Weekly Reflection Term 2 Week 9

Positives:

• My cheerleading team won!
• At the ePro8 Challenge Semi-Final, we came fourth. Next week we have the grand final!

Negatives:

• This week I have had a lot of cheerleading and gymnastics practices, so I had less time to finish all of my schoolwork.

What I learnt:

• I learnt that a 32 sided polygon is called a triacontakaidigon.

Weekly Reflection Term 2 Week 8

Weekly Reflection Term 2 Week 8

Positives:

• I achieved my Languages Milestone!
• I filmed all of the scenes of my My Future Milestone!
• We have almost finished our cheerleading routine!

Negatives:

• I had great week - no negatives!

What I learnt:

• I learnt how to use the overlocker at tech!

Theory Exam

On Saturday 17th June, I had a piano theory exam in Hamilton. I was really nervous, and my stomach churned on the way there. We got a bit lost, but I found my way into the exam room. I was taking a grade two exam, so I had to sit at a grade two desk. There was only one left, so it was hard to find. I sat down, and they handed me my exam. We had one and a half hours to complete the exam, and we weren’t allowed to leave until forty minutes were up. I flicked through the exam paper, to see what the questions were like. Most of them looked fairly simple, except for one Italian term on the back. The term was “larghetto”, and I couldn’t remember if it meant faster or slower that the term “largo”. I put slower, but I still wasn’t sure. Most of the other questions I feel I got correct though. I wanted to be as accurate and attentive to detail as I could, so I was taking nearly three minutes just to write one note or clef to make it look perfect. After I had checked my answers over several times, I handed in my paper and left the exam room. After I left, I googled larghetto. I discovered that I had gotten it wrong, but I was confident with my other answers. My exam will be graded as a pass, a merit, or a distinction. I am confident I will at least get a merit, and maybe even a distinction. I think this exam was a great experience for me, and I am excited for the next one!

Word Of The Week: Excruciating

Definitions:

• Intensely painful.
• Very embarrassing, awkward, or tedious.

Type Of Word:

Adjective

Use it in a sentence:

I landed my round off perfectly. Or so I thought. My ankle rolled, and I heard a terrifying crunch. I looked down at my ankle to see it completely bent around the wrong way. Bones and flesh were sticking out everywhere. The pain was absolutely excruciating. I passed out, hitting my head on the way down. I woke to my head throbbing. I was lying down on a hospital bed. The excruciating pain in my foot was still there. I sat up to take a look at it. But I found that my foot was gone.

Drawing:

Synonym:

Painful

Antonym:

Relaxing

ePro8 Challenge

On Friday, Hayley, Fraser, Murphy and I participated in the ePro8 Challenge. The ePro8 Challenge is a challenge about engineering, and technology challenges. The “e” stands for Engineering, the “Pro” stands for Problem Solving, and the “8” stands for Innovate. Our team was called The NPS Aces.

There were four different activities to choose from. We could make a robotic guard dog; a laser tracking system; a theme park ride; or a bridge. Our thinking was that bridges are simple, we can build a bridge, so that’s what we decided to build.

We got started straight away, and we knew what we were going to build. There was a bit of a miscommunication between us though, and some of us were unsure of where we were getting with it. We were thinking about scrapping the bridge, but we decided to keep going with it. We were forty minutes into the competition, and we were in last place with no points. Everybody else had plenty of points, and we were really behind. We were getting a bit stressed out.

After we finally got our bridge structure done, we pressed our buzzer. Everybody had a song for their buzzer, and ours turned out to be “Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows”. It was really funny! The judge said our structure was good, and gave us the points for it. We were now in third place! The next step for us was to put a road on top of our bridge. There was quite a bit of trial and error with this, but we figured it out eventually. We got the points for that, and we were in second! The next step was to build a car that could drive across our bridge. Our car kept falling apart, and eventually the wheel itself broke, so we had to get a new wheel. Eventually our car worked, and it went across the bridge. We were in first place!

The next and final challenge for the bridge was to make a traffic light that would turn on when a car hopped on the bridge, and then turn off again when it reaches the end. We had a lot of trial and error, but we actually found it quite easy after we figured out what to do.

We were still in first place by quite a bit. We had completed all of the bridge activities, so we moved on to the laser tracking system. The first part we got done was the laser itself, which was more points. We had to make it focus and unfocus on things. Then we put the laser on a hinge and made it focus on other things. Our time was almost up so we decided to ditch the laser, because we didn’t think we could do anything else with it.

We had about ten minutes to go, so we thought we would try to start the amusement park ride. Because we didn’t have much time left, we tried to get away with doing it not very well. That didn’t work, so we just tried to build it in the time we had left. We didn’t manage to finish that particular task, but we were overwhelmed that we had won! We were super proud of ourselves, and especially proud that we had made the semi-finals.

I think the ePro8 Challenge was a great experience for me, and my team and I all really enjoyed it, and we are super excited for the semi-finals!