Stepz

Over the past five week all year 8 students have been attending "Stepz Classes" where we would learn 7 dances for the end of year 8 social. These dances have been really fun and diverse from one another,everyone enjoyed these lessons and wish there were more to come. But sadly today is our last stepz lesson, the next time we perform these dances will be on the 13th of December. We would like to say a huge thank you to our instructor Katie for helping us with all of these dances along the way!!

Seminars

Since the first week of term 4 we have been working on seminars, for the year 8s it had to be on a career but for the year 7s it could be on just about anything. I did mine on TV presenting, the criteria was it had to be based around 3 main questions and it had to be a minimum of 8 minutes. I was really happy with the end result of my seminar, I ended up getting the highest level for all the sections which I was so pleased with. This is the URL to my website which has all the information about my seminar. www.wix.com/shannc993/tvpresenting.

Athletics

On Tuesday 16th of November 300 students went over to growers stadium to compete in the schools annual athletics. There were loads of different categories you could enter such as high jump, long jump, sprints (100 metres), 200 metres, 400 metres, 1500 metres, discus, shot put.

You were either in the categories junior, intermediate or senior (boys or girls). A few records were broken by Kaitlyn Petherick, Havannah Pearson, Tauhi Lopeti. Everyone competed really well and supported eachother through out the whole day and we are hoping to have some good wins at zone athletics.

But whilst we were over at the high school the non competing students stayed back at school to have a fun filled day eith lots of activities to keep all involved very busy for the rest of the day.

Science at the High School

On Monday 15th of November, our class room 23 went along with room 30 over to Pukekohe High School to have an introductory science lesson to make sure we are up to date by the time we start next year, also to become more familiar with the routine structures and equipment.

Whilst we were there we also learnt how to light a bunsen burner, draw scientific drawings of each piece of equipment and we completed a few fun experiments to end the morning. We all have a bit more work to do in our booklets before the start of year 9 but all in all this was a very useful day which I'm sure every single person sitting in that classroom learnt something that day.

This morning we completed a current affairs quiz, it was quite difficult. I scored 6/10.

Te Paea's Farewell

This past few weeks the mentoring group have been organising a farewell shared lunch for Te Paea, who is leaving our school on the 12th of November to move to Australia. Te Paea was apart of a lot of activites and groups such as Rock and Water, Mentoring, Aims Netball, Touch Module Organiser and so many more. So some kids and Jack decided it was a good idea to get together some students and kids. The Mentoring Group, Rock and Water, the Aims Netball Team and her class room 5. It was a really great day and a big surprise to Te Paea. Good luck for your travels Te Paea, we are definitely losing a good one.

Te Reo Tuesday

Within the starting of PINTV we had a new segment called Te Reo Tuesday, where we Mrs Pearson, Mr Pope and Mrs Potai are trying to improve the Maori language through out our school. Here are a few examples.

PINTV

PINTV will be hitting our screens week one term 3. Pukekohe Intermediate students are waiting in anticipation, for the first live recording.
Kevin Pope, Rebekah Pearson and Sarah Poutai have all been starting up this station since the middle of term 1. Everybody involved can’t wait to get started because finally all the hard work would have payed off. Roughly 40 students and staff altogether have there own specific jobs like for instance, 16 students will take turns as being presenters, a few of those students will go out and about round the school interviewing some of the top student athletes or achievers and also some teachers, some reporters will go to sports events as well so the school gets the inside scoop on everything and anything that’s happening at Pukekohe Intermediate.
This station has tried to be run before by Craig Bush and Kevin Pope but unfortunately the station became to hard to run as it was. But given the option Kevin wanted to try it again and with technology the way it is it was thought the station may be more of a success this time round.
The station is mainly to help kids know where they are supposed to be and when, the screenings will be every morning 5 days a week shown to the whole school. A special feature that didn’t happen last time was Te Reo Tuesday, which will help the students with Maori language.
“As a student at Pukekohe Intermediate I loved that we had the chance to be involved with PINTV,” says Karlene Hunter one of the presenters. All the kids had the opportunity to apply and be apart of the TV station weither it would be in front of the camera or behind there was a job for any kid who was prepared to put in the time.

Japan Exchange

On the 17th of September 18 students, 1 principle, 2 staff members and 3 parents were off to Japan for the trip of a life time. We had an 11 hour flight but luckily for us we were scheduled to leave round 11pm but that changed when the weather had a bad turn for the worse, and a piece of roofing metal blew off the airport roof and landed on our plane which meant we were going to be delayed until all of the necessary paperwork has been done. That took about an hours time which meant we ended up leaving at about midnight. We had a very late dinner then either went to sleep or watched a movie or two. Then round 2 o'clock just about everyone was asleep. We woke up after having only 2 or 3 hours of sleep and really sore backs but we knew we were close to Japan.

