P.E

This year I have started to look forward to P.E much more than ever before. I have a teacher I know well now and I have a lot of friends within our class so I'm able to flit from being able to work with one lot of people to another. Year 10 P.E started on Adventure Based Learning. We played some games on the field but as we have come to change units many times since and do more interesting things, I have come to anticipate P.E more eagerly than during ABL.

Swimming Sports came early on, in March, and I had a fun day with my best friend of similar swimming ability and the same age group as last year, because we are younger than most in our year group (and they competed with older swimmers this year). I am not a club swimmer although I'm fairly confident in the water and I came first in my heat of six for Breaststroke, and second in both Backstroke and Freestyle! My friend and I were actually asked to do the Junior relay for our house too! I swam the second lap, the best I could, although I was against club swimmers. For a laugh, and because virtually no-one volunteered for Butterfly, I did a length of that too. I came last by miles but worked hard and it was a really enjoyable day!


I also went out with our most competitive athletes this year to a stadium for athletics day. I did Long Jump and got through a couple of requirements there, and ran 100m, 1500m (in which I got a second placing card because I was one of two people in our age group in the race!), 200m and 400m. I had a small go at High Jump because we had done some in P.E a week previously but I found it quite hard.


Again we ran the Block Run this year. I ran the whole way and we were let out of the school in threes. We were released at the faster end of the middle-speed-group, which I was happy about, and my time was just over 13 minutes - less than twenty seconds slower than the tenth runner back.
We've just finished our chilly time in our heated school pool, because, of course, it is quite freezing getting out, first thing in the morning! I wasn't very impressed that we were split in to an average, supported and competitive group (I was in average although there wasn't much difference between them all) and were made to swim widths of the pool with the aid of flutterboards. We were categorised by a big race at the beginning of the unit. With no goggles (and a stitich in my leg!) I came in after the top eight, and so this was how we were sorted. However, a drastic positive change in my swimming occurred as soon as the stitch came out and I was my happy water self again. We got a lot of free time this year too, which was great. A few days we lined the mats up across the pool and raced across - it was so fun! I learnt how to straddle entry into a pool without letting my head get wet by straddling before I went under, and we did drills of holding our breaths and underwater swimming, which I had been practicing all summer in our pool!


There was a unit recently in which we did endurance tests and similar exercises. Our teacher made us run up the bank 20+ times, forwards, and backwards, and then lunging, and then high kicks, shuttling up and down, up and down, and the pain was so intense! We did sit-ups and push-ups and although I really struggled after a while, and our whole class started dying off, I liked the idea of doing endurance tests like that and didn't mind too much. This unit included the Beep Test too. I got to Level 8 something, and although I felt I could continue, my foot was just short of the line when the beep sounded (which probably didn't matter).

Surprisingly, the Striking and Catching unit we are on at the moment is turning out to be, perhaps, my favourite set of P.E lessons. We've had four sessions. We practiced throwing and catching, then played Softball. I manned Base 2, which is a change from how I used to be in P.E years ago! We've had two cricket lessons, and I've discovered I really love cricket. I bowled a little bit both times, and did some bowling in Rounders too; it's my goal to play a more important role in all our upcoming games and I'm proud of myself for stepping out to take on things like bowling, that I can do!


What I'm really keen for is the Circus unit. I'm teaching myself how to unicycle!! It is incredibly hard but within my four lessons so far (about two hours total at the moment) I have learnt to unicycle fast with one hand trailing the wall. It's very addictive and so will be one of my two tricks that I must learn. (I'll also perform some sort of trick on stilts, because I don't have any trouble with those.)

Our last unit before the holidays was Self Defense. I didn't enjoy it as much, but learnt how to throw a good punch and escape armlocks!
Next year I am forced to take only five subjects. Originally I was thinking I don't wish to give up PE yet, but as it won't help me in the future I will choose something else. Therefore, I have about ten last weeks of PE, which has taught me a heap for my life.

