Robotics - Microbit Code: Dice

This is the result of our work in robotics so far. We have learnt how to utilise the microbit, creating codes and uploading them onto the device, allowing us to do all sorts of cool things. One of these is the example below- rock, paper, scissors. Click the shake button on the simulator to run the program.  

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).