Yes, it's true - I am very much the bookworm. I literally walk around banging into things because my nose is stuck in a book, most likely involving war, murder or supernatural themes. Here are a few of my favorites:
What If They Find Us? by Kathy Clark
The Harry Potter Series by J.K Rowling
Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board by Zoe Aarsen
Twilight By Stephanie Meyer
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
But anyway, that's not actually what this post is about. Today we had Round 2 of the teacher-led workshops. I'm in Word Patterns with the amazing Nicola, and today we were making crosswords.
Who would have known how absolutely frustrating this task could be! I mean, all you have to do is choose a theme, put in some words and make them fit together, and add some clues, right? WRONG!
On the second sheet I went back and back to the first mini-crossword, the theme for which was Sport. It was originally Dance but that didn't work so I rubbed it off and started again. I did this many times until finally I had finished the first mini-crossword with the theme Sports. One of the words was Emily because that was the only thing that would fit... hey, for all we know, there' a famous swimmer or runner or discus-thrower or whatever called Emily!
For the last five minutes or so we played a game on the iPads called Bookworm. It's highly addictive and VERY educational, I assure you. Look it up on the app store and download it, you'll have your eyes glued to your iPad/iPod/iPhone/Tablet/Android/You Get The Idea for the rest of your LIFE!
Mwahahahahahahahaha.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
SUCCESS!!!
I can't believe it! I've kicked that chess leader board in the BUTT after our chess session today! Usually I dread playing chess, and I'll tell you why...
At the start of the year, the names were placed randomly on the board. And I just happened to be at the very bottom. Just by coincidence. But I suppose SOMEBODY has got to be at the bottom, don't they?
But then again, this was turning into a problem for me. I would only ever move one or two spots up at a time and then I'd move back down the following week and so on. My mum came in one sharing night and saw me at the bottom of the board and started ranting. "You've seriously let your game slip, don't you care about your education, chess is SO important, if you played your brother at home more you'd be better," etc, etc. I still never really did anything about it though, until today.
Just another Monday. The music blared, we all raced down to the mat. Darryn took the roll, we went over the day plan. Sorted ourselves into groups for workshops. The student email got handed over to the same people as last week. Then...
"Chess!"
Oh no, oh no. All of my friends were already paired up, and so I had to challenge somebody I hardly knew. I looked up and down the leader board, from the top to the bottom. All the good spots were reserved by all the really good chess players that I'd have no chance of beating. But somewhere on the board, kind of in the middle, but still pretty high up, I saw a familiar name. "Whatever, he goes to my school, he's not a complete stranger," I thought. With a small sigh, I challenged him and we started the game.
I knew I was off to a good start when I took his queen right near the start. I lured him over with my rook, but by the time he realized that he couldn't take me because I was protected, it was too late, he was over there anyway. I moved my pawn forward - if he didn't move his queen, it would get taken. But he'll move his queen away, I told myself. Don't get your hopes up.
But, miraculously, he DIDN'T move his queen away! He moved a pawn or a bishop or something and realized what he had done only as he lifted his hand off the pawn or the bishop, whatever it was. I moved forward, grinning, and took his queen. Then, it was only a matter of time as I moved my queen to his king and maneuvered him into CHECKMATE!
At the start of the year, the names were placed randomly on the board. And I just happened to be at the very bottom. Just by coincidence. But I suppose SOMEBODY has got to be at the bottom, don't they?
But then again, this was turning into a problem for me. I would only ever move one or two spots up at a time and then I'd move back down the following week and so on. My mum came in one sharing night and saw me at the bottom of the board and started ranting. "You've seriously let your game slip, don't you care about your education, chess is SO important, if you played your brother at home more you'd be better," etc, etc. I still never really did anything about it though, until today.
Just another Monday. The music blared, we all raced down to the mat. Darryn took the roll, we went over the day plan. Sorted ourselves into groups for workshops. The student email got handed over to the same people as last week. Then...
"Chess!"
Oh no, oh no. All of my friends were already paired up, and so I had to challenge somebody I hardly knew. I looked up and down the leader board, from the top to the bottom. All the good spots were reserved by all the really good chess players that I'd have no chance of beating. But somewhere on the board, kind of in the middle, but still pretty high up, I saw a familiar name. "Whatever, he goes to my school, he's not a complete stranger," I thought. With a small sigh, I challenged him and we started the game.
I knew I was off to a good start when I took his queen right near the start. I lured him over with my rook, but by the time he realized that he couldn't take me because I was protected, it was too late, he was over there anyway. I moved my pawn forward - if he didn't move his queen, it would get taken. But he'll move his queen away, I told myself. Don't get your hopes up.
