Picture Writing - Jamie

I’m sitting on the roof of the building, heart racing in anticipation of what I am about to do. Today I would help make a difference. I grip the shopping cart tightly with my sweaty palms. The eye holes in my gas mask began to fog up, clouding my vision. Despite the sweltering heat, I resist the urge to remove the mask. I know it will help save me from the searing pain of the tear gas if I am caught by the Police. I begin the run up and give the brick laden trolley an almighty shove. It’s back wheel gets caught on the edge of the building sending it’s load of rubble flying off the edge to form a barricade across the road. I climb down, run to the pile and move some bricks in the shape of our sign. CEZA. Retribution. I joined them as soon as I recovered from the shock of losing my family to the police. They welcomed me in, but I had to complete a task for them.

I sit down to catch my breath, my mind racing with the adrenaline of what I have just done.

WEE WOO WEE WOO!!!

The cops are coming. I realise. I can’t get caught. A nearby building provides the perfect hiding spot. I jump through an open window, and hide inside a wardrobe.

Ccrreeeaaccckkkk. The cops have opened the door and are closing in. As their footsteps get closer, my heart pounds faster and faster. My gas mask fills with sweat, and my breathing becomes short and clipped. I can see them through the crack in the wardrobe now, heading towards me. I catch a glimpse of blue and black as a scarred hand reaches for the handle, about to open my hiding place. I am like a rabbit in his hole, slowly being dug out by the hunting dogs.

“I think I saw him!” yells another officer. They turn away and head upstairs. A breath I have not realised I was holding escapes me in the form of a loud sigh. I am safe.

By Jamie

Report Writing Leadership - Jamie

Leadership

What makes someone a leader? Is it how they behave, is it  that they have talent or is it how brave they are? No. I believe it is those things and more. It’s all the qualities and values that they live by and believe in. By including these values and qualities in your own life you can become a leader yourself. They are determined to be the best they can be.

To become a great leader, it is important to include these values in your life. Many of these values come from well known leaders themselves and what they believe is great leadership and success. People look up to leaders to show them the way to act and behave. If you demonstrate these values then you can show them how to become great leaders themselves.

Great leaders know who they are. They know who they want to be and what they want to do with their life. This is crucial to being a leader because you must look confident in yourself and so inspire others to do the same. By dedicating themselves to being better, they can improve who they are. To do this they focus on giving back and making a difference to others because, if you are not making someone else’s life better, you are wasting your time. Peter Jackson was someone who had great success in life and used it to benefit others when he purchased a church for $10 million to save it from demolition.  A life is only worth living if you use it to benefit others.

However, you don’t have to look at others and compare yourself to them. If you do this you will not succeed in life, because there will always be someone better than you. You should look at yourself and focus on making what you see better. For example, when choosing a challenge, a great leader will attack their fears or weaknesses. They won’t choose something they are good at, but go for the areas where they are less confident in. By throwing themselves into the deep end, they are challenging themselves as well as improving themselves.  If you challenge yourself every day, you can be a great leader yourself.

Whereas talent comes naturally, you must work hard to become skilled at something. Talent can only take you so far in life before those who have worked hard to become skilled will surpass you. Becoming skilled at something gives a great feeling of satisfaction, something you won’t feel if you just use your talent and take the easy route. So if you have a talent or have a strength, don’t just go with the easy option and rely on your talent. Work as hard as you can at being skilled at something. Do this and not only will you become better at something , but you will have earned your skill and can be  proud of how well you have done.

If a leader wants something they will go get it.  This shows absolute determination in the face of unrealistic odds, negative opinions and their weaknesses. By protecting their dreams, they are not letting anyone tell them they can’t do something. They will listen to other people’s opinions but will stay determined no matter how unrealistic the idea is. There is no such thing as an unrealistic idea. For example, Thomas Edison was a great leader in technology and was determined in his attempt to create the light bulb. Though many people thought it was an unrealistic idea and laughed at his failure to make a lightbulb 2000 times, he replied that he hadn’t failed, he had learnt 2000 ways how not to make a lightbulb, but he only needed one way to make it work. This shows how determined he was to protect his dream. You can do the same by working hard at something you are passionate about, because if you believe that you can do it, you can achieve it no matter how unrealistic it is.

“The man who says it can’t be done and the man who says it can are both usually right” - Will Smith (American Actor, Rapper and Producer)

So to be a great leader you must be determined to believe in your ideas and dreams. You must work to hard to have skill not just rely on talent all the time. You must always try to make a difference and follow the values of a leader. Challenge yourself everyday to do something you are afraid of. Having all these values and qualities to use in your life means that you can be a great leader as well. So what are you waiting for? Start inspiring other people to be leaders by showing them what you can do. By doing this, you can convince other people that they can be great leaders too.

Sources

“Will Smith on Life”

www.youtube.com

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

Authors Opinion

Written by Jamie

Inferencing by The Brilliants

For the past two reading lessons the Brilliants have been doing a presentation on inferencing using fotobabble. 