Once arriving it was like a heat wave hitting us as it was 33 degrees! (a bit of a change for us) We had a big week ahead of us doing the most walking out of any of the groups that have been in the past.

Everyone was exhausted by the end of just the first day and we weren't looking forward to the walking the day after! But we had a nice relaxing dinner of Okinomayaki (a traditional Japanese dish) which everyone thought was really nice and most of us didn't even eat it all because there was so muchg in front of us.

After we'd finished our two days in Hiroshima, we moved to the city of Kyoto where we stayed in the youth hostel which was a bit of a change but we all adapted really well.

Once our time in Kyoto was done, we left for Hara Mura where our host familie awaited us. On that day it was also my birthday which was really nice. We had an amazing welcoming ceremony where there was about 60 people waiting to greet us they performed items and made fantastic speechs to us in english. We then went home with our families and spent the night in a traditional Japanese home, we would be staying here for the next 8 days. Whilst here we did loads of different activities with our hosts and we even went to school which was a big high light of my trip for me!

We then left Hara Mura for a very emotional good bye, but we were off to Tokyo. Everyone was soo excited because in Tokyo we had loads of shopping streets to go to and we were also going to Disneyland. Tokyo was such an amazing city, but then we had to leave. No on really wanted to go home but we were all almost ready for our own beds and to see our families. We had a long flight ahead destined for New Zealand.

Descriptive Writing

At the moment in class we have been working on descriptive writing, what our learning intention was, was to find a book that has a descriptive sentence or paragraph and to add onto it and create an image for the reader. This is my story.

She had large, wide set green eyes, and long brown hair that curled slightly and turned to gold at the tips.

She wore a dark blue dress that flowed neatly onto the floor the delicate lace that coated the outside of it was still in tact piece by piece.

Her walk was peaceful slow and unique, her gestures were small, her voice was soft and calm. She was angelic.

She was there just there, no one realised. They were to tied up in their on un-imaginable lives.

Maori Language Week

This week Pukekohe Intermediate have participated in a Nation wide celebration
MAORI LANGUAGE WEEK
The chosen theme this year was “Te Mahi Kai” which is translated to The Language of Food, the Maori hospitality has always been a big part of the culture and this year having this as the theme has made it a bit more special, to celebrate Maori Language Week our school put on a number of activities for the students of the school and they had competitions where you could battle it out with other classes using Te Reo words and phrases. For instance every class would receive the classroom challenge in the morning and you had to either translate English words to Maori or vice versa. There was also a fishing competition where 3 people from each class competed against each other to catch ika (which is also known as fish) they had to make there fishing rod then find a way to catch the most amount of fish possible in the time frame, the winning class was room 43 catch 11 ika.
As PINTV has been starting up there was a special feature called “Te Reo Tuesday” which will carry on through out this year. This week it included greetings and farewells so we could use them in the playground.
There was a competition set out through out the whole school which was released a week before the start of Maori Language Week and that was the poster competition where you had to make an eye catching poster that showed it was Maori Language Week and Te Mahi Kai, and also the dates. Ana and Jade from room 12 took out the competition. Congratulations.
Thank you very much to Mrs Pearson and Mrs Poutai for their VERY hard work over these past few weeks.

Descriptive Writing

Recently in class we have been doing descriptive writing, as they wanted to make sure we wouild all be ready for "High School". Wr have so far written a piece on "The Library" where we had to describe either being a book on the shelf, a teacher, a student or the author of the book, then we had to write another piece about "A bedroom" wether it be your bedroom, a dream bedroom or a room in your house. Then the last one we wrote was also about "The Library" but we wrote about the setting and the piece below is the one I wrote.

The Library

The dirty windows blocking out the bright vibrant sun, the books disordely chucked onto the shelves, the librarian ready to pull out each individual strand of hair on her head, students rowdier than ever, footsteps surround me, the teachers efforts to make the class quiet devastatingly fails, the brand new shelves are already covered in a layer of dirt and dust, books sprawled across the floor, the displays that were once stunning in colour now dull and in complete disarray, it's dark the lights were sick of being the days entertainment, they've left but their shrieks and cries still linger within the walls.

Miss Morris

This past four weeks we have had a student teacher in our class, she has been a really great help and will definitely be a great teacher in the future.

Miss Morris was in her 3rd year at teachers college, which was her last. She was in our class for what sounded like a long time but really she made everything so fun and the time just flew by.

She was really great at helping us with our science fair projects and did heaps and heaps of experiments with us in the afternoon.

We wish you good luck Miss Morris for the future and we hope you have a great time teaching!

