Lord of the Flies, A Review Thus Far

For our novel studies our teacher has chosen for us, lord of the flies.  This is an amazing book because so many of the characters and objects that are mentioned have a deep symbolism and the events that happened with them  This is a dystopian novel about a group of boys who landed a crash on an island with no adults and plentiful resources.  The children quickly find each other with the help of a conch.  The conch is a representation of power and order for whoever holds the conch can speak as was disclosed later.

From there three main characters emerge.  Piggy: a squat fat kid is bullied by the other children because of his glasses, asthma and his nickname: Piggy.  However he is the most intelligent of all on the island and has great ideas most of the time.  His glasses are also the only known way to light a fire which gives him some say between the other kids.

The leader of all of the children as voted by them is Ralph.  He is calm and collected.  He also found and blew the conch which allowed him to become the leader.  He has childish humour and excitement but is weighed down by the responsibilities of a leader and tries to make reasonable decisions.

Jack is the leader of the former choir now hunters.  He is arrogant and self centred.  He believes he is the true leader but never explicitly mentions this fact.  He is driven by the urge to kill a pig.  He has almost no belief in escaping the island and instead seems to focus on short term goals that bring him pleasure like killing pigs.  He also doesn’t seem to care about sustainability like building huts for them to sleep in.

These three characters and all of the other children on the island then start their slow descent to savagery.  At first they have decent ideas like lighting a signal fire to make sure a ship could find them but the characters gained a lot of tension and questioning of leadership that eventually causes Jack to become more of a chief than Ralph.  They become careless with their eating, the littluns (all of the smaller children) often getting sick from the unripe fruit also use the toilet when and wherever they want.  This shows how careless a society can be when they are not under strict order and rules to make sure they are doing the right thing.

The children under the rule of Jack, other than the sole exceptions of Piggy and Ralph can only be described as savages.  They are violent and unruly without much thought or order (if any) to all of the decisions made.  This reiterates the earlier point that a successful society must be under careful and considering leader with well thought out rules, laws and management to keep everything running.  It is only natural for children to play and the sensibility and responsibility of making a sustainable and efficient environment that had a clear and helpful method of rescue was just to much for them which is almost certainly why the end result is so bad.

Ralph represents order, Piggy intelligence and Jack represents savagery.  It holds a lot of hidden meanings inside everyone that makes you think deeply and carefully about how it relates to now and the worst parts of humanity amplified by the childish thoughts and imagination that they held.  I really enjoyed this book so far and I’m excited to analyse events that happen to study the bigger picture.

The Freedom Writers: My Reflections

Hello, we are coming up to our English assessment and we have done a practice task to get ourselves used to the formatting and what we have to do.  The text we were given was a speech from a background character named Alejandro.  He talks about how he is homeless which wasn’t clear before then.  It shows a message that how a character looks is not entirely accurate to what’s happening outside of their social lives.  Even though some people may look the same or somewhat normal on the outside, they can be having difficult times or struggling with their current way of life.  A prime example of this is Alejandro in this text.  It is implied that most people don’t even know who he is but then he randomly comes out with a confession about personal life that is entirely unexpected.    This relates to real life because lots of people may actually feel like this or have these problems but they hide it really well.  This means you should always consider people’s feelings.  An example is  when making insults about poor people but the person you’re talking to is secretly affected by it as well.  You shouldn’t assume the best or worst of people when you don’t know the full true story.  We are all guilty of making offensive comments but we should more mindful of who we are saying it around

Eva (pronounced Ava) is a character in the freedom writers who goes to Long Beach high school.  In my opinion she is a good role model for some of the other characters based on some of the actions that she does.

There is a scene where she is standing in court in defence for another character named Paco who had murdered a character earlier in the movie.  The accused was another boy who had shown violence towards the murdered person who was a shopkeeper just before he died.  Eva, despite the fact Paco was both in her gang and her boyfriend she still chose to tell the truth even if that meant she could be murdered.  There were massive implications to this scene but she showed incredible bravery in the end.  In the scene she looks at the family and friends of the accused and victim who likely all also know the truth about it.  By telling the truth she may be throwing things like loyalty out the window but by breaking the system and going away from what everyone else wanted she ended up being true to herself following her own rules to do in her opinion the right thing.  This is something that other teenagers could aspire to, becoming a better person and having the integrity to be doing the right thing.  She role models courage in incredibly high stakes situations to allow justice to be served correctly no matter the cost.  It  is amazing that she did that because even her parents disowned her because of it.  The implications of her not doing the right thing would be sending an innocent person to jail and letting a murderer get away.  It shouldn’t matter how well you know them even if it is someone you know.  It is always good to have integrity and do the right thing.

Below is some images representing some of the main points I’ve talked about.

Physics: A Reflection of 1.1

Our assessment for this term was focused on the Earth side of physics, remember, it’s physics earth space science.  We had to look at a human induced change in the environment.  Our one was deforestation and we learnt about it and all of the impacts that it has on the environment.  We learnt that not only deforestation is bad but it can cause many other things like acid rain and global warming which also have their fair share of implications on the environment around us. I am writing this part before I get my grade but I think Mr Prakash has prepared us very well for our assessment and I feel I have done very well.  I cannot wait until next term where I have got my grades on all the other assessments I have  done this term.   Update: Hi welcome to term 2.  The results have come through and I got an: Excellence.  I’m very happy about this.  It is the first of the credits I need to get an endorsement with excellence which is my goal for this year.   Prior to this I was rather nervous about the results over the holidays but I am excited that I got this grade.

