Ways Manners Help the World Go Better

1. Using manners makes you a better person.

2. If you use manners regularly, you will have more friends and people will like you more because you are polite.

3. When you use manners you are being grateful.

4. Using manners is showing respect to others.

5. If you are tidy and regularly pick up your mess, you are noticing the fact you have made a mess. 

6. Speaking in a low or quiet voice keeps a room peaceful. Being loud can be a distraction and can count as invading others' personal space.

7. Getting on with a job or something you have been told to do is being respectful of that person by following the instructions they have given you. 

8. If you touch other people and invade their personal space and privacy you are being disrespectful of that person's privacy.

9. Not using bad or offensive language is being respectful of everyone else you are near because using bad language makes you look bad as a person.

10. Asking other people about their day or how they are feeling can make the other person’s day a lot better and can cheer them up. 

11. Making other people feel better by recognising they are in trouble or need help is being helpful and can make you feel good about yourself too.

12. Appreciating others' helpfulness makes you look better as a person and helps other people by recognising their help and acknowledging them.

13. Taking the blame for yourself instead of blaming other people and lying, is making the scene not last as long and when you get it over and done with, everyone can get on with something else. 

14. Be honest to everyone. Being honest with people can make people like you and let you have lots of friends and people can trust you because they know you don’t lie to others. 

15. Be kind to those around you. When you are rude and disrespectful, people will hate you and not like you. It will also make you feel unhappy or angry if you are rude to others. 

16. Seeing a good, funny or positive side to every mistake is a good skill to have and can help people realise everything isn’t always bad. 

17. Compliment people regularly. It can give people a good reason to be happy and it makes them happy to hear something nice about themselves. A compliment can even just be about how nice you think they are or “you like them because they are funny.” It can make everyone’s day much better. 

18. By using manners you can be a better person. Without manners the world would be like a pig sty because no-one would take care of anything or anyone. 

19. Noticing others mistakes and helping them fix it. 

20. Thinking about how others may react. If you realise that something you do is going to make someone react badly, don’t do it. 

21. Giving things that aren’t yours back to the person that owns it. 

22. Ignoring people doing the wrong thing can make that person stop being disrespectful and can make that person realise what they are doing wrong. 

23. If you can see an argument starting, don't be a part of it.

Tech

Today at tech we started our term 4 classes. I am in cooking for first block and digitech for second block. 

Cooking

In cooking this term we are focusing on cutural foods. Today we looked at New Zealand and we made a modern day hangi pack. Traditional hangi's are made in a hole underground with hot rocks at the base and cabbage leaves to seperate the rocks from the food. Then the food goes into baskets and is put underground. It is usually left for over an hour to cook. The vegetables that go into the hangi is potato, kumara (sweet potato), pumpkin, carrot and cabbage. There is also chicken included in the hangi. Along with this food you can make a stuffing mix, and roll it together to make stuffing balls. Once the stuffing balls are made you place all of the food on a piece of tinfoil and add a tablespoon of water on top of the food. After that seal the food completly so it can cook properly, especially the chicken because if chicken isn't cooked properly it can give you food poisoning. Once you have prepared the meal, cook your hangi in an oven at 200º fan forced. In about 45 minutes the hangi will be cooked. 

Digitech

In digitech we are going to be creating our own game using coding and scratch. Yesterday we all did the same game but we had to do the second half of the coding in pairs or by ourselves. 

Literacy Reflection

For the last few weeks in literacy, we have been looking at how the authors and directors tell and show the reader or viewer about the character. A few of the ways authors and directors do this is by looking at the different elements: Actions, speech, environment, costume and general appearance of the characters. 

We looked at a few different scenes from the Harry Potter series and read some pieces from the book. We were looking at the elements and deliberate choices the authors and directors use to introduce a character. 

An example is the way Hermione talks properly and speaks the full words compared to how Ron speaks when he speaks all the words together and uses slang. 

In the following scene Jessica and I have included the use of the different elements to introduce our characters. One of my friends gave me feedback on my script by highlighting the different elements in my script. Appearance: Yellow, Environment: Green, Actions: Red and Speech/Words: Blue.

I think my script turned out well and I did a good job creating the characters because I have thought about the characters words, attitude, appearance and more. 

My next steps are to organise my time and make sure I have enough time to finish my work. I also need to work on including more words to describe the appearance and environment in a scene.

Vera is in science class. She is asked to be buddies for the session. Ada is the only other girl in the class without a partner. She has never met this girl before and is shy. Once they start on the science project, Ada thinks it's funny to stuff up by using rare potions as a joke, even though she doesn’t know how they work. But Vera does. So once Ada pours the potion in the mix the two spark with friendship magic. The next day they become instant friends, the potion was a friendship potion. Of course!

