Yasmin's News

Hello Hello

Welcome to the newest blog entry! I know, I didn’t keep my promise, I  said I would write every Friday, but I didn’t, I’m sorry. Forgive me? 

What Room V has been up to…

SDL

SDL is and acronym for Self-Directed Learning (or in one particular person’s case, Self Inflicted Learning) and it is a period of time in which we (the students) get to timetable our day. We might as well just scribble FREE TIME all over our timetables, ha ha ha (jokes!). Anyway, what happens is that we receive the timetables, which are blank of course, and we get a sheet specifying the work we are to do each day. We put each subject in an empty block of our day and then complete the work attached to it. For Jay, it’s probably really handy because he can test people. He likes testing, apart from throttling children and drinking the occasional (ha!) Coke. We also get checklists showing our capabilities for each subject. So now I have maths in the afternoon and can put it wherever I feel like putting it. The sad thing is that I have to do it, and maths is all around me. Without maths, they wouldn’t have been able to make this keyboard I’m typing on! Anywho, let’s get on with the blog entry…

Art Week

Last week we had Art Week, a week we have every year that we spend just doing art, art and more art. Lucky drama counts as an art, because I did that with Jay. We did a play, which you could call a kinaesthetic play because we had to move all around our ‘stage’ -a park- to do it successfully. It was called Making Movies, a play about a director who is totally broke and cons his actors into performing for free. Rated R12, for teacher bashing references and baby-rude words (bottom and knickers, the like.) I did it fabulously of course.

formal time Formal Time FORMAL TIME!

On 17 December, all the seniors are leaving! Well, not all of them, the Year Sevens still have to sit here under Jay’s thumb, but the Year Eights are. We have organized a formal and we are leaving this formal at 9:30 (woo hoo). We’re all going to receive books of our choice, and just have a good time and make the most of it.

 

So I guess that’s it then. What a short blog.

 

Bye Bye

Yasmundo

All That Jazz

I am back again with my splendiferous, fabulicious new blog entry! You’ll hear all the typical stuff and all that jazz.

Maths
Recently, we had a second math test on Algebra. Jay liked watching our faces contort in mathematical torture while he just sat down and laughed. We’re having another One Hour Mystery Math Session again, about a child who stole a gigantic cookie. Of course I wouldn’t do that! Would I…

SDL
The SDL season is here again, which stands for Self Directed Learning (or, in Sam’s case, Self Inflicted Learning)! This is when we are allowed to learn whatever we want during the week, as long as it’s an actual subject in the NZ curriculum. We also have to do some reading, writing and maths exercise every day. This means I get to do maths in the afternoon, yay. I hope Jay’s going to give us the timetables soon…

Speeches
The Thorndon Speech Season has come to an end with two champions going onto the Finals, our two senior school pioneers, Hannah Saul and Mikey Mazey! WOOOT!

Science Roadshow
Just yesterday, we hopped on two different buses to go to the Hutt to see the Science Roadshow, which is pretty much a bunch of science experts going around the country to show us a seemingly endless variety of science exhibits. There were several displays, like Maps. On that, you have to predict the different names of types of maps, like Geological Map, Physical Map and Political Map.

Japanese
We have Japanese every Friday, just before Technology. We were made to do an inquiry on a main branch of Japan. For example I’m doing Japanese folklore. Did you know that their ruler of the underworld is Enma, a man always portrayed as short tempered and merciless. To scare children into telling the truth, parents used to say, “If you lie, Enma will pull out your tongue!” I’m sure that had a way of getting the truth out of them.
Be back next week for more Blogannuation! (my new word for Weekly Blog Entries.)

Yasmin

Term 3

Welcome to this new, sparkling, fabulicious Room 5 blog!
The blog has gone all grey and dusty and old because Jay was so busy being evil, he forgot about this poor, neglected blog! Well, now you have a new post written by moi (Yasmin Larry) so read and enjoy!

Maths
Recently we have begun a new unit of maths – Algebra. It requires logical thinking, and the use of letters in the place of numbers. If you keep trying, it really isn’t that difficult. To improve on this, we have been doing ‘One-Hour Mysteries’ (as a class) to develop our mathematical thinking.

Writing
We participated in the Senior School Short Story Competition (a tongue twister in itself) and three stories were just good enough to get through to His Principalness Mr Sutton:
Lydia – “Lost” (A drama that deserves an Oscar)
Ben – “The Life of a Serial Killer” (It’s a fantastically twisted story)
Hannah – “The Unfortunately True Story of Me” (Better than Jacqueline Wilson,Roald Dahl and Jane Austen altogether)
We wish them all good luck!

Maori
We were asked to take any book out of our library of Maori books and translate it into English. We are going to scan these into a Powerpoint and then record our voices reading it. We will then share these with the Junior School.

