Animators Apprentice!

Animations. Most of us grew up watching them, like The Lion King trilogy, Pocahontas and Disney Fairy tales, but over the years these animations have grown more advanced. Have you heard of the rated cartoon named Bro Town? Well last week on Thursday we were lucky enough to get to meet three of the artists.

At the beginning of the lesson they introduced themselves as Ali, Maka and Nils. To start the lesson off, they showed us a presentation which educated us on a brief history of Animations. We learnt that Mickey Mouse was the first moving animation but with sound. After an educational talk about history, we learnt how to split lines. How do you do this? Well you have to draw a line down the middle of whatever you are trying to split.

After a session of splitting lines, we were going to learn how to make a Zoetrope. This is a contraption made out of cardboard to create an illusion that makes an object seem like it’s moving but it actually is just a couple of still frames of an image which goes from one state of movement to another. We all started with something easy: A jellyfish.  After decorating our Jellyfish, we finished the session off with the joy that we have made our first ever comic strip for a Zoetrope!

NZ Goes for Gold!

Sitting on the edge of my seat, I was waiting anxiously to see who would win the Rowing: Men’s double sculls. I watched as they gracefully rowed over the dark shimmering water. The motion of their legs were in sync with their arms as they powered over the water. Crossing the finish line, my brother and I celebrated New Zealand’s first gold medal.

Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan won the nation's first gold medal at the London Olympics. Overwhelmed with joy Sullivan flung his arms up in the air, shook his partner’s hand before standing upright in the boat. The nation shared their joy as we were ecstatic at this win.

This is  the 7th gold medal that New Zealand has won in rowing, but it is the first time we have won it in the Men’s double sculls. This is a huge achievement for them, and for the country. “It was about staying composed and waiting for our moment” Cohen commented after the race.


You can read more on this NZ Herald article if you click on this link:


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10824241

Intense Archery

Title: Target Concentration
Brainstorm: Concentrated, Veins on arms, Focus, Target
Sentences:
1. Striding onto the platform, he felt the pressure of a thousand eyes observing his every move.
2. Nerves started to take over, as his heart pumped, and arms ached.
3. He proudly wore his country’s colours while keeping his eyes on the prize, which in this case was the target.
4. Pulling back the arrow, he whispered words of encouragement to himself. “I can do this, I can do this”.
5. Upon release, the arrow shot straight towards the target.....and achieved a direct hit.

Devonport!

Walking down these mysterious steps, I looked into the tunnel but it was pitch black. Using my senses, I ran my fingers over the rough walls. My niece Maya tried to use her phone as a light but, the light was drowned out by the conquering darkness. “We’re lost...” I moaned, then all of a sudden we caught a glimpse of what looked like light. we followed it and came across a contraption. Smothered in spider webs we studied it hard. It had all sorts of levers and spikes, which made it looks like a former contraption used for torture. We were so concentrated on it that we didn’t hear my sister calling us. “Lena, Maya, come lets go and eat!”. We reluctantly did as we told, and exited the tunnel. We were visiting the Devonport caves.

10 bruises and a scar later, we arrived at another set of steps. As we stepped onto the boardwalk, we were greeted with a stunning scenery. The sun hung gracefully in the sky, while it shimmered on the deep dark water. My feet ached like I had just run a marathon. Sitting down on the seats, I took out a packet of chocolate brownies. I bit into one, and it tasted like heaven on a platter. 5 brownies later, we packed up and were heading to the caves now.

On our way to the caves, we saw something interesting in the corner of my eye. We looked and saw a couple of people sliding down a hill on pieces of cardboard. It looked reckless, but what would be the harm just to go and check it out. We looked and saw that there were tracks where you slide down. “Hey Lena, If you go down I’ll give you 10 dollars!” My sister dared me. To be honest it didn’t look like the best thing in the world but, I looked fun. I searched for a piece of cardboard in good condition, and snatched it up. Calmly laying it down on the edge of the hill, I stared at the density of it. Sitting on it, I felt the pressure of my sister’s eyes on me. “1,2,3...GO!” She screamed. Riding down, It was a bumpy ride.....and when I say it I mean it. Pieces of long grass somehow landed in my hair. At the end of the hill, I looked up and saw my sister laughing hysterically. “Well I’d like to see you come and try it!” I screamed, But that was physically impossible...especially since she was pregnant. “Come Lena, We have to go home now.” Walking up the hill, I made my way to the car.

