Wachner Place Keynote

Today we presented our Keynotes about Wachner Place to the rest of the class - Kady, Miro, John, AJ and I - and we got to see the other group's presentations as well. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Why on earth would somebody want to do an entire Keynote on stinking Wachner Place?" Very understandable, thinking that. So why are we spending precious time perfecting and fiddling and putting effort into a Keynote about Wachner Place??? The answer is simple. Because we have to.

Well, yes, we have to, but we also want to put the Wachner into Wachner place. We want to make Wachner Place exciting, so that instead of having to say, "Oh, we don't have to go to Wachner Place, do we?", you can say, "Can we go to Wachner Place? I want to play with the Tilting Ball Maze and sketch the brand new gardens and play with the giant chess board and look at the murals and the mosaics and everything!" 

Next week we are going down into the Council Chambers to present our proposal to the council. Eek. Yeah you might not think that that's so scary. But look at it this way. Scary adults plus wimpy kids plus stuttering words plus silly Keynotes equals...

EEK.

But everything will be so much better once we practice hard. We won't be wimpy kids anymore, we'll be confident kids who know exactly what they're doing. And we won't be stuttering anymore, we'll be talking loudly and clearly. And they won't be silly Keynotes anymore, they'll be flawless Keynotes with no mistakes and awesome colours and creative fonts and settings and bold titles and much more. But OK, so you can't take away the fact that they're scary adults! ; - p   

Air Pollution

Ah. Sniff, sniff. Breathe, breathe. The air is sweet, here in New Zealand!

But if you said that in Iran, the most polluted city in the world, you would most likely be considered crazy. The air in Iran is literally yellow. Yuck. 

How do I know? Today at Enrich, we watched a video clip of The 10 Most Polluted Cities In The World. I would NOT like to live in any of the countries featured in the video! Why not? Oh, the towns were full of garbage, the people in the cities had to cover their mouths with cloths, etc, etc! That's all!

What caused this problem? US. No, not the United States. Us. As in, we. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. "What did I do? I'm as innocent as a sack of potatoes!" Well, you didn't do it personally. But you know those really big factories that pollute the air? Well, we create/build factories there, because these countries don't have as strict laws against air pollution.

Just think how bad this is for the environment!

The worst bit is, we live in this. Yes, that's right. The air from all those disgusting countries doesn't just waft around doing nothing. It travels. All our countries are inside a bubble. We live in that disgusting air pollution!!!!

Wachner Place AGAIN!

My morning was pretty good today. Woke up, yawned, snapped at my little brother to stop shaking me to wake me up and watched him scurry away from me in terror, had breakfast, arrived at Enrich, watched Darryn and Clara play a mental edge game, doing bunny-ears behind Darryn a few times, played Chess with Hannah and got steamrollered, and then my glorious day was punctured by a very unpleasant sight.
WACHNER PLACE.
Looking even more boring than ever before, and wet with rain and sludge and cold, the dreary eyeful wasn't too attractive. We slouched around taking measurements of the gardens, counting the little pillars and measuring walls as we were asked.
There were, let me think, two at the front, two more, I think there might have been one more, about five little gardens full of cigarettes, Pepsi Max cans and other horrible bits of rubbish like torn and wet newspaper. The only plants in sight were drooping, prickly roses - well, no roses attached to the stalks, actually. 
Our group's job was to enhance the garden. Not now - first we had to figure out the price and ask the council if we could do it and everything. 
All in all, not the world's greatest amusement park, unless you're a loony who thinks looking at a big blank space and droopy roses is some bizarre form of entertainment. I really hope the council gives us permission to enhance the garden, because it's pretty boring now.

More Writing

SO. I am 99.9% positive that you don't want to hear me rabbiting on about Creative Writing, but it's my blog, so I can do whatever appeals to me, and at this moment I want to rabbit on about Creative Writing, which I have complete authority to do, so I shall now do so.
Sorry about that. I got a bit carried away. Well, anyway, today we did more Creative Writing.  I liked our warm-up best of all. We used Story Cubes. Some of you will know what Story Cubes are, but for those who haven't the faintest idea what I'm yakking on about, they are sort of dice. You take a handful of them and roll them. On each side of each dice there is a picture. Yes, just a random picture. Shooting stars. castles, faces, arrows, cell-phones, apples, turtles, hot-air balloons and much more.
We buddied up and took it in turns to roll a handful of dice. Whatever pictures came up, we had to arrange them into a way they made sense and then tell a story to our buddy. For example, say I rolled:
An apple
A cellphone
A face
A compass
A bee
A hot-air balloon
And a castle.
I would arrange the dice and tell a story that would go something like this...

Once upon a time, in a medieval castle (the castle) there was a person (the face) lying in bed. They couldn't get to sleep. The night was so hot and warm (the hot-air balloon) and somewhere a bee (the bee) was buzzing outside, which was a very annoying sound. Another annoying sound was the sound of his cellphone (the cellphone) which was lost (the compass) so he couldn't answer it. He tried anyway, groping around in the darkness. His hand grabbed something, but it wasn't his cellphone, it was an apple instead (the apple) and then the ringing stopped because he was so slow and it remained completely lost. The End.

Bit of a stupid story on my part, but it was still really fun. Then we had to go back to the list of memories we made at the back of our books at the previous Creative Writing session and choose a different memory to write about. My story wasn't sad this time - it was funny. :)

Teacher comment

I was really impressed with the quality of your writing today Izzy. The story that you wrote was really effective, your language choices were great and you certainly managed to get your audience to engage with your story and relate to how sad that moment was.
It was great to see you so motivated and into what you were doing - keep up the good work!
Darryn

Creative Writing

Today I did some Creative Writing with Darryn. It was really fun! You know the bit that cracked me up most? Our warm-up exercise. Talk about weird! Darryn gave us  all the same picture and we had to do a character profile about it. AND GUESS WHAT THE PICTURE WAS? A hobo! Just kidding! But really, it wasn't much different. We were given a dopey, idiotic-looking CLOWN! Now, I'm not ashamed to admit it - clowns give me the hibbery-jibberys. But this one? He was just weird.
We had to describe it in every way possible. How old was he? I guessed 90. (He-he-he)! Was he poor? Rich? Did he like being a clown? Or did he think every minute of it sucked? We had to develop the character in our own, unique way. He was ours to bring to life. (Actually, I'd rather prefer it if he was dead).
Then we had to write down a list of strong memories. My list was jam-packed! Then we had to choose one memory and write a short story about it. I wrote my one about the moment I found out that my dog had died. It was a sad story. :( 

To entertain you, here is a picture of the clown I was talking about. 

NOT KIDDING! Isn't he just... weird? 

Teacher comment

Wow Isabella what a great day of writing you had today! Jenni was really impressed with your blog post and I was amazed by the depth of your writing and the quality of the language you used in the afternoon writing workshop, This is obviously a real strength for you and I am looking forward to seeing what develops over the next few weeks! Keep up the great work.
Darryn