Nicholas' Learning

Technology This week in cooking, we had a reliever teacher called Miss Tobec who used to teach Home Economics at Lincoln two years ago. In that session we made Cinnamon Pinwheel Scones and Banana Loaves. Instead of making them in groups, we all made them individually for the scones and in pairs for the loaves. For the pinwheel scones we had to go get the flour and baking soda, sugar and butter and had to mix it around until it was well combined. Then we had to make a well with the dry ingredients and mix in the milk and water slowly and start beating it literally. After that we lay it out on the bench and started rolling it out with a rolling pin and then added the cinnamon and rolled it up. Then we put it in the oven. For the banana loaf, we had to get basically the same ingredients and mix it up while on another bowl we had the wet ingredients. We cracked the egg into the mixture and then split the mixture into two separate loaf pans. Then we put it in the oven. I think the care ...

Student Leader  One of the responsibilities of being a deputy head boy is that you need to attend weekly student council meetings and contribute to them. My role in the student council is that I have to take minutes, where I have to do the roll and record every idea that is being suggested. This role is actually quite hard as ideas are suggested incredibly fast. This week in the student council, the topic was fundraisers and causes we should fund raise for. Some of the suggestions for causes were: -  Terror Victims - Sport Clubs - Food For Homeless - Animal Shelters - Any type of shelter - Cancer Society - Second chance dog resuce - Dental care - Child Cancer - Second Chance dog rescue - SPCA - Plunket - Ronald McDonald House - Starship Hospital Next week when we meet again on Wednesday, we will be discussing the subject of what Oaklands school do against bullying. A care value that I showed during the meeting was Community, by contributing to ...

City Council Trip On Monday the 29th of May, the student leaders went on a bus to the CBD, where we went to visit the City Council Building to learn more about them and leadership. When we got there we took a little walk around the CBD, to make our way towards the Council Building. When we got there we got to have alittle break to take pictures while a member of the council staff got organized and ready to teach us. Once we got into a little classroom in the council building, we looked at a presentation about what the council does, eg; Taking out the trash, giving us fresh drinking water, doing building inspections, etc... and how the council is run. The council teams are split into different groups, most of them had just under 300 people working for them, while some of them had as little as 18. After that they had 6 council workers to take us to where they work and explain to us what they do and have us report back. My group had the Resource Consent workers who basically had to f...

Technology Last week at technology we had a switch in our Pentads so this week we did Design instead of Science. This years order is different, last years order went, Design, Woodwork, Science, Cooking and Then Textiles and then Design again and so on. But this years order goes Design, Cooking, Woodwork, Textiles, Science and so on. Design and Textiles is taught together with Mrs Scott and Mrs Paterson. All we learnt at Design was net making, which is basically what a 3d object would look like if it was folded out and we also learnt how to use the 3d modelling tool Tinkercad's beta. After that we did a general knowledge Kahoot which was challenging and I learnt a lot of things in that Kahoot. I think the Care Values I showed was Active Thinking because I had to use my brain in some of the net making challenges and the Kahoot. The evidence of leadership is resilient because some of the kahoot questions were very challenging.

Student Leader  This week for my role as Deputy Head Boy, we had a leadership meeting about who got their merits and who didn't get them. As I got my Merit last week in Assembly, we get to do the reward game/ activity for leadership as we had done what we had to do for the term which was to get at least our merit. Also for our role, in term 2, the heads and the deputies get to go to this world vision leadership event on the first week of term 2 on Thursday. I think the care values I showed this week was Active Thinking as I was organized and got my Merit quickly. I showed leadership by being trustworthy; by being able to get my Merit in the first term like he told us to.

Link to my Prezi For my excellence badge, I decided to do the Home Learning Challenge "Research an important person or event in NZ’s history. Present your findings." I decided to use the tool Prezi, which I hadn't used before. Since this was about NZ's history I decided to research Kate Sheppard, who was a women's rights activist. I used a variety of resources including Wikipedia and Biography.com.   

Technology This week on Thursday we had technology and on the penultimate session of science, we had some fun with lego mindstorms, which are robots that you program and do fun things with. We initially started building the lego mindstorms, some people tried to go off by their imagination but Melahkye and I decided to go with an instruction booklet that taught us how to build a basic robot. The building process was pretty easy so we got to programming fairly quickly. We taught our robot how to move in a square so the next challenge would be so it won't go out of the square when moving around. It didn't work that well as there was something wrong with our motor but Natasha and Savannah's worked. I think the care value I showed was Active Thinking as the programming stage was fairly challenging and confusing.

Student Leader   This week for my role we had a leadership meeting during Tuesday's read and feed time. It was about what we think is going well, what we are happy about and about what we find very challenging. I said for both of them public speaking, as I think I did well speaking at the Run Bike Run but I still find it challenging. After that we had a sub meeting with the Heads and Deputies about running the Student Council, which as part of the role of Heads and Deputies role. We came up with these ideas - Use a talking Object - Stay on a specific topic - Let everyone share - etc... I think the care value I showed was Active Thinking as we had to spend some time coming up with some ideas about how we would run our meeting.

Technology This Thursday for technology we did some things with microscopes. They were microscopes that need to use a slide, which is a thin glass object. First we looked at how to treat and how to use the microscope. Then we drew a diagram of the microscope with labels and everything. Since Melahkye finished the diagram quickly we got to use the slides that the university of Lincoln sent, which had slides that ranged from Male Pines to housefly legs. It was very fascinating and fun. The Care Value I think I used this week was Active Thinking, because it was very fascinating and we had to come up with ideas about why they were like that.