Current Events

This afternoon we went on a website called NIE online and completed a current affairs quiz which had all the recent news that had been on the news lately, every Friday we will be completing this quiz. I got 100% and I was really pleased with that. To get these questions right every week we have been asked to watch Prime at 5.30, TV 1 at 6.00 or TV 3 also at 6.00. The URL for this website is, http://www.nieonline.co.nz. Check it out.

AIMS Games

On the 5th of September to the 10th September, there is a big sporting tournament in Tauranga called the AIMS Games it has many different sporting disciplines such as netball, football, hockey, gym sports, swimming, cross - country, badminton, golf, tennis, rugby, basketball, multi sport, squash and water polo, for both girls and boys but our school Pukekohe Intermediate doesn't include all the sports offered but most of the sports included are and trialled so all students get a fair chance of going to aims, yet most of the time to trial you have to play that sport outside of school and be in quite a high grade. Like netball for instance they wanted all the girls trialling to be at least higher than D grade for the Pukekohe Netball Courts.

AIMS is a really big event for our school and there are round 95 students going to Tauranga and there's a teacher that's in charge of each sporting group that will also go to aims with the team as either there coach or manager.

I am part of the AIMS netball team and am really looking forward to it, the competition will be pretty stiff and but I think we have a strong team and have a good opportunity for placing.

Good luck to all the students and teams competing and hopefully we will come away with a few places!

Exposition/Speech - Why Aspartame should be Banned

How often have you heard “Sugar Free” or “99% Sugar Free?” Well that’s because the product makers add a little thing called aspartame, which is just a fancy word for artificial sweetener or fake sugar. They do this to make the product sound a whole lot better than it really is. But aspartame isn’t that great for you and has heaps of side effects if you unfortunately, receive aspartame poisoning. I think it should be banned.

According to doctors there is an enormous population suffering from side effects associated with aspartame, yet they have no idea why drugs, supplements and herbs don’t relieve their symptoms. Then there are users who don’t seem to suffer any immediate reactions at all. Also aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates, which will make you gain weight. Is this happening to you?

The side effects towards aspartame poisoning are very serious and have caused many problems with people all over the world, some of the effects include epileptic fits, pain in one or both eyes or even worse blindness, headaches, migraines, shortness of breath, personality changes, dizziness, unsteadiness and severe depression are all some of the possibilities you could get after receiving aspartame poisoning and trust me there are many, many more. What’s the point in suffering for something as little as this?

Aspartame is often included in your everyday snacks, meals and drinks such as coke zero, flavoured water, cereals, chewing gum, juice and even maple syrup and these are just a few, aspartame is consumed by the average person everyday and in your usual diet coke or diet lemonade and products similar to that contain round about 200 milligrams of aspartame. Do you eat or drink these products?

Artificial sweetener has been back and forth with the health board who is trying to get it banned while the government are saying its just a way of life and there's more people surviving than dying, so what's the point in taking away an amazing ingredient, for the unlucky few. But I beg to differ, because what if that unlucky person was someone in your family, someone who was really close to you. How would you feel? Would you rather sit back and say oh it doesn't matter, they'll be all right or would you rather stand up for that someone and make a big difference in somebody else's life.

Me

My Speech

Why aspartame should be banned.

Auckland Netball

At the start of this year there was a message on the notices about all the girls who would like to represent our school for netball and go up to Auckland every Tuesday and compete against loads of different school from all Auckland.

There were round 120 girls who signed up at first and that had to be cut down to 10. The first cut that was made, was if you were at a lower grade from Saturday netball then you probably wouldn't get a chance to trial. 120 girls got cut down to 30, period 1 and 2 in week 6 the 30 girls got together and had a hard trial with the coach Donelle and from that 10 girls were picked.

I was lucky enough to be one of the girls that got chosen for the squad and after we got in the team and the names were finalized and then we got told that this was also going to be the aims team that would go down to Tauraunga to compete in a big netball tournament!

I would like to say thanks to Mrs Pearson and Donelle for giving up their time to help us kids with the skills and co-ordination we need to be top netballers!

Student Learning Plan

Last night I had my parent teacher interview, I was VERY happy with the response I got from my teacher! One thing that helped me with my interview was my student plan, it showed my parents the goals that I'd stated, I wanted to achieve.

My goals were:
Reading- I would like to complete all my reading assignments on time and to a high standard.

Writing- Proof read my draft writing for punctuation, spelling and grammar.

Mathematics- Find out the correct meaning of a cube root.

Citizenship- To be organized and be able to work in a busy class time table.

Overall I think this learning plan was such a great help and I will definitely want to use it again for my next parent teacher interview!

Recent Typing Test

This afternoon we completed our "Sense Lang" typing test again to see how much we have improved from our first test back in December 09. My first score was 48 words per minute and my score from today was 53 words per minute so I did improve slightly but this time it was touch typing, so we had a sheet over our hands and weren't aloud to look at the keyboard. So I thought that I was prity successful and my statistics were 53 words per minute, 177 characters typed, an overall of 8 mistakes and a success percentage of 95%.

