Similes - SLJ

Similes

1. The racing car is as fast as a cheetah. 

2. My friend is as tall as the Eiffel tower. 

3. She is as small as a little mouse. 

4. The galaxy is as beautiful as the shinning light that gleams in your eyes. 

My Poem

Trapped

I’ve been trapped in the darkness,

For as long as I can remember. 

I feel like I'm drowning,

in a pool full of tears.

Maybe there’s a way out,

Something to numb the pain.

There’s this something…

I hear this voice.

It’s telling me to make a choice,

Before it’s too late.

Thoughts fleeing through my mind,

I’m starting to feel like there’s no more light.

Palms sweaty, stomachs turning.

Shutting my eyes, forgetting what’s in sight.

Collapsing onto the floor,

My body is now feeling like jello.

Laying there, as I still have my eyes close.

In so much peace,

I am no longer trapped anymore. 

Learning intention: My class room had to think of a subject about anything and create it into a poem. We did this for a test. I chose to write about the subject of being 'trapped' in your mind.

Keeping Fireworks

Keeping Fireworks

For my topic I have decided to write about keeping fireworks instead of banning them. I am sure that at the end of the day you’ll be persuaded by my reasons and opinions that are stated throughout my paragraphs. I strongly believe that fireworks should be kept, instead of banning them. Fireworks have been a tradition for many families (including mine) and I want people who are reading my piece of writing, to believe this statement once they’re finished reading my persuasive piece of writing.

Families and friends are brought together by doing fireworks, and it’s a great opportunity for people to bond with each other and all around have a great time. Guy Fawkes has been a tradition in my family since I was little and it definitely brings the whole family together and the atmosphere is just so positive and it’s full of joy. I (and many others) celebrate fireworks on the 5th of November when the big event happened. Here, I will write a short story to sum up everything that happened on the night of the 5th. On the 5th of November, 1605, the gunpowder plot happened on the night of the 4 / 5th of November. Guy fawkes was named after a guy called Guy Fawkes! Guy Fawkes was caught with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in the cellars beneath West miner. The idea was to blow up the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament on the 5th, and to assassinate King James 1.

Since many people are getting hurt from lighting fireworks, it’s 100% their responsibility and it’s their fault! When it comes to fireworks, people need to be more cautious about their surroundings and what they’re actually doing. Loads of young adults and teenagers are being stupid when they’re lighting / around fireworks. It has come to my research, that 71 people in New Zealand last Guy Fawkes, were injured and they were mostly children! Jumping jacks and fire crackers were well known from all of the injuries that were caused from last year. It disappoints me a bunch that people are getting hurt and possibly some will be at a death rate because of fireworks. The thing is, it’s their fault. Young teens and adults often drink alcohol and end up doing stupid stuff with fireworks. Also, adults need to keep their children safe and make sure that they’re not petrified, if so then keep them inside with another adult.

Second of all, if you have pet animals you can lock them inside and close the curtains shut. You can also play music or turn on the tv so they don’t hear the loud noise of the fireworks. Also you can keep them in the furnished room in your house where the atmosphere is all calm and neutral (this will make your pets think that nothing is going on and everything is normal.) I always hear people complaining about their pets being terrified by the loud noise of the fireworks, and the bright colours. Some people’s animals have even ran away from home! This, once again, is all of our responsibility. There are loads of ways you can make sure your pet is all safe and sound such as… don’t let fireworks off close to animals, have one of your family members inside of the house with your pet, keep them indoors (the reasons I mentioned earlier). Most importantly organise where you’re lighting the fireworks were either it’s in the backyard or at the beach.

Most importantly it has been a tradition for many families since the year 1605. Guy Fawkes night is an old English tradition and it’s an event that is celebrated with bonfires, fireworks, barbecues, and family gatherings. Every family has a different tradition where they do different stuff. Some create a rag doll / mannequin of the man and burn it in the fire.

To sum everything up, I am positive that the reasons I have stated will leave you bevelling that we should keep fireworks and that they should NOT be banned. It would be a real disappointment to many people across the nation, , hearing that fireworks may be banned for everyone and anyone. I know it would definitely upset me and my family since it’s been a tradition in my family for a long period of time. That’s why we should keep fireworks instead of banning them!