But, miraculously, he DIDN'T move his queen away! He moved a pawn or a bishop or something and realized what he had done only as he lifted his hand off the pawn or the bishop, whatever it was. I moved forward, grinning, and took his queen. Then, it was only a matter of time as I moved my queen to his king and maneuvered him into CHECKMATE!
Way to Go, Einstein!
I don't know if I've mentioned it before but for Affective Domain we have to study a gifted adult. I am studying Albert Einstein, a.k.a Abnormally Insanely Intelligent Human Life Form. He mainly excelled in Mathematics and Physics, which is pretty much exactly opposite from me. He actually failed in French in his entrance exams for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich! And several other subjects! But he did really really well in his Physics and Mathematics exam.
He was born on the 14th of March 1879 (which makes him a Pisces like me!) in Ulm, Germany. Yeah, weird name, but then cities in Germany often have weird names.
He was Jewish. That is something that deeply interested me. I never actually knew that. Another thing that really interested me was that one his papers was published in a science journal called Annalen der Physik. Hey, another weird name!
But then I suppose, if you think about it in a different way, Einstein was a bit of a weird guy...
He was born on the 14th of March 1879 (which makes him a Pisces like me!) in Ulm, Germany. Yeah, weird name, but then cities in Germany often have weird names.
He was Jewish. That is something that deeply interested me. I never actually knew that. Another thing that really interested me was that one his papers was published in a science journal called Annalen der Physik. Hey, another weird name!
But then I suppose, if you think about it in a different way, Einstein was a bit of a weird guy...
Monday, August 19, 2013
Stalking!
Haha, I'm going to crack up laughing when I get home because my mum is going to ask me, "Hi honey, what did you do today?" and I'm going to reply, "I learnt how to stalk people!"
No, I'm kidding, we're not actually stalking people - we're people-watching and writing down lots of details about them. There IS a difference, you know!
So... a pleasant Monday afternoon with a hint of Spring found one fabulous school teacher and five rowdy children walking around town stalking people. (You know what I mean!). We went ALL over the place - up and down busy streets, up and down quiet streets, sitting on walls and even into the Library, because lets face it, you see some pretty - err - interesting people hanging around libraries.
So as we were walking around in a pack with our little notebooks and pens, somehow a story involving murder unfolded in my mind. Little disconnected ideas were jotted down on my notebook, and soon they came beautifully linked together in a story about a creepy man with his eyes hidden sending murder letters, signing them, "Rest in peace - Murphy" to a seventeen-year-old girl called Mallory who naturally gets all freaked out and starts to investigate. Turns out she should have just kept out of it because she gets pulled into a big irreversible mess, discovering horrifying secrets about her assassin Murphy along the way. The grand finale takes place on top of the water tower at night where Mallory (stupidly) confronts Murphy and ends up getting thrown off the top of the water tower. I haven't decided if she dies or not, by the way. Oh, and I forgot one more crucial little detail - the second before Murphy chucks a screaming Mallory off the water tower, he growls, "Rest in peace."
I haven't decided what I'm going to call the story yet - I'm torn between Rest in Peace and Mallory and Murphy. Some advice, s'il vous plait?
Monday, July 8, 2013
Uh - I Think I'm Lost
Today's Mapping and Geography workshop with Darryn was really cool and interesting, but I'll admit it was a little confusing at times because Geography and Logic is NOT my thing. I hate it! It's so confusing! Although it was much easier today, I still felt a little lost when Darryn started talking about C43 and North Mag/North Grid! I mean, wouldn't you?
But you're probably feeling pretty confused as it is, so I'll back up a little and start from the start, which I think's a good place to begin, don't you?
Today when we did the Geography and Mapping workshop with Darryn, I learnt about grids, compasses, how to make a 'bearing' and navigate my way through an enormous mass of forest, jungle, push, mountains, lakes and ocean!
Here are just some of the things we did...
We unfolded a few of Darryn's maps that he uses for hunting and studied it carefully, with Darryn telling us where what was and what all the lines meant and what was land and what was water... then we joined two maps together and he told us a crucial piece of information - that of you have two different maps but one leads on from another, then the two overlap because if they don't then in the middle you've got this big blank part and you're like, "Hey, what the heck's over there?"
Then it was... COMPASS TIME! Darryn plonked a compass on the map and the red side of the needle pointed to where was North so we could align our map, because the tops of maps always face North. Then we spun the dial on the compass so that the little 'N' was what the red line was pointing to, and then we turned our map around according to that so we were all exact and lined up.
Mt Izzy...
Next Darryn told us about 'bearings'. Some of us faced each other pretending to be mountains (Mt Izzy and Mt Emma) and another person had to make a 'bearing' from one mountain to the other.
We also covered things like one square on the map was one kilometre, there's a twenty-degree difference between the angle North Mag and North Grid, and more.