I am happy with my progress and I hope that I will progress even more at the end of Term 2!

Hara Mura Exchange

On the 20th March 8 students from Pukekohe Intermediate and 1 from Pukekohe High, got a student from Hara Mura Junior High in Japan. They stayed with the chosen students for 9 days and in NZ for 10. Today was the students last day in NZ and left there new families for a very emotional goodbye and were off to Waitomo for a good NZ trip.

I was one of the lucky students who was able to receive one of the students and be able to experience what is like to not speak the same language but having to find a way to communicate but by the end of the 9 days we all could understand and talk to them like we were having a conversation, not struggling to know what they are saying. As a group, with our students we first went to Miranda Hot Springs in the Franklin district on the sea bird coast and all the host families went and had a pot luck dinner on Sunday 21st the day after they came. Then we went on an Auckland trip and visited Kelly Tarltons, Bastian Point, the Sky Tower, Victoria Park Market and a quick tour of the Maori Display at the Auckland Museum. Then on Friday we went to Sunshine Ranch in Clevedon and went on a horse trek and then went on a flying fox and a rope swing then last but not least we went on the water activities which were basically water confidence course and as far as I know all the Japanese students and even a couple of teachers really enjoyed the challenge of the courses available.

The students who received students this year and a quite a few others who got students in 09 will be visiting Japan this year in September for round 16 days. Hara Mura Junior High is Pukekohe Intermediate's sister school and they have a group of students who come every year but our school only sends students every 2 yearly.

Overall I think this group of kids that came all the way from Japan were absolutely fantastic! They students were Saho, Chiaki, Kaho, Junko, Sakiha, Hagemay, Ushiro, Ryota and Shouhei. Thanks to all the teachers who helped made this trip happen.

Multiple Intelligences Test

Today the year 8 part of our class room 23, toke a multiple intelligences test, which told us if we were Naturalistic- Nature Smart, Kinaesthetic- Body Smart, Linguistic- Word Smart, Logical- Number Smart, Interpersonal- People Smart, Intrapersonal- Myself Smart, Musical- Music Smart and Visual/Spatial- Picture Smart. Your results were given in a pie graph and showed how much of each your personality was.

In some aspects I think they were correct, with my results basically, nothing was really out of place and I think they pin pointed me prity well. My top marks were Interpersonal Smart which means you will like to mix with other people and you will belong to lots of clubs. You like team games and are good at sharing. Also Logical smart which means you will be good at mathematics and other number activities; you are also good at solving problems. Another one of my strong points is being Musical Smart which means you will enjoy music and can recognize sounds, and timbre, or the quality of a tone. The last one that I think is one of my best is Kinaesthetic smart which is you will enjoy sports and are good at swimming, athletics, gymnastics and other sports. The other intelligence i scored reasonably high on was nature smart which I was quite surprised and I didn't really except to get that sort of score.

I've looked over my results and I think that, the intelligences I got tested on, I was great at some and then there are a couple that I'm okay at like Intrapersonal smart but all in all this test summed me up quite well.

I recommend that you try this and see how accurate it is for you!

If you would like to take the test then go to Google and type in "Multiple Intelligences Test" and the first link that's available click into it and read the instructions from there.

This term Mrs Pearson introduced us to a site called "Mathletics," and luckily for us the school funded the program for us to use, because if we weren't associated with the school we would have had to pay $99.00.

Mathletics has a number of activities you can choose from and if you receive 100% you get a gold bar and in total I have 5 gold bars and I have attempted 8 rounds activities. But if you want to verse someone from across the world then you can play live mathletics which means you choose a level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. You could be faced with subtraction, multiplication, division and addition and you could have 2-4 players in your group.

You receive coins, when you play live mathletics you receive 5 coins for first and 10 points if you brake your record, also you receive coins from the activities you do. I have got 525 points this week but my highest score is 2040 points.

You can get certificates, (bronze, silver and gold) the possibilities of getting a certificate are good. If you receive 1000 points you receive a bronze certificate, then when you receive 5 bronze you will get a silver then when you get 3 silver awards you will get a gold certificate.

All together I think mathletics is a great and worthy site to use.

Rhythm Interactive

On Wednesday 17th February, all the year 7 classes went to a show called "Rhythm Interactive". John, Chewy and Lucie ran the program throughout the day, but they had a very different way of doing things. Every student received a drum to use and the show itself was 100% mime so basically they didn't talk. The reason for this was to show the kids that actions speak louder than words.

I myself being a year 8, I saw the show in 2009 and thought it was fantastic, we are very lucky to have them come every year! :)

Erica Petty a year 7 who saw the show this year said "It was a great show, I liked the beats and it made me want to join in!