At that moment I realize that it’s a bomb and run for my life but I feel a sharp object fly and hit my back. The two people yell “OI!!! COME BACK ER” I yell “NO!!!” but I soon regret saying that because they yelled “IF I AM GONNA DIE THEN YOU ARE COMING DOWN WITH ME”. They both hold up guns and grab my arm. But I hastily jump before the bomb hits I feel a strong gust of thick smoke and wind hit my back. I can feel tiny shards of rock, metal and wood fly past my back. However I suffer bad smoke and gas inhalation so I quickly grab a gas mask that is dangling from my neck and put it on as fast as possible. I try to escape the burning gas and radiation. 

Then just out of the corner of my eye I see a crumbling brick building covered in moss. I see it and rush in to it as the planes soar above me dropping bombs and as the army tanks drive past me through the thick fudgy soil. I can still hear the machine guns shooting rapidly in the distance. Suddenly I hear the ground rumbling and the old building starts to shake with bricks crumbling off. Then a colossal sized army tank drives straight into the old building sending it smashing into pieces I get blasted and I fall over only to find a huge green army tank driving straight over me but I'm still alive. I quickly crouch down under the tank luckily I'm not injured. So I grab a land mine and place it under the tank. I run for my life I hear a deafening roar in the distance behind me. I keep on running until I reach the end of the wet, cold, damp, pango black forest. I burst out of the bushes and meet my team at the port. There is an aircraft carrier waiting for me there I jump onto the aircraft carrier and run across the floating runway and climb into a spitfire then I disappear off into the kikorangi blue sky...    

Making a Paper Plane

Hi, today I researched how to make a paper plane. I have made a presentation of the instructions. When you have had a go, let me know how your plane flew, and maybe send me a photo. Smart Blogging.

My Scratch Project

Task: create a simple animation using scratch that teaches people some of our phrases of the week - Korero o te wiki.

WALT:

-use scratch to code for computational thinking
-learn how to create basic code on scratch
-say basic phrases in Te Reo Maori

Click here to see our Korero o te Wiki-
Phrases of the week.

See my scratch project below

Test

test

My Marae Recount

       My Marae Recount

In Term two, week one, 1-2 of May, my class and I went on a field trip to our local marae at Arahura. We were going to the marae because we wanted to learn all about the Māori culture.

Finding Greenstone

 We were going to go down to the river to find greenstone\Pounamu as one of our first activities on our marae trip. We headed off down the street. It was an extremely steep and straight street, I nearly fell over a few times. As I was walking down the street it was very slippery; as slippery as ice because of all the dew and frost from the morning. We arrived at a small clearing on the bank of the river. It was next to a long industrial concrete bridge. We had to walk through a short gorsy track through some trees and shrubs. It was very muddy and slippery  and I cut my leg in the process of walking down to the river. We arrived under the bridge and we had to walk through a sequence of streams in order to get to the other side of the bridge. It was very rocky and the river did not have much sand. Where there was sand it had a random gooey substance. I was searching up and down the river eager to find some greenstone. Not many people were having much luck in finding greenstone, then just when I thought I was not going to find any my hopes raised when I found a huge piece glistening in the sunlight in a crystal clear stream. At first I thought it was not greenstone\Pounamu and it was just a green rock but I picked it up. It must have weighed over 6kgs because it was very heavy. I carried it over to Jerry ( an expert at finding greenstone ) and he said it was a genuine piece of greenstone\Pounamu. I continued searching up and down the river keeping my eyes peeled, in the end I did not find a second piece. Eventually we headed back up the steep hill to the marae.





Sports Game

As the night creeped over the sky we did a rotation activity with a choice of tukutuku panels, soap carving, a game and  weaving. I did a sports game first. It was fun because we were constantly running. I tripped over a few times. We did a hockey game it was a game where you were given a number and you had a partner from another team that has the same number. When your number is called out you and the person with the same number from the other team run out and you grab a makeshift hockey stick each. You had to prevent the ball from getting into your goal while your trying to get the ball in your opponents goal. Then when we had our rotation I swapped round to soap carving. It was very messy. While everyone was making beautiful carvings I was just cutting out roughly a huge hole through my soap. I was making such a mess that the table was covered from top to bottom in soap crumbs!.


The next day we got in the car. We were going to do a walk around lake Mahinapua. On the way Hamish, who was traveling in the same car as me, put a pillow case on his head and pretended he was kidnapped. He tapped on the window and faintly said, “Help I've been kidnapped.” Whenever a car came he would do his act by tapping on the window with the pillow case on his head but all of a sudden we saw a police car in the distance. If the police officer saw Hamish pretending to be kidnapped the police officer would have taken it seriously. We stopped off  at the start of the walk.  There was a historic rail car off a bush locomotive. I got into a group of four  and we were running through the track. We reached the end of the track after going through a series of muddy puddles. I slipped over on slippery wet tree roots a few times. We stopped at a clearing at the end of the track with a small view of the lake. We listened to a maori story from ancient maori culture and had a snack. Then we headed back. Shannon, Flynn, Cameron,  Aiden and me pretended it was world war 2 and we pretended to shoot the Germans and the German army tanks. Then we reached the end of the walk. 

