Category: Ako | Learn

The Summer Learning Journey – 2023 – Superhero of my ethnicity –

Task Description: I’m not going to lie, this was harder then what I thought it would be, I had to think of names and some other information about my character. And for the photo, It was hard to use the few links that were on the side, I decided to search on google and this is what I found. This task was a teaser from the summer learning journey to start us Point England students into the journey. My highlight for this task was I guess making a superhero, and my low light was having to think really hard about the information. What I can take from this is that being creative with something really can get our minds working in a fun way. If we think differently about something it could change the way we do it or the way we act from it.

– DLO – Make It Work – Shoe Rack – The Five Musketeers

Task Description:

For this term, for our DLO we had to make something that would improve the environment around team five. Our team had five people, which were: Me, Eleni, Lynette, Swaimah, and Zaria. Our team started to plan our on paper what we thought we could make that could improve the area around team five. We wrote some ideas down and drew some designs on what possible things we could make. After we came up with the idea to make a shoe rack since the shoes outside of our class bay was so messy!

Before we started our “Make it work Project Research” we had to make a group name for ourselves, but none of us knew what would be a good name for us. I decided to just name us something I watched when I was younger and that was the five musketeers. We all agreed and got started on researching designs and materials for our shoe rack. We all did one slide each to efficiently finish and get started on our project though it was hard to find both materials and designs that didn’t cost much and wasn’t hard to design.

When we started our Make it work project, we also had started our inquiry diaries, What are those you ask? It’s in the name, more specific diary. So basically we wrote everyday we did inquiry into the diary and those would be our reflections of the day. We wrote what we did during the day, what we could improve on, what we learnt what we contributed to the group.

We had decided on our design on week 2 we decided that we wanted to do the same simple design that we had our bags in, in reference it looks like white wood and its smoothed with it looking like a cubbyholes (for our bags) we were the first group to get our wood, though we had gotten advice from one of the teachers that our design would be to much work for us and we wouldn’t have enough time to finish it.

We continued to work on a different and faster design and as we progressed we finished in week 6

We had one whole day of inquiry and I had so much to talk about in the diary, this is what I said,

Monday 6th of November 

Today there are four of us, me, Eleni, Zaria and Lynette. This Monday, our shoe rack has changed multiple times and now the shoe will be hanging out sort of from the shoe rack, we have measured how the shoe will fit and the exact fit of the shoe. We decided on the type of shoe rack we are doing and we are now waiting on one of the teachers when they are done to give us a tool to screw it in together. 

I helped with getting the wood and the small types of materials that we needed to get, just to measure the wood. Lynette helped with also getting the wood and measuring the wood as well with Zaria. We had to get one of the shoes from our cubbies where our bags go or the ones chucked on the ground and put it on our design to get the right measurements of our project. 

We started to drill in the screws into the wood so it could stay attached, we found this difficult because if we didn’t put enough pressure the wood rises from the bottom platform which leads us to reverse the drill to drill the screw in once again. 

Once we finished drilling in the screws we had our morning tea break and came back in, in the middle block we used this time wisely to start using the sandpaper to smooth out the edges of our shoe rack, and after that we took our shoe rack back inside to the street to start sketching on the wood, we had one wood plank each to do our different design.

 I can’t draw properly so I did some easy shapes, or designs, we had to stop there because then after lunch we had to pack up I think or just have time for our diaries to fill in our entries since we were building most of the day and not on our Chromebooks. 

Problems we had with this week were trying to find the exact measurements, trying to get the lines straight,drilling in the screws, trying to find designs we wanted to draw on the wood. 

From today I learnt that working together helps the project get done faster rather than doing it by yourself because working alone with only two hands makes the project get built slower. I also learnt that talking or discussing what we are working on gets us all on the same page rather than some of us getting confused about what we are doing. 

Our group had fun doing this as we have finished our project and just need to paint on it, as we may not have time to do it today.

In the end we did our reflections and we loved what we made, even when sometimes someone or some of the people in our group aren’t here during the days that we did inquiry. There was one day where we had our whole inquiry session cleaning up the paint we did outside. My highlight for this DLO was working as a team, and finishing the project to show at the end of our video, we also learnt some cool new things like drilling in screws and a lot more that you could find in the video, a low light I had from doing this DLO was having to find the exact measurements and material of wood to do our project. What I can take from this is that anything is possible if you put both your mind,effort and heart into it. Overall I enjoyed my last DLO of 2023, I won’t get to do something like this again for quite a while or probably at all. I loved that I got to enjoy every bit of the project along the way with the video. I hope you enjoy watching our last DLO for 2023!

