LAST DAY EVER!!!!!!!

Welcome to my last blog post ever. WAAAAHHHH!! Well today has been an interesting one. We started the day with the last game of chess ever for us year sixs. I took that chance to play my last game of chess against Alex and lucky for me I won and can say I rule at chess! After that we had the first round for today of affective studies and we saw some interesting ones like Houdini and more. Next it was time for passion time and I learnt heaps more chords and I'm so going to continue learning guitar next year at high school. After that we had more affective studies and they were awesome everyone did such a great job. After that came an interesting part of the day we got a free sausage sizzle lunch yum yum. After lunch we did some more affective study and I did My one and I think I did a great job. So Finally a final goodbye from me and I wish you a Merry Christmas and good bye.

Mandalas!!!!!

Today I've learnt heaps! We had another guitar session today and we learnt two new cords A7 and G and trust me they are not that hard to learn. Also we got some songs to learn, some Elvis songs and Happy Birthday. We worked so hard that my fingers still ache from this morning. Then after lunch we started some new patterns workshops I'm doing Mandalas. Now your probably wondering what on earth is a Mandala? A mandala is a pattern that lots of religions use. What they do is they get alot of different coloured sands (note these sands are not dyed they are naturally coloured sand) and they turn the sand into a picture with theses special brushes and they make a picture with the centre being the seed. Making a sand Mandala takes about six days and then when they are done they sweep it all up and then they take it to the river and pour the sand in and it is a blessing on the world. Then we started to make our own Mandalas, No not using sand using pencil.

Halloween came late...

 We started today with our affective study and I am close to completion now. I just need to add a few things and edit it then it will be done. After that it was time for passion projects and I got to work on my mindstorm again and the best thing is I've completed the shooter bot and its so cool.
It will fire all 6 missiles at whatever target is in front of it. And next week I'm going to make some adjustments to the bot with some more sensors and stuff like that.

Then after lunch halloween came late because I got a bit of a scare. We had a talk about digital citizenship. This is all about keeping yourself safe on the Internet.  We talked about how some people hack things and take people's money and how they hack peoples log ins and do things that that person would not do. I also found out that if you take a photo and put it online people, can find where it was taken.  Once you post something, it is online FOREVER!

Mindstorm mania

To start today I started working on my affective study on Ole Kirk Christiansen the inventor of lego. Then when it came to passion time  my passion project was finished.

I got to start making a new mindstorm all for my passion project and I've made the standered bot already and the best thing is that its a NXT 2. Also today I learnt how to program my mindstorm using the computer program  but since I've only got the basic bot I can only make it move and talk for now which is pretty cool. I've decided next week that I'm going to start building the shooter bot to start with and when its done and all programed its going to be really cool.

Victory

When I walked into Enrich this morning, I got the best news and a big surprise. Katie told me that my movie was a finalist in the Year 4-6 Documentary section of the MADE Awards. I'm so thrilled!!! So all my hard work paid off and now I'm waiting to see what happens next.

To start the day, we had a game of chess but only Hyrum and I were playing chess - everyone else got on with their Affective projects. In the end, Hyrum bet me. I only had a King and he had a King and a Queen.

Later on in the day, it was time for guitar lessons. Today we got the chords to some of the songs we are learning to play. After that was finished, it was time for a tech challenge. The challenge was to make a chair that the large frog could sit on. I had to join in with a group that were part-way through the challenge, and they didn't look like they were having great success. We took up the finished product to the front for judging, and our chair fell apart and sadly it wasn't much of a success!

MS the mindstorm.

Today is great. I've finished my documentary and it's being sent away today!!! Next was guitar lessons. Today at guitar lessons we got tested on changing from E to D and I'm doing pretty well. We also learnt how to change from A to D and it's super hard you have to learn where to put your fingers off by heart and getting your fingers in the right place is really hard. We also have to practise changing from E minor to major and that isn't so hard. After lunch it was time to do some more on our mindstorm and ours is looking so cool! Today we installed the ultra sonic, light and sound sensors and we are adding in the touch sensor.

Mindstorms

To complete editing was my goal for my documentary today. I had to change some of my pictures and edit the order of some of my slides,  and I'm really happy with how it looks. After about an hour of work all the editing for my documentary was done. During lunch it was time for my next guitar lesson. This time we started learning about some songs to play and how to shift our fingers around the guitar to get the different chords. After guitar was over,  it was time for the second session of robotics with the mind storms. and during this time we have just about got our rem bot done!

Guitar madness

Today has been so great! Today I started my guitar lessons with Mr Hawkins. First we learnt how to remember the cords on a guitar. The keys are E, A, D, J, B, E. this is how we learnt how to remember the cords, Evil Adam Drinks Jin Before Eating. Once we had learnt the keys we started learning the cords. We learnt how to play E major and minor A and D. While doing that we had to learn which fingers we had to put on which cord and in which fret. What is a fret? A fret is the space between the metal lines that go across the neck of your guitar. And now when I get home I'm going to drive my family crazy by playing my guitar!!!!