Learning intention: For Guy Fawkes, my classroom had to write a persuasive writing piece of were ether or not to ban fireworks or keep them. For my persuasive writing piece I chose to write about keeping fireworks, as it is my belief. 

The Amazing Race

The Amazing Race 

Last week on Wednesday the 16th, the year thirteen high school students from Greyhigh, invited us to participate in the amazing race. The high school students organised all of the activities and they were in charge of them. For the amazing race we were all put into teams of four, a total of ten groups. We all had a country related theme and my team was the UK. When it came to doing the activities we competed against each other. There were a total of five activities for all of us to do. These activities included a lot of teamwork and encouragement. One of the activities was when you had to use chopsticks to balance a lolly, and you had to do this obstacle course to get to the end and finish the activity. The number of lollies your team gained then you would be rewarded with them at the end! Another activity was doing bowls. Basically a mat was laid down on the grass and your team had to roll all of the balls and try and get them as close to this little white one to win. The third activity was a haka one where you had to organise these pictures which resembled the actions and your team had to relocate them. After that activity was the fruit bowl race and for this, you had to wear a bowl of fruit on your head with a towel secured around your head to make sure it didn’t fall off another obstacle course and the aim was to beat the opposing team member you were up against. The final activity was soccer target, and this game was when you had to kick a soccer ball onto a picture that was attached to a fence and each of the pictures contained a certain amount of points. We only had a minute each to get as many points as we could.

Overall my personal favourite activity had to be the lolly chopstick race! I enjoyed this activity because we were rewarded with lollies at the end! Well yeah that too, but most importantly it was challenging for me because I’d never used chopsticks before. At the end of the day, the team with the most points will win the race, and my team won! I was in shock and I was super proud of everyone as well who worked hard and supported each other. I had an amazing time and I'm sure that everyone else did too. It was such an amazing day, and I am thankful for the opportunity to get to do something fun and exciting like this (since we don’t get to do much stuff related to this).


All of the teams also had to create a chant related to the country they were assigned:
Our chant:
Biscuits and tea!
Biscuits and tea!
Biscuits and tea!
We love to eat biscuits and tea!

Rat Eradication

Last Tuesday my classroom went and built rat traps, with the year thirteens from high school who taught us how to build them. We learn't all about why it's important to trap rats, and why they need to be eridacted. We all had loads of fun, learning and creating rat traps. A special thank you to the year thirteen's from grehigh. We really appreciate it, we had loads of fun!

Duffy Books

This morning we got given two Duffy books from yesterday when a Duffy speaker came in, but we got given it today since we had a program on yesterday. Every term we get a panflet where we get to choose four books that we would like to read, and at the end of every term we get delivered them! Two books get chosen out of the four you choose. Our school is very grateful and lucky to get books to read, it really gives us an opportunity to learn alot more and improve our reading skills. The reason why my school gets Duffy books for free is because we are a Duffy school! Not only our school gets the chance to get awesome cool books, but a few other schools across New Zealand do too! Every year there is a Duffy show at school, and sometimes at the end of it we get given our free books! Students all around New Zealand have received around 12 million + books from Duffy! Duffy gives books to over 100,000 New Zealand children around about three times a year. The two books I received today are called Echo by Esperanza Rising And The Dreamer, and I also got given a book called Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve. I am super grateful and lucky that my school gets given Duffy books, because it's an great way for kids to learn and improve their reading skills. 

Space Exploration (My Persuasive Argument)

Space Exploration
(My Argument)

I think that space exploration is extremely important and useful for multiple reasons. Here I’ll be stating all of the reasons why I think its important and giving you my honest opinions and thoughts.

My first reason is that if we don’t find new places to live and areas we could become extinct. Why’s that? And how? (you may ask) well in this world there are currently more than seven billion people that live on planet earth, which is quite a huge amount of people. But however we’re all crammed together on this single, individual planet. If something happened to earth like a meteor came crashing down or a huge asteroid happened, our species could be wiped out and humans could become extinct. Colonising other bodies in the solar system is a way to create “backup” of humanity that will survive no matter what happens to earth. This is just a thought, but maybe in the future humans will never be seen to take a step on planet earth again, perhaps they could be living on another planet, but hopefully they don’t become extinct. Space exploration is helping to address fundamental questions about our place in the universe and the history of our solar system.

