Why is it important to make wise choices?

Why is it important to make wise choices?

How do we make wise choices? We are given opportunities and situations where it is most important for us to make a wise choice, but how could a simple ‘yes’ affect our future and what are the consequences? As an appropriate example, the illegal use of drugs has been a negatively impactful and controversial issue on society, especially towards vulnerable minors in this type of scenery. Therefore it is difficult to listen to our conscious and gut feeling, and give into the peer pressure.

Over half of college students' health are influenced by drug and alcohol consumptions, or have been associated with illicit drug abuse. Many young students are exposed and tolerant to drug use as well. But putting our life and future into someone/something else's hands is dangerous, and unfair. They destroy our body systems, and going down this pathway takes away from our lifelong opportunity and experience. What would you do if a relative offered you a drug? What would you say? How would you say it? Think again. Ask yourself why. Situations like this, is when we need to make a wise choice.

Making a wise choice is paying attention to the circumstances, the options you’re given, and thinking about facts/affects. It’s important we listen and put ourselves first in situations where we are the ones taking the bullet. By not letting stress or our emotions decide for us and giving ourselves time if possible.
This also means it’s so important of who we surround ourselves with. Being skilled at making good decisions for ourselves increases our chance and value in our future.



L.I: To write an explanation.
This week for Writing, we created an explanation in 40 minutes, about making wise choices and using an issue/topic where this applies and which I used, drug/alcohol consumption. This also helped us practice and remind ourselves about what an explanation is and stretch our brain and fingers to be able to write one again. This is almost a preparation for our real writing test sample for next term. We began with 5 minutes of planning, and not only 'DRAFT'ed afterwards but also talked with a buddy to help us expand our vocabulary and our text, to think about our writing more.

Collaborative Explanation - Plastic Pollution

         Why is plastic pollution a problem for our coastlines?

Did you know that over 1,000,000 sea animals lose their lives each year due to the huge amounts of plastic waste in our oceans and coastlines?! Mistaking it for food, the animals will eat the plastic...but as it takes years to break down, it stays trapped in their body and they will eventually die. From our actions, they are forced to suffer and we create a bigger problem for ourselves in the future...How would you feel to be swimming in plastic?

Plastic makes up 90% of the pollution on the ocean’s surface; a large majority of that ends up inside our sea animals or wrapped around their neck, and intoxicating the waters. The plastic we leave lying on pathways and throwing on the street ends up in drains and leads to the sea. About 97 percent of New Zealanders have admission to plastic facilities, but why aren’t we doing anything about it?

Plastic is biodegradable but it takes around 1,000 years to break down based on the type of plastic it is. Plastic NZ says that every New Zealander takes in about 31kgs of plastic packaging a year, but only around 5.8kgs get recycled. “Love Your Coast” is one of the many projects that is taking action by bringing together groups of people to help clean the shores of New Zealand. This project decides to clean the shores of New Zealand as they want the next generation to be cleaner.

We should take action now for a better and healthier future!

For one of our writing sessions, we were practicing planning and writing an explanation for one of our future tests the following week. We were worked collaborative to get a better understanding of the purpose of an explanation and how to write one. Our topic was about plastic pollution, and one of the ways we looked at this was by watching a few videos. Love Your Coast is one of the many projects in New Zealand that is making a change on this huge environmental issue. For this activity I worked with Florence, Haylee and Sakina to create our collaborative explanation.

Fishing for the Future

Fishing for the Future

Each year, the amount of fish in the marine waters are rapidly decreasing in
New Zealand and you wouldn’t have expected you could be the reason why. 

The cycle begins with the hands of a stranger like you and me, and the careless
actions of letting go of your plastic waste. World wide, over half the percentage of marine
pollution is plastic, affecting hundreds of our sea-animals.

This can simply kill a sea-animal in mistake of food. Plastic takes a long time to break
down, which will be bound to affect at least a single marine-animal. Plastic pollution takes
a big hand of this, but as well as a fisher. 

There are rules that should be followed when catching fish, like it being strictly 30cm
big to take home. Too big of a fish, means it won’t be able to breed more, and too small
of a fish means it won’t grow to size and won’t be able to breed. 

Next time you go fishing, remember to…

Hold the fish with a wet towel, as their protective coating can come off using just
your bare-hands, and put the salt-water fish in salt-ice too keep it fresh for cooking
and storing when it is the right size to catch. 

So let’s fish for the future and change our ways, with open-minds for out-come.
Taking action now, will be a huge benefit in future for our fish generation.

