Science Fair

Ashley and Jye Yin tell us all about the science fair that has been happening at Hillcrest Normal School this week...

 

All of the senior classes took part in a science fair this week. Room 22 and 11 did light, Room 23 and 9 did simple machines, Room 10 did fire and Room 8 did magnets. We all had set up a table with an experiment.

 

One of Room 8's experiments was showing people how to make a magnet. What you do is you get a pin and a magnet then you stroke the magnet along the pin but only stroke it one way. You need to stoke it 25-50 times. What happens is the magnet pulls all of the atoms in the paperclip to face the same way, and that is what creates the magnet. In a magnet all of the atoms are facing the same way but in a pin they are all facing in different directions. We had some special visitors at the science fair, Mrs Frizzle(a character from the magic school bus) and Mrs  Ryan (an old science teacher at our school).  They came to open the science fair. We all had lots of fun and learnt heaps.

 

Cross Country Poetry

Room 8 have been writing free verse about our cross country run a couple of weeks ago. Here are a few for you to enjoy.

More lovely pukekos

It was another busy afternoon creating our lovely pukeko pictures for our calendars. Here are six more of our creations for you to enjoy!

 Brandon's Pukeko

 Zoe's Pukeko

 Ronak's Pukeko

Amy's Pukeko 

 Joel's Pukeko

Sithika's Pukeko

Stunning Pukekos

We have been working hard on our calendars and our first ones are finished. We have used a mixture of pastels, paint and collage to create our masterpieces. We are very pleased with the way they have turned out, let us know what you think.

 Ashley's Pukeko

 Ella's Pukeko

 Gwen's Pukeko

 Izzy's Pukeko

 Mosese's Pukeko

Zach's Pukeko

Surgery or Not?

We hope you are enjoying our series of persuasive writing about the kiwi, do let us know what you think about the subject.Today Aspen tells us why she thinks it was worthwhile operating on K2 the kiwi.

Surgery or Not?

K2 is a kiwi who had an accident when he  hatched. His leg had twisted around the wrong way. The people who were looking after him decided to fix him with surgery. These are some reasons why it was worth saving K2 the kiwi.

Kiwi are endangered.They are very rare, there are only 1600 little spotted kiwi left!

80 years ago there were 5,000,000 kiwi in New Zealand but in 2008 there were 72,600. In the wild only 5% of kiwi chicks will live to adulthood when chicks in captivity have a 65% chance of surviving.

Kiwi are only found in New Zealand, they don’t live anywhere else because they love the food here. The great spotted

Kiwi only live on Stewart island so spend some money to help our kiwi!

Finally kiwi are a symbol to New Zealand  and we are called kiwis .When people come to New Zealand they go to kiwi houses so we can’t lose our native bird if were called kiwis and if they go extinct we can’t be called kiwis anymore!

That’s why I think it is worth saving K2. Kiwi are very special to New Zealand and are close to extinction so donate now, please save our kiwi. 

A kiwi being looked after by an Operation Nest Egg helper.

Kiwi Crisis

It's Izzy's turn to share her writing about the kiwi today, let us know what you think about her arguments. 

Kiwi Crisis

In New Zealand we are losing more and more kiwi each year, if we don’t do something now we are going to lose our national symbol. But is it worth saving them? Wouldn’t you save yourself if you were suffering what kiwis are?

Kiwis are an endangered species. Only 25,000 brown kiwis remain in NZ. 80 years ago about 5 million kiwi and in 2008 there were only 72,600, this number is estimated to decline to 63,500 by 2018 because of us. We need to do spend some money on something the whole of newzealand cares about.

Kiwis are only found in New Zealand of our most threatened kiwi the rowi and the haast tokoeka, only 350 of these kiwis remain to survive. They are found in the two separate regions of the west coast of the south island. So why can’t we save the kiwi there’s no excuse for us not to. At the moment these areas  are not safe and we need to do something about it.

Kiwis are a symbol to New Zealand and we don’t want our name to be taken away for something we did. Tourist come to NZ to look at the kiwi because of cause they don’t have them in their country. Tourists go to gift shops with kiwi items and we get money from those gift shops. But if kiwi go extinct, NO MORE MONEY, NO MORE TOURISTS!!! Tourists are a big part of New Zealands economy.

So do help save the kiwi as they are close to extinction, are only found in NZ , and are our national symbol. DONATE NOW!!

Saving the Kiwi

Today Ella is going to share her piece of writing on why we should work hard to save the kiwi, as you can see it's an issue Room 8 feel strongly about.

Saving the Kiwi

K2 is a brown kiwi who had an accident after he was born which made his leg twist round the opposite way round, which is why I believe we should help all Kiwis.

Kiwis are endangered, the most endangered species of kiwi is the Haast Tokoeka and the Rowi with a small amount of about 350 remaining. The brown kiwi has the most with approximately 25, 0000. So if we don’t protect our precious kiwi they will all be as dead as a Dodo.

As I said before, kiwis are endangered! If we don’t help the kiwi they will be extinct, which is terrible because they only live in New Zealand.  If they die there will be no more kiwi left in the world. If they all get wiped out we will have no symbol. The Australians get the Kangaroos, why can’t we have something special that lives in our country.

Our national emblem is the kiwi because no other country has any. Your probably thinking, so what? Why do you need a national emblem?  Well the truth is, we don’t, but they're endangered and native. No one looked after them so we did, and since then we are called kiwis.

Kiwi are endangered their native and their New Zealand’s national emblem. We need to take care of them. Imagine being a kiwi and all your friends and family are dying you wouldn’t be happy at all would you?