SST - Bean to Bar: The Journey of Whittakers Cocoa

Click on the image above to access google earth presentation. 

We are currently in a human rights unit for social studies, researching the journey of cocoa from bean to bar, talking about the ethical issues along the way. Below is the google earth visual presentation I made to illustrate the journey of cocoa. 

Science: Heart and Lungs Unit

The topic we have been working on in Science at the moment is called 'Heart and Lungs'. As the name suggests, this topic explores the heart and lungs as well as the blood and circulatory system. We have learnt the difference between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, which is commonly represented by red and blue, red being oxygenated and blue representing deoxygenated blood. We learnt the function of the lungs, which is to reoxygenate the blood as it passes through on its way to the heart. The heart itself is extremely strong, pumping the equivalent of 7, 200 litres of blood each day. Comprised of four chambers known as atrium's and ventricles, which accurately makes our heart known as a four chambered heart. The blood travels into the atrium and is then pumped into the ventricle, before being pumped out of the heart and to its respective place. Valves in the lining of the artery's that lead to the heart, known as semi-lunar valves, fill with escaping blood and press together to form a seal, preventing blood from falling back into the heart. We also learnt about the two different jobs that the heart completes. The right side of the heart is responsible for pumping deoxygenated blood to the lungs to get reoxygenated and then pumping it back into the heart, to be pumped around the body. For this reason, the right side of the heart is often much weaker, the muscle not as thick, due to the fact that it only needs to be pumped to the lungs and not around the entire body. That is the job of the left side of the heart, which is constantly working to pump the newly oxygenated blood around the body. This is why the left side of the heart is visibly much stronger, because it's job is to pump blood to the entire body, which is much more strenuous. We learnt about the coronary veins which line the surface of the heart and are responsible for providing the heart with a constant source of oxygen to prevent it from becoming too strained. Finally we learn about the actual composition of blood, and the four main components which make it up. Plasma, the liquid component of blood which is responsible for transporting the nutrients around the body. Plasma makes up 55% of the blood. Next are the Red Blood Cells, or RBC. They are the cells responsible for transporting oxygen around the body. They are the only cell that does not possess a nucleus, instead possessing haemoglobin, which attracts oxygen to affix itself to the cell and gives it its read colour. They make up 45% of the blood. The remaining less than 1% is made up of leukocytes (White blood cells, WBC) and platelets. WBC are responsible for producing the necessary antibodies to help arm the immune system and fight infection. Platelets are the body's natural plaster, clotting the blood around open wounds to form scabs which prevent the wound from bleeding; they make up less than 1% of the bloods volume. That concluded our learning for this unit for the duration of 2020. We will finalise the topic with an assessment when we return in 2021. 

WHAT IS MEDIA???

Phone beeping, postie driving into the driveway, radio blasting from the kitchen, billboards on the side of the road. We are constantly immersed in media throughout our everyday lives, listening to the never ending flow of advertisements, messages, radio broadcasts and ideas. Media reaches everybody, everywhere and is used by different people for multiple different purposes. Media is essentially any method of communication used to reach a large number of people. Like Instagram, Google Drive, the radio or TV. There are various different categories that these forms of media are classified under. There is Print media, which refers to media shown on paper via magazines, billboards or newspapers. There is social media, which refers to platforms such as Tiktok, Facebook or Instagram. There is also Broadcast media, which refers to methods of mass communication such as the radio or TV. These fall into another two main categories, print and electronic. Their names are quite indicative, but for people who find this a bit hard to understand, electronic media is any form of media transferred by using technology, and print media is anything written or printed. We all come in contact with all of these at least once a day, whether it's listening to the radio in the morning or commenting on a friends post on the way to school. Personally, I prefer broadcast media, the radio, and print media such as National Geographic or cooking magazines. Toodles, Bye, Cheerio, Adios.

 

Social Studies: Comparison of Cultures

Over the past few weeks during social studies, we have been working on comparing cultures. We were required to pick a European culture and then compare it to New Zealand's. Here is my finished result.

