Writing sample

Today we assessed our own writing samples. We had to write what score we thought that we deserved, and then we had to explain why we deserved that score. My final score was 43/5a. I think I deserved this score because I feel that my writing had all the correct structures for an advanced writer. I am quite proud of my score.

A special place in the community.

Write to explain to your reader why this place is special.

Think about:

• what your reader needs to know about the marae
• how you are going to introduce the marae
• the order of your ideas and how you link them.

A marae is more than just an artifact. A marae is eligible for a lot
more considerate things than just being a historical value. Families
visit marae to become a stronger clan. A marae is special because it
is utilized for celebrations, milestones, reunions, shelter for the
homeless, Te reo maori and many more cooperative assists. A marae
is the foundation of families. A marae provides an authentic lifestyle
that families hope to come home for. A marae can bring forth comfort
from families and it can also make families come together as one.
All marae are different and have powerful meanings to back them up.
You will come across many marae that are carved, and then on the
other hand you have many marae that are not carved. These minor
things don’t mean that people are not maori, it has a stronger meaning
that many people or tribes have different perspectives of how they
want their marae to look. 

Celebrations occur at a marae quite a lot. These are reasons for
families to come together and celebrate occasions with their many
loved ones. Celebrations have always been apart of the marae because
the ancestors of ancient years also celebrated birthdays or reunions
at a marae. A celebration that prevails at a marae is usually backed by
a huge hakari. You should never come across a marae that doesn’t
supply the manuhiri or whanau with a kai after whatever occasion
takes place. This is just one of the many things that the kaumatua,
kuia and most of all ancestors had high standards of. Celebrations are
examples of how families can use the time together for bonding and
reuniting. 

In New Zealand itself, there are way to many people that are
homeless and this subtracts the strong wairua that our maori nature
provides. By far there are a few marae, specifically located in Mangere.
Mangere is apart of the big city called Auckland and in Mangere there
is a marae called Te Puea memorial marae that has agreed to open up
their doors for all homeless people to feel welcomed along with a lot of
comfort. These marae have campaigns going to support homeless people
with clothes, food, comfort and many more civil acts all likely to make
people feel welcome. This is very helpful because this however has a
big impact on marae and how people choose to look at them. 

Te reo maori has a big repercussion on marae because Te reo maori is
the indeginous language of Aotearoa. If you were to listen in on
kaumatua and kuia mihi, you will hear their whakapapa and their pepeha.
This is one way to find out how you are related to them and they would
usually announce their family line, so you will also recognise some of
your relatives. When the manuhiri are brought onto the marae,
sometimes there are Kaumatua that mihi as they walk in, they are
most likely acknowledging loved ones that have passed on or thanking
the kai karanga. These are some authentic things that families are
proud to come home for. 

A marae is very special in many ways. It is vigorously vital to keep
our maori language compulsory so that many generations from now
can endure the language just as much as the tupuna did. Marae are
used for celebrations, shelter for the homeless and most importantly
Te reo maori. A marae is held to manufacture memories and also to
gather for the commemoration of a loved one. More importantly a
marae is known as a forever home.

S&L	Ideas	orga	sent	vocab	punc	spell	total
6	6	6	6	6	6	6

For Structure and Language I thought I used all the structural features
that was appropriate to the genre. I used a variety of language features
that were a perfect fit for my criteria.

For Ideas I thought that I showed insight, originality and some authority
and/or reflection on the wider world. My ideas were deliberately selected,
effective and elaborated well. This is why I scored myself a 6 for ideas. 

For organisation I scored myself a 6/6  because I know my paragraphs were
properly sequenced and structured. 

For Sentence Structure I scored myself a 6 I thought I could write a
variety of sentences that are grammatically correct. Most of my sentences
were correctly structured for effect.

For Vocabulary I thought used precise vocabulary that were descriptive,
effective and expressive. My vocab were all technical and abstract for
effect.

For Punctuation I thought I was able to use a variety of punctuation that
enhanced my writing and very little mistakes.

For Spelling I thought I spelt essential words and a range of difficult or
diverse words of a few or no errors.

Rugby World Cup - Quarter Finals

Today Miss Simeon is our teacher! We spent our morning learning about the Rugby world cup quarter finals. I thoroughly enjoyed this task because it was all about researching facts and information about the 8 different countries that made it into the Quarter Finals. I didn't actually find any of this task challenging! We used two apps for this challenge and one of them was just google docs and the other one my My google Maps. My google maps is a site that you can use to pinpoint a country and it allows you to add information, images and videos. Other people can also access your work, that is if you allow permission..... I hope you enjoy!

New Zealand - All blacks

Ireland - Wolfhounds

Australia - Wallabies

England - Lions

Wales - WRU

France - The blues

Japan - Sakuras

South Africa - Spring box

New Zealand:

Population: 4.794 million

Team Captain: Kieran Read

Capital city: Wellington

Name of the team: The All Blacks

Fact 1: 2.5 million cars for 4 million people (including the kids) makes New Zealand’s car ownership rate one of the highest in the world.