Wk 7 Algebra

Task Description:

For Wednesday’s maths work, we had this task and I didn’t get to finish it so today I finally managed too. For this task it was about most of our X’s on our maths test, and this was one of them, for me we worked as a group to complete this as it was a very hard task. We thought of different strategies to work out the questions, and then we finally understood. My highlight was working in a group rather than working alone since it progresses our learning further more, and my low light was being stuck on the same slide until we had gotten the working out for our answers.

Christmas Word Problems

Task Description:

For Wednesday and today, we had to do our own Christmas word problems and swap with a friend, I decided to swap with Lynette and I tried to think of five questions that were related to Christmas and that involved some type of maths. In the end I managed to finish making my five questions and did Lynette’s questions for me, they were quite tricky but I managed to complete them in the end. I had fun swapping and making these questions especially since it was about Christmas. One of these tasks were by me and the other one was by Lynette.

The Enchanted forest

Enchanted Forest

Task Description:

For this task, we had to write a story about us being in an enchanted forest, we had to write about our adventures in the enchanted forest, we had to create a problem then solve it but we also had to include a lot of dialogue, I decided that I wanted to make mine long though I didn’t have too. I actually quite enjoyed doing this task because it got me to imagine or to think about what I did or what I could do in my story.

Maths – Christmas Fractions, decimals and word problems!

Task Description:

For this week, this was the first proper maths session we’ve had in a while. For this task this was basically just a revision or in other words just a recap of what we learnt in the past few terms, for me I worked together with a few others since I didn’t really remember all of it. But after working out these problems, what we learnt all came back and it got easier to solve the rest. My highlight was getting to remember or revision what we learnt from the past weeks my low light was trying hard to remember what we learnt from past terms. I took back a lot of information I forgot and now I have it once again.

Mystery at camp – Adventure

Mystery at camp – Adventure

Late at night, both me and my friend, Swaimah heard strange noises outside. We peeked outside the curtains and tried to hear and see where exactly the sound was coming from, it was coming from the trees nearby our cabin. We tried to ignore it because we were tired and didn’t want to be sleepy the next day. (The following day) When we went to where we all were supposed to meet, one of our teachers had announced that their phone went missing late last night.

 “Someone has come to my cabin and taken my phone and has it somewhere, if you know who it is or you are that person please return it to me.” The teacher had stared at our group for a while before turning back to the rest of the teams, did she suspect us as that “someone?” We had breakfast and went back to our cabins. “Did you see that?” Swaimah said, “The way she looked at us?” I said. “Obviously, she suspects us as the culprit without asking us any questions.” Swaimah replied. 

“Do you think she saw us peeking outside thinking we took her phone?” I asked. “Well probably if she suspects us that much.” Swaimah said, we looked at each other for a while then we sat in silence. “I have an idea!” Swaimah exclaimed. “We should try and find her phone, and then maybe we can clear our names from being culprits.” Swaimah explained.

 “Well, that would take a while, and after all it wasn’t our fault. We were just curious about what was outside.” I said, Swaimah and I sat in silence again, “We can’t just do nothing, she’s going to be looking at us all weird everytime we pass by, we have to find her phone and who stole it.” Swaimah said, “Fine, but if this fails it’s your fault.” I said, “Alright, let’s start with what we heard last night.” Swaimah said, “I heard the branches breaking, and birds calling. But I don’t know anything in particular about the noise, I was just curious since it annoyed me so much.” I said, “I saw a light flash in the trees nearby, and then I saw the branches move quite a lot but there wasn’t any wind blowing at the time.” Swaimah replied, 

“Do you think someone framed us and told her purposely that it was us?” I asked, “Probably but we shouldn’t assume, maybe there were other reasons why she assumes us.” Swaimah replied, “Ok let’s start by planning how we might figure this out.” Swaimah replied, (A few hours later) “And there you have it, that’s how we can solve this!” Swaimah exclaimed. “Well, that does make sense but where on Earth do we have that much time to go around asking where people were and what they did last night, wouldn’t that make us more suspicious?” I asked, we looked at the paper, then at each other we fell back to the floor. “We aren’t going to be able to do anything about it if we don’t even have a plan,” I sobbed. “It’s fine, it’s nearly time for the first activity we should start getting ready.” Swaimah said, we both got up and started to put on our shoes and head to our first activity which was archery. 

