The Sir Peter Blake Award!

On the last day of school for Term 2, The Sir Peter Blake Award was handed out. I was the person from my class who had got it. If you don't know who Sir Peter Blake is he sailed around the 5 times! He also competed in the America's Cup 3 times. The first time he won the America's Cup for New Zealand he wore the famous "Red Socks". The "Red Socks" were a present from his wife and when ever he wore them good things happened. Sadly he got killed by pirates in the Brazil seas. He was on a mission with some other scientists to find out about climate change. He said climate change was bad back in 2000, imagine what it’s like now 17 years later. In the pack I got: A book - The Story of Sir Peter Blake by Tessa Duber, A Medal, A pair of red socks and a certificate. I was nominated by Mrs Baird last year and also Mrs Frances-Rees.  “Molly is a fantastic role model, who uses her initiative and is always willing to help others.  She is a fantastic leader who is very organised, she comes up with new ideas and thinks about all the detail so they run successfully.  She relates well to children of all ages and is very dedicated to her leadership role.”

My EMBARRASSING Brother - That I Don't Have!!

Goal: Language Resources

“Why, why, WHY? Why is MY brother so embarrassing?” Well you're probably wondering why I’m going on about my brother being so EMBARRASSING, well let me explain! My brother is a very awkward, smelly (like a rotting rat was in his pocket), PS4 addicted (like a cat to catnip), geeky 15 year old, who has no friends - well he does have 1 friend…… but she’s not really real!

My Mum is a ‘go and get some fresh air’ kind of mum, so when my mum said to my brother “Go and get look at the beautiful surroundings out in the air,” he didn’t argue he just did what my mum said and got some clean air, rather than a stinky boys room. Here is the embarrassing part; He took his imaginary ‘Girlfriend’ with him! You might be thinking why is this so bad, let’s just say IT’S BAD!!

If he is in a public space he pretends to be with his ‘girlfriend’ and he does all the things that people with their ‘special friend’; like holding hands and all the other GROSS things people do with their ‘special friend’! I never want to be around him when we are out in public because now he has a ‘girlfriend’ and pretends like he is talking to his ‘girlfriend’ people always look and laugh. Its funny if your watching but not really if you related!

My Brother likes to invent new things (part of my brothers geekiness!), one of his new and improved things he’s invented is a fart-gun! Yes a fart-gun! He has tested it out in the house before and it smells horrific - it smells like you have just dived into a sewer tank……. aka DISGUSTING!! Whenever my Brother builds a new creation he has to show his ‘girlfriend’. My Dad has banned it from our property so he went to the park.

He improved it by putting more of everything in it and even putting some fireworks in it! He went to the park to show his ‘girlfriend’ to ‘impress’ her. When he pulled the trigger on the fart-gun it made a terrible farting sound, everyone started laughing, then their faces turned white with horror. The only one who was clapping was his ‘girlfriend’ and everyone else had fell over on the surface with the terrible odor.

It was a bad idea to do it on that day because little did he know he there was a national ‘Catch The Murderer Day’ - so there was heaps of police around! When he set it off it made a very loud noise and the smell waves flowed into every corner of the city. The police can running,

“What have you done?” said one of the many police,

“What’s that terrible smell” said another policemen/just as they said that (and more than 30 other policemen saying the same thing)all of the policeman dropped to the ground.

When the smell had faded away more policemen come to arrest my brother for the terrible smell he made. A lot of people went to hospital sick as a dog from the smell. My brother swiftly ran away knowing (I don’t know how he thought that with his ‘brain’) that the police would come after him.

He went far, far away into a forest. When our Mum said

“Go and get some fresh air,”

He went away into a forest and made an underground house. So that’s where he went there and stayed there for a long time. Meanwhile when he went missing people were looking everywhere, there were police with dogs, he was on the headlines of papers, billboards and on the news.  

1 year went by and know one saw him…… He was still alive but stick thin. Someone was walking through the forest and saw him, lying on the ground…….... DEAD; That’s the story why I’m an only child!

Inquiry Project Term 2 - Carbon Dioxide

Trees help to prevent climate change. In one year an acre of trees can provide oxygen for 18 people. Trees help to prevent climate change trees also save water. Studies have shown that trees heal people;like children with ADHD have less symptoms when they are in nature. Trees protect people from sun rays. The gases produces clean air for people to breath in provide food, water and wood to light a fire - to keep warm. Trees absorb all the gases horrible in the world (nitrogen oxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide)

Carbon dioxide is a colourless gas - that is a slightly toxic

carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. In the last century more and more Co2 has been going into the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is increasing each day because of us humans It is mainly natural but humans influence it like: fossil fuels (factories), fires, trees, cows and more. Co2 is also from nature, so it's not all our fault (thank goodness!). It has made the ocean 30% more acidic, its is killing animals because it's to acid for the animals. Carbon is odorless. Co2 is a natural gas that is formed by two atoms to make one.

The Co2 will stay in the air for a long time (It won´t go away overnight).

Inquiry Project Term 1 - Sophie Pascoe

On the 8th of January 1993, Sophie Pascoe was born. Little did she know that she would be a world champion. She is a gold medalist Paralympian, swimmer! Her fatal injury made her famous.      

She was only two years old when she lost her leg. Her dad mowed over her leg with the lawn mower, and she got rushed to hospital immediately, by her neighbour and her dad. She spent six hours on the operating table and was fighting for her life, by then they only saved her right leg with only scares. In total Sophie spent 18 days at the hospital.

An important person in Sophie’s life was her grand dad (Gragra).  When she was only 9 years old and the start of Sophies swimming career, her granddad was at the final stages of his battle of lung cancer. She made a promise with her granddad that she would go to the olympics and win a gold medal. Little did she know in the following years to come that's what will happen. She keep this promise ever since.

