Gamer's Spot

Hello readers! Tomorrow is the National Day of The Child. It marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 1989, the CRC established the basic human rights of the child (A person below the age of 18). So, all of our class is going to be writing a post about it. Here are the 3 rights that I think are some of the most important:

1. Article 7 (Registration, name, nationality, care): All children have the right to a legally registered name, officially recognised by the government. Children have the right to a nationality (to belong to a country). Children also have the right to know and, as far as possible, to be cared for by their parents.
2. Article 8 (Preservation of identity): Children have the right to an identity – an official record of who they are. Governments should respect children’s right to a name, a nationality and family ties.
3. Article 10 (Family reunification): Families whose members live in different countries should be allowed to move between those countries so that parents and children can stay in contact, or get back together as a family.

I chose my first fact because I think that it would be important to have a name. For example, if you were alone in a hospital with no one to identify you, one of the only ways that they could is if you told them your name. If you got taken away from your family, it would also make it harder for people to track you without an identity; they would only be able to find you by a description and a picture of you. It would be important to belong to a country too because if a child wasn’t, they could be from anywhere. It is also important to be cared for by your parents because they would most likely be your best care providers and because if you weren’t, then how would somebody important know who your parents are?

The second fact also seems to be quite important even though it is very similarto the first one. For example, if you didn’t have a birth certificate, then people might not know who you are at all, and it would make it hard for people to identify you. It is also important to know what family you belong to so that if you got hurt or injured somebody could contact your family members and tell them.

The third fact that I have chosen is quite important too because if your family was separated by a war or any other reason and part of your family had to leave to a different country and the other half had to stay, you would want to see both of your parents and your siblings or try to get the rest of your family to the country that your family wants to stay in. If my family had lived in a different country and the other half in a different country, I would still want to be able to see both parts of my family.

If you have your own blog, you should visit this site and choose 3 rights and write your own post about them, or tell me which right you think is most important in a comment.

Convention on the Rights of the Child by Paolo Mazzo

This Remembrance Day our class got to be in charge of the Remembrance Day assembly. I think that we did a great job on it, and got the message of Remembrance in the students’ minds. We had to do a few things before we could do  the assembly though!

Our class got to go in groups to interview different people from the military. I got to go to all of the interviews because I was the one watching the recording software and making sure it was working properly. Each of the interviews lasted on average 10-20 minutes, but one of them lasted much longer because we had a lot of things we wanted to ask him. We used the interviews to help create speeches that had a very good amount of information in them.

I tried to remember all of the people who died in the war so that we could have better lives today. I thought the best thing to represent this would be the Poppy. I used all of my favourite pictures of Poppies that were available to us to make this image. I also think that the Poppy is a wonderful flower, with such a rich red colour to it.

What did you do this Remembrance Day? did you go to a ceremony in your town?

All images from Veterans Affairs Canada

On Monday, I got up like I would almost every day. I got dressed, ate breakfast and then walked to school. It was like just any other day, except later we were going to go down to Lewis Park to see the Olympic Torch Run ceremony!

But before that, we still had to do a few things first. We went to the computer lab so that we could do some work on our blogs. Once we had finished that(at 9:45 AM), it was time for us to go to the buses and leave for Lewis Park. It took about 15-20 minutes to get there after we had left the school, so we didn’t get there until about 10:00 AM. We still had a little walk to the stage, where there was a giant mass of people watching live performances.

I watched a few of the performances(which were really good!), but then I ran into some of my old friends from last year, and my teacher from last year. Their school was also at the ceremony! After a while of talking to them, I noticed that they had Coca Cola bottles, and asked where they were getting them from. At the edge of the park, there were a whole bunch of booths and stuff that were handing out free hot chocolate and cola! There were also some other things being handed out like tambourines and glowing cola bottles! I didn’t get one of the glowing cola bottles because I wasn’t there when the guy was handing them out.

While me and some classmates were exploring, the Olympic Torch finally came in! That was what we had been waiting for the whole time, and I thought that it was great to see it. At the same time, there were SAR Techs parachuting down from a helicopter, but they were a bit late(they were supposed to come before the torch did), so not many people really noticed them. The person who had the torch then came up to the stage and lit the main torch with it, and some more performances came on after that.

Our class got to take a picture with Mr. Pullin, one of the people who were running with the torch. I also got to hold the torch because there was a person letting people hold it. I thought it was quite heavy for a torch, but I wasn’t the person who designed it! We then got into a line and walked back to the buses because it was time for us to leave.

Once we got back to the school, we ate our lunches and then we worked on a list of the things that happened that day.

