Nearly one thousand visitors or more!!!

Imagine standing up more than forty times doing a speech about what you are good at!!

Well that is what some of my friends and I did. Each time about 10 visitors or more came to hear our speeches. Some times a whole bus load would come at once! My speech was about video conferencing. There were 5 things we talked about. There was P.E.N.N {this stands for Pt England News Network}, podcasting, our own televison show called schoolTV and even blogging. Down below is a movie which shows me saying my speech.

The Tolerance Show!!!!! Presented to you by Tanielu and Leoden

Duing this year the Point England Extension Group have been involved with Rock Our World. Just like our school, they have topics for the terms. This terms topic was about tolerance. We had to make a movie about different scenarios. We had to choose to tolerate or not to tolerate. Our scenario is.......... actually find out what our scenario is by watching our movie.

"The Toy Shop on Zip Zap Avenue"

"Hey everybody, its show time!" shouted Sione and Jordan P. They were two of the main characters for our school production "The Toy Shop on Zip Zap Avenue". This production was about a toy shop that comes alive when the shopkeeper leaves and the toys celebrate a superb friend that had been sold just before the shop closed.

It was crazy getting ready for this. Pupils were coming in and out of the classrooms and the library. Man, the first night was absolutely stupendous. Everybody was nervous. When the the MCs said those words, it was everyones time to shine. We had to sing the theme song for the production. I was ready to go like a racing car at the start line. I had an ecstatic kind of feeling. I had heaps of energy and at the same time was a little nervous.

My part in the production was playing the recorder and also playing the guitar. I got dressed up as a rat when I was playing the recorder. I felt like a real rat when I was in costume. Instruments are cool because if you play them properly they make a really good sound.

On the other two nights I got better and better at playing the two instruments. I could feel them dance to the music that was being played on the sub woofers. This was an experience that I will never forget.
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Here is some footage of me playing the recorder and the guitar. Above is a video of The guitars getting played and down bottom is me playing the recorder like a rat. You can not see me when i am playing the guitar because i am hidden by Kalim a friend of mine that is singing but in the production they call him tiki.

Camp Bentzon was AWESOME!!!!!!!

We've had heaps of things happening in term 4 like testing,our school production
athletics and now we get a rest from all that. Last week, year 6s went to camp. There was a lot of preparation for camp. Mrs Flavell said that a guy named Mr Coop would be important because he will be making our food. Peter and Erin {the managers} helped us with our activites. We went to Kawau island then onto Camp Bentzon. We had travelled one hour on the bus and about the same amount of time by
water taxi.


After all this travelling, we finally arrived at camp Bentzon. Some of us were very tired and then the teachers said we were going for a walk to have a swim at a very nice beach. I thought it was going to be a short walk but I was so wrong. They said it was a walk NOT a very steep hike! At least when we were walking we had beautiful views and
the beach was amazing. We had a sand competition and my group won with a koru
design.

Man we had a cool first day, and that was only the first of the 4 days. It was Wednesday and Mr J woke us up for a morning run up a hill and he warned us people have gotten hurt running down the hill. Mr J even told us that one year, some boys
thought that they were "the man" walking up the hill so they decided to run down the hill and then he said "the man at the top and crying baby at the bottom".It was in the morning and before breakfast and we had to run up a steep hill. I felt like a very hot baked bread coming out of an oven when I finished.


Breakfast time is the time when you enjoy nice food and guess what, we had to sing to get our yummy food. Some groups had to sing 2 songs or more but most of the time, the groups only had to sing 2.


On Wednesday and Thursday we did our activities that the teachers had organised. There were heaps of activities like abseiling, sailing in a optimist dingy, a Burma trail,a confidence course and a few more. There was also another activity that was not on the list and that was bombing off a little platform. In our spare time there was a few other
games like a cricket set ,a rugby ball for touch and about 3 tennis balls.


Items. Everybody knows what an item is in New Zealand but for some reason when kids try to sort out a item sometimes we argue because we don't like each others ideas. Its also cool to watch what other people have come up with. This is one of the best things at camp Bentzon because you do not know what they are going to do. They might do something funny or serious, depending on the situation.


