Three Weeks of Fun

Year 7s are writing another blog while the Year 8s are in Poutama, making a new junior playground with Mr Fowler. 

~ o O 0 O o  ~

Things we have discovered about being an Intermediate:

- I have to be a role model to the younger children (Sukhdev)
- I am lucky to learn Spanish at this school because some schools don't learn Spanish (Karmveer)
- I have to take responsibility for sports gear, even if the little kids leave it lying around (Tara)
- I still have to respect the Year 8s (Aaron)
- I have to take on more responsibilities (Corbin)
- I have hard work - but fair (Amber)
- I get to use electronic devices more, and with more freedom (Mwaniki)
- I have different classses for maths, technology, Spanish and art (Syvannah)
- I have a "to do" list to help me remember all my homework and other tasks (Lili)

Things we have learnt:

Some Spanish:  

¡Hola!, ¿Cómo estas?  ¡Gracias! ¡Fantastico!

Capital letters are used for people's names and initials,  and for headings and titles in our work,  and  forholidays or festivals - such as Valentine's Day. We also learnt that Valentine's Day ALWAYS has an apostrophe.

In PE we are doing ultra-rip and are learning how to defend our tags and how to attack.

In social studies we have learnt about how to make Cool Choices: we can choose between cool, ugly and weak choices, but making cool choices is obviously the best choice.

We are also learning about what happened in New Zealand leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi:

Once it was discovered the kauri trees made very good spars for ships, a lot of ships came to New Zealand to  cut down kauri trees to sell in England. (Corbin)

Kauri trees were up to 30 metres high before the branches started, so this made kauri very good for round spars.(Amber)

Photo of young kauri

Thomas Fyshe Palmer was a released convict who came to New Zealand to look for kauri spars. He was a convict because it was illegal to publically campaign for the right for everyone to vote (universal suffrage). (Karmveer) 
In England, you could get jailed for trapping someone else's rabbits. (Syvannah)

Some explorers never returned to England. (Tara)

Governor King, from New South Wales, gave Maori from the Bay of Islands some potatoes and pigs when two kidnapped Maori were returned to New Zealand in the 1790s. (Tara)

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, people in England could get a seven-year jail sentence in Australia for something as petty as stealing a loaf of bread. (Mwaniki)

People could be hanged for stealing food; for example, in Sydney, in 1805, 2 men were condemned to be hanged because they stole some pork. (Aaron)

 The Maori rangatira, Te Pahi, was visiting Governor King. He begged for a reprieve for the condemned convicts because, in New Zealand, everyone was entitled to eat, and all food was shared; there was no such thing as stealing food. (Sukhdev)

Te Pahi

Seven years was the shortest sentence convicts had to serve in  Australia. (Lili)

Hone Heke and Kawiti were competitive; Hone Heke signed the treaty first, but Kawiti later wrote his name above Heke's. (Karmveer)