Has the Olympic Torch passed through your town? Or have the Olympics been held close to where you live? Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

Vancouver 2010 Logo by fboosman

Last  year our teacher asked us to write a post about 7 random facts about us, so we all did. But, this year, my new teacher also asked us to write 7 random facts about us, so I’m going to write 7 new ones(there are a lot of random facts about me). Its always fun to do a post like this because the possibilities could be endless, which just makes it even more fun to write them because you have to decide what 7 facts you would want to include! Here is an entire new batch of them about me, you should compare them to my last 7 random facts post!

1. My favorite colours are lime green and orange(I like lime green more though)
2. My favorite kind of ice cream is called gelato(its an Italian ice cream, not quite the same as normal ice cream, but it tastes way better!)
3. My favorite animal is a monkey(if my Voki and my monkey Jimmy didn’t already give it away)
4. I’ve had 3 pet dogs(Abby was my first dog who now lives with my mom and sisters, when we had Abby we also bought her brother Blue, but we had to give him away because he had something wrong with his hip and now my dad and I have Jade, a really hyper awesome dog)
5. I’ve always wanted to go to the Caribbean and just spend a week  or so there relaxing and swimming
6. I’m really allergic to cats(I sneeze a lot around them, then it turns hard for me to breathe after a while)
7. I’m writing 7 random facts about me, my favorite number is 7, I’m on number 7 and I’m in grade 7!

7 by mag3737

Hello readers!

During the summer, my blog didn’t have any updates. I was just too busy to do anything on it. But, this year I’m going to keep blogging because my grade 7 teacher is a friend of Mrs. Smith, and she wants to blog throughout the year too!

I’m not going to the same school anymore because I moved closer to a different one. Mrs. Smith suggested that I go into Mrs. Braidwood’s class because Mrs. Braidwood wanted to blog. I’m glad that I got into Mrs. Braidwood’s class because if I didn’t, I probably really wouldn’t have had time at school to write posts and update my blog. Our new blog is called “The Ripple Effect“, and we have already written a few posts on it.

The rest of my class will get their individual blogs probably by the end or middle of October, but I don’t know exactly when they will.

Hi!
Our class has done a lot of amazing things this year. In this post I will try to remember what we have done as a class throughout the year!

Camp Hornby
Well, the first really fun thing we did was go to a camp on Hornby Island. It wasn’t only our class that went though, every grade six class got to go. We did a lot of really fun things like kayaking, high ropes, games in the forest and the climbing tower. My favorite thing that we did at Hornby was probably the kayaking because I think it is really fun. My friend Hayden fell out of his kayak when his group did it, and he had to swim back to the shore (and that day the water was really cold!)!

I was in a tent group with Hayden, Kris and Julian, and on the first night Kris and Hayden both fell asleep in the first 10 minutes or so! Me and Julian didn’t fall asleep that fast. Oh no. I’m guessing that it was somewhere between another 2-3 hours before me and Julian fell asleep. When we weren’t asleep, me and Julian talked about a video game. I can’t remember what it was though.

On the second night, I had a bit too much to eat and I wasn’t feeling very well (I think I had too much salad at dinner). After dinner, I really had to go to the bathroom (which smelled horrible). I had to wait a while before I got to use it, and when I did get to use it someone kicked the door, so when I tried to open it, The hinges were stuck somehow so the door wouldn’t swing open. I told the other people waiting to go and get Mr. Green to open it. When I got out, it was time for the campfire, so I went to where it was and I sat beside my friends. We had hot chocolate and some chips for a snack. I threw one of my doritos into the fire pit, and then it caught on fire. It didn’t look like it burned when it was done, but instead it looked like it had melted (it was very strange). After we had finished our snack, we sang some campfire songs and then it was time to go to our tents. I had to go to the bathroom again, so when I got back to the tent, Kris, Julian and Hayden were fooling around with the giant flashlight I brought. They were turning it on and off and whenever it would go off, Julian would change how he was standing. It made me very dizzy. Once they were done, I didn’t feel good at all, so I stepped outside and I threw up in one of the bushes!

We also did a lot of other really fun things this year, like:

• Spring Musical
• Winter Musical
• Christmas Gift Exchange
• Our Class Election
• Blogging
• Howlin’ Halloween Happening

Look at that picture. Doesn’t it look strange, weird or cool? Well, I think it’s all 3 of those. Do you think you know what it is? If you can’t tell, it is a picture of a computer screen that I took during the Glocal Project. The Glocal Project is a software run by the Arts Umbrella. With this software you can take pictures with web cams and then give them effects, make their borders smaller and give them a random size (like I have with this picture). Arts Umbrella is for art where they teach you things about art and photography.

We have 2 people here that are teaching us about art who came from Arts Umbrella and they are Josh and Francesca (Josh works there and Francesca is a volunteer visiting Canada from Germany). Josh taught us ho to use the software and how to move the pictures from the shared drive into our own folders.