Documentary Completion.

Once chess was over this morning, I spent pretty much every single minute of my day working on my documentary! I've been working so hard on this, but it was all worth it. I've made the greatest five minute movie ever, in history!

I've been adding and editing all day long to get my documentary done and finally I've got the five minutes of footage (genius)! I've mixed my good ideas with some hard work and determination, I've put it all in the oven and produced one documentary! I also learnt that there is a university named after Justus Liebig, (the man who invented Marmite). Also did you know that Justus Liebig is known as the father of the fertiliser industry. Today we also had some guests from the ILT and the ILT Foundation come in to have a look at what we do here at Enrich@ILT.

A day @ circus Enrich

Where to put this one, where to put that one? "I know were that goes. These where some of the things I said during the patterns workshop today.  Today, we had to order important events from 2000 - 2006.  We were looking at similarities and differences in this timeframe, as well as any patterns we could see.

To start the day I had a game of chess against Madison and won holding onto 5th place on the leaderboard. Once chess was done it was time for infographics with Katie. Infographics, well the name really says it all. At infographics I learnt about a programme called Prezi which lets me make a presentation about whatever I want. It's sort of like Keynote, but more interactive. After that we had Miro's sister Lauren, come in from Circus Aoteroa to talk about what she does in the circus. Once Miro's sister had left we moved into passion time and I've almost finished my movie. All I have to do is add some voice overs and check everything and I will be done!!!!

Patterns in time

"Stalemate!" Was how I started  the second week of the term. A 20 minute game of chess against Alex woke me up. After taking an early lead all I could get Alex down to was a stalemate. Once chess time had depleted it was time for some teacher lead workshops. I was went for Miss Nicola's survey workshop where we did a multiple intelligents test to find out what we are most gifted at. Once that was finished it was time for Passion time. During this space of time I got my voice overs completed and started organising an expert for next week. Once all this time was gone we started some patterns workshops. The opitions were time, migration and writing patterns. I choose Time with Katie. We all tried to guess how long a minute is, without a clock to help us.  I guessed 1.06, which was pretty close.  We discussed some of the ancient methods of timekeeping - candle clocks, hour glasses, and water clocks.  We made lists of all the things we could think of that relate to patterns of time - day and night, seasons, tides, calendars.  Your whole life revolves around time.  Patterns in time repeat over and over.  Next week we are going to design our own machine to measure time.

The end of the term.

Today at Enrich I learnt the names of the different type of clouds and how to recognize them when I see them. To start my day I had a game of chess and my challenger Miro. The game had started. The game went on and on. But in the end it came down to points and then I had won!!! After chess time had disintegrated we moved into teacher lead workshops. This time I was on cloud patterns. In this time I learnt the names of clouds and how to recognize them and we also made a cloud  finder to also help us recognize clouds
The  some of the names of the different cloud types are cirrus, stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratus, cumulus and altocumulus. Next on the agenda was passion time. During this time I got my draft email for Warren Mckenzie and now I'm doing a "what happened?" to Sanitarium. And now I'm off to finish my day with student led workshops. Have a happy holidays!

Chess victory.

"Stalemate." I had tied against Claudia in my first game of chess. "Oh well better luck next time I told myself."  Then, what a great game! Victory was mine! I had just beaten Nathan in a game of chess and now I'm third on the chess leader board. Oh and by the way did you know it's Gifted Awareness Week? First think this morning, it was time to work on my patterns keynote. I added a few more slides, the music and the timing and now I'm heading down the the path of completion. Now the time had come for passion time so I sprang into action. In the given time, I edited the interviews from last week and put them into my i-Movie. I also got some more facts about marmite. Also I edited some of the timing in some of my clips because you couldn't read them. And then I completed the music for my i-Movie it's so cool!

Learning on the Ipad

"Checkmate." at last I told  myself victory was mine after a gruelling match of chess. 

"Good game Jacob."

 "You too Wilson"

After chess we started some new workshops. They are affective domain, IPads and keynote. Each week we do a new workshop. I started with IPads we learnt how to use some new apps that are on the iPad some of those apps are Extreme FX, book creator, pic colage and phyciss.

During this time we also got to have a play around with some of the new apps. We drew some pictures with a new art app, we made environmental music the sounds had been filmed with like a car horn, kicking a tire, slamming a door and that sort of stuff.

We also had a go at a psychics app where we had to build something like a tree house and it had to hold some thing heavy and you would pass or fail and another thing you have a budget you have to stick to.

At passion time I took some more interviews but this time I did them on the iPad and that was much easier than using the camera.

And thats been whats happening at enrich today.