Presentation: Global Warming

In our 1 PES class we have been studying some human induced activities and how they affect the four spheres.  Our class was divided into five groups and each one was told to pick a specific human induced activity that we had been studying in  the previous weeks.  They were: Acid rain, Eutrophication, Ocean Acidification and Global Warming.  We then got to work making our presentations.  On the day to present I was ready.  The feedback the class gave was that my speaking was unclear and fast.  I have taken the feedback and will work on it.  Overall it was a nice experience to gain knowledge, teach others and gain confidence.  Here is the script we used  and here is the slideshow.

Jump start 2025: PESS with Mr. Prakash

A couple of weeks ago we got into our jump start.  This means that all the year nines become year tens and all the year tens become year elevens.  This is to fill in the time while the senior students are on their study leave.  One of the classes that  I selected was Physics and Earth, Space Science or PESS for short.  We immediately got into our units for the year.

The first one is what impact humans have on the four spheres.  The four spheres are the biosphere, the geosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere.  All of these are impacted by human actions.  We learnt about how acid rain affects all of the different spheres either positively or negatively.

Our second unit is on the different motions and forces.  We learnt about, pressure, the different types of forces, newtons laws, NET forces and contact/non contact forces.  We also did a practical experiment for this unit.  We put a fishing line from one side of the room to the other and put a straw with a balloon attached to it.  We had to inflate the balloon at different amounts and then let it go and measure the distance and time it took to get across the room.  We used these calculations to see how fast the balloon travelled.

Our final unit that we learnt about was the interactions that the Earth, Sun and moon have an affect on our lives.  So far we’ve been learning about the solar system, various parts of it including what happens inside the Earth as well.  We also learnt about the theories of space-time and the layout of the solar system.

I have been really enjoying this topic so far and I can’t wait to learn much more next year.  I am happy with this subject and Mr Prakash is a great teacher, I would recommend taking this option if you come to Bay of Islands Collage.

Advice Collum

This is a response to a scenario of a student that is struggling with social media.

Hello Tahlia, it seems like you are struggling with social media.  Own it, just because you don’t get the likes you hoped to get means that people don’t like you.  In fact you shouldn’t even care what others think just be you.  You should ignore the bad comments and focus on the positive ones and grow off that.  If at any point you feel it’s too much just take a break, have a breather and come back to it when you feel better.  Push past the negativity and just stay positive I hope this advice helps and that you start enjoying posting on social media and become a popular influencer in the future.

Film Festival: Finding Jacob

At Bay Of Islands Collage we have been tasked to make a film worthy of the festival.  Our teacher Taira came up with the idea.  It seemed like a really good idea.  It was a greenstone that gets lost and attempts to find its way back to the person who lost it.  We originally had a lot of different ideas, some involving  live animals and hard to execute shots.  Those were all removed.  Most of the others disappeared due to the time limit.  We really struggled with planning our shots because there was so much to do and we thought it may be easier to roll with it.  The other problem was story holes.  A lot of things happened for no reason making the story difficult to follow.  We were then taught to story board with each event being chained with a therefore or but instead of and then over and over again.  This helped our story gain clarity.

After we finished recording we began editing.  This was mostly a new experience for us but we had to learn fast to get the movie finished.  It probably wasn’t the best idea for our first time animating because so much of it required shots of the Pounamu having a face or arms and legs.  Luckily for me I didn’t have to do that.  While the others struggled in terms of animation I got to be the compositor.  Basically they tell the animators what they want to be animated and then get the completed footage cut it down to a reasonable size and then fit it in with the rest of the story.  I think that we worked very well as a team and ended up making an amazing product.  A big thanks to Taira for teaching us the works, Ariana and Mikaira for animating, Asher for animating and creating the soundtrack and Riley for adding sound effects.   If you would like to watch our movie here is a link

Building Our Touch Game Plan

We’re now in the second week of touch and we have been learning a couple new skills and practising a couple of the ones we already knew.  The dummy half is very important in touch rugby.  Their job is to pick up the ball when a touch is made to avoid the opposition taking possession of the ball.  However they have a burden.  They cannot score the try.  If they are touched when in possession of the ball it’s an instant handover.  We also worked on the attacking shape.  We have to make sure that when we are pushing forwards that the allies are in a good position behind the person with the ball ready to receive the pass or be dummy half.   As a team we have been working on communicating well in defence.  We have been rolling up as a team pushing the attackers backward and sliding with the passing of the ball down the wings as the ball goes in that direction.  One of the strategies I thought we could try is that with the attack you slide down one way with a two man drive and while the defence is with you pass right down to the other end so they can charge to the goal.  I’ve been enjoying touch a bit and like thinking about different strategies to play the ball.  Next week I want to contribute to my team by playing the ball as much as I can and not fumbling with the ball.

My First Week of Touch

We have started our unit of touch.  Some of the things we’ve learnt so far is getting back 7 meters when a touch is made, side stepping other players and passing the ball.  I didn’t know that they increased the meters you had to go back from 5 to 7 meters.  In my opinion this is a fair change because the extra two meters can help you gain quite a bit of ground.  One of the easier skills is planting the ball.  It’s not very complicated and it’s all about getting back into a good position to receive the ball.  I find it difficult to sidestep, especially when there is almost no room to move around.  I enjoyed ball tag because I did quite well compared to others and was one of the last people standing.  My focus is to get more confident and proficient in the skills allowing me to grow as a player. 

Volley Ball Unit Success

At the start of term we did a volleyball unit.  This involved learning different skills and playing the game.  The volleyball unit was more enjoyable than I originally expected.  I learnt all three of the receiving setting and the hitting.  My favourite of the three was definitely hitting.  My height and long arms help me to hit the volleyball with more force.  I like the motion going up to hit it.  I need to work on receiving because it hurts my arms and it’s not very accurate.  My performance I feel has improved a lot more from when I first started.  I am proud of where I got to.  If we were to play again I would definitely work on my receiving.  I would play again. If I had to.