This Week's Update

This is the start of our Spanish language. It covers greetings and replies.

This week we have been a bit busy and done some art work in our class - artworks which are bright and colourful, some with warm colours and some with cool colours. They are all up on the wall and look fantastic!

This is a list of our rights and responsibilities in Huia 1.

This is our treaty which is an agreement between all the members of our class.

This is what part of our back wall looks like. It has our NZ flag, The Treaty of Waitangi and our class treaty.

For our Poutama work some groups are mixed with other classes for Science in the food technology room, making wooden frames for hard materials and making a carry bag in soft materials. For our technology group we are learning about "What makes a good photo?" Once a group of students has got our teacher's permission they go out of class with a camera and take some interesting photos. Students learn how to use macro and how to zoom out and in with some of the cameras.

Some of the things that make a good photo are:

• close up - of faces, butterflies, patterns etc
• rule of thirds - features on intersections and horizons on lines
  
• contrast - of colours, near and far, young and old, hard and soft
• emotion
• humour
• action
• story
• perspective

That's some of the features we learnt that makes a good picture.

Here are some of the pictures we took:

We are also learning about The 2010 Winter Olympics games held in Vancouver, Canada. All Intermediate classes have been doing a project about it.

We have been practising playing the ukulele which is a small guitar with only cuatro strings. We are starting to play a song named "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."

We are developing in our ukulele lessons.

We learn about the Edgecumbe Earthquake

On the first day of school, Mrs Vincent read us a short story about the Napier earthquake which happened on the first day of the school year in 1931. We talked a bit about earthquakes and Rosie told us her grandmother was in the Edgecumbe earthquake of 1987. We invited her to talk to us.

In Week 2, Rosie's nana, Judy Dawson, came to talk to us about earthquakes and her past experience of being in an earthquake. In the year 1960, Rosie's nana was teaching a class in Whakatane and they didn't have our type of technology (e.g computers/laptops, not much electricity, etc.) and had not had any fire drills or earthquake drills. Once, a tidal wave was heading to Whakatane, (where she was teaching) and she didn't know that the town's siren was a tidal wave warning. Parents were worried and teachers tried to evacuate all the children. This was her very first disaster experience.

In 1987 she was working at a preschool with 20 children in Kawerau. The little children were doing a little project and some Intermediate students came to assist the preschoolers. Suddenly there was a strong eathquake and they all got under the very low tables. A big cupboard fell over and crashed to the ground but no one was hurt. Nobody could get home straight away because the bridges were damaged. It took a long time for everyone to find their families again and some people had to stay away from their children that night because they could not get home. A lot of people had a huge mess to clean up in their homes because food and crockery fell on the floor and glass jars smashed and it all got mixed together.

The railway lines were buckled, there were splits in the land and across roads, many houses were damaged and many people were frightened about another earthquake.

Can you see where the earthquake has split the land?

This is a photo of a newspaper page showing the buckled railway lines.

We learned a lot about what it is like to be in an earthquake and what to do if an earthquake happens. At school, you get under your desk or a table as quickly as you can. If you are at home get under a table which is a lot stronger than a door way.

We would like to thank Mrs Dawson for talking to us and sharing her experiences.

Check out these links to really interesting sites about earthquakes.

This is the geonet.org site which shows the activity of quake drums which show if there has been any earth tremors. Click on "Latest quake" and "shaking maps" to learn about the latest earthquake in New Zealand.

This map shows where the latest earthquakes in the world have happened.

This is a video of what happens to your home in an earthquake and tells you what to do in an earthquake.

How quake-safe is your home? Dial an earthquake. Create your own earthquake to see what happens as the shaking gets stronger.

It's 2010! Back To School...

Welcome back to our first post of the year!

This year we are Year 8s and some of our Huia 1 students (from last year) have moved to different schools and different classes, but don't worry we will still keep you updated with what's happening in our class or in our school.

We all had an awesome Christmas and summer holiday.

Our class is a Year 7 and 8 mixed class, although we still have some of our last year's students. On our first day back at school we were desperate to know which class we were going to be in and to know who will be in our classes. We haven't done much work lately since it's our first day back, although we are doing some tests. (Note from Mrs Vincent - we've done a lot more work since this was first written....) We also have new students that have arrived in our school. The new students to our school that are in our class are Ben and Anton. Surprisingly, we have 28 students in our class compared to last year where we had 31.

We have a link to the school website and you can also find out about what's happening in other classes.

We have been updating a bit about the Treaty Of Waitangi, and just basic facts about it. See if you can answer or quiz your family or a friend about these questions: (The answers are down below)

1. When was the Treaty Of Waitangi signed?
2. Where can you find the original Treaty on display right now?
3. Who is the Treaty between?
4. What year was the first New Zealand flag decided?
5. Who signed the Treaty first?

James Busby - his house was where the Treaty was signed.

This is what the Treaty looks like now. It is in the New Zealand Archives in Wellington.

Hobson was called ashore to sign the Treaty just after noon on the 6th of February because many Maori were starting to pack up and leave. Hobson was still dressed in his civilian clothes and only carried his uniform hat.

Captain William Hobson

Hone Heke became unhappy with the consequences of The Treaty and chopped down the flagpole at Rusell to show his dissatisfaction with how Maori in the Bay of Islands had been affected.

ANSWERS:

1. 6th February 1840
2. Archives New Zealand, Wellington
3. Maori Chiefs and The Crown
4. 1834
5. Hone Heke

Fact: Hone Heke signed the Treaty Of Waitangi first, although Kawaiti had his name signed above Hone Heke's name so it might seem that he signed it first.


By: Nikeeta And Brittany