My next reason is that space mining could save the world. New technologies are getting built and designed every single day, therefore the strain on our natural resources continue to increase. The extraction of valuable minerals has led to a host of problems, including environmental damage, and human exploitation, but there’s an amount of precious materials that are lying around in space. Startups like planetary resources want to mine asteroids instead of earth, which would mean an effectively unlimited supply of raw materials that are laid upon earth. In theory, hydrogen fuel that's been mined from asteroids costs significantly less than fuel from planet earth! Due to high costs of escaping earth’s gravity.

We also need to continue to explore and discover. It’s very important humans keep doing this or otherwise we are going to be stuck on planet earth until the day we might become extinct. There are more practical reasons for space exploration, but one of the principal reasons we must continue is that we are explorers. That’s why humans number in the billions from our earliest upright steps, we’ve endeavoured to learn more about the world around us, and this is to build civilisation. Exploring space is an opportunity not only to discover new worlds and build advanced technologies, but instead to work towards a larger goal irrespective of nationality, race, or gender. If we discontinue to explore then we may stop being a human race.

Most importantly the human race is increasing more and more by the day. Every day a child enter this world, which means are population goes up. Some countries make that having children is illegal. Our current population is 7.7 billion in August 2019. Our population is increasing 82 million per year! Our population is becoming more huge, and people are becoming homeless. There could be a few reasons for this. One not enough houses are getting built or two, the prices of housing are becoming more expensive for people to buy. We also really just need a backup because one day something terrible could happen to earth and what are we going to do then? Give up and just sit there until death falls upon us? No. We need to continue to explore and Nasa needs to continue to spend money for space exploration. Because population is expanding rapidly in huge numbers. There is hope to find a planet in space that can sustain life to human beings. I believe there are planets out there that include an environment that is safe for us to live on, but it must include the important resources we use on a daily basis like oxygen, water, trees to give us oxygen (plant life), food, shelter etc. As a team humans could build and create a new planet that is suitable for everyone to live on.

Another durable reason I have is space exploration can protect us by a catastrophic asteroid. This could be the cause of a possible chance on how the world might end. An asteroid hits our planet about every 10,000 years or so… shouldn’t we all be prepared? If we don’t want to end up like the dinosaurs someday, we need to start to protect ourselves against the threat of being hit by a big asteroid. According to Nasa, typically about once every 10,000 years, rocky or iron asteroids (which is around about the size of a football field!) could smash into our planet’s surface and possibly cause tidal waves big enough to inundate coastal areas. But we also have something else to fear about... there are asteroids that are about 100 meters (109 yards) across or bigger that we really have to watch out for. Such a collision would unleash a firestorm of heated debris that would fill the atmosphere with sun-blocking dust, which can easily wipe out forests and farm fields and starve the human and animal life that it didn’t immediately kill. All though there is this widely funded space program that enables us to spot a dangerous object long before it strikes earth, and send a spacecraft to plant a detonate nuclear explosion that could nudge it off its collision course.

My very last reason is that space exploration could help solve a really big question. A Lot of people believe that life exists somewhere else in the cosmos, according to a 2013 Huffing ton poll half of the american nation chose to believe it! And a quarter of them think that extraterrestrials already have visited our planet. But so far, sweeps of the sky with Earth-based telescopes for signals that might be beacons from distant civilisations have proven fruitless, possibly because the Earth's atmosphere interferes with such messages reaching us. That's why searchers for extraterrestrial civilisations are eager for the deployment of more orbital observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope. That satellite, which was expected to launch in 2018, had the ability to search for the chemical signs of life in the atmospheres of distant planets outside our solar system (source: Kramer). That's a start, but an even more aggressive space-based effort to look for clues of extraterrestrials might finally help us to answer the question of whether we have company out there.

To sum everything up, In conclusion, I believe that space exploration is important and needs to continue. I have given decent reasons and explanations on why space exploration is important. I have explained the impact on how it affects our environment, population etc. I’ve also explained how its important we should keep exploring and overall how important space exploration really is. These are my reasons, opinions and thoughts on what I think about it. Overall, I strongly believe that space exploration is important and it should continue!

By Aimee