Novel Study - Dracula by Bram Stoker

This week we are doing a group novel study. The books we had to choose from were Dracula, Just a dog, Sherlock Holmes, Hatchet, Sitting on the fence and black beauty. I decided to do Dracula because I love fantasy and horror. and it intreged me. So far this week I have read up to page 26 ( It doesn't have chapters.) and I am kinda confused. here is my Summary and thoughts so far




Jonathon harker is on an adventure leaving behind his life back in London for a while. We follow him on his long carriage journeys and people are giving him lots of superstitious items? We soon find out that the reason is because the person he is visiting is obviously Dracula. But Jonathon does not realize that he is a Vampire.

You can tell it's Dracula because he has pale crusty skin and talks using very strange sentences. We watch Jonathon explore the castle and he is worried and mildly scared. When he is shaving he cuts himself and this is when the cross he was given comes in handy because without it he would have become a vampire. Jonathon is now very scared and is afraid to sleep in this castle that belongs to Dracula




My thoughts so far on this book is honestly that Jonathon is a bit thick. Maybe he grew up in a non supernatural world. But the book is called dracula. And I knew that even if the book was called kittens. That the man Jonathon meets is a vampire. So far I dont really know if I am going to enjoy the rest of this book or not but I hope that Jonathon realizes because he may die if he doesnt.



Or maybe Dracula is a cool guy and just wants to chill? But something about him tells me thats not what he wants

Listening poem

This week in Literacy we are doing poem related tasks, My favourite one was re writing using some of our own words the poem, ¨listening¨ by Peter Bland, I really loved the concept of this poem. 

The concept is if you plugged something like a microphone, moniters? etc? what would you hear?

Obviously I dont know the answer to that question, but I think I made a pretty good guess. 

Another thing we had to do was say nothing for a minute and 30 seconds and write a list of what you hear.

This was really fascinating and quite peaceful.

Then we took some of the sentences from Peters poem and re wrote them into our poem.

Here it is

With a Microphone plugged into the earth we can hear water gushing through pipes, dirt falling from tunnel walls, landing in the water flow. Up through the dirt we can hear wind tumbling down and around through trees. The slight ringing of air. When we take our headphones off we can hear earths huge silence listening back.

Its Tech time!

At tech today I was very annoyed because I didn't think that I was going to be able to finish my projects in Electronics and plastics. But when we got their I was pleasantly surprised because we were going to our old tech groups to finish our projects.

Block 1

In electronics I was kinda underwhelmed because it was really easy to finish my work but I had got heaps done in advance and I was actually super proud. What I made was a light that turns on only in the dark and turns off in the day. and It had a Rainbow LED. I made it for my friend Olivias birthday. even though it was in March. better late then never! It had a teal plastic base and a clear plastic sheet on top with a spray painted corgie, cat and bunny. I am so happy with it! 

Block 2

In plastics I didnt really have to do any work because I had finished last session so the teacher just had to laser cut it. My clock design was white with the numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11 still there but I replaced the 3, 6, 9 and 12 with the symbols of the percy jackson, harry potter, hunger games and Shadowhunters.
I really really love this clock and it is now hanging on my wall at home

Podcast in Isolation

As a few of you will know for the William Pike challenge this year me and a few of my friends ( Jelani, Abe, Jasmin and Mak) are going to be creating a rawhiti news/podcast. We started this last year but never finished it. This year we are determined.Our original plan was ti get an episode out by the end of term 2, because of the lock down we cant film the podcast/news at school which means we needed some creative work-arounds. I had a few ideas that may work. One of them was to have a google meet with one of the teachers or principal.We still have to do quite a few thing for that to happen though. Another idea was asking students if they have done anything creative that we could share on the podcast. like sending videos of an art project? The third idea was doing an at home tutorial video for how to bake something or how to grow a plant.
( another idea is we could taste test cupcakes like we were going to do at school... We could do it over call....) Anyway I have been writing a script for podcast/news episode 1 and we really hope we can get this done!