We finished the day off with a box full of steaming hot Pizza. While I bit into the Beef and onions, I reminisced on the day we had. It was full of scares, food and FUN with the family, But the downside...We were stuck in traffic, though this was the perfect time for a snooze. The day was awesome and hopefully we could come back again!

Hinemoa, The Belle of Kainga

The extension group are focussing on a particular New Zealand artist who is well known for his detailed oil paintings which have influenced many artists today: Charles Frederick Goldie. We had to choose one of his paintings and we had to try to replicate it. Out of numerous paintings I chose to paint this one called 'Hinemoa, The Belle of Kainga'. 

Over a period of 2 weeks, I researched, observed and drew this fine work of art. While researching I found out that this painting was painted in 1913 which is about 99 years ago. This painting is one of Charles Goldie's few oil paintings, which make it hard to believe that it was a oil painting at all! You might be wondering why Charles Goldie only painted Maori people. Well the answer is quite simple: The culture was dying out. Especially the Maori tattoo called the Moko. It symbolises your family, and respect that you have for your culture.

The finished product is better than I expected, because as my friends know: I am not very fond of art. After this task, I have learnt the beauty of art and the power that it has to change the way people think. The thing I want people to notice about the extension groups artwork is the importance of Maori culture. Of the beauty and and respect that their Taonga bring to them, in this case the Taonga in this painting is the Tiki.

These are a few of my favourite things!!!

All I need to say about this photo is: Me. This photo shows symbols that explain me. The first symbol shows that I love fashion. When I go out with my family or friends. People would explain my fashion sense as a person who loves to wear anything that is Vintage. Performing is also 1 of my hobbies. Singing is a creative way of expressing how you feel. Dancing is also a creative way to express yourself with movement. Me and my big brother Sam both share a love for dancing. The symbol on the bottom left corner shows that I also have a love for sports. My favourite sports are Netball, Volleyball, touch and multiple other sports. Cameras are great. Why I hear you ask? Well it stores all of your important memories on it. Thanks to modern technology, we can do more things with cameras like uploading the photos onto the computer just by a click of a button.

So there you have it. I have told you 4 things that represent me. If you are interested in reading more you can click on this link and this will take you to my flickr page: These are a few of my favourite things!

Selena Wondering?

In Room 20 we had to think of a question that we were thinking about. We called it our wondering. This is an animation as to what MY wondering was. If there were Gravity in space, Where would all the planets fall to?

France

The flag that you can see above belongs to France. You might be wondering: What do the colours on the flag mean? Well the blue represents the influence that France has over other countries. White shows the peace and purity that France has. The red shows the bloodshed that must be lost when you are fighting for honour for your country.

This wasn't the only design of the flag of France? There were many designs and ideas, and the flag's meanings changed endlessly until 1794 when this flag (And it's meanings) were made the official flag of France!

Mihimihi

This video here is a voice recording of me, reciting a mihi that I learnt off by heart. It took me about 3 weeks to learn this, and it was especially hard because the words were in Maori. 3 weeks ago I would've thought that learning this was impossible, but now it's as easy as taking a lollipop from a baby ( Not that I would do that!). So here is all my hard work in words!

Geomertry Translation

In our class: Room 20,We are learning about a learning area in Maths and that is: Geometry. In Geometry we are learning about translations, No, not language translation, translation as in: Moving shapes without making it bigger,smaller or anything else, just moving. The focus for this photo was to:
1. Find a grid and add it to a new google docs drawing.
2. I had to add a shape,well in my case my shape was a square.
3.I copied the square and moved the square 2 down and 2 across.
4. Took a screen shot and uploaded it to my blog for the whole world to see!!! That is it. I really look forward to learning some more about Geometry in the future!

Welcome to Point England school

This is a glimpse of what happens at Pt England school. It has little snapshots of what we do and how we do them. It also has a photo of our new Intermediate. You'll see clips of new entrants lining up and Senior boys playing on the court. The Pt England way is important to us because it helps us understand how to respect other people, mould our behavior, taking charge of our belongings and classroom tools and lastly to take charge of our learning. Hope you enjoy watching this movie.