Your Turn: Descriptive writing

During English for the past few weeks, we have been working on descriptive writing. Our task was to take a sentence from the descriptive writing we had been doing and create a google drawing with an image that would depict that particular phrase. I chose to do two because I couldn't figure out which one I preferred. 

Science: Food and Digestion

During science for the past few weeks, we have been studying food and digestion, and have recently been looking at teeth,  comparing carnivore teeth to herbivores. We learnt how the different diet of that particular animal affects the tools they have to break the food down. For example, the teeth cows possess  grind down their food are predominantly premolars and molars, as those teeth offer a wider and flatter surface area for them to use to break down the fibre rich grass which their diet predominantly consists of. Carnivores on the other hand, possess sharper and more prominent incisors which are used for cutting into their food, as well as canines, four large teeth situated near the front of the mouth which are used for holding and securing their prey to prevent it from escaping. These teeth are also responsible for tearing the food into smaller chunks, making it easier for the incisors and other teeth to chew. We also looked into the different ways these groups of animals have of chewing their food. Cows have a jaw that enables them to move their mouth in a circular motion, and this makes it easier for them to grind the food over their teeth. Carnivores on the other hand, possess a jaw that moves up and down, and this gives them a much stronger bite power. Their jaw is able to move upwards with the help of strong temporalis muscles that pull their jaw upward and backwards into their skull. That kind of went of the point, so to cut a long story short, below is a video that we made. We had to look at the teeth the different skulls had and then had to guess what it was and then answer a few more questions in the video (which is below). 

Showing not Telling writing: My Friend

Pixie hair the colour of hot toffee dances across olive toned skin splattered with brown paint. Her toffee hair frames owlish eyes, deep pools of new bark, set deeply on the olive canvas like gemstones in the ground, glinting with unprecedented mischief. Her blunt wide nose is situated smack bang in the middle of her face, with nostrils that flare with the waves of her emotions. Under her wide nose, her cherry coloured mouth is most often painted in a smile, unconsciously lighting up the world. She is lithe and strong, with a colourful personality that is rivalled only by the clothes she wears. Flames on her pants, the sea on her shirt and the clouds hanging on her headband. Quirky and bright, she looks like she is wearing a rainbow. 

Her general angelic facade barely conceals a personality brimming with mischief, mostly brought out by chocolate. She has an evil twin that feeds on this substance, hiding in the depths of her soul, and will emerge when there has been excessive consumption of rubbish food. She is a bit like a coin, one side of her is stubborn and determined, the other making her one of the kindest most sentimental people in the world. In fact, at prize giving last year she was crying rivers when it came to saying goodbye. Rivers, plural. The flip side of the coin is like a wall that will not budge, and will stand tall even through waves of insults or ridicule. Like a wall she protects those she stands in front of, simply because she can and wants to help. However, over time, sections of the wall can become worn and fragile like the petals of a daisy, shattering in a gentle breeze. We are her wall through these times, by her all the time no matter what. The wall may look blunt and staunch in the daylight, but under the stars and with her friends, the wall shines the same silver as the moon. 

Friendship is like a wrought iron chain, it can be bent, pulled, tugged, broken, but there are still more links, and the broken ones can be forged back together. She values friendship and treats it like you would a growing plant. Nurturing it with words, maintaining it with actions, and keeping it alive just by being herself. She is like an open book that is written in a secret language only we can understand. Her secrets spill from these pages, her thoughts, her moods, her feelings. Trust is another important thing in a relationship like this, where pretty much nothing is hidden away. Trust is the first flower that grows on the vine of friendship, keeping things locked away in plain sight, such as secrets. Trust waters friendship, keeping it alive. Fun is the laughter that follows an exceptionally bad joke, or the giggles of mirth that echo through the night at a sleepover. Fun is the second flower on her friendship vine, keeping relationships alive with a giggle, a laugh, a chuckle. So friendship, trust, and fun. The three sides of the dice, and the flowers on her plant of friendship.