My Year 8 Blog!

What have you learned through blogging?

Zoe: Blogging allows you to say what you think about different things from your heart, without people interrupting you.

Me: Through blogging I have learnt about what different people think and what issues people like to address. It has helped me come to understand what different girls in my class and around the world write and think about the same issues and the way they respond to these. Blogging is all about sharing thoughts and feelings with other people.

Some people say that “Blogging is just a different way of learning”. Do you think this is true? What do you say about the possibility of using blogs to learn?

I think that schools should consider using blogs to teach their students and that it has potential to become a learning tool. It makes students think about what they should write because other students and teachers may read it. They think about things in different ways and about how to express themselves through blogs.

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Two weeks ago was our 8 Alive week. During that week we painted part of a Mural that will go up outside our Food-Technology rooms. We also went on two excursions: CERES and Rock climbing… 

CERES is located in East Brunswick in Melbourne and is a community Environment park. In the park they have a cafe that mostly serves organic food and drink. They address the issue of Environmental Sustainability and house an Indian village where people go and learn about recycling in India and Indian culture. When we went there with our class we each got to paint a picture and got a Bindi (dot on forehead) and Henna (painted onto hands/feet) painted on. We also made recycled paper and learnt about Melbourne’s waste.

Later on in the week our class went to rock climbing in Nunawading. We all had to partner up - my partner was Zoe, and went off to go climbing. We had to trust our partners to not let us fall and it was a great experience for all of us!!! It was really fun and there were some huge walls, but I managed to climb all the way to the top of one of those walls, which was a great experience!!! It was so much fun and I wish I could go back and do it all over again.

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What makes a good teacher? Have you ever asked yourself this question and wondered what the perfect teacher would be like? Well, let me tell you, I have! 

For me the perfect teacher would be someone who respects their students and appreciates their opinions. It would be someone who creates a good learning environment, where everyone can learn at their own pace and using the best methods to learn. Of course, there is no perfect teacher, but some come close. Have you ever had a teacher like that? 

As a student people expect a lot of you, such as parents, teachers and classmates. They expect you to do things that are sometimes really difficult to do. Sometimes people expect to much of us and teachers and parents especially. In this term, our class has had around 7 or 8 projects, all of them at once and I think this is putting unwanted and unneeded pressure on us. 

Parents sometimes make it really hard for us, and my parents at the moment are expecting me to go to Saturday school, do all my chores (bathroom, my room, my shoes, the birdcage,  vacuuming etc.), as well as my homework, and all that on the weekend! My dad expects me to do all my chores first, so this weekend I didn’t even have a chance to do my homework, because I didn’t have time to. 

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever felt like you were going to break under the pressure? Have you ever wanted to skip a certain part of your life when you were just swamped?!?

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A few days ago all year 8’s gathered in the Hall to watch a play called “Girls Talk”. It was presented by 2 women who had talked to a lot of people about issues girls have to face and deal with. They interviewed people about real-life events and made it into a play. Some of the issues they addressed were: drugs, boys, teenage pregnancies, eating disorders & periods etc.

The play was really good and I think it would really helps people when they performed it at schools and other places. Some parts of the play were really funny, some where really serious and sad. It was a really good play and I would definitely recommend it!!!

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This is a Poem I wrote in English class. We were experimenting with strong words and how to use them. This is my result:

Home. Wherever I am.

Do you remember?
I remember a park.
You played with me
on the green, green grass.
It tickled around me and gave me rashes
I felt so free and happy, so full of joy,
And I laughed out loud.
I remember a park.

Do you remember?
I remember a garden.
You looked out for me,
No matter where I was.
I climbed a tree and you were there for me.
I felt free, up high. Up in the tree.
And I came back down and you were there for me.
I remember a garden.

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In English class right now, we are learning about strong words, as used in poems, and we did an exercise, which is called ‘Weather Warrior’. What we did is we all picked one or two types of weather and then imagined they were fierce, strong warriors, and wrote about it. My Weather Warrior poem is featured below:

The Weather Warrior

Thunder, like an angry rhino, rumbles down Napoleon Rd. Frightening and pushing aside everything pure and good in it its path, like a fierce man-eating elephant, not stopping at anything to get revenge. Revenge occupies the thunder like a bomb about to explode. It rages through him like murderous knives. He intends to use these knives on anything that stood in its path. He is unafraid, and wants nothing more than to destroy the God of all that lived and died, who had taken away the one thing that was precious to him. He wants to srtike fear in every human in his path, to teach that so called God, not to mess with him again.

