MEMORIAL Acrostic Poems

We have been working in class on Acrostic Poetry.  We themed our ideas around ANZAC and created acrostic poems using the word MEMORIAL.




- Josh S




- Emily H

Marching side by side

Everything

Memorials with wreaths laid on them  

Off the horse and into the night

Riding toward the rising sun

Ill and injured everywhere

At the going down of the sun we will remember them

Lest we forget  

- Manasseh G

Trenches: Our homework

Week 7 homework was to create a trench 3metres by 1 metre (this size is for one person) by stacking chairs. Try to live in this space for several hours or overnight. Make it as realistic as you can, but don’t include the rats or mud!

So many students went above and beyond to understand what it was like to live in a trench. Check out some of the amazing homework below:

LILY and HATTIE

ERIN

On Saturday night I slept in my trench I made it in my sisters room. I used chairs, a Teepee some storage containers etc. It wasn’t very comfortable without a big fluffy pillow and mattress

ABE

This week we had to make a trench and stay in it for a couple of hours. When I was in my trench I wrote a letter to my great grandad Dave( they called him Davie) who fought in world war 2 against Japan. Here is my letter to him.

Dear great grandad

I am your grandson Nigel's oldest son. My friends call me Abe. I have a younger brother Hugh and a little sister Eve.

For our homework we had to stay in a trench for a couple of hours. My trench is an upturned picnic table with blankets on either side. Dad tells me that your trench was way worse, he said it was in the jungle and it had bugs, it was hot and sticky and that you had gunfire over your head.  Dad also says that you fought the Japanese. He said that you fought to stay alive, not to kill anyone. He says that you would be pleased to hear that one of my best mates is japanese because  you told him that you believed that they too were also fighting to stay alive.

Dad said that you know a tablet as a pill you take when you were sick. But now days a tablet is a touchscreen device that you can play computer games on, you can look up stuff that you want to find out, take pictures of yourself ( AKA a selfie) and email ( like sending a letter but a lot faster and electronically ) and you can do a lot more. It’s not like when you used to send letters and they would take weeks to get from the trench to back to your house.

I can’t imagine how scared you would have been and not knowing whether or not you would have been coming home.   

My time in my trench is coming to an end. It was very uncomfortable but I bet my trench was way more comfortable than yours.

I’m glad my class have done this project because I have learnt a lot about you and a little about what what you went through.

Yours sincerely

Your great grandson

Abe.

 

Here are some pictures of me in my trench.   

EMILY

I spent a few hours in the trench!

My parents took some pictures of me in the trench!

Here are some of the pictures!

↓

I even found a little wormy!

                  

FRANCESCA

ABBIE

CONNOR AND ALIX

                                                        

Kotahitanga week School Powhiri

This morning we had a whole school powhiri for Kotahitanga week.  

Francesca and Connor stepped up to their leadership roles and were the first class to present our class pouwhenua. They were very calm and spoke very well in front of the entire school. They did our class proud.

Pouwhenua Speech:

FRANCESCA: Kia ora Ko maungawhare Ko Francesca toku ingoa.I am here with Connor on behalf of our pou designer Harite White. In ruma tekau ma rua we have been working on unity and diversity, as part of our pou we have used our logo in the middle of the pou as our main feature.The red is for the best house, AKA: sheppard !!! we used the red inside of each koru representing  the maori culture in our house and HNI.

CONNOR: Our pouwhenua represents different cultures at HNI, by all of the hands reaching into the HNI logo in the middle, symbolising the different cultures together.The REACH at the bottom is for our values that in room 12 we try our hardest to achieve.

We also used a lot of green for one of  the HNI main colours. We have our class number right at the top so everyone can see.

After each class presented their pouwhenua, the boys delivered an amazing haka.

Kei te pehea koe?

During Te Reo lessons we have been learning about how to greet each other, ask how we are and respond.  We wrote scripts to show our learning and then acted out these scripts using the media room.  In the media room we used the Macs to edit clips and create IMovies.  Here are some of the finished products:

NZ Flag Referendum

WALT: use our plan to write a discussion text, which tells the history of the flag, and both points of view.

Success Criteria:

• Has an introduction which tells us what the text is going to be about.
• Has one paragraph explaining the history of the flag
• Has one paragraph explaining why we should keep the flag
• Has one paragraph explaining why we should change the flag.     
• Has a conclusion saying what your opinion is on the flag debate.

Model introduction:

Between the 3rd-24th March 2016 there will be a referendum held in New Zealand as to whether we should officially change the flag.  A referendum is when the public (over 18) are asked to vote on a question from the government about our nation.  The public will be deciding between the current NZ flag and the Silver Fern Flag.  

Change the Flag

From the 3rd until the 24th of march 2016, there will be a flag referendum in New Zealand, to decide whether or not we should change our current flag to the blue, black and white fern design. A referendum is when the public, (18+ only) are asked to vote with their own opinion on a question from the government about our Nation, in this case it is our national flag.

New Zealand has had quite a busy flag history! Our flag has changed 4 times and we have had 3 official flags, one of them being the British flag. Our current flag’s design was possibly taken off Australia, as the flag designer was living in Australia at the time. Our current flag was decided in 1902, when we decided we wanted to have our own flag. One of our oldest flags was ‘The Flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand.’

One side of the referendum is to keep the flag. Our flag means a lot to us, and  we are only changing a look not anything important. We fought under the current flag in war, we won the Rugby World Cup 3 times with it, and if we change it, some people may not know what country we are because we have a different flag. Changing it will be spending a lot of money on something not really necessary, and we could spend all of that money making sure that kids living in poverty have food and clothes, but according to some people changing the flag is necessary!

On the other hand, if we changed it, we could finally have an original flag, unique only to us. Other countries may even think that the black and white fern is our flag already, as we use it in a lot of our sports as a logo, like the All Blacks, Black Caps and a few others. Our flag would no longer have the union jack, and wouldn’t look like Australia’s! I think the new design represents us a little bit more anyway.

I personally think changing the flag is a good idea so we can be more unique, and I love the new flag design, although I think that the cost is far too much! I’m ok with either of the two options although my preference is to change it! But when it comes to the referendum, all that matters is what New Zealanders think. What will you choose?

Harriet W