After all this we had to pack up and leave. We made our lunch and jumped on the water
taxi. Nearly all of us missed kawau island and also missed our family.

What a SHOCKING game....

The ultimate Storm win the Grand Final, I still can't quite believe it. They have won 2 times in the last four years. They had just beaten the Parramatta Eels to take the title. A team that has won 10 of their 11 games before they had been beaten last Sunday.

The first half was domanated by the most experienced team, Melbourne Storm. When the Storm had gotten their first try, the Eels looked determined but unable to hit back. After a little while, the Storm were setting up for their second try and then they had gotten it. Now the Eels were in shock. They havent been in this situation for a long time, this through them off. Their kicking game was no good. They could'nt make some good yardage and their plays could not get them through the defence line. The Storms defence was very very strong.! At this stage, I was quivering with anticipation. Iwas thinking "I wonder what kind of magic the Eels are going to produce, actully, I wonder if there was going to be any magic?". At half time, the Storm were leading 10-0. I decided to try and cool myself down because I was getting angry at the scoreboard.

aT halftime, the Eels coach must of given some pretty good commands because I saw a spark in their play when they came back on. After 10minutes, the Eels put some points on the board, the score was now 10-6. Melbourne came back and scored another 2 tries with the Eels answering back with one of their tries. The Eels coach Daniel Anderson, decided to bring his big gun back onto the field, Fuifui Moemoe. In less than 5minutes Fuifui had stormed down to the try line and had gotten a try to put some hope back in Parramatta. The Eels were now down 1 converted try. The game carried on when Fuifui Moemoe had just made a beautiful tackle around the legs of Billy Slater who then dropped it. The referee called it a strip when it wasnt. When we watched it in slow mo, I could not believe my eyes. It was such a important time of the game for the referee to make a dumb decision. I was devastated for my team and angry at the referee. 5 tackles later, the Storm kicked a field drop goal. When it went over, there was only 2minutes to go. I knew the dream of winning the Grand final for my team was over. 2nd place is still awesome for a team that has not won since 23 years ago. WATCH OUT FOR THE PARRAMATTA EELS IN 2010!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Electric Parramatta Eels slither to the GRAND FINAL

"Wooooooo!!!!"went the hooter. Did you know that the Bulldogs lost against the Parramatta Eels last night? Everybody thought that it was going to be a close game but the final outcome was 22-12.

The first half was messy for both sides but in the 4th minute the Bulldogs managed to get a try. The worse thing for the Eels was their star player Jarryd Hayne was put on report for a knee to the upper body of Bryson Goodwin. I hope Jarryd does not get a suspension for the last game of the season. The Bulldogs had an opportunity to get an 8 point lead but Hazem did not get one of his conversions. The Eels did not give up and then finally made their first try of the game. This evened the score up, so now it was 6 all but the dogs came back with determanation and scored another try. At half time the Bulldogs were leading 12-6.

I could tell that Daniel Anderson {their coach} was telling them to do this and that when the Eels were in their changing rooms for half time. The commentators were talking nonstop about the first half.
The Eels were all listening hard because they wanted to win the game and so did I. I was feeling nervous because what if they did not come back to win? What if they get a beating?

The nervous feeling started to go away because they scored another try in the 2nd half. That means that the score was even..... again. After about 15 more minutes they got another try and that feeling went away again then a new feeling came inside me. Can you guess what it was? If you guessed happiness and proud you would be right.

My Uncle Matt said that his team {the Bulldogs} would win. He mocked my team before the game started and he said "...Can you guess what bulldogs eat for breakfast? Smoked Eels....". when he said that I did not mind because I knew that the Parramatta Eels would win anyway. When another try {the last} and conversion were added for the Eels, I said to my Uncle "what were you saying about smoked Eels?" and he said "Yeah yeah" then we both laughed together.

In the grand final it will be the Parramatta Eels against the winner of The Brisbourn Broncos or the Melbourne Storms who are playing each other today.