Art
About two weeks ago (when SOMEONE should have been writing this) we had our first Graham Braddock Art Course. We were taught how to draw Still Life. It’s a lot more complicated than just drawing a bunch of fruit and leaving it alone. It’s boundaries, shades, dimensions, lines, scales, centimetres... More recently, we did Still Life on our own. You can come into Room 5 if you want a Butcher’s Hook (UK slang for look).

Inquiry
We have been doing a HUGE inquiry on China. Our big question is:

WHAT ARE THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NZ CULTURE AND CHINESE CULTURE?

We have been investigating this question in several different areas: Food, Medicine, Art, Government, Family, etc, etc. And let me put you in on a secret:
We’re planning to have this fantastic exhibition on what we have learnt! It is going to be fantabulous, I tell you, and that is all I can let loose. It will be fantabulous.

And one last thing…
SPEECH SEASON IS NEAR!

5 days,9 hours,30 minutes and 55 seconds left till Speech Day…

On a closing note, I would like to thank Jay for giving me this job…well actually it’s not a job because:

“If you like what you do, you’ll
never work another day in your life”
-Kong Qiu

And I love it!

I also promise to not be like our evil teacher and neglect this blog, and write in it every week. Jay’s happy now.

Rainbows,
Yasmin

Art Exhibition

Last term we studied the art of Don Binney. We identified what was special about his art and then practiced drawing and painting in his style. Our paintings will be on display at Wholly Bagels in Thorndon for two weeks from 31st of July. Here are some examples.

Films

Children from all the different classes at Thorndon have been working together to make a series of one-minute films. The link to these is:

http://schoolepisodes.wetpaint.com/

Visit and let us know what you think of the films.

Birds

This term Thorndon School is working on an inquiry project about birds.

On the 7th of May, we went to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. First we had a talk with a bird expert called Tom. He took out some feathers and we had to identify what bird they were from. He also told us about and showed us some of the opossum traps they use to keep opossums away from the birds. After some talking, Tom took us on a tour around some of the sanctuary. We saw and heard lots of native birds and learnt about them. I have to say that it was very exciting and we all learnt a lot. The other classes also went to the Wildlife Sanctuary as well, but on other days.

In class we have been watching some DVDs and YouTube clips about different birds to learn about them. We have also visited the library and are reading loads of different books about birds. We have also started to write reports on birds. Some people are writing about birds that are endemic to New Zealand, like the Kiwi, and some people are even doing extinct birds. We have to have at least 3 sources to take notes from. We used the internet and books to gather information. Then we put our notes under sub-headings, organising the notes into categories. Some people have started their draft of their report, while others are still taking notes.

One last thing, our class has our own Birds Wiki. It has information on birds, video clips of birds, and you can add information to it anytime! The wiki address is:

http://thorndonbirds.wetpaint.com/

Check it out!

By Lilly

A Tale For A Dark Stormy Night

The Cellar

When we bought the house, I was three years old, not quite old enough to know what was going on. My parents were opening up a Greengrocers at the front, which was what it had been used for when it was new, in the thirties. The cellar, they agreed, would be excellent for storing potatoes and the like. The house was drastically renovated, and was moved into in 1999.

That was a little over nine years ago. Birthdays came and went, I got pimples; our cat was born, lived, and died.

And all that time, I stayed utterly terrified of the cellar. It started when I heard It moving in the cellar, which happens to be directly underneath my room. Then I heard It bringing in It’s kill. At first, small things- sparrows and rats, even the odd cat. But as It grew, so did the size of It’s prey, which had become dogs, cows, and the occasional lost child. My parents thought I was paranoid to be scared of a room, and I knew that they wanted to arrange a visit to a psychiatrist for me. It wasn’t particularly scary, not the room itself- just a large, stone cellar, with four walls and a ceiling.

My mother grew more and more irritated at my behaviour- I had grown thin and pale, and jumped at sudden noises. But that was only because It had started talking to me.

'Come,' it said. 'You know just as well as I, it won’t be long now.'

That scared me beyond anything I had ever known before. I had tried to run away, many times, don’t get me wrong. But each and every time, I was found, and put back in the room above the cellar. At long last, driven to breaking point by my phobia, my mother decided to teach me once and for all that there was nothing in the least frightening about the cellar. I shrieked and fought, howled and bit, wept and pleaded, but it was all in vain. She dragged me down into the cellar by the hair, opened the door, and told me she would come back for me in ten minutes.

And then she did a terrible thing.

My mother locked the door.

It came shambling towards me, jowls stained with the blood of previous victims. It howled with glee even as I screamed with terror, only one option left open to me. So I took it. I ate it.

After all, that’s what I did with all the kill it used to bring me.

The problem is, however ...

I’m still hungry…

By Hannah Saul