I really enjoyed my stay at the marae and I thank all the caretakers who work there. 

Photos are on the page below 



         



  

My Quote Art

Recently we have been doing some quote art. We used pastel to make a pastel version of our real face. We had to add a background behind our artwork face. Next we had to write an inspirational quote that we believe in. On the above shown is my art work.

If I had wings...

For the past few weeks we have been doing poetry. This weeks task was a poem about if I had wings... First we had to answer some questions and then we had to colour in the piece of paper with  the poem. Last of all we had to write our own if I had wings poem. We had to use sticky ( interesting ) language, use the five senses and use interesting verbs and nouns. Here is my poem.

My School Kit Poem

Over the past few weeks we have been part of get NZ writing poetry project. This project is aimed to get 96,000 poems written across New Zealand. We were sent a tin with some objects in it and I used two of these objects to write poems. Here are my poems.

Powhiri Process

we have been learning about being welcomed onto a marae. Here is my writing work about powhiri.

Powhiri Process

I am writing this text to explain to the reader the process of a
powhiri.

Wero

As soon as you arrive at the marae they will question you to see if
you come in peace or war. If you come in peace they will welcome
you and let you stay if you come in war and violence they will send
you off. If you came in war and disrespect they won't attack you like
they did in the ancient times.  One of the warriors does the wero.

Karanga

If you come in peace they will allow you stay. Then they will
welcome you by doing the call of welcome. The call of welcome is
when the women gently and gracefully say a slow sentence in a
song form this is called the Karanga.  

Whaikorero

Once they have welcomed you they will give a speech. The
speeches are a very important in the welcoming process. During a
maori welcoming speech you should never talk because in maori
culture it is considered disrespectful but in any speech in any culture
you should never talk anyway.   Some of the male leaders do the
Whaikorero.

Waiata

Once a gift has been given it is time for another waiata (maori song).
The waiata started off by the women but then the men join in.

Hongi

Now it's time for the hongi. The hongi is when you touch noses with
another person. The hongi is a -maori form of greeting.

Kai

After all of the greeting events have taken place it's time for a huge
maori feast of delicious kai (food). The kai often is fresh food that
the marae have grown themselves.   

Poroporoaki

When you have had your stay and are about to leave, the hosts have
a special ceremony to farewell you and thank you for coming to
stay at the marae. They may even have a special haka to show their
appreciation.    The guests often show there thanks by singing a
special song.

By Charlie

Kawa of care

We have been learning to follow the kawa of care which tells us how to look after our devices and be cyber smart. We had to chose three rules to write about. here is my work.

Digital arts

https://spark.adobe.com/video/5gUTorbafQNzK

Not just a house

Not Just a House

I am writing this piece of writing to explain what a marae is and how it works.


A Marae is a very special building because it holds all the members and relatives of the Māori tribe. It also holds all the memories of the relatives who passed away. The marae is so special in many ways it also has so many secrets that a visitor might not be able to identify for example the carvings.  The carvings on a marae aren't just a decoration they are part of what keep the Maori culture running and most carvings hold a special legend or story: carvings are much more than meets the eye. The carvings are carved by highly talented carvers. One small Māori carving could potentially take months to carve and a wharenui could take years to build.

There are a handful of different Māori names for each part of the house. The marae even has
special names for the roof and the rafters. Depending on its age a marae can be modern and
fancy or just casual and normal. Either way a marae can be a stunning site to visit. If you're
lucky you might even visit a marae which has a waka-  ( a maori canoe) and you might even
get a ride on a waka. Even a waka could take one year or more to get it to perfection. To build a
waka you must be very talented to carve out a waka. Another rule at our local marae is when
 you are in the marae you are not allowed to take any photos at all in the marae.

  

A marae is very important because not only is it a sacred  place but it is just like a book: it holds
the photos of the past relatives. The rafters and framing are just like a body of an ancestor.
There is even a head on the top of the arms on the front of the building. Another word for the
head is Koruru. It is meant to be the head  of the tribe or whanau who would have passed away.
It is also a special place because when a natural disaster occurs the civilians whose houses
could have been taken down with the storm are more than welcome to go to the marae and
stay there as long as they like. So the caretakers or owners of the marae are very generous.
These are some of the reasons why a marae is a very important place.

By Charlie