And to think I thought that maps were just a piece of paper with a bunch of lines all over them!
But you're probably feeling pretty confused as it is, so I'll back up a little and start from the start, which I think's a good place to begin, don't you?
Today when we did the Geography and Mapping workshop with Darryn, I learnt about grids, compasses, how to make a 'bearing' and navigate my way through an enormous mass of forest, jungle, push, mountains, lakes and ocean!
Here are just some of the things we did...
We unfolded a few of Darryn's maps that he uses for hunting and studied it carefully, with Darryn telling us where what was and what all the lines meant and what was land and what was water... then we joined two maps together and he told us a crucial piece of information - that of you have two different maps but one leads on from another, then the two overlap because if they don't then in the middle you've got this big blank part and you're like, "Hey, what the heck's over there?"
Then it was... COMPASS TIME! Darryn plonked a compass on the map and the red side of the needle pointed to where was North so we could align our map, because the tops of maps always face North. Then we spun the dial on the compass so that the little 'N' was what the red line was pointing to, and then we turned our map around according to that so we were all exact and lined up.
Mt Izzy...
Next Darryn told us about 'bearings'. Some of us faced each other pretending to be mountains (Mt Izzy and Mt Emma) and another person had to make a 'bearing' from one mountain to the other.
We also covered things like one square on the map was one kilometre, there's a twenty-degree difference between the angle North Mag and North Grid, and more.
And to think I thought that maps were just a piece of paper with a bunch of lines all over them!
Monday, June 17, 2013
Newspaper
For once I'm not going to prattle on about my Passion Project, because that must be getting pretty boring by now. No, today I'm going to prattle on about something completely different -
(Drumroll please...)
My newspaper article.
No, no, don't exit out of this post! Newspaper articles SOUND boring, but at Enrich they are the OPPOSITE of boring. For this article we're allowed to write about anything we want to. I only started last week but now it's DONE - well, at least, the actual writing part is done. I'm going to change the font and maybe add a picture and blah-de-blah-blah, but in terms of the hard stuff, I'm done. So I'm pretty relieved!
So... I suppose you're wondering what I'm writing about? Well, I'd like to tell you, but you know me. I like to keep you in suspense, so I'm not going to tell you right this minute. I suppose you're just going to have to read next week's post to find out!
(Drumroll please...)
My newspaper article.
No, no, don't exit out of this post! Newspaper articles SOUND boring, but at Enrich they are the OPPOSITE of boring. For this article we're allowed to write about anything we want to. I only started last week but now it's DONE - well, at least, the actual writing part is done. I'm going to change the font and maybe add a picture and blah-de-blah-blah, but in terms of the hard stuff, I'm done. So I'm pretty relieved!
So... I suppose you're wondering what I'm writing about? Well, I'd like to tell you, but you know me. I like to keep you in suspense, so I'm not going to tell you right this minute. I suppose you're just going to have to read next week's post to find out!
Monday, June 10, 2013
Catching Up
I have to catch up this week because I was not here last week (well, nobody was, Queen's Birthday, remember?) but I wasn't here the week before that either because I was in Auckland for an aerobics competition, and the week before THAT I was sick.
So that's three weeks (well, two weeks, really, because nothing happened last week) of catching up to do! Not that catching up is a massive task at Enrich, because we don't really have things that we go back to a lot, like Maths Contracts or Inquiry or whatever. Except...
PASSION PROJECTS!!!!!!
My historical fiction diary was exactly as I left it three weeks ago - so nothing had been done to it for three whole weeks! I had to get cracking. My fingers went flying over the keyboard. Click-click-click-click-clickety-click-clickety. Click. And one more click for luck.
I'm going to ask if I can work on my diary at lunch (we're not allowed on the computer without permission today) and no way will the extra work make up for all the time I lost, but hopefully it will help!
I've just completed my 'Passion Project weekly planning' sheet, which is reflecting on this week's passion time and planning for next week.
Hope I get my story finished soon!
So that's three weeks (well, two weeks, really, because nothing happened last week) of catching up to do! Not that catching up is a massive task at Enrich, because we don't really have things that we go back to a lot, like Maths Contracts or Inquiry or whatever. Except...
PASSION PROJECTS!!!!!!
My historical fiction diary was exactly as I left it three weeks ago - so nothing had been done to it for three whole weeks! I had to get cracking. My fingers went flying over the keyboard. Click-click-click-click-clickety-click-clickety. Click. And one more click for luck.
I'm going to ask if I can work on my diary at lunch (we're not allowed on the computer without permission today) and no way will the extra work make up for all the time I lost, but hopefully it will help!
I've just completed my 'Passion Project weekly planning' sheet, which is reflecting on this week's passion time and planning for next week.
Hope I get my story finished soon!
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