THE SERGE OF THE PARRAMATTA EELS, WATCH OUT BRONCOS OR STORM!!!!!

The Parramatta Eels electrifry the Titans....PERMANENTLY

"The season is well and truly over for the Gold Coast Titans" sadly said the commentator. My gosh, did I see the Parramatta Eels last night win again? First, over the St George Dragons and now the Titans. The score was absolutely amazing.

The Eels did not let them even score a try. The score was 27 -2 to the "electrifying" Eels. They were on fire in the first half and they only made a few mistakes. At least the Gold Coast Titans had a two pointer. It was 12-2 just before half time and can you guess who stepped up and got the field goal? He has the title "Player of the Year" and the award to make it official. This man was in my last post "My FAVOURITE rugby league player". If you guessed Jarryd Hayne then you would be right.

He is the ultimate player. He can kick a 40-20, score tries, can make up beautiful plays, set up tries and now he can kick a field goal. He did it just when the buzzer went for half time. I wanted to run around like a crazy manic. In the second half though, the Eels made a few too many mistakes but they still held on.

There were times when the Titans nearly scored but the mighty Eels still held on. Instead of the Titans getting tries , it was the stunning Eels that had the tries, but they only scored 2 tries this time. The first try was when the Eels passed the ball out wide and then passed it back inside. It felt like a classic maneuver to me. The second try was from pure power and footwork. Ben smith scored this try which was the last.

The scrum was down and packed then the halfback passed the ball to Ben smith. It was a good situation for Smith. It was him against the tackler Luke Bailey, so he just fended him off and did a little step then he had his first try in first grade. To make it even worse for the Titans, they got a penalty so the Eels chose to finish the game in style which was to slot the ball in between the posts and that's what Luke Burt did. I was screaming in my mind and saying "YES" then saying yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE PARRAMATTA EELS ARE ON FIRE. WATCH OUT BULLDOGS AND BRONCOS

My FAVOURITE rugby league player!

"What a fantastic try by Jarryd Hayne" the commentator shouted through the microphone. Can you take a guess of who my favourite rugby league player is? If you guessed Jarryd Hayne then you guessed correctly! Man, did you see the score against the St George Dragons? Jarryd Hayne got the last try for The Parramatta Eels. He sidestepped 4 people. It was an amazing performance from the Eels. The score was 25 - 12 to the amazing Eels. I could not believe that the Eels had won because sometimes the Dragons would come back, but when Luke Burt got the field goal, I knew that they had won. Next week, they will be versing the Gold Coast Titans. They had lost to their big "brothers" the Broncos. Jarryd Haynes position on the field is the fullback. This position means that if the other team gets tackled five times they have to kick the ball then the fullback retrieves the ball and if he and his team gets tackled five times that team has to kick too. The fulback hardly gets the ball but Jarryd Hayne had played like a half back when he is gotten to his peak. Here is Jarryd Hayne's stats-

D.O.B: 15/02/88

Age: 21

Height: 188cm

Weight: 96kg

Position: fullback/wing

Rep Honours: 3 matches for NSW 07 and 09,1 test for Australia 07, City Origin 07 and played for Fiji 08

and he got player of the year for 2009. The nominees were himself, the five-eighth for the St George Dragons - Jamie Soward or Anthony Watmough who plays for the Manly Sea Eagles. He and the Eels are going through to the finals football {rugby league not soccer} I really hope the Eels win against the Titans. Have you got a favorite League team. Comment and tell me. GO THE PARRAMATTA EELS!!!!!

The coolest word site!!! Wordle

Today at extension we got to use a very cool website. It is called Wordle. We used this program to get the picture above. This program scans though your blog and shows you which words you use most often.

An instrument that records earthquakes

Shake shake shake went the mysterious object in our I.C.T teacher's hand. What was it?

Mrs Tele'a said that we were going to make a seismometer. A seismometer is an instrument that records an earthquake and its magnitude. We were doing this because we were going to have a video conference with Hamish Campbell about a region called Fioidland in the South Island of NZ, having a huge earthquake . No, not Hamish Carter, this guy is a....a....well .. he is really heaps of things. Yesterday we had to make a home made seismometer. We got these steps from the Internet. These were the materials we used.