We have taken probably over 1500 pictures in the 2 weeks they have been here, and tomorrow we are going to have an art show at Mark Isfeld (the high school that is pretty much right beside our school). Me and my friend Mitchell worked together on two posters. One of them just has a whole bunch of random pictures, and the other one has pictures of voki things and neon stuff (I like the one with the voki things and neon stuff more than the the other one).

My favorite picture that I have took is the one above. I pointed the webcam at the computer screen and I changed around the size of the pictures on it and I took it. I have many other blue ones like this. It is my favorite picture because I like the shade of blue that is on it. I can’t remember what the glowing orange dots were. Sometimes when you take a picture of the computer screen, it will keep showing the screen over and over again. It looks really cool.

Hi!

I won the Student Blogging Competition for my post Cool Globes!?. I’m glad I won, but that wasn’t even the post that I entered. I entered my post called How Blogging Has Connected Me To A Global Audience.

I can get a 12 month subscription to Edublogs, but I’m not sure if I’m going to use it or not. I’m probably going to give it to one of my readers or classmates. I can also get a badge to show that I won, but I’m not quite sure how to get it on my blog. I’m going to have to try to do that sometime… Or I might ask Ms. Smith to help me do it, because I’m really not sure how myself. A lot of other people won, and some of my classmates won too like Nicholas and Sam( or SpiderSam!).

Here are the other people who won: Makaya06, THS Lit 10, C-O Connections Blog, Read, Write and Knit, Taking It Further, Sacred Heart BLOGATHON!, English Social Studies Blog, Tara’s Blog and New and Fascinating English Blog.

I would like to thank Ms. Waters for organizing all of the blogging competitions, all of the people who entered the competition and Ms. Smith for being such a great teacher and letting us have blogs! Keep up the great posts everybody!

What is it like in a Canadian Courtroom?

A long path leads you to the front doors of the courthouse. Once you step through these doors, you are in the security check room. Once you have been checked and you don’t have any metal on you, you can then proceed into the main courtroom. You would probably see a lot of people in the room, and you would hear the Judge or the Crown Prosecutor asking questions to a witness. You would feel like you have entered a room of law, but that is probably because you just did.

Who works there?

• Crown Prosecutor- They are a lawyer who works for the province/territory. They represent the society, working closely with the witnesses making sure that they give all of the evidence.
• Judge- If there is no jury, the Judge will have to make the final decisions about the accused. They have to believe the Crown Prosecutor to make sure that the evidence is correct.
• Court Clerk- The Court Clerk is like an assistant to the judge. The Court Clerk reads the charges if the Judge finds the accused guilty. They also ask the witnesses to swear on the bible or to make an oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
• Investigating Officer- They are the police officer who investigated the crime and the evidence and knows about the case. They make sure the Crown has the right information.
• The accused- They are charged with committing the crime. In Canada, they have the right to hear what the witness says. They have the right to remain silent, letting the Defense Counsel do the talking, Another right in Canada is that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

How we make the court fair

In a Canadian courtroom, we try to make it as fair as possible. Most courts have wheelchair access so people with disabilities can still come in as a witness or a crowd member. Anyone on the jury also can’t know or be related to the accused because that might influence whether you say they are guilty or not. You also can’t have read about the crime in the newspaper because you may have already got an opinion on whether they should be guilty or not.

Ever since April came around, I have been hearing a frog(s) croaking in my backyard, usually sometime around night. I heard it last night and it kept me up until almost midnight (I was very tired in the morning!). I don’t know much about frogs, but the frog that I have been hearing must be very loud because I can hear it through my closed window. I think that there are a couple of frogs who come by my backyard at night because I can tell that there is more than one.

Frogs are amphibians, which means that they are cold blooded, and that they hatch in water and have gills, but once they become older they have air breathing lungs. Frogs are relatives of newts, toads and salamanders. Salamanders and newts are a little bit like lizards, but not exactly all that alike because lizards have scales and aren’t born in water, and newts and salamanders have smooth skin, just like most other amphibians do. Frogs and toads are also quite alike but then again, they aren’t exactly the same because a toad usually has bumpy skin and it looks like they have warts on them, while frogs are really smooth skinned and don’t have any warts on them.

I wish that I had a pet frog because I think that they are really cool animals (at least until they start croaking when you are trying to sleep!). I would also like to have a newt or a salamander as a pet too because they are really cool. I would get them a really big tank where they can have some water, but still have some land in it.

Do you have a pet frog, a newt or a salamander? Would you like to have one as a pet?

red eye tree frog 2 by: eyesplash Mikul