Ambassador -Television

In 2010 I have been an ambassador for Pt England School. My role has been to talk about my learning to hundreds of visitors who have come to our school from all over the country and around the world.


This video shows you what I had to say about how Television and other screens help us learn.

Selena - television from KPE TV on Vimeo.

This is the transcript of my presentation:

"One of the ways we share our learning at Pt England School is through television. Mr Burt set this up in 1996, so you can work out that we have been doing this for a long time now - fourteen years in fact!

The Pt England News network goes to air 4 days a week and each episode is about 10 minutes long. We remind the school about the events of the day, the UV rating and what has been happening in sport around Pt England, New Zealand and the World!

But most importantly, every day a class gets to tell the whole school about what they have been learning. Every class is timetabled to have the opportunity at least once a term to make a movie for PENN about the learning going on in the class. This is given to the PENN production team so they can include it in the programme for the day. Because of this, every student at Pt England has the chance to be on PENN at least once a term.

The Production team for PENN is managed by Mrs Tele'a. Behind the scenes she has a small team of Year 7 students who produce the show each day. They will tell you more about what they do if you visit the elearning Centre. She also has a small camera crew of Year 6 students who film the content.

In front of the camera there is a larger group of Year 5 and 6 students who anchor the show. These presenters are timetabled on for a week at a time.
The entire crew has to be at school at 8 oclock in the morning so we can get PENN recorded and edited by the time school starts at ten to nine.

In 2001 Mr Burt had the great idea of sharing our learning with our community via public television and so schoolTV was born. At 5.45 every Wednesday our whanau can sit back in their own comfortable chairs at home and watch the highlights of the week from PENN. Mrs Tele'a produces and edits this show before it goes to air on Triangle Television.
This is an Auckland based channel, but if you have FreeView you can see it anywhere in New Zealand.

We also enjoy creating movies for the big screen. We have film festivals, multi media productions and other events where we can create special movies that showcase our technical and acting talents as well as our learning.

And you may have noticed in our foyer that we share our learning on a different type of screen again. This is Campus Channel where we can upload our television content over the internet and add up-to-date messages for everyone to read using a feed from Twitter.

I think that publishing on all these different types of screens helps us learn how to be confident."

Minister Heatley speaking to us after we gave our presentation.

Minister of Housing, Phil Heatley, was one of the people we presented to this year.

Cross Country

“Boom ....Boom” My heart skipped a beat when I heard the shocking announcement. It was Cross - Country. Butterflies started fluttering in my stomach because I didn’t want to run. Then I knew that Mr Burt had set up an Ambush, I assumed that the teachers knew , but some teachers hesitated. “ Oh no, here we go again.

I forced myself to sit behind my fellow competitors,It was a freezing day, which didn’t help at all. Then there was another horrible report from Mr Burt : “ Today, Cross - Country isn’ t going to be as long as usual so the oldest are going first”. My heart dropped that means me. “How am I going to survive the race” I moaned.

I reluctantly dragged my legs to the start line , I felt something fluttering in my stomach and I knew that they were butterflies. The butterflies started flapping like crazy.”Take your mark “ shouted Mr Burt. I was doomed. “ Get set”. “Oh no”. “BANG”. All of my competitors zoomed past me.

My heart was pounding wildly , while my legs were going through excruciating pain. My throat was so sore that I had to swallow saliva every 3 seconds. I could feel and hear the mud squelching, in between my toes. I kept saying to myself “ Keep jogging, you can make it”. The pain was growing tense, I thought I was going to collapse right on the ground.

Mid-way through the course I was already wheezing. I saw 4 people in front of me. 2 were boys and 2 were girls. I tried to do a little spurt, but that made no difference. As I passed the teachers they all said positive things to me like “keep going” or “finish this”. That really helped a lot ( I think ).

The finish line was a few steps away, I was desperate to finish. Everyone on the sideline was cheering especially Miss King cause she wanted Tainui to win. She shouted “ Sprint Selena Sprint” . So I listened to her and ... BAM. I finished the race , I was proud because I came 3rd.

After that horrible experience was over, I ran straight to the tap and drank all of the water I could. My throat was filled with glorious water, and now it was soothed. I went and sat down slowly since my legs were aching. The most fun part of the day was when I crossed the finish line and came third. I was surprised because I thought I would have never survived this race.