Fact 2: The Maori name for New Zealand is ‘Aotearoa’. It means “the land of the long white cloud”.

Highest Land point: Aoraki/Mt Cook

Ireland:

Population: 4.784 million

Team Captain: Rory Best

Capital city: Dublin

Name of the team: Wolf hound

Fact 1: Ireland is the only country in the world to have a musical instrument as its national symbol. 

Fact 2: Green wasn’t always associated with St. Patrick. In fact, historians say that St. Patrick’s color was light blue.

Highest land point: Carrauntoohil

Australia:

Population: 24.6 million

Team Captain: Michael Hooper

Capital city: Canberra

Name of the team: The Wallabies

Fact 1: Australia is even bigger than you think it is. It's almost the same size as mainland USA

Fact 2: The world's largest sand island can be found in Australia - Fraser Island

Highest land point: Mount Kosciuszko

England:

Population: 55.62 million

Team Captain: Sean O'Loughlin

Capital city: London

Name of team: Lions

Fact 1: England is the most populated country in the United Kingdom. The other countries that make up the United Kingdom are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Fact 2: There is only a 34 kilometre (21 mile) gap between England and France 

Highest land point: Scafell Pike

Wales:

Population: 3.125 million

Team Captain: Sam Warburton

Capital city: Cardiff

Name of team: WRU

Fact 1: The country of Wales is said to contain more castles per square mile than any other country in the world.

Fact 2: Wales is often termed "the land of song" the country is known for its harpists, male choirs, and solo artists

Highest land point: Yr Wyddfa

France:

Population: 66.99 million

Team Captain: Guilhem Guirado

Capital city: Paris

Name of team: The blues

Fact 1: France is the largest country in the EU, and known as ‘the hexagon’

Fact 2: France was the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food

Highest land point: Mont Blanc

Japan:

Population: 126.8

Team Captain:Michael Leitch

Capital city: Tokyo

Name of team: Sakuras

Fact 1: The Japanese name for Japan is “Nihon” or “Nippon” which means “sun origin”.

Fact 2: Tokyo is the capital city of Japan and also the largest city. Other major cities include Osaka, Nagoya, and Sapporo.

Highest land point: Mount Fuji

South Africa: 

Population: 56.72 million

Team Captain: Schalk Brits

Capital city: Cape Town

Name of the team: Spring box

Fact 1: The world's first successful heart transplant was performed in Cape Town

Fact 2: The two biggest man made holes in the world were excavated in South Africa

Highest land point: Mafadi

My Statistics Data

This presentation presents my Statistics Data from my test. We had three different tests that are often completed every term! My presentation includes images of my tests and also highlights and reflections. I hope you enjoy!

Epro8

This afternoon, a rather large group of yer 7 and 8's travelled down to Whangarei intermediate school to compete in the yearly Epro8 challenge. I was lucky enough to be apart of the large group! Not gonna lie, I was so nervous just thinking about the different challenges that we had to complete in a action packed amount of time..... Well not exactly, we basically had 2 and a half hours to complete as many challenges as we could! We had come across a rough start to our challenge. We all then payed attention and slowly got the flow of how everything functioned. We also had a little glance at every elses creations here and there so that we could get a fair idea about what our objects needed to look like. The task that I found most challenging was probably this one challenge where we had to make a frame for the battery and direction box to hook up to in order for our counter machine to process. This was a hard task to complete because we had to attach a switch to go off every time the wheel turned 360 degrees. We had to attempt this challenge about 4 to 5 times. After we finished this one task, we discovered that we were coming close to last place...... We thought of a solution really quick so we decided to choose our next task carefully and also to be cautious with how many points were awarded with the tasks. We hit the red buzzer at least 7 or 8 times and every time the judge came around, we just about got points for every clocked level. I will update this post with the pictures when they are shared to us!!

Te Reo Week 7

This week for Te reo Maori, our group completed a task that revolved around famous people! Not only that, we had to mention their position that they play in and also where they come from. One other thing that we had to do was mention someone famous that we knew that played a sport that we enjoyed as well..... I hope you enjoy!!

Weekly Blog Comment

This week on our angendar, It was the Kaikohe cluster's turn to comment on the Kaikohe west schools blogs. I decided to comment on a young girls blog. Her name was Amber, I thoroughly enjoyed reading her blog posts on her blog. Here is a picture of my comment below, I hope you enjoy!

Word of the day

Word of the day is something new that our classroom does instead of spelling. I find this method easier than spelling because you are able to complete the definition of the word in a rather small amount of time. It isn't as simple as it seems, believe it or not, some words are quite challenging actually. Here is my example of our word of the day....... I hope you enjoy!