Month: June 2017

This week was the last week of school before the Summer break for me and in school, we did some pretty fun things before school was over.

On Monday, we still had to do some work but it was pretty simple like finishing our projects that were due the next day on Tuesday and if I remember correctly we also got to play some games which was fun. I remember I was playing Tetris after doing my art that day. On Tuesday, we did our gallery walk of our space science projects where different groups were given a space related item to research about like the Hubble Space Telescope and Space Food. After a few days of researching, groups put their information on a board and then on Tuesday one of the group members of each group stayed at their board and the rest went around to other groups to gather information about other topics from other groups. That was most likely the most interesting part about Tuesday. During French class, we also got to watch a some of a Mr. Bean movie which was fun. After that, some people also started working on their art if they weren’t finished and then we got to go home.

On Wednesday, we mostly moved some things from our class like desks and replaced them with tables because my teacher prefers tables over desks. We also cleaned out our lockers and had an assembly where there was the last character assembly of the school year and we also said goodbye to a few teachers that were going away from the school for a few years in the future. The next day which was Thursday and also the last day of school started off with an assembly when we said farewell to our Vice Principal and we got to show a video that I helped to make and we also said farewell to the graduating grade 8’s that were going to high school. The rest of the day we got to use laptops to play games or do other things that you wanted to do and also eat some snacks some students brought in to share with the class. At around 12:00 we took everything out of our lockers and put them in our bags and went into to class and our teacher wished us luck in the next school year and then we clapped the grade 8’s out while the were exiting the school and then when the bell rang at around 12:10 we all got to go home and start our summer vacation.

Overall, it was a fun last week of school and I felt like this school year went by quite fast, but it was a very enjoyable year with nice classmates and teachers.

School is going to end next week, but despite that my class still, has a science project due next Tuesday on different astronomy tools. Each group is supposed to choose a tool used in space or that help study space and then put all the information on a bristol board to present the information.

My group is researching all about the telescope and we have gathered all the information and all we need to do is put it on our bristol board. The telescope was invented in between 1608-1609 by a German spectacle maker named Hans Lippershey. The first person to actually use a telescope to look into space was an Italian astronomer named Galileo Galilei. He improved the original design so that it was able to look at planets far away from Earth. Telescopes work by using two pieces of glass called lenses that bend light into focus so that when the light reaches your eye the image you are looking at appears magnified. This way, it is easy to see things that are far away. Early telescopes were used by sea merchants to observe ships. They were also used by some militaries.

Telescopes are still being used today and are also being improved. An example of this is the Hubble Space Telescope made by NASA that was created to observe space. The telescope is an interesting device that has allowed us to gain lots of knowledge about space without actually going there.

In the past few weeks in my French class, we were supposed to make a small group of around three to four and choose a French food, make a poster of the ingredients and instructions, and also make a video of the group making the food.

My group decided to make a macaron cake which was a cake with macarons on it. So we had to make a cake which was a chocolate one and also macarons. We had to find four different recipes because we were putting all of the items together like the frosting, cake, and macarons. First, we had to find recipes and then translate them to French which took a while. Then we had to design a poster, but since we had so many recipes we only put the chocolate cake on the poster and we also decided to just make the cake when making the video.

When we met to make the cake we waited around a little bit to decide what we were gonna do and then we started to film the intro which took a long time since some of us kept on laughing so it took a long time. Then we actually started baking, but while gathering the ingredients we found out that there was no baking soda so we had to use more baking powder. Once we finished making the cake batter and put it into the oven we took a break and then started making the frosting. The frosting was easy to make but there was a lot of sugar. I was slightly concerned about the cake however because we kept the cake in the oven for a long time which was more than half an hour at 350 degrees °F. The cake turned out alright, but I’m pretty sure I’ve made better cakes before. We ended up taking almost five hours just to make the cake.

In conclusion, I think the cake was okay but we took way too long to make it and probably should’ve used a different recipe because the batter was really thick and took a long time to mix.

This week there was the Track and Field Area event where schools from around our area send one or sometimes two students for each event to compete against the other schools and then they go to Regionals if they win in Area. This year I got to go to Area and skip a day of school which is probably the main reason why a lot of people from my school want to go to Area. A student is only supposed to attend one or two events, so I got to go for the 400m race and Standing Long Jump.

When we got to school instead of going in the normal way the people going to Area met in the gym through the front door and waited for the buses to arrive to take them to the high school where the Area event was. Each school gets a canopy tent for students to put their bags under and our tent was in around the same spot it was in last year so it was pretty easy to find once we got there. The 100m races started as soon as we got to the high school so I got to watch some of my friends do their events. The 400m race was my first event which was after the 100m races were over and I did better than last year since I did the same events as this year and didn’t do as well. While waiting for my second event, I got to watch a few of my friends’ events and also got to do some other random things. For Standing Long Jump I think I did pretty bad since I did worse than I did at school and the people at Area were really good.

For the most part, I would definitely go to Area again next year if I get the chance to so I can skip a day of school and also have fun with my friends and do all the different events.

Each year, there is a test called EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office) which students in grades three, six, nine, and ten take which assess how well their teachers have been teaching the students and usually lasts for a few days.

This week at my school the grade sixes took the EQAO test which consisted of both math and language problems. Most of the questions on the test were multiple choice questions making them easier to answer, but for some of the questions in language, you had to write a few lines or a page depending on the question. I found those questions particularly annoying because my hand starts to hurt after writing for a while so I had to take some breaks if I was writing a long paragraph. I found the math to be the easiest of all the questions because most of the questions were either multiple choice questions or questions where you calculate and solve the problem then write a final answer. That way, I didn’t have to write as much as if I was writing a paragraph.

When completing EQAO there are four shorter sections of language and two larger sections of math, so we had to finish the test by splitting up the different sections into different periods and days. On Monday when we started. We completed the first section of language in the first three periods of the day and one section of math in another three periods. Then we did what we would do on a normal school day for the last three periods. On Tuesday, we took six periods to do the last section of math, so since it took less time we had extra time to do some other things. On Wednesday we finished the last sections of language and then EQAO was over.

I didn’t find EQAO particularly annoying or hard as some people said it was, but since we have to do it a few more times eventually I would expect the questions to get harder and more difficult therefore maybe making it more annoying to complete and possibly take longer to complete too.