Jim Walsh - Swimming

Mining West Coast History

History Topic

Fair trade Learning

For our topic this term we have been delving deep into Fair Trade and what it's about.   Fair trade doesn't support companies that have child labour.  Fair Trade helps exporters, for instance if someone provided coffee beans for The Fair Trade Company then Fair Trade gives them a fair amount of money.   Sometimes Fair Trade build schools for children who need education, they also provide fresh water and food.  For our fair trade topic we have each been assigned to a sack.  We had the option if we wanted to be in groups or not, I decided to partner up with Elsie to create a poem.  Our stages throughout the process went like this: First we came up with a poem that was meaningful, then we came up with designs for the sacks, our third stage was to edit everything and see if there were any mistakes.  Our final stage was to get creating.  We laid out pieces of newspaper onto the lino in the corridor  because there wasn't enough space in the classroom.  We then dipped our cotton buds into the cup with Indian ink and carefully dabbed our way through the sack.  The process didn't take that long to complete, but we were still very careful with our work and it turned out looking really good in the end.  Overall I think that the fair trade topic was fun, next term for the class topic my suggestion is to either do an art inquiry or a music inquiry where you have to play a song and figure out the meaning behind it, for the art inquiry we could choose an artwork to get inspired by and make our "re-creation" or something that looks similar. 

Nutritionist Experience

On Tuesday the 26th & Wednesday the 27th of March a Nutritionist from New World called Jessica Smaill came into our class and taught us how to read and compare food labels, what types of fats, sugars, sodium etc are healthy or unatural, basically she taught us about food in general.  We got taught  what food are occasional and everyday food, I found it very interesting and informative.  We had two sessions with Jessica before we went to New World.  The next day we went into town on Thursday the 28th of March.  We first drove to the Recreation Centre to either use the courts or go swimming, I decided to use the courts.  We were at the Rec Centre for about an hour.  After the Recreation Centre we then went to New World.  We were at New World to read and compare different food labels and write down the results on a piece of paper. There were 5 different types of categories including breads, breakfast cereals, bars, snacks, The hardest healthy type of food to find was surprisingly bars. We had the class split into groups of 5.  I finished early along with Jakob & Eden, we went to Jessica to let her know that we were finished.  She then gave us a challenge which was to go around New World to find an almost perfect & healthy sauce.  We successfully finished that by discovering two different sauces.  After everyone eventually finished their activity we went to the wine & beer area to gather around Jessica to say our thank yous, she then dissapeared into New World as we moved on to our other activity, which was to find ingrideints for our smoothies.  We split into groups once more.  Each group had a catagory out of the ingridents.  There was fruits & vege, milk, etc.  My group ended up with the fruit & vege, we were allowed to choose the fruit & vege that were going to be put into the smoothie. After about an hour or so at New World we went to the Dixon Park and had a little munch.  Last but not least we went to the library to read books that aren't in our library back at school.   After a fun filled day we had to go back to school in time for the bus.

What I learnt from this experience: I learnt how to read and compare labels on food.

How has this changed what I eat and drink: I think this experience has changed just a little bit as to what I eat and drink.  I'm eating more fruit then usual and drinking more water than usual.  I also read the food label at the back for curiosity and fun purposes.

Art Inquiry Reflection

My art inquiry was based on making an art gallery in the hallway so that people can look

see the different art.  I think I got behind because I was changing my ideas on how it

would look like. Those thoughts were developed in week 3 or 4. I wanted to put artwork in

the gallery that was created by lake brunner students this year. I didn't want to put the

gallery into place in the first week, instead in week 6.

Vocabulary, Mirror image

Apartheid - segregation on grounds other than race.

  (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.

Chagrined -  feel distressed or humiliated.

he was chagrined when his friend poured scorn on him

Remnant - something that remains.

remnant strands of hair

Trudged - Heavy steps taken slowly.

He trudged over to the mall.

Oppose - Disagree, argument.

those of you who oppose capital punishment

Plastic bags everywhere!

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Plot line

 I was trying to achieve to make a plot line for the 3 little pigs in 10 minutes. 

Mould experiment

In class we all did this experiment where we make mould and see which type of food grows mould and which don't.  Here is my experiment.

Fermented food with Mary&Tara

In class we have been learning about food, so we decided to ferment some.  There was a wide variety to choose from all the fermented food.  So Tara and I decided to choose fermented cucumber and boza. 

Fungi explanation

Prebiotics and probiotics

Our Whenua-Our Land brainstorm

Spanish Vocabulary Refugee week 5

Tornado Forces Investigation

Wheel & Axle Investigation