100 Word Challenge - Part Two

For English, we've been doing 100-word challenges. You either have to include different language features or -like we've just done- include words given to us by our teacher.

My challenge is down below, the words I included was magnetic, guilt, exclude, cute and daughter.

I used to feel like there was a magnetic pull on me. A strong force pulling at my feet, dragging me into trouble. I felt the need to exclude others to feel better about myself. I have no idea why, but I did. I felt the guilt, I did, I really did and it felt horrible but I still did it. It wasn’t cute, not at all. No one thought so. But my daughter helped me to recognize that it’s wrong. I love her for that. You should include others, and make people feel good about themselves. Because I did.

(This story is made up and in no way have I done something like that to someone)

If you have any feedback or ways I could improve my work -on other posts as well- comment your opinion below and I'll try my best to use your help.

I Wonder How The Brain Works? - English - Curiosity

I Wonder How The Brain Works?

For quite a while, I've wondered how the brain worked and whats inside. For starters, how many cells are in the brain? How many cells are used to control our bodies?

Well, the answer is 100 BILLION CELLS. There are 100 billion cells inside of an average adult brain, 100 billion freaking cells! Unbelievable. Every cell is connected by synapses, every cell can connect to tens of thousands of brain cells. To explain it a bit easier, think of yourself as a brain cell, you have a long rope connected to ten thousand other people, and then those people have a rope connected to another ten thousand people and it goes on and on until every person in the world is connected and more. Imagine that! Another word for a nerve cell is a neuron. The image below is a picture of a neuron.

Another thing I learned was that a skin cell lives for about two to three weeks, a Colon cell lives for about four days, but brain cells live for an entire lifetime. Also, if one of the cells in your brain die, they aren't replaced.

I also learned that if your heart stops, the brain survives for about six minutes after. If you go without CPR for six minutes you can't be brought back to life. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) needs to be started before the six minutes are up to bring the human back and the brain usually survives the lack of oxygen. But after the six minutes are up the brain begins to die.

Did you know that your brain has the ability to heal itself? People thought after a stroke the brain had very little ability to heal itself. But some people regain function after the stroke and survive, so the brain is definitely a fighter when it's damaged and can heal itself.

I learned a lot about the brain, and there is much much more to discover.

100 Word Challenge - English

Drama Queen

She sat on her seat silently… for once. But not for long. “Oh my God!” She shrieked so loudly I think I went deaf. “What is it Nicole?” I asked. “Lily told Milly, that Cora, told Aiden and Caden, that Tate cheated on Kate!” She worried. What? “I didn’t catch ANY of that Nick.” I laughed. She rolled her eyes. “Of course you didn’t, you never listen, I told you the cat pooped on the mat, you needed to clean it up, but you didn’t want to go near that. The cat also dragged in a dead rat!" Whoops. Dang.

Short Story - Engllish - Show, Don't Tell

Creative Writing

I sat on my bed watching my shows, as my roommate played games in the living room with her friends. I heard them laughing. "I dare you to drink a mixture of different fizzy." They laughed. "Easy." I heard a deep voice chuckle. Suddenly the house shook. "O.M.G, EARTHQUAKE!" A girl shrieked. There were things falling around my room. My mirror dropped to the floor and shattered, I squealed and ran out to the living room. I looked out the window and saw houses being lifted by some force, being ripped out of the ground and floated to the sky. "O.M.G WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" The same girl screamed. "Shush!" I said. "Stop panicking!" I looked back out the window and saw pipes and wires sticking out of the ground, there was rubble and debris everywhere. "Oh my goodness."

"What do we do?" The deep voice asked. "How should I know?" I said. The powerlines were all pulled down and the destruction looked horrible. I looked up and saw the whole neighbourhood and further flying in the air. Suddenly there was a loud rumble above us. I looked out of the window and saw a plane zooming downwards. "OH, MY GOD!" I screamed. the plane hurtled towards the ground and crashed. It exploded. We all screamed. "H- How many people were- were on that thing?" My roommate stuttered.