-a cardboard box

-a polystyrene cup

-a permanent marker

-a piece of paper

-a string about 60 Cm's

-marbles or tiny rocks{optional}

When we started, the whole room was filled with noise and we were all racing against each other. After very hard work, we finally made our seismometer but this was still unstable. The pen that was stuck though the cup was not reaching the paper on the bottom of the cardboard box.

We tested it after we had fixed this problem. The marbles that we put in, were too heavy and it broke the string that was holding the cup off the ground. Our team was very happy to have finished it. Here is a picture of our home made seismometer.

I'm only 10 and I just met John Key!

Wow, imagine that, you're only 10 years old and you get to meet the Prime Minister of your country, along with 3 other pupils from your school.
That's the Right Honourable JOHN KEY {The Prime Minister of New Zealand}. This was on the last day of term 2, Pt England School.

The meeting took place at Ruapotaka Marae in Tamaki,Auckland City. My classmates and I went with our I.C.T. teacher Mrs Tele'a. They were Tanielu, Cruz, Sela and myself. Some of us were getting a little nervous......


There is a good thing going on and it is called the Tamaki transformation and this was the subject that we were talking to him about. We had three questions for him. When we arrived at the marae, it felt like ages waiting for the Prime Minister to come into the marae. There was a group, singing a Maori waiata and the boys sounded like they were doing a haka. There was a lot of other people who had come with him, I think they must have been the Minister of Education and the Mayor of this area.


When he sat down, Maori people began to say a speech in Maori from the side that we were sitting on. Then the side that John Key and all the other Parliamentary people were sitting had a speech too. This would keep going on and there would be a Maori song after about 2 Maori speeches. I think every body that was Maori did a speech and even the Prime Minister himself did a speech in Maori. As I'm not Maori, I didn't understand a single word they were saying but I asumed that they were welcoming each other.


It was kai {lunch} time when we finally did our interview. The interview was really cool, click above and you can watch for yourself.

The history of dinoasurs in a museum

This week on Wednesday we got to go to the museum. They had activities on dinosaurs which is our topic for this term. We had to go with the year fives because we had a test the day before when the rest of the year six's went. We all went on one bus and I was sitting next to a classmate of mine, Moses. It was a long way from our school to the museum in town. We were divided into Five or six groups. In my group it was me, Tanielu, Sela, Seni-Mino, Toreka and our parent helper Havea. When we got there we saw two schools. One of them was Parnell but I do not know what the other school was.

First we went to the natural history part of the museum. It was very cool because they had statues that looked realistic and they also had three lizards. Two of them were green and the other was camouflaged like the little tree that was put in there. Secondly we went outside to have our morning tea.We only had a little time for playing on the field across the street. when we went inside we had to climb a big staircase to get to our next activity.
For our next activity we went into a big wooden circle thing. A guy called Paul was telling us our new activity. For the first part of the activity we went into our groups and Paul put out some special objects into boxes. We all felt them and me and Tanielu smelt it and me and him regretted it because Paul said it was his favourite and you would not guess what it is! It was dinosaur poo! Thats right, dinosaur Poo!!!!!!
The second part of the activity was about moa. They are extinct large New Zealand birds. They think that Moa might have lived when the dinoasurs lived.
After a long day at museum we went back to school.

Mrs Lagitupu the kung fu master

Its been such a great year so far since our fun and hardworking teacher Mrs Lagitupu has been teaching us. The sad thing is she will be leaving us next week but the happy side of it is she gets two bundles of joy! Thats right, you read it correctly, she is having twins! Isn't that exciting?

Time has gone by very fast. We've done so much amazing stuff with her like making movies, podcasting and also blogging. I have learnt so much from her, she is like a kung fu master that is teaching me all these complex and interesting moves.