My image that I drew on the Ipad

Checkmate.

"Check." I said to Blake. Blake moved Then I took his final piece and then "Stalemate." "Good game Blake." "You too Wilson." And then I had a game of chess with Jayden. It was a really intense first couple of seconds and then we got down to the final moves "Checkmate Jayden, Good game." "You too." That's how the start of my morning played out. After Chess it was time for student-led workshops. Again, I went with Max and this time we learnt how to add gravity when a player jumps. But sadly we only got half way through. We also learnt how to make the characters change direction when they hit the side. Oh well more for next week. As the day rolled on we moved into passion time. I got three more interviews and some of the music done done. The people I interviewed today were Blake, Jayden and Madison. And next I'm going to do teacher-led workshops. I'm doing the Enrich Newspaper with Nicola.

Student teachers

To start our day we did chess. In my first game I played Jacob and bet him. In my second game I played Sophia and won by points so I'm now eighth on the leader board. Once that was done we did student lead workshops and I went to Max's workshop which was all about Scratch. At the workshop we learnt how to make our own game by learning how to make the  characters move by controls. Also we learnt how to give the characters life and how to make them lose life and to make them lose life we learnt how to make the characters attack. Once we had finished our game we moved into passion time. Today for passion time I did some interviews and I got four done. I interviewed Max, Alex, Jacob and Miro. I think that one day that these guys will be movie stars. I'm now editing the footage and putting them into my i-Movie.

My visit to Cue TV

To start today I went for a visit to Cue TV and I went and saw Ashley McKenzie for an hour. We talked about how to line up the camera when filming how to edit my clips and how to play with the light when taking pictures and videos. He also showed me one of his own documentaries. He taught me how to do a thing called a Covershot. A Covershot when you have a clip and you put a picture of something when someone says something like "um" to cover it up. He told me that the hardest part about the editing process was knowing what to put in. Ashley also told me that I needed a bottom line and we decided  that my bottom line was Life is not worth living without Marmite. I also got a special  tour of  Cue TV in SIT arcade. When I got back from my visit I immediately started editing my Imovie because some of the things Ashley told me.

The new term

Back at Enrich already! Man the holidays went fast. To start our first day back we had a game of chess and I challenged Madison and won, and now I'm just outside the top ten on the chess leader board. 

After that we had a talk about some of the models of giftedness. From that we learnt ability alone will not produce outstanding accomplishments. We also talked about Gagnes model of giftedness and found out that he and Tannebaum both think chance is a huge part of giftedness.

Next for the day was passion time and I got my email from cue TV. I'm going for a visit next Monday That will be awesome!!!! 

I also got a couple of people to come and give their vote while I recorded them on if they like marmite or not, sadly most people said no but one

person said yes.

Last day of Term 1

Man what a busy term!!! The time has come once again for a  two week holiday YAH!!! But lets get back to today. Once again we started off with passion time And I sent an email to Cue Tv to ask if after the holidays I can come in for a visit to see how they do their filming and how they edit their films and  now I'm waiting for a reply. I also got some more facts and progress for my documentary and I have a minute 15 seconds of film done and after the holidays I'm going to start filming interviews and stuff everything is going great!!! After morning tea we edited some of our pictures from our patterns field trip on iphoto and then we put them into a keynote. In my keynote everything was either beauty, order, strength or survivability and now after this I'm going to do my technology challenge. See ya, have a good holiday and drive safely.

My life today

"Passion time, Yes!!!" I told myself this is great. I get until morning tea time to work on my documentary. For the next hour I was making plans and adding pictures and words and now I have just over a minute of documentary. After morning tea we had to fill out this Reflection sheet and we had to write a topic for each of the corner stone and it was not easy and it took the rest of the time until lunch time.
This is my reflection sheet.

We watched a video about a boy called Caine and he made his own arcade out of cardboard in his dad's workshop. And it all started with a small plastic basketball hoop he had won at an arcade. And then he made heaps more games and set them up in his dads workshop. then one day a guy came into  Caine’s dads shop to buy a new handle for his Mazda and he played Caines Arcade. Then he made a page on facebook about Caine’s Arcade because he was Caine’s first customer and he organised a flash mob for Caines arcade and when the day came caine had the shock of his life when hundreds of people came to play caines arcade.  Caine is realy gifted and he had lots of self motivation. Canie had lots of inspiration and he gave me a lot of information and I learn’t that if I stick with something I can achieve great things. I have learn’t lots of things from caine like if I purse my personal best I will achive lots of things.  We also did this task called what is intelligence where we had to say if we thought it was intelligent or not. And I learnt from this that everyone is intelligent in some way. 