She became a professional swimmer by, taking swimming lessons like every normal kid.At the start she couldn’t even keep up with the other kids, Sophie’s mum put her in swimming lessons because she wanted to live a normal life. The same year the school swimming sports were held, she won her first race and realised that she could beat normal people. This is when she realised that she had a talent in swimming.

At the age of nine she competed at the Crippled Children's Society (CCS). She swam against a current paralympian and won the race, even though their disabilities were very different. She caught the eye of Graham Condon and Roly Crichton (Sophie’s currant coach). They offered Sophie to train with the QEII Swim Club - This is where Sophie’s swimming career started.

One of Sophie’s best strokes/world records are 400m IM and 100m Butterfly. Sophie won 9 gold medals, 6 silver medals out of all Paralympics. She won 2 gold medals at the commonwealth games. IPC World Championships 8 golds, 4 silvers and 4 bronze medals.

Sophie Pascoe is an inspiring leader. Even though she had a tragic accident when she was 2 years old, she showed everyone that nothing can get in your way even though you might be scarred for life.

Persuasive Writing #2

Why Oamaru should extend the Oamaru Pool to a 50m pool.

Would you get annoyed if when you went to the pool and you couldn't swim because there wasn't enough room to swim? Well why do you have to put up with that, there is enough room to extend the pool why don't they make a start?  

Recently the pool has got a lot more people going through the doors; which means more money for the Waitaki District Council. With more people going through the doors means more complaints because the pool is not big enough. The Oamaru Swim Club has grown majorly in the last couple of years. The squads have gotten bigger. Which means that the squads and lessons will take up more lanes in the pool. Then there is all the aqua joggers that want a lot of room to aqua jog in. There is also the public who just want to swim in lanes (but then have to get kicked out of their lane for squads) and not be jammed in. What about all those people that just go to the pool to play? If all the lanes are filled with the squads and lessons, then there would be one more lane for people who want to swim lengths, then there would be no room for people who want to free play. So to fix this problem we could use the park outside because unless I´m blind it never gets used (except for the hospital - when the helicopter lands). So maybe you could increase the pool and use some of that useless park! This is another reason we should extend the pool.

It would bring more people to Oamaru. This would be more money for shops, places for people to stay and food places like New World and shops like that. If the pool is done really well people would want to go back to oamaru because it has a great pool that can cope for everyone. Having a 50m pool would mean it would cope for all the people. You could have a divider in the pool so you could have twice the amount of people in the same pool. If you have 10 lanes, it could double just like that with someone putting in the divider. It would go from 10 lanes to 20 lanes. Our coach Narcis could have 10 lanes to have all the squads going at the same time. There would be room for the aqua joggers (lets say 2 lanes), lessons (4 lanes), and there would still be room for people to swim. Oamaru could hosts big (national) meets. There would be 50m of seats along the poolside, and there would be enough lanes. If they do the facilities really well so there is enough room for people to get changed, go to the toilet, have a shower etc.  

If there is enough room, why don't they start? This is why I think we should extend the pool!

Persuasive Writing #1

Why we shouldn’t have a lifeguard as a coach while our actual coach is away.

NOTE: This is not about the person it is abou t why we should have a professional coach while our actual coach is away!

How would YOU like if a random person, (That doesn’t know what to do!) came one day instead of your actual coach and YOU, got bossed around like they know what to do? Would you like that? Well I don’t like it when that happens. My reasons are they don’t know what to do, get angry at you for not doing the right thing *when you are*, and everyone goes all silly because no one will say “Don’t do that!”

We shouldn’t have a lifeguard as a coach while our actual coach is away because they don’t know what we actually do in training: As swimmers (and as Intermediate and Age group squad swim mainly everyday) we know what we do in swimming, so we don’t need to be told what to do; like “now you do 16 lengths (400 meters) of IM” - We know what it means. I know that Development Squad is younger and they need  someone to help them, but the squads above Development know what to do. Sometimes the lifeguard changes the program, example: They took out kick and changed it to something else. Kick is an important thing to practice in swimming to get a strong kick - so we can go faster at meets and improve our pbs*. It is also recovery; when you have done fast sets you are tired, so kick is a good way to catch your breath.  

*Personal Bests

Secondly, I think we shouldn’t have a lifeguard as a coach is, they would get paid the same amount of money as the Professional coach would that day or week they teach: Since they are taking the role of the professional coach for the time the coach is away, they would get paid as the coach would. My personal opinion is that they don’t deserve that amount of money. The reason why is because some people don’t train as hard as if the proper coach was there - People would start to slack! The lifeguard does not give you advice or tips on a stroke; for an example the real coach has said to me when I had just swam 50m Breaststroke in a set he was like, “You look like a drowned rat because you are not stretching out long” the next time I did 50m breaststroke (and I stretched out longer) the professional coach was like “much better”, that's what a coach does. Or maybe it is the pool manager's problem. I feel like they don’t want to pay money to get a proper coach while our actual coach is away. Especial if you are putting the prices up, I think you need to put in place a proper coach that knows what to do.

My final point is that there could be better people that could teach us; there is better people than using the first and cheapest person you can find. I think you could use the older people from age group (unless they are away at a swim meet) because they could learn new things from watching people - it would be good because both of the people would learn something! They kids swimming would learn some tips and the age group person could try out a new technique in training. They would also get some pocket money and you won’t have to pay as much/or you could use an ex-national swimmer, that teaches in the swim program already. They would already know what to do in training because they have already swam with the squads before. They would give you tips to improve your stroke, turn and dive; and plus they are also really nice.

I really believe that instead of getting the first person you can find, you should think about who you should get to coach us. Thank you for listening to my point.