Elecatcowpigyakfly

Today's 'Handy Hints with Hayley' features the 'Elecatcowpigyakfly' a mysterious creature I made. Recently Mrs Bennett went to a teacher workshop and she learnt how to make a mysterious creature using Google Drawings and using the explore tool, rotating shapes and cropping images. Using the skills she learnt she brought them back into the class and we made our own mysterious creatures... 
Here is mine...

Brand Video Making

Recently with Mrs Torrie, our cyber smart teacher. We created a Brand Video. We could make the video about something we would advertise or make something just to put on the start of each blog post (which I will be doing). I decided to make mine for my blog, so every time I post a new blog post I will put on the video. I decided to call mine 'Handy Hints with Hayley' We used WeVideo to create our videos. I will be posting another blog explaining how to make the video (which is quite complicated)
Here is my video I created...

Woodwork Tech

This week we finished creating our stools with Peter Roberts (our woodwork teacher) Today we finished adding in some small cuts of wooden dowel and staining the wood. We had 9 weeks to start and finish the stool. Each stool stands at around 25.5cm deep by 30cm wide. It has been a big learning curve because each year we have a rotation and we learn something different and create something new so we learnt some different skills. So making a stool was a little more complicated then making a paper weight (what we made last year). The skills we practised or used to make our stool were... Sawing, sanding, staining the wood, glued, measured and drilling. My main highlights were challenging myself and getting to use the stool knowing that we made them. Overall, I had a great time working in the woodwork room and I am sure the other year 7's did too! Next term we are rotating to Cooking with Mrs Bennett. 

Left: Duncan       Left Middle: Me              Middle Right: Jaimee        Right: Rylee 

Earths Structure

For the past couple of days our learning has been focused around Volcanoes, Mountains and the Earths structure. Learning about the earths structure helps with the understanding of how Volcanoes erupt and how mountains form and change shape over time. My reading group were the assigned the task of creating a diagram (on Google Drawings) with the earth's layers and a few sentences explaining a bit about the layers. Here is my diagram of the Earths layers...

Soundtrap

Last week our Cyber smart teacher Mrs Torrie introduced to us a new music website where we can create music. This website is called 'Soundtrap'. With our music we had to make the mood of the music like our picture. It was more more complicated than the past music websites I had used in the past. We had to choose our picture (I choose a cheetah) then we had to create the music on Soundtrap. After we had created our music we had to download the music into our drive and onto a slide with the image.
Even though I found this website a little hard to use I highly recommend it. If found that finding the music and sounds was hard however I shortly git the hang of it and I eventually came up with...

Persausive Writing

Recently in class we were given the task to write a Persuasive piece of writing. Our writing was about whether we think that 'Zoos are cruel and should be banned' and whether we agree with the statement or not. Here is my writing...

I strongly believe that Zoos are cruel and should be banned! Yes, Zoos are fun experiences. We get to learn about beautiful, exotic animals that most of us don’t often get to see. We also get to hang out with friends and family, but it isn’t like that for the animals. When animals are taken away from their natural environmental habitats to be taken to a Zoo, when they get released back in the wild, they can’t survive without rehabilitation.

My first reason, animals enclosures are very small, too small. Just think, it’s like being trapped in quarantine for the rest of your life. Zoos know that animal enclosures are too small and some Zoos have tried to make land bigger. For example places like the Werribee Zoo, in Australia have a part called the ‘Open Range’ which is a bigger 32km enclosure where African animals like Giraffes, Elephants and Zebras can roam. However, according to BBC, between 3,000 to 5,000 animals are killed in European zoos every year. Zoos in India and China couldn’t feed their animals over lockdown, meaning they had to be shot. Are all of these animals killed because there isn’t enough space for them, or not enough food?

My next reason is that Zoos aren’t safe for humans. Some of the animals can be unhappy, causing them to lash out, hurt or even kill people! For example, in 2016, a 3 year old climbed over a fence into an endangered Gorillas enclosure. In the end the workers had to shoot the Gorilla to save the kid, this wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have Zoos. Some animal enclosures aren’t surrounded by very high fences either meaning people could climb into their enclosures or feed them food from the other side of the fence.

My third reason is that animals don’t get to live in their natural environments or with their natural herds. Animals might be safe from predators in the wild however they live unhappy and lonely lives in a zoo. Elephants are normally used to living in big herds, where in a Zoo there are only 1 or 2. When Elephants aren’t in their herds it makes them feel quite threatened and under stress. To help animals being put under stress, Zoos could minimize the amount of people allowed to enter the Zoo and raise the price of entering Zoos. Less people could help reduce the stress animals have because there isn’t as many people banging on glass, and the noise. Animals are also able to hunt and catch their own prey in the wild; zoo animals instead are given a carcass to chew on. In my opinion, Zoos should let animals like Lions, have live food in their enclosures.

Next, a lot of Zoos have a section where animals perform tricks. Seals for example are taught how to balance a ball on their noses, meaning that they could get hurt in the process. Animals are supposed to be in the wild, not doing tricks or trapped in a small enclosure. At the end of the day it doesn’t achieve anything for the animal, it only archives entertainment purposes and money for the Zoo.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that Zoos should be banned! Despite the fact that Zoos try their best to make the animals feel at home in captivity, I believe that animals

That is my writing, I hope you enjoyed and feedback is welcome anytime!

Hypertufa Pots

Last week with Mrs Allan we made Hypertufa pots. Basically it's a concrete pot with Perlite and Pete moss (we used Perlite and Pete moss to add texture and thickness). 

Last week we made a cardboard mold. We covered it completely with a thick layer of tape. We also pierced a hole in the bottom of the mold and put blue tack though the hole to cover the mixture blocking the drainage hole. After we made the molds we made up the mixture using concrete, Perlite and Pete (and water). 

After we mixed the concrete we added the mixture to our molds. However before we started adding in the mixture we added a plastic pot in the middle, on top of the blue tack. 

(Sorry for the badly written steps or instructions.) 

Anyway we added handfuls of the concrete mixture around the pot. Then we let the concrete set for a week. Today with Mrs Allan we took out the plastic pot and the cardboard. Our class now smell like a gardening center from using the Concrete!!! 

Here is the Website we used to make them if you would like to try them too... 'Go gardening' I am going to be taking my plant home today to plant some succulents in. 

(Once again sorry for the bad instructions) 

Here is what our Hypertufa Pots look like...