MY HOLIDAY

Over New Year 2010 my family and I went to Australia. It was my first time overseas! We went to all the theme parks on the Gold Coast, saw the Sunshine Coast, enjoyed the summer days, and then traveled to Sydney to be with family. We were over there for three weeks and I met cousins I had never met before! It was the ultimate holiday and we came home with tonnes of memories and photos!

WELCOME TO 2010

I am currently in Year 10, which is so much more fun than Year 9! I am finally updated, regarding this blog, at which I am surprised I am still keeping it going! I was thinking the other day that this was only a months worth experiment back in 2007 but I am finding it extremely useful, having information, a summary, photos and work from just about everything in my school life since Year 7! I like the idea of this, because, truth be told,we didn't do anything before Year 7, in school, anyway! This year I have continued with Visual Art and German, and I was accepted into a Year 11 Social Studies Course and a Year 11 Science Course, which means at the end of the year I will be sitting proper NCEA exams for seniors. NCEA focuses on certain numbers of credits, obtained from good work throughout the year, to get you into each following year, and then, eventually, university. I am still keen on becoming an Interior Designer and am taking all my subjects in my stride. Being a Year 10 is great!

WHAT I'VE LEARNT

One year of college gone and I am still missing Intermediate. I miss the access to internet and Web 2.0 tools! I was warned at Intermediate that college wouldn't use computers nearly as much, but it is still true. I often feel priveliged because I know about e-learning e.t.c now, after being at Intermediate, and a lot of my college peers don't know of such things. At my school we use PC computers, which is a change from Apples that I don't appreciate, and we use computer labs very rarely. I've hardly been on a computer at school all year! Just once or twice for each subject. Even then, internet is only used for access to Google or suchlike, and not to share our learning. I have forgotten many of the tools we used to use and so I am very grateful I blogged it all while it was in my mind last year. Anytime I can log back on to Blogger and refresh my memory of the Web 2.0 tools out there. A few Power Points have been made this year too, but that is about it, so I think that next year I may be able to arrange with my teachers to do any sort of presentation the technological way, so I don't entirely forget the internet, or perhaps swap a Power Point assignment for a Voki, Viddix or Wikispace! There is still a lot of time to use these, and I could boost my grades with some very creative Web 2.0 tools that my teachers, I am sure, wouldn't have even heard of yet! If I can change my learning to fit what I became used to at Intermediate, in the future my teachers may assign complete projects using tools I can teach them, and then, the way of learning really will change.

FOOD

Term 2 came and I was taking Food as well. We only cooked about once a week, which was a slight disappointment, but I still enjoyed learning about the theory things of food, and we all enjoyed hands-on cooking! I was in a really good group of four and we worked amazingly well on the days we had to cook, with a time limit pressing down too. Perhaps they were the best group I've ever worked with in terms of efficiency!


Our theme for our assessed cooks was the 2009 movie Monsters Vs Aliens, which we watched one afternoon at the cinema, then we planned individual recipes that we would cook as a group (so they had to be similar to the rest of our group's recipes). All the surrounding information was to be handed in in a booklet, which I did a couple of days late. Still, it came back with an impressed comment stating that my teacher thought it had perhaps been the best one in the class! I was elated, as I had made a rather fat book of information. All the pages are below, in order, so you can read my plans and reflections for yourself, but the weeks spent preparing for the three big cooks we did had us making wedges, scones, pizzas and some other delicious delicacies. Eating was the best part of the class!


I achieved a separate assessment with Merit, when I had to cook for my family at home. Apparently I had 'good use of my routines and recipes' and I was pleased with how I worked. I made packet creamy chicken soup, a bit of a cheat, but an entreé only, nevertheless, followed by sausage snails, easy and cute, with mounds of mashed potato for the shells. I put in a third course of one of my excellent little green salads, and that was before some potato wedges, spicy and seasoned to perfection. My best dish was my rice pudding for dessert, my first time making it, and eating it, since I was a baby! I cooked for my mum and dad, and they really enjoyed it. Mum gave me a lot of positive feedback!


Three of my favourite recipes were shortlisted by me as to what I'd cook that fitted the theme of the movie, and I ended up cooking just the one, three times (but due to sickness I only cooked twice). My little book got me Excellence.