Suddenly a bug flew up through the sink followed by two more. They landed on the table and a huge hologram appeared above them. There were men and woman sitting at a long table. "Greetings. We are coming to you live from the white house." A man said. "What the heck is going on? Why is this happening? Are you the cause?" I said. "Listen, listen, the reason this is happening is because an experiment we were working on has gone wrong and has caused things in the air to shoot downwards and things on the ground to dart upwards. We are working on it, and promise to have you all down soon. Every house up in the air is getting this message. Again, our apologies." And with that, the bugs flew back out through the sink. "They don't even sound sorry. Do they know how much it'll cost to get these houses fixed?" A guy said. "Forget about that! Did we all forget about that plane that just exploded?!" I said. I looked back down through the window and saw the ash and fire surrounding the planes remaining parts. "Are we going to be up here forever?" My roommate asked.

"I have no idea."

THE END.

Matariki - Drama 2018 Term 2

Matariki

What is Matariki?

Matariki is the Maori new year. It's also the Maori name for a group of seven stars/seven sisters. The names of the stars are Ururangi, Tupua-rangi, Tupua-nuku, Waita, Waiti, Matariki, and Wai-puna-rangi. Some people think that Matariki is the mother star and the other six are the daughters. Others think that Matariki are Tawhirimatea's (the god of wind) eyes. When Papatuanuku (earth mother) and Ranginui (sky father) were separated Tawhirimatea became angry and tore out his eyes throwing them up to the heavens. 

Matariki also means two things, Mata-Riki meaning tiny eyes, and Mata-Ariki meaning eyes of God.

Matariki is usually celebrated on the last few days of May. Some celebrate it the day the moon rises and some the day after. Celebrations can last up to three days.

Aotearoa - Stan Walker - ft, Ria Hall, Troy Kingi, Maisey Rika 

Link to the song

This song, Aotearoa, is sung by the artists above. Stan Walker decided to release his first song completely in Maori to celebrate the Maori Language Week. I like this song because it's in Maori and I have Maori in me so it's a special song in my opinion. I like the music video too because people from all over Aotearoa are working together to spell out the word Aotearoa on the beach. 

Some lyrics from the song-

Chorus-

Nō tawhiti, nō tata
Nō te whenua o te Atua tātou
Ahakoa nō hea mai koe
Ka whawhai tonu mātou mōu

Translation-

No matter if you're near or far

We come from the land of God

No matter where you belong

We fight for your freedom.

Chromatography - Science 2018 - Term 2

Last term for science we were learning about a lot of things and one of those things was Chromatography.

Chromatography is when you separate the colours of the substance. Chroma means colour in greek, and graph means picture/photograph.

Below are two pictures of the Chromatography we did. The left one is a normal water-based marker and the right one is a permanent marker.

As you can see in the water-based marker the dot we made faded/disappeared. But in the permanent marker the dot faded slightly because, well, it's permanent.The pigments that dissolve easily dissolve faster, but the ones that don't dissolve very easily, dissolve slower.

What we did was cut up pieces of chromatography paper and draw a line two centimeters from the bottom in pencil. Because if we did it in pen the ink from the pen would mess it all up. We made a thick dot of the ink just on the line and sat it in a test tube. For the water-based pen, we used normal water and filled the test tube just below the line, and for the permanent marker we did the same but used acetone instead of water.

Drama/Music 2018

Drama

This term for drama we have been learning about musicals, we performed them after we learned the choreography on Wednesday. My class performed "The Time Warp".

I learned a lot about musicals and different choreography.
This work shows my learning because I practiced hard for the performance and got up on stage.
It was a challenge for me to get up on stage and perform. I was in the choir at my primary school for two years and we performed in front of hundreds of people, yet I was still a bit nervous to get up and perform. Mostly because I knew most of the people I performed in front of, it was nerve-racking because I was scared we'd mess it up.
If we performed again I would show more enthusiasm and get into it more like Nadia and Jessica.
I really enjoyed performing in front of everyone although I was nervous.
I am wondering if anyone else was as scared as I was or worse.
It was really fun performing that day, I loved it. We even got to wear party hats, blow party blowers and pop confetti.

Below is a link to the video of us performing The Time Warp.
Time Warp

9Bu performed "Revolting Children" from Matilda. Below is a link to the video of them performing.
Revolting Children