When he sees the little children cowering inside their houses, being comforted by their caring parents, all his thoughts of destruction and evil simply melt away. His thoughts travel back to the time of joyous times with his son; If it weren’t for the Lightning…

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The Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa. The name Sierra Leone was adapted from the Portuguese name for the country: Serra Leoa. The literal meaning is “Lion Mountains.” During the 1700s Sierra Leone was an important centre of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It was established by freed slaves, who in 1791 founded the capital, Freetown. From 1991 to 2000, the country suffered greatly under a devastating civil war. The average life span of a Sierra Leonean is 38 years for men and only 42 years for women, which is only about half the life-span an Australian would have.

This might help you understand why not many people would want to live there. As you probably know, some athletes from Sierra Leone, who were supposed to participate in the Commonwealth Games, ran away and were found a few days later in one of Sydney’s wealthier suburbs. Here is what some of them had to say about their home country… “I want to seek asylum here and I won’t go back to my country. The people come- the government comes- and they kill my sister.” Musa Kamara said. “They catch me and beat me up and shot me on my leg.”, said Mohamed Sesi “I would prefer to die than to go back to that country,” Lamin Tucker said, “I would die instead of going back to that country.”

Hearing this made me think about all the luxuries I have right here in Australia. Although the Civil War ended years ago, the government still sends out to get people who don’t please them. In Australia everyone has fresh drinking water, and most have enough food. In Sierra Leone the only people who have that are the people from the government who collect taxes, but instead of helping their people, they go out and buy new cars for themselves.

People like those from Sierra Leone come to Australia in search of Asylum, and to live here. Most come illegaly, and so our government detains them in one of Australia’s 7 detention centres till they get Visa’s etc. Our class decided to help people in detention centres, by selling cakes, muffins, slices and cookies at our school. We raised an amazing $205.10!!! It may not sound like much, but it’s a start.

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In the movie Fly Away Home, Amy goes on a journey, which I believe begins as soon as she steps on the plane for Canada, because that is when she is learning about other things. Her father probably started talking to her about Canada, and how sad he was about her mothers death, but instead of warming up to him, she probably remembers her mom, and what a good parent she was, unlike her dad who was never there for her. 

 When she finds the geese, she starts yet another journey, this one probably completely different to the other one. In this journey, Amy learns to love again, and care about people. It is like the geese link her mom, her dad and herself… 

 Amy’s journey didn’t just help herself, but also her dad, and especially the geese. Her father found out how to be a good dad, the geese got a home, and everyone ended up affected, by that one deed Amy did.

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I have learnt about many different things, like in SAE, we went over the weather and climate etc. In science we found out about dinosaurs, and did a timeline on evoloution!!! I learnt a lot this term, and find that I now have a lot more friends than in Year 7… I now have a whole group of friends in my CoreGroup, and even more outside it. I really enjoy going to this school, and I learn heaps everyday. Except Weekends. And Holidays.

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In the movie Fly Away Home, a young girl named Amy is involved in a car-crash, which kills her mother; they were driving along, Amy’s mum looks over to her for a sec, in that moment a truck appears, and when Amy’s mum looked at the road again she saw the truck coming at them, so the manouvered the car around the truck, but the car rolled down a hill and arrived at the bottom turned over… Amy survived, her mother didn’t.

Amy wakes up in hospital to find her dad there. That is when she knows that her mother is dead, and when she then finds out that she will go and have to live with her dad in Canada.

I really like the movie Fly Away Home, because it reflects on things that can happen to anybody at any time…

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Goodnight Mister Tom is a book that we are currently reading in English. It is about a boy named Willie (William) Beech, who is sent to the countryside, during World War 2. He is evacuated from his home in England and ends up in the care of Mr Thomas Oakley.

 Mr Oakley soon discovers that Willie is afraid of being beaten by Mister Oakley, because he looks even tougher and stronger than his Mum. Mr Oakley, ofcourse, has no inention of beating him, and as the story goes on we find that Mr Oakley once had a wife and a child, who both died shortly after each other…

Goodnight Mister Tom is a very educational book, as you learn about what people did, when they where at war etc. The book’s author is Michelle Magorian and although it is a very long book, it is one I would recommend you read.

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In class we talked about how people buy things like $15 scarves, and right next to that stand there is a World Vision stand. We also found out that in all the 4 hours the person stands at the World Vision stand, only 3 people actually come up to that person, and only 2 of those people actually agree to sponsor a child. We also talked about how its actually just this big rip-off, seeing as how only half of the money you give to them actually goes to your sponsor child…

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This past week we have been on a programm called 8Alive, where we did stuff to bring us closer together within our Core Group - 8.6… We had lessons with our school councilor, Jodie, and learnt about MPower Girl. She is like a role model to girls, and is practically anything we want her to be. On Thursday our Core Group, and three others went to Queen Victoria Market, got split in groups of four, of our own choice of course, and had to complete a task we had been given. It was so much fun, but after a while we had to meet up with a teacher assigned to our group to make sure we were all still there. My group then went to McDonalds, although I don’t normally go there, to have lunch. I bought two ncklaces, a lollypop, and a bag of Sour Worms.

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