Mental Edge...  Most days in the morning we have a game of chess and this involves quick thinking, sacrifice, logic, strategy and to learn from your mistakes. It also requires lots of concentration because if you accidentally touch a piece that you don’t mean to, this could make your whole plan fall apart.      We do Wilson games each morning. These games require a lot of concentration, teamwork, friendship, and pursuing your personal best and sometimes that can be really hard. You also have to be really brave to participate to progress because if you are not brave you will never get anywhere. 

Concept Curriculum... We went on a field trip to the park and around the town to find patterns and help us realise that patterns are a universal concept. While we were out on this field trip we had a camera and a clipboard with a sheet and we with a buddy had to write down what patterns we could see and take photos of them. We noticed patterns that we walk past everyday with out noticing them. I learnt that patterns are a universal concept.

 Talent Development/Passion Time... during passion time we get to do whatever our passion is and we get to explore our passions in depth and learn new things about ourselves. I find this time is really great because I get time to do things that I don’t get to do at school or have time for at home. and this is all about self motivation and sticking to the task because if you do that you achieve great things. 

After lunch we did two rotations To start I was with Darryn and we did this thing about Gagne's model of giftedness and then we did this newspaper thing where we had a story starter and we had to type a story from that in 15 minutes and send it to Miss Nicola.I hope you enjoyed reading about what happened in Wilson's life today.

Custom Glitter Text

As we left Enrich I wondered what pictures I might find of patterns. And as soon as we had stepped out of the building I saw Zillions of patterns "Man." I told myself this is going to be a long day.  First stop the libary. As I was walking down the road to the library we were stopping nearly every five steps because there where so many patterns. When we got to the library the amount of patterns was amazing. I had never realised that there where so many patterns. As we walked around I was snapping all the patterns I could see. This was awesome. Then just down the road was our next stop Wachner Place. One of the parents said "Hey look at" She was looking at something through her sun glasses that no-one else could see. I had a look and I though it was pretty cool so I put the camera up to her sun glasses and took a photo. Next stop Countdown. When we finally got to Countdown we had to put our cameras away because we weren't allowed to take photos inside the store. When that was done Max and I had taken at lest a hundred photos! Next stop, Enrich for a snack and to get our lunch boxes so that we could got to Queens Park for lunch. It was so cool there. We went to the Japanese garden, the cactus garden and the museum and now back here. What a day!

Custom Glitter Text

"Yes!" I told myself. Finally I thought of my topic for my documentary......  THE MARMITE DROUGHT!!! Great I can get started. So I began the documentary on THE MARMITE DROUGHT!!!!!! Drag, drop and type was my pattern and boy that pattern was effective.  I now have 19 seconds of movie and most of my storyboard done. Now what to do next? "Check!" 

"Not now." Oh no Jayden has killed my bishop I must avenge it. Yes I have his Queen. "Checkmate Jayden. Good game." "You too Wilson." Yes I had bet Jayden at chess and moved 4 spots against my arch rival Max.

"Blue, Red, Green,Yellow, Purple and Magenta, Yes I had earnt my colour and that was cerise! The aim of this game is first you have 4-5 people standing up the front, and they have a colour on their back, (it is just a sticky note with a colour written on it). The people up the front stand in a line, and say their colour, and then everyone else has to close their eyes and the people up the front with the colours on their back swap places.  The audience then has a turn at guessing the order of the colours.  If they guess correctly, they get a colour, and they get added to the list of colours to remember! Can't wait for next week to come.

Custom Glitter Text

Done!!!! Finally I had finished my passion time proposal, Now time to go show a teacher. I slowly headed over to Katie to get it checked but Oh no she was with someone else.
 Oh well I will just have to wait a minute, then, let down again!  All of a sudden I saw the five or six person line in front of me then inside I could hear myself crying NNNNNOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Five minutes later the line moved forward, then two minutes later I was upside down chatting away to everyone possible.  Finally it was my turn,  a couple of minutes later I had to start again - oh well. At least I know what I want to do now, I'm going to film a documentary and enter this years MADE awards.
At the start of the morning we watched a movie call Caine's arcade, about a 9 year old boy who made an arcade out of cardboard! If you want to watch this video click the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIFNkdq96U
After that we played a Wilson game  where there are four hoops and 4 bean bags and you have to chuck beanbags into the hoop within a 3 minute time limit. You need 2 - 4 teams each with an even amount of players. You can play the game in many ways like  - Get them in in order or with each hoop having an amount of points.

The day of adventures

Finally I'm back from my many adventures. Last week I was up in sunny Christchurch and the week before that I was at year six camp and the week before that I didn't get my post done so this is my first post in ages. The morning started with debatable truths and we had a recap on what we knew about patterns and then we moved onto the Wilson game,  Piccadilly Circus, the record was 28 seconds by the Wednesday group and our time was.....................31 seconds so close !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Next we had a discussion about the Polyfest competitions. Topics were T-shirt design, Art exhibition and Community Lei design. Well thats all folks, for now ....