Wednesday 26 June 2013

Stormbreaker Review

Cliff hanging, chest pounding. These are a few words to describe the dramatic ‘Stormbreaker’ book by Anthony Horowitz. In P4 we have been reading this exhilarating novel .

Stormbreaker is about an average 14 year old boy, Alex Rider that lives in suburban London with a pretty average normal life. However, his parents are dead and he lives with his rather antisocial, sort of boring fitness frantic Uncle Ian Rider. Alex knows karate, being an expert. Tables turned one early morning when police arrive and his Uncle on a trip around Europe for his drab job as a banker, but Alex discovers that his uncle is dead and is much more than a lousy banker. Ian Rider was a spy for Britain’s MI6. Alex goes to his Uncles funeral, still not knowing the truth, and notices to much things don’t go together. Something fishy is going on. When he finds out the truth via the suspicious actions of his fellow work mates, Alex gets hired by MI6 to go on the same daring mission his uncle took on and died. Alex gets sent to Sayle Enterprises, Port Tallon to investigate into the suspicious Herod Sayle and his diabolical new invention.

My favourite part was when Alex was going for a walk from the factory to the town, and Sayles sidekick, Mr Grin, hires two people to kill him on the luscious walk. Alex hears roars of engines and it turns out to be two assassins on quads, with cheese wire between them.  I really thought he was going to die in that part, but he uses his trusty karate skills to defeat these people. I like it when he fools one of the people on the bikes to go straight into the electric fence and plunges to his death over the craggy cliffs of the Cornish coast.

I highly recommend this book and series if you enjoy action stories, or even if you like the cherub series. This book does have its ups and its downs, however it always keeps you amused the whole few hundred pages.



Guess the Character


Sunday 16 June 2013

The Self Inflating Baloon

In week three, We were all thinking of cool experiments to do in our lab groups. My lab group investigated into 'the self inflating baloon'. I found out that the thing that triggers the inflation is the acetic acid in vinegar.
Lemons also have acetic acid, so we formed a hypothesis and a question. Our hypothesis was that the vinegar would still end the fastest to inflate the baloon, which ended up correct.

The Graph for the Knowledge Quiz


Interhouse General Knowledge Quiz Results for our Class


Monday 10 June 2013

My Minecraft Debate

Intro
Whatever happened to playing with the ball and cup? Jacks? Or going outside and helping dad cut down the trees and mow the lawns? Well, my answer is what children of our age are doing in their rooms 24/7. No, not searching up silly things on the internet but playing games like minecraft, a game invented by Markus Persson. It started off as a small game bringing in barely any profit, however, over the years minecraft has become a game played worldwide by millions of people.  In Mokoia School, we have been experimenting with this new craze of a game.
Into the Curriculum?
I highly disagree with introducing this game to schools. First, it has no educational side to it what so ever, and second, children nowadays play it enough at home. Did you know that 50 percent of our New Zealand children don’t exercise every day? This is all due to kids playing silly computer games like minecraft. If we introduce this into our curriculum, the children not guilty of playing this abomination of a game will soon become addicted, making that percentage climb.
Fighting in school
Throughout Mokoia, the controversy rate has climbed at school due to silly students TNTing other people’s houses. This game makes students brains turn to mush, making them do even more silly things on this game.
Conclusion
This game should not be allowed into the New Zealand curriculum, as it just doesn’t do anything good for our hard working students. I believe it shouldn’t be in the curriculum, but that’s only one person in about a million.

• Courageous Kids Run for Kids Cancer


On Friday the 7th of June the children of Mokoia Intermediate ran a gruelling cross country around the lush hills of Rotorua. A bunch of generous children decided they should gather sponsors for the cross country and donate all the money given to those children to the child cancer foundation. 26 students took part in the sponsor run, along with the whole school. One of the kind donors, Flynn Baxter, won the cross country. It is expected to have around 400-500 dollars raised.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

My Mystery Drawing.

Lately we have been doing a lot of of procedural writing. One example of this is we had to make instructions for a year 2 class for a drawing. You can try it yourself:
1.       Draw an oval, 3 cm wide and 2 cm tall.
2.       Then draw 2 small circles(1cm wide and tall) on top of the oval. Make sure they are evenly spaced.
3.       Draw even smaller circles inside the circles you just drew, and colour them in with your pencil.
4.       Then draw a smile in the middle of the oval.
5.       Draw a circle 3 cm wide and 2.5 cm tall on the bottom line of the oval.
6.        Then, inside the big circle you just drew, draw two half banana shapes half a centimetre wide and one centimetre tall, make sure the round tip of the banana shape is facing downwards.
7.       This is where it gets harder. On the bottom of the circle, draw a smiley face 4 cm long and half a centimetre tall facing upwards so the curve touches the bottom of the circle.
8.       Draw another half banana shape 1.5 centimetres long and half a centimetre thick going downwards.
9.       On the bottom of the curves draw triangles 1 cm long and wide.
10.   Then draw 3 mini circles on the left, middle and right of both feet.
You have now finished your mystery animal!

My Viscosity Powerpoint.

Click here for my powerpoint.

The second part of our paper plane statistics.


The first part of our paper plane statistics.




Home Made Lava Lamps

In P4, we have been doing a lot of things in the science lab lately. One of the many experiments we have done is the 'Bubbles in a Bottle' experiment. What you did was you filled a clear bottle up with about 1\5 of water and the rest with canola oil. You then drop any colour of dye you want into the bottle, wait until it hits the water and then drop an Alka-Seltzer tablet into the bottle. This has been one of  my favourite experiments so far. To turn this into a challenge, we formed a question and then a hypothesis. Our question was 'Would the temperature of the water effect the amount of bubbles that rise'? and our hypothesis was correct. We all had a fun time.

My term 2 goals.

my 
My goals for Term 2
Maths
To be able to successfully read and use a tally.
Science
To finish the fair with an on – topic task.
Reading
To get 90 % or over in my running record.
Sport
To complete cross country in under 35 minutes.
Writing
To finish a dark mythica