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Saturday, March 21, 2015

Polyfest Trip

The Yr 7 & 8 had the privilege to travel to the ASB Polyfest. Polyfest is where schools from all over Aoteroa perform in 7 stages with 7 different cultures. There is Samoan, Tongan, Niuen, Cook Island, Maori, Diversity and the Speech stage. It is a four day long festival starting on Thursday going right through to Sunday. Pt England has never been on a school trip to Polyfest so we were very excited. We were going to be doing educational activities for most of the day before going in our parent groups to visit some of the stages.

For the first activity we went to Globug where we learnt about saving power in our homes. They gave all the students a timer that we could use when we are in the shower. The timer was set to 4 minutes so that water can be saved. Next we tested how fast we could hit a tennis ball down a long tube. The highest score so far was 117. I only got 73 but it was still fun. After a couple more activities we had lunch before going off in our parent groups to visit the stages.

I was in my Dad's group with some other class mates, our group didn't really visit many stages so we were just walking around looking at the different stalls and advertisers. At 2.30 everyone met back near the entry/exit before we loaded the buses. It was a fun trip and a great way to spend the day before winter comes. Hopefully the Yr 7 & 8 can have more fun trips like this in the future.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Mrs Tele'as Birthday

This morning, the 16th of March was Mrs Tele’a’s birthday. Team 5 sang Happy Birthday to her when she arrived from a meeting but something else was about to happen. Everyone was already sent off to their classes to start work. Students were spread out in the street and in their classes when suddenly, loud music started.

Some of the boys started jumped and cheering, “Choo Hoo!!!” Mrs Tele’a came in and started to perform in the middle of the circle with the boys. Students from every class started to come in and soon, it was a circle with people Samoan dancing in the middle. Miss Peato came out and lay down on the ground, Mrs Tele’a put her foot on her back and started to dance. Mrs Tele’a was wearing a green puletasi with a leaf print on it. She pulled it up to show her Malu, a Samoan tattoo for females.

It was really cool to share a part of her birthday with her. She is an amazing teacher and Team 5 wouldn’t be the same without her! We all hope she has a great day and a great year!
Happy Birthday Mrs Tele’a!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Visual Mihi

This is my visual mihi. It shows one of my hobbies, a bit about my belief and my culture. As you can see, I am really into listening to music, it is one of my favorite things to do. My father is Samoan and my mother is NZ/European which is why, I have drawn the New Zealand flag and the Samoan flag. The last picture shows a cross because my family and I are Christian. We believe that Jesus Christ is our savior and he saved us. I hope you enjoy my visual mihi and maybe you learnt something about me!

Video Conference with Hawaii

The Yr 7 & 8 extension had the privilege of video conferencing with two other schools in Hawaii. Our first school was Nanakuli Elementary School where all the students are instructed in the Hawaiian language. The second school was Kea'au Elementary and it is located on the island of Hawaii. For every school, there was a presentation about the school to share to the other two.

Pt England was the first to share and we decided to create a Google presentation to explain a bit about our school and our country, Aotearoa. After the presentation was shown, there was time for questions from Nanakuli school. Mrs Lagitupu talked a bit about Manaiakalani and where the word originated from before we had some time to talk about our chromebooks. Even though they use digital technology for learning, they are not able to take it home with them, so their work finishes when they leave the classroom.

Next, it was Nanakuli ES' turn to present, they chose to make a movie instead of a presentation. The movie had someone talking in the background while it showed footage of the school. Their school goes from Kindergarten up to grade 6, during the movie we got to see the kindergarten class and the grade 2-3 classroom. Most of the student's first language is English but they are taught Hawaiian so that the language is not forgotten.

Last to present was Kea'au ES and like us, they created a presentation with information about their school. Kea'au ES has 870 students that attend and it ranges from kindergarten to grade 5. The students that we video conferenced with were 5th graders and they had turns are explaining what was on the presentation. One thing that was really interesting is, in their area, there is a lava flow through where they live. They get lava updates daily to say where it has been and where it is going next. Some students in that class have had to move from their home to somewhere else because there had been pieces of lava out on their lawn. It is very dangerous.

One of the main reasons why we called is because the Hokulea two sided waka is sailing to Pt England shore on the 24th March. The Hokulea is from Hawaii and they are trying to prove to the world that using traditional ways to navigate. They have no GPS or modern technology, just the stars and the sea swells. The waka is coming in the Pt England Beach where all the students (2,500 Kids) from the schools in Manaiakalani cluster will come and welcome them in by a waiata, haka and presentation.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Explorers of the Sunrise


This is a presentation about an article that my reading group read. It shows my answers to the vocabulary questions and the article questions. 

