PAL Day At Paihia School

On the last day of last term all of Paihia got to participate in a “P(hysical)A(ctivity)L(eader) dayP(hysical)A(ctivity)L(eader)” as a fun thing to do for the last day. A PAL day is a sports  day that is ran and organised completely by the tuakana of our school. Some students A Pal day is a sports event that is run and organized completely by the tuakana of our school.

Some students in Te Ngahere were hosting all kinds of games to play like darts(the BIG version), obstacles and soccer. Being a PAL I got to host a game along with my friend Breeze and we choose to do Dodgeball.

The part I enjoyed the most was getting to see all the different types of games that groups were hosting(my favourite was the bike/scooter race.) The hardest challenge I experienced was trying not to get frustrated when the people in our rotation weren’t paying attention while we spoke. To overcome this my buddy and I persevered and tried ignoring the kids that didn’t want to listen.

Something I would do next time is to make sure we have everything prepared beforehand so we weren’t just winging it.

Does your school do sports days like our PAL days?

Oh, No I got Scammed ( How To Avoid getting Scammed or Phished online)

In Te Ngahere we have been learning to avoid Scams and Phishing when we go online. I think this is really important because I know people who have easily been scammed because of pop-ups and emails. This is actually a challenge that was given to us by Manaiakalani. 

One way they try to scam you is by using an unsafe site and then they proceed to ask for your personal information(eg: your g-mail log in) and since they’re using an unsafe site they can easily see what you wrote. To avoid this you look at the lock pad at the top next to the tab bar and if there is a red line through it then it’s unsafe.

Something new that I learnt is that EVERY POPUP IS BAD because they duplicate themselves and they could give you a virus. 

I found this very difficult to do at first because I only included some of the information on why the email/pop-up was fake or legit.

Did my DLO help you with avoiding Scams and Phishing? ”

Hurt Your Head With These Rebus Challenges

In Te Ngahere we have been doing Rebus challenges every Friday. A Rebus puzzle is a puzzle that includes images and words, they try to test your brain by trying to make you think outside the box. For each puzzle, you try to decode it and figure out what it ends up saying. It’s usually a famous saying of some sort.

We were given these during lockdown and since our class liked them so much we got to try them in class.

We get 9 to do every  Friday and it definitely shows how different people’s minds work because some puzzles were easier for some people to solve and others were harder for people to solve.

 I thought that these were really fun to do because the more you end up solving the easier it gets to solve others.  The best part of these puzzles is probably the very satisfying feeling you get when you do end up solving a puzzle. 

There are also some rebus puzzles here for you to try:

Which one did you find the hardest to resolve?

Bio Poem

In Te Ngahere for Tuhituhi we have been learning to create  a bio poem about someone special in our lives.  A bio poem is a poem written about someone. We could write about anyone like your mum, dad sister or aunty. 

I chose to write about my eldest sister because she was who I thought inspired me the most. 

We had to use a template to write a poem too.  We also had to include things like name three things they say all the time, etc...

The easiest part was thinking of a something that my sister likes because she likes most things. The difficult part was trying to think of something that my sister says a lot because she hardly repeats anything.

Have you ever created a poem like this?

100 word story The frozen Palace

During lockdown we got to  choose what to post about for blogging so I decided to write a 100 word story. This story was based on this image from Pobble 365 “The Frozen Palace”. 

I thought this would be interesting to do for a blog post because I enjoy writing narrative stories. It ended up being easy to write and good to do when you’re bored.

What are you doing during quarantine?

4 Shot Movie

In Te Ngahere we have started making movies. To help us make these movies we started of by making mini movies that include 4 shots, an establishing shot , a long shot, medium shot and a close up shot. An establishing shot includes the setting and where the story is happening. A long shot usually introduces  your characters. A medium shot shows more detail of what your characters are doing. The close shot usually shows what the characters attention is focussed on.

Something I think my group did well was working quickly and efficiently because in the time of 25 minutes my group and I were able to finish our movie that includes the 4 shots. Something I think we could’ve done better is to spend more of our time planning so that we knew what we were doing as soon as we started filming.

The easiest part as taking a picture of the whole library as our establishing shot. The hardest part was trying to actually come  up with the plan/idea for our movie.

Have you ever created a mini movie before?

I am Hope

This week in Te Ngahere we had the privilege to have someone called Tai come to talk to us about mental health. He was a representative from the “I am Hope” foundation which is a charity that helps Kiwis with mental health. Tai told us that mental health is just as important as physical health and that it was ok not to know much about mental health because he didn’t really understand it too until he was 22. 

He used his own story to help us understand the struggles that people with bad mental health can go through. For example he talked about a traumatic event he went through that put him in a bad place and how he got through that. Tai  goes and visits schools, communities etc.. and  shares the story he just shared with us to try and let people know that there is somewhere to go if they need. Something the “I am hope” foundation has done is try to make counselling free for Kiwis under 25 so that help is more accessible.

My favourite part was when he mentioned someone called Elliot who he met that helped him more than he ever thought without even knowing. Elliot is a person who played a major part of Tai’s story and he doesn’t even know.

Something that I learnt from his talk is everyone has something called an inner critique and your voice of reason which is like your minds two voices. I think I could see this information in the future so I know to listen to my reason of voice more.

Do you know much about mental health?