Ailie

 On Tuesday the 30th of March, the Science Roadshow came to Otaki College with many different gadgets and gizmos to show us. They showed us experiments involving fire and explosions and lots of gases and balloons. It was very interesting to see. First when we got inside   there was already a few classes sitting down. we sat to the right of them and began listening. Two lady's were talking to them about something they had previously done. She soon got onto us and began the show. A blonde haired girl  introduced herself as Jess and her brown-haired friend was Steph. Jess said they would be talking about gases and asked if we knew any gases. Lots of people had good ideas and raised their hands.  When that was done she demonstrated some experiments. Lots of them involved fire. One of them had a gas blowing about candles without touching them. It blocked the oxygen from reaching the fire. The gas was called carbon dioxide (CO2).  They showed us a few more experi...

 On Friday the 19th me and most of my class preformed a remix of Black Box by Stan Walker. There were many different instruments such as keyboard, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar. Some people even sang! Personally I prefer the keyboard so that was what I played. I played all the chords (D, C, G).  We had practiced for ages and we had just got it right. The teacher, Mrs. Devane, set up the camera in the corner of the room and counted down. When the singers started, that was the time to start. It felt like normal, there was no pressure. As soon as our harmony was over Mrs. Devane rose and turned off the camera and told us we did awesome. Everyone had listened perfectly and followed the instructions. The video was done and recorded, and so was our option for music.

Today, 25th of March, the year 7s, 8s, and 9s all went to the Maoriland Film Festival at the Memorial Hall. There were so many short films and all of them were extremely creative and unique. Children and adults all made their films together. My favourite was called Big Buff. It was made by a kid who survived a forest fire and found a creative way to share their story. Big buff was very strong and knew how to make wood. Another character, White Little Suit, lived near him. Big Buff's house burned down and he was very sad. He moved into White Little Suit's BIG backyard and they lived life happily. I liked it because the voice over was very cute and sweet because the kid who made it was very young and couldn't pronounce the words. It was also very funny because they kept saying how big White Little Suit's backyard was. A lot of other people enjoyed that short film and the giggles spread like waves across the crowd. All the other shorts were amazing in their own unique way.

  SS Otaki Ceremony Today, Friday the 12th, our school hosted the SS Otaki ceremony. There were many important guests such as Commodore Melissa Ross, Captain Tony Date, Captain Lewis Robinson, and Helen McAra. We got to sit under the shade of red, blue, green and yellow tents. We ran out of room for me, Lilley, and Shylah under the green tent so we had to sit under a red tent with some Year 13's and guests.   There was a powhiri that was for welcoming the guests into the school. Father Phil led the whole ceremony and many people gave speeches. One person told the story of the SS Otaki, a ship that gt attacked by the German ship SMS Moewe in 1917.  Captain Archibald Bisset Smith like all captains went down with his ship and was awarded a Victoria's Cross, the highest ranked award for bravery. That was my favourite part, hearing the stories. Five people raised flags like Mana who raised the SS Otaki flag and Leo who raised the New Zealand flag.  Rose also raised t...

Today we did DMIC Problem Solving in groups of four. Shylah was the questionnaire, I was the writer, Jorgia was the presenter, and Jess was the reader. The problem asked us to figure out how many cookies a child had eaten on the first day of five. The kid had eaten one hundred cookies in total. First we took away six from a hundred five times and soon after realised that strategy didn't work. We then tried to divide one hundred by five. That strategy didn't work either. Then we tried guess and check. We started with the number fifteen. we added six to the four times and got the following numbers. Fifteen, twenty one, twenty seven, thirty three and thirty nine. We added all those together and got one hundred and thirty five.Then we tried ten which was to, high, five was two low, and then we tried eight. The numbers were eight, fourteen, twenty, twenty six, and thirty two. We added all those up and got one hundred! We were really excited at our lucky guess. We were then chosen to...