We started shooting arrows at the targets. We were quite bad and we kept missing quite a lot, we got better, eventually. I turned around to grab another arrow until I saw two girls walk past with something that was a reflection of the sun in their hands, could it possibly be the teacher’s missing phone? “Swaimah, look over there! That could possibly stop the suspicion from our teacher.” I exclaimed, “So much for all that planning,” Swaimah replied. “Hurry up, we need to spy on them to see if they actually have the phone,” I said. We both asked if we could go to the “toilet” and we tried to catch up to them, we found them and we hid behind a bush, “What’s the password?” Veronica asked, “I don’t know, I just grabbed it and ran off,” Vannesa replied. 

“This is going to take forever, someone will eventually find out it’s us.” Veronica uttered, “It’s fine, because I already took a photo of those two girls from another cabin and edited it to look like it was them who took it,” Vannesa replied. “It was them, they just photoshopped us to look like we took it.” I whispered, Swaimah accidentally stepped on a branch and they turned around, we ran before they noticed we were hiding, we went back to the archery station and stayed there till the activity was over (obviously) we went to our teacher Mrs Hill and told her that it wasn’t us and it was in fact vanessa and Veronica.

Respond to Text – The 20 minute City

Task Description:

For this reading task, we had to read a story and a few articles about a 15 – 20 minute city, and answer these few questions, for our create task we had to do a video and a presentation about the 15 – 20 minute city. My highlight for this task was doing this with my partner Swaimah and going through all these together and that we only did one take for the video to be completed. My low light for this task was having to go back and fourth from articles and stories to find out what to write on our presentation for the 20 minute city. I took a lot on board from both the reading and writing tasks that we had this week. I hope we get to do more like this in the future to come. I hope you enjoy going through these few slides and watching our presentation.

The fifteen to twenty minute city

The benefits of a 15 – 20 minute city

15 – 20 minute cities are the types of cities to have facilities or areas you need to reach or access within 20 minutes or less. Other cities around the world are slowly implementing this as it makes our lives much easier. This would also help advertise physical activities such as walking, running, cycling and more, with these types of cities there comes both benefits and limitations. 

Information #1 Reduce the use of car dependency 

Having 15 – 20 minute cities helps reduce the use of cars. This means it saves using money and time commuting to the area needed within a short distance. There wouldn’t be as much traffic as it is in normal types of cities, and the neighbourhoods are closer together meaning there would be less need for the use of cars. Reducing the use of cars means there would be less noise pollution, an harmful or annoying level of noise that disrupts anyone living nearby. 

Information #2 Greater Accessibility 

Another benefit of having a 20 minute city, is that people have more of a greater advantage of accessibility into areas needed. This means that shops for everyday essentials are close to home and so is health,education,parks, playgrounds and more. For example, if someone didn’t have any food at home to make and eat the grocery store is not that far away from home to get too.  All these convenient areas  should be accessible to people without the need of a car. 

Information #3

A last benefit of a 20 minute city is better health and well being. How does having a 20 minute city help out with our health and well being? It helps by giving more opportunities for walking and cycling, providing more active and physical activities. For example, cycling,running,walking or any type of physical activity out in the sun can provide various things, such as, vitamin D, endorphins, and losing weight. This can bring people’s health benefits along with the improvements in the quality of life as it is also more time and more opportunities to socially interact with others. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, 15 – 20 minute cities have a huge impact on people who live in different cities without convenient facilities. People become more active and traffic is reduced since everything is bundled up together there wouldn’t be as much use for cars as there is today. People see more neighbourhoods and that can strengthen the community by socially interacting with one another. These cities also give accessibility to the areas needed to commute within a couple of minutes. 

Task Description:

For this writing task, we had to read a story about what a fifteen to twenty minute city was, we had to note down important information that we could add into our writing. For this I was glad I got to learn something new as well as write about. My highlight for this task was getting to do another explanation type of piece writing and my low light was having to read a lot of articles to get all this information. What I took from this was that the more I read the more knowledge I get from it. I hope you enjoy reading this.

Fruit Orchard

Task Description:

For this weeks maths task, I had to do this task, and for this task our WALT for this maths slides, were to “solve multiplication problems by using skip counting or additive strategies interpret and solve multiplication story problems.” For these slides I found getting the answer quite easy as I was to just multiply the numbers in the story about the strawberry patch. Some of them were sort of like trick questions where some of them had the same amount of it. My highlight for this task was getting to get my brain started for the day and I had no low light for this task, what I did take on from this task was working independently on my own on this task can make more efficient affects to my learning.