We've been using the language from our Inquiry Model on this blog and you might be wondering what it's all about!  Here's a copy of the reading one (they'll all the same, it's just that the words that are especially helpful in each subject have been bolded to help us.)

This is what we did...

Building Knowledge.  First we brought what we knew about inferencing and found that all of us together had enough information to do it ourselves, though we found some more information and brainstormed together. 

Then we moved to Making Meaning, where we summarised it and considered how to organise it all. We negotiated what we would include in our presentation and who would say each part and we knitted some ideas together where possible. Then we began to plan and assemble our script.

Finally we moved to Applying our Understanding where we created our fotobabble. We created the script and applied our understanding by creating our own example of inferencing and we justified why it was inferencing. We solved the problem of writing our everyone's parts seperately by working off our original piece of paper. We also solved the problem of running out of time on fotobabble by taking out the dictionary definition we had - it was too long and we thought it actually made things quite confusing! We replaced it with our own definition which we thought was better anyway. We considered the possibilities of how to make a member of the group stay quiet (this was quite difficult) and came up with a solution to help them. Last but not least we applied what we learnt to our blog and recounted all the steps.

Break Through!

By Jamie and Alex

Starting Science Fair...

Today the year 7 and 8 students carried out an experiment to test dishwashing liquid and it's effect on different liquids (in this case, milk, water and apple juice.)

The seniors were introduced to some key words and researched them before knitting together what we found to give a definition we would all understand.  They started to give examples of each term under the headings (eg. they had a go at writing their own hypotheses once they understood what one actually was.)

They're still working through the details but you can click on the following image to see the document that they're all working on.

See how we got on here (photos):

Moving Milk! on PhotoPeach

and video:

Learners, what did you guys think of the experiment and your learning?

Daily Journal Writing by Jamie

For journal writing on Tuesday we wrote about a mystery trunk that we find under our house. We had to include a Metaphor and a Hyperbole. Here's mine...

One day when I was lying on my creaking, groaning bed I felt a sudden urge to go down to the basement and explore. I was a shadow as I tiptoed past my parent's room. I could hear their breathing. I was so quiet. When I got outside I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The chilly, winter breeze froze me to the very bone. When I opened the basement door the moonlight reflected off a rusty piece of metal. Excited I ran towards it. It was a clasp. I snapped it open, realizing it belonged to a old, worn, down, leather trunk. It took an eternity to open the elephant sized lid. As I peaked inside I fell to the ground laughing. After all that, I was now the owner of... A pair of moth eaten socks.

An Image in Time - Jamie, Craig, Fatima, Maddy & Ben

WALHT (We Are Learning How To): Write a interesting paragraph from a picture, using metaphor and personification.

This morning for journal writing we were doing a moment in time image.  It needed to include a metaphor and personification.  We chose between two images.  One was a globe with hands, the other was a rock climbing wall.  We hope you enjoy them.

When I look at the globe I think of each hand as a country and the globe as the environment.  Each time a hand comes away, a country stops caring, making it harder for the remaining hands to take care of it.  It will end up being a concrete wasteland.  If this happens the stars will never wink again.

By Jamie

It's Craig here - I've underlined the figurative language I used, can you work out which ones I've used where?

It all started when the universe ran over to our part of the solar system and popped a balloon causing a big bang.  That was the point when our part of the solar system was invented.  Then civilization started, they began to hold the world. Later on war was invented, civilizations crumbled making it harder to hold the world.  The Earth was beginning to feel like an anchor to the people who are still holding.  Later on in time our technology has begun to pollute the land and our environment.  More hands drop.  If one more pair of hands drop, our world will be a wasteland.   

By Craig

Standing alone holding the globe all by myself.  The globe felt like I was carrying a marble but the longer I held it, the quicker I realised I was holding a dinosaur sized globe.  I felt like giving up but the globe smiled as someone else helped me hold it.  I felt like a thousand weights lifted off my shoulders.

I felt like I did quite well because a couple years ago, I wasn't sure about metaphors and personifications.  Now I can write metaphors, personifications, and similes at ease.  Journal writing has helped me lot.  Journal writing is really affective because the teachers give you a topic to write about and you have to use figurative language.  I am looking forward to more journal writing so I can improve on my weaknesses.

By Fatima

As I steer at the rock wall it laughs at me. As I start to climb the wall I turn into nimble monkey creeping to the top.

By Maddy

As I am the great billy goat I am preparing to conquer this great big mountain and guess what, it laughed at me.  I think it will be a big challenge for me!

By Ben

Fotobabble and the six thinking hats help us to reflect

This is our groups Fotobabble (made by Jamie, Hossain, Edwin, Ruby and Dani.) It is about the Six Thinking Hats which we use to help us to write a better Learning Journal. To find out more about these hats, check out this link that we found. The Six Thinking Hats - these hats were created by Dr Edward de Bono.

How have you used the Six Thinking Hats?

By Jamie and Hossain