Miss Peato's Birthday Surprise

We had just finished our morning Waiata and everyone expected Mr Wiseman to put his guitar away but he just kept on strumming. Miss Peato who was trying to announce the morning notices, looked very confused. Mr Wiseman just kept going and it was a different tune to the Waiata so we knew he wasn’t trying to see our normal song again. Miss Peato was very very confused along with the rest of us. Suddenly Mr Wiseman went behind Miss Peato and kicked the door to the green room.

Out came Miss Clark, Mrs Moala and Mrs Tele’a all singing, “Happy Birthday to you! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday Miss Peato! Happy Birthday to you!” Miss Peato suddenly realized what was happening and a massive smile spread upon her face. All the teachers had laes and Mrs Tele’a gave one to Miss Peato while she blew out the candles on the cake Miss Clark was holding.

After Miss Peato blew out the candle, everyone clapped. Most of us didn’t even know that it was her birthday so it was a surprise to many people. Miss Peato carried on with her notices and we started the day. All the staff had some food for morning tea and the Yr 7 & 8 teachers ate the cake at lunchtime.

Writing Test: Trip to Tairua

Anniversary Weekend, my family didn’t really celebrate it, maybe one year we might have gone to the park but really, it was just another weekend in January. This year, we wanted to actually do something because my Mum had the weekend off work and it was the last weekend we had of holidays. Initially, we had planned to climb up Rangitoto Island, that was until my Mum got a message from our friends who live in a small town called Tairua.

My Mum and Dad had known these people for nearly 20 years. They used to live in Samoa together when my older sister and brother were born. My oldest brother was best friends with their oldest girl when they were babies but since then, they moved to a place called Brunei which is in another country and we only saw them briefly about five years ago.

So everyone agreed that we should go down and spend the weekend with our friends. (Even though we couldn’t really remember anything about them) We packed the car and headed down on Friday around about 3.30pm. In our eight seater car, I was in the middle seat in the middle row. I had pillows around my head, baskets of food in between my legs and just about everything else on my lap, I was SQUISHED!! It was like that for the whole two and a half hours that it took us to get from Auckland to Tairua.

As we entered into the small town, we saw a sign that said, “Welcome to Tairua!” as we drove past the school that one of our friends worked at. My stomach had so many butterflies flying around because I was so excited!! I had never been to Tairua but by the look of all the beaches, it looked FANTASTIC! We drew closer to their house and I saw the smoke rising from the burning hot barbecue that was cooking our yummy dinner.

We were welcomed by their whole family and to be honest, I didn’t recognize any of them! It had been so long and I couldn’t remember any of them and they couldn’t remember any of us either. At first it was a bit awkward because it felt like we were about to stay in some stranger’s house for two nights, but by dinner time, we were all talking like best friends. It was like some sort of click that we had because my two sisters agreed that we could tell our new/old friends anything and they would straight away know exactly what we were talking about.

That night after dinner, we decided to go and check out one of the beaches and leave the Mums and the youngest ones at home. The beach was very very long, it had a five entries and each were about 10 minute drive away from each other. We went to the first entry which was the right side of the beach and saw how beautiful the beach was. It had perfect waves, not too big and not too small and the sand was like flour.

After a bit of searching, I noticed that by the large cliff to the right of us, there were stairs. I asked their Dad, “Where do those stairs go to?” He replied with a smile, “It goes up the hill, do you want to go?” I nodded my head so we all head off up the stairs. At first, it was a nice little walk but it soon turned into, “Where do these stairs end!?” By the time we got to the top, it was getting dark but their Dad Chris said, “Let’s go this way because it is easier that way to get back to the car.” So off we went walking along this road that went around a mountain.

By the time we got to the car, it was pitch black and were using the very few street lights to navigate. But our night didn’t end there, we got home and played a game called Head’s Up! for another hour! We didn’t get to sleep till midnight and the parents stayed up till I don’t know when talking and talking and talking. I was so tired I drifted off to sleep in my sleeping bag nicely.

On Saturday, we went to a really cool place called Frog Rock. It was a little river which had a huge rock that people could jump off. We went there after the Saturday market and stayed there for 2 hours before heading to one of the beaches. The beach that we went to was called, “Sailors Grave” and it has enormous waves that could tip even my 6.2ft brother over. It was really fun but by the end, my hair was everywhere from all the waves pushing me over. That night, we had fun cricket game which was won by the boys and we played another round of Head’s Up but we did get to sleep before midnight.

Sunday was our last day at Tairua and we spent the morning jumping off the Tairua bridge. The water was really cold and my cut my foot on oyster shells while I was trying to swim back to shore. We had a nice lunch with barbecue leftovers and I discovered something. My Mum and Raewyn (Their Mum) actually went to school together and were best friends! So my mum and their mum have known each other for a lot longer than I thought.

After lunch, it was time to say goodbye to our new/old friends. It was really sad and I really wished that we could have stayed longer. I loved hanging out with them and checking out all the different beaches. I couldn’t believe how many swimming sites than they knew of in such a small town. I really enjoyed my time in Tairua and I can’t wait for the next time we go down.

The End