I wonder what our new teacher is going to be like? Will he or she be fun, nice, hardworking and helpful like Mrs Lagitupu? Anyway whoever gets to teach these wonderful talented pupils in Room 18 we will welcome him or her to our class and we will make them feel at home........maybe

Well we wish you all the best when you go Mrs Lagitupu. Room 18 will miss you and will hope you bring the babies in.

A Samoan recipe for Extension

In Extension, we are making a cookbook with homemade recipes of food we are already eating at home. It will be a combination of dinner and desert recipes. We have different Pacific Island students in Extension so we have come up with a few Island dishes. Last weekend I learnt how to make alaisa fa'apopo, or in English its called Coconut Rice.

Ingredients
3cups of rice, half a can of coconut cream and a pinch of salt

Equipment:
a rice cooker {or a pot} and a bowl

Step 1: Cook your rice as you would normally cook it.

Step 2: In a bowl, pour half a can of coconut cream and then add a pinch of salt to it and mix.

Step 3: Make wells in your cooked rice and pour the coconut cream mixture in evenly. Mix together.

Step 4: Serve and eat when its hot. {My Dad loves this with Koko Samoa which is Samoan cocoa. It tastes way different to cocoa you buy in the shop}

Getting jiggy with Will Smith......

Imagine singing "I'm Yours"  by Jason Mraz with some students, Peni playing the uke and Will Smith "getting jiggy with it" on his seat via iChat video conference. Yes this is true, it all happened on Wednesday 15th April 2009.

A small group of Pt England students and ex students were lucky enough to talk to the famous and talented and amazing movie star and singer! He is so cool and is a really funny guy. He will be getting an award from the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. Tolerance in the dictionary means allowing and accepting other peoples rights to their own opinions and actions. That was the topic that we talked to Will about.

He was talking to us about this because when he is going to get the award he will be reading a poem about tolerance. This poem will be special because the students in a programme called  R.O.W will have added their own two sentences to the poem that he started off. I would love to see the finished poem.

Peni was funny to Will Smith. This is what he said "We do not tolerate that flag behind you because it is Australian and we are from New Zealand" and then everyone roared with laughter, even Will Smith cracked up laughing.

R.O.W......

In extension we have been working on a project that is in R.O.W. This stands for Rock Our World. It is a world wide project, which involves heaps of countries in the world. They have themes and the theme for this round is food!!!!! {I love my food with a nice cold icy drink too} In my other post, you can read more about what we did.

They also have a format called garageband. You make a music track on this and then send it to the schools who are participating in Rock Our World. Every school in Rock Our World, gets a schedule to add on their computerized instruments. Point England School was on drums for that week. All of us in extension made a track and Moses got the most votes. His track got sent to the next country. Nice work Moses.


On Flickr we made Mihi's to introduce ourselves to Rock Our World. We used pixelmator or hyperstudio 5 to draw our graphics. After we finished drawing we put it into a programme called comic life. This puts our pictures into frames and joins them together to make a really cool page where we can also add notes to it once it is on Flickr. If you want to know what one looks like, you can copy this address. http://www.flickr.com/photos/extpes/3384043466/

The healthy and unhealthy food pyramid

"That looks yummy" I said. 

In extension we were learning about food and the food pyramid . We got to find out what were our favourite meals and our favourite deserts. We were with partners for this activity. My partner and I liked different meals and deserts. I could not chose my meal so I wrote nothing  down and for my desert I wrote down any ice cream and pudding!

Then we got the picture and printed the food pyramid. I found out that most people like fatty and sugary food.

My Holidays

"Hey Leoden, we're going now!" my Dad said. In the holiday's, we went to Cambridge. Its near Hamilton. My family and I travelled there by car. It took about one hour or so. We went there so that my brother Latham could compete in a sport called Waka Ama. This took place at Lake Karapiro. It was on Maori TV.

Man, there was heaps of food there and the food was nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Luckily there were ice blocks there too because I really felt like an ice cube melting in a oven watching my brother and his team paddle.

My brother's team challenged heaps of opponents and they just made it into the finals. I was jumping up and down like I had a sugar rush because it was so close. They were leading all the way and then ran out of puff. They came 8th in whole of NZ. Thats better than nothing.