Teacher: “Does anyone not have a partner?”

Ada: (calls out loudly, waving her hand)  “Me! I don’t have a partner.”

Teacher: “Okay anyone else?”

Vera mumbles that she doesn’t have a partner but the teacher can’t understand what she is trying to say. 

Teacher: “What was that Vera?”

Vera: mumbles again.

Teacher: “Ada, you can go with Vera.”

Ada: confidently walks over to Vera’s table and sits down next to her.

Ada: (talking nonstop really fast.) “Hi, I’m Ada. Nice to meet you, how’s your day going? Mine is just fine, I got to hang out with the popular girls at break time!” 

Ada rants off about her day as if she's met Vera before

Ada: (Really fast talking and what she's ranting about.) “My little brother fell down today and I laughed and it turned out that he almost broke his leg… and he cried all day haha. It was also kind of scary but of course I knew he would be fine. Dad got angry with me because I didn’t listen and refused to make my bed. Gosh parents are annoying.”

Vera thought Ada was a little strange and didn’t particularly like her.

Vera: (harsh voice)“Do you mind?! I don’t actually care about you I’m only with you because of this stupid science project!”

Ada: “Geez. Didn’t realise you had a bad temper. Maybe you should fix that for next time.”

The girls behind snigger at Ada’s small joke. 

Vera: “Maybe you should get started on the science project.” (the word ‘you’ is spoken back to her, based off of her past sentence)

Ada: (Enthusiastic voice) “Okay, let’s go then. What do we have to do?”

Vera: “Didn’t you listen?!”

Ada (Sighing): “I guess not.”

Vera: “Well we have to make a science potion so we can get better grades.”

Ada: “I’m putting this into the potion and also I don’t care about my grades, they don’t matter anyway.”

Ada holds up a bottle of fraelin and tips it into the large container. 

Vera: “Ada, NO!”

Ada: “Why not smarty pants. I can do whatever I want.”

Vera: “Can’t you see?! I’m wanting to get good grades here for once and you think it’s funny to add whatever you want into this potion. It will do something deadly, I’ve read all about these chemicals.”

Ada: “You can’t stop me.”

Teacher: “What’s happening here?”

Ada: “I’m just pouring stuff into the potion glass.”

The teacher glances over at Ada. 

Teacher: “And do you know what those chemicals are?”

Ada: “No but that doesn’t matter. Nothing bad will happen.”

The rest of the session Ada is pouring random stuff into the glass and Vera is about to storm out of the room, but she doesn’t. 

Vera:  (calm voice) Ada...for the last time, please, can we just do the right thing.”

Ada: “Fine, okay. Do whatever you want. Please yourself you clearly don’t want me here helping so see you.”

Ada leaves the science room.

Vera: (Sarcastic voice) “Thank god she’s gone.”

Vera finishes her project before the girls’ break. She is given an A+ while Ada is given a D- for her effort in her work but not listening to her teacher. 

Ada comes back.

Vera: (enthusiastically) “Yay I got an A+!”

Ada: (grumbling and sarcastic) “Yay (eye roll), I got a D-.”

Sailing

 On Tuesday the year 8's went sailing. I had never been sailing before and I was super nervous about trying it. We firstly took a bus to Lake Rua, then got taught the rules and how the day was going to work. Next we learnt to set up the boat and put all the pieces on properly, then we got to do the setting up. After the setting up we had morning tea, then a one-to-one system when there was one person and boat going out on the lake with a coach on a motorised boat. Once everyone had had one go it was lunch time and after that we had a one-to-five ratio on the water where there were five kids on the water with boats and one coach but they had all three coaches on the water and all of the boats on the water. Once we had finished sailing we packed up everything and had the choice to go for a swim. I chose to go swimming because it was so hot but the water was freezing! Overall the day was fun and exciting. Hopefully this inspires you guys to have a go at sailing. 

Tangram Builder

Today in maths we used a website called tangram builder to create shapes, people and animals out of shapes. Here are some of the shapes I created. To make the tangram shapes we had to rotate, flip and slide the pieces. To create the tangrams, we are learning about angles too because we can rotate the shapes certain amount of degrees and we can see the different angles in the shapes. Like the triangles are like 90 degree angles. Here is the tangram builder website so you can create tangrams too: https://mathigon.org/tangram

 

William PIke Challenge Clean Up

Yesterday me and some kids from my class cleaned up the streets around school. We took giant rubbish bags and almost filled up all of them. Everyone got into groups and we each shared a bag. My group found 68 cigarette butts. We did this clean up for part of the William Pike Challenge and spent an hour doing this. On the way back from picking up rubbish, we found a lot of cardboard boxes somewhere and took them back to the school skip. It was actually a lot of fun but gross at the same time and it felt good to help our community.