Student Leader This week for my role, since we didn't do anything that related to leadership that week, this is going to be about how I think I role modeled to the students at Oaklands and how I helped and got involved with the Jump Jam held during lunch on the wet days. One example of when I role modeled was when I got involved at breaktimes and how my friends and I tried to stay quiet and did something sensible when it was an inside lunch and morning tea. I also got involved with the jump jam and kind of helped out with it. I helped pack up the hall after Jump Jam was done, etc.... I think I showed the Community value.

For my merit badge, I did the Home Learning Challenge R6, also known as Research a different culture. Find out how their culture differs to yours. Present your findings. Since this was about researching a different culture and how it differ from mine, I chose to use a Venn Diagram as that would be the best way to show the differences and similarities. As you can see, I chose the Cambodian Culture and my culture which is the Indonesian Culture.

Run Bike Run This Wednesday we had the Run Bike Run, which was a very fun and exciting event this year. Alongside some things I had to do for my role, I had a lot of fun. Most of the event we were just sitting down talking or playing the games ran by the House Captains, which was a game of French Cricket. But the special part was during the races, when you either ran, biked or both. My group was called "Run, Bike, Lose" and in it we had Emily doing the first run, Milan doing the biking and Me doing the last run which was considerably shorter than the first run. I think our team did great in trying our best as when Emily finished her run, she looked very puffed and when Milan finished biking, she too looked tired, and when I had to run, even though it was shorter, felt drained. Our efforts were not ignored though as we came second overall in the teams races for the year 7's and 8's. Beaten by Tr'e, Soulin and Brayden. I think the Care Value I showed at this even...

For my merit badge I decided to do the Home Learning Challenge C3, titled "Teach a family member how to use an ICT tool that they are unfamiliar with (like the Flip, Google docs or a specific App)". I taught her how to use a feature called Emoticons (or Emojis) as I thought that would benefit her the most, as she loves to post and text alot of her friends and had always been asking about what those tiny pictures in the text bubble meant. First I walked her through how to use the emojis, showing her that it was as easy as tapping the smiley face picture on the keyboard. She was shocked to see so many little pictures across her keyboard and immediately told me "how do I get rid of it, it's too much on my eyes". After she got used to the emoji keyboard, I showed her the other categories of emojis and he was even more shocked discovering that you can scroll down them to see even more of them. I showed her the "happy" emoji and the "sad" emoji a...

Student Leader This week for my role, I had to contribute to the Run Bike Run by helping out. One of the things I had to do was (along with the Deputy and Head Girl) say a speech about the Run Bike Run. Charlotte talked about the Kauri Whakatauki and trying your best, I talked about Rubbish and the Care Values and Anneke talked about general stuff and opened the Run Bike Run. Another job we had was helping out with the medal ceremony, which had some awkward moments. A privilege we had was free roam around the track, which was mainly used to help out and encourage them in the races. The Care Value I think I showed during this event was Excellence, as alot of us didn't know what to do during the medal ceremony and had to improvise.

Student Leader This week for my role, we had a practice with our roles in leadership with the teacher. We did some public speaking exercises, we had one exercise where we all wrote a subject on a piece of paper and ended up having to talk about a random subject that was given to you for 30 seconds. It was very hard and the subject I ended up getting was "Tigers". Although it was very challenging I think I stuck through and stayed resilient and just did it for 30 seconds, (which was way shorter than it seemed). Another exercise was we all got the same poem and read it out aloud in groups of four to the other student leaders. The care value i think I was showing was Excellence because I stayed resilient and kept going even though Public Speaking isn't my strong point.

Technology This Thursday when we went to technology. For this pentad, my group is in the science block. For science we learn about the periodic table and the science process. This week we decided to test how far an egg could drop before it would crack. We had four eggs and went up by 5cm every time an egg survived the drop. 2 of the eggs only went up to 10cm before cracking and the 2 other eggs ended up getting to a meter before cracking. After that we ended up making a bar graph showing our results and the average. The care values I think I showed this week was Active Thinking, as we had to use our brains to make a hypothesis and make us think outside the box for when we started dropping eggs. 

Being a positive role model at Oaklands This week I tried being a positive role model and I think I did pretty well in trying. I role modeled putting gear back once you're done with them and being nice to others by saying hi or including them. One aspect I don't think I role modeled well was getting involved since I just sat in a circle a lot and didn't get that involved. Things I think I did very well was generally being nice to others and making new friends and talking quietly to the person next to me on the bus. I think the Care value I showed this week was Respect as what I mainly role modeled was respecting others and being kind to everyone.

Student Leader This week for my role, we had an assembly hosted by the student leaders, which included me in it. We all had a speaking role in the assembly which included the Head Peer Mediators and Head PALs. For my speaking role I had to call up Mr Rule to assist us with the our school waiata. The Care Value I think I was showing was Excellence because I'm not really comfortable with Public Speaking and I just got up there and got it over and done with.

In Week 4 of Cantamaths, we had 2011 Year 7 Questions, so it was a little easier than Week 3 but still challenging. Some questions were like "If ... went 5 metres south and 2 metres west, then went 13 metres south again, how many kilometres would ... have walked?" I ended up getting 8/20 since they were kinda challenging obviously. I think I used Active Thinking because some of them were very confusing and complex.

At Technology,  we went to our new pentad textiles/design. We watched a tiny snippet of this show called dragons den and they explained that at the end of the pentad that we had to present our creations like the people did in the show. I think I showed active thinking because we had to thinki of an idea of what we did.