Last week Panmure Bridge had a special visit from the Hiwi the Kiwi, and are now taking part in the fun writing competition for an exciting prize. I chose to write an Explanation, to provide facts about the important situation. Using my book as planning, I wrote ideas for my final writing. Everyone finally DRAFTed our work with a partner, deleting mistakes and unnecessary words, rearranging ideas, adding left out words/punctuation needed, fixing the sentences/structure & languages and talking about all of these with a friend which was Angela. This is my final Explanation, for everyone to read.

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Writing Self Evaluation

Is plastic the best option?

Have you ever thrown out a piece of plastic without thinking about it? You might not have known how effective plastic is to the environment and waterways. Not only plastic bags, but plastic bottles as well. Things like this take 400 years just to break down! It’s killing our marine animals and polluting the environment.

The earth is full of pollution, and a big percent of it is plastic waste. This is why we need to reduce the amount of plastic we use in our daily life to help save our planet. This could be done by replacing them with reusable items instead. A materialed bag instead of a plastic bag, and a hard bottle instead of a plastic bottle. Slowly, this could help decrease the amount of landfill spreading and adding in our countries.

Although plastic is very unhealthy for the air, marine animals, and land, it is a useful item. Sometimes these items even could be re-used another time. Plastic bag help us carry any items we bought from the store and sometimes we decided to buy a plastic bottle. But the bottle you bought could even cost more than are-usable one, and the plastic bag you got wouldn’t help you bag your items the next time you go shopping.

Plastic bottles and bags, aren’t the best choice but still are still an option. You could help care for the planet just by using a single item that could last a long while. Next time you see a bit of plastic, pick it up before it gets anywhere it shouldn’t need to be. Care for the planet.

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With a partner, we marked our easstle sample with the LS2 writing rubric. I worked with Nyjah to rate our explanations for the Punctuation, Vocab, Organisation, Sentence Structure, Structure and Language, and Ideas used in them. We also went into detail by explaining our answers with self check and partner check. To summarise the self evaluation I gave myself R4 in Punctuation, R3 in Vocab, R4 in Organisation, R4 in Sentence Structure, R4 in Structure and Language, and R4 in Ideas.

Explanation Sketchnote

             
Our writing focus for this term is explanation. This week in pairs of two, we had to created a sketch-note about our understanding and learning of an explanation writing. I worked with Florence and it featured the structure and language features.We also looked at a writing about ants called "How ants find their way". We had to do tasks on the writing and answer some questions.

Venus Flytrap Explanation | Paragraphs

L.I: To write detailed paragraphs.
This week for writing we learnt how to make proper paragraphs when writing an explanation. We had to make a copy of the 10 sentence Venus flytrap explanation that Mr Wong made and update it to proper paragraphs. We had to make the paragraphs completely different and make it on a new document without the planner. An explanation paragraph is S.E.E which stands for statement, explanation, and ending. I wrote five paragraphs - a paragraph for my introduction, 3 paragraphs for my explanation, and 1 paragraph for my conclusion.

18 Sentence Explanation | Earthworm Digestive System

L.I: To write a 18 sentence explanation.
L.I: To write basic paragraphs
This week for writing we had to make an 18 sentence explanation on earthworms digestive system because last week was a 10 sentence explanation. We are working on making basic paragraphs this week. Each paragraph was 2 sentence that had a statement and explanation. First we watched a video on showing the earthworm digestive system which has 7 steps so in total we will have 2 sentences in the introduction, 2 sentences for the 7 paragraphs in the explanation, and 2 sentences in the 1 paragraph in the conclusion that adds up to 18 sentences. We used the template document from last week as well. The 7 steps are - Mouth, Pharynx, Esophagus, Crop, Gizzard, Intestine, and anus. Mr Wong wrote the first paragraph for the mouth by getting the information from us for what he was going to write down. Then in our separate reading groups we had to make up a paragraph for the pharynx step then we came up with our own for the rest. We could keep is simple then make it more detailed later on. If we needed to, we could watch the video again which I did and so did a lot of other people as well. Like last week with our 10 sentence explanation, we couldn't have more than 18 or less than 18. If we were thinking, we would that we could also use the explanation for our inquiry purposes.

Here is the Video we made the 18 sentence explanation on - Earthworm Digestive System

Explanation | Aluminum Cans

L.I: To compare explanations with reports.

This week for writing we had to write a 10 sentence explanation.  So that we could compare a information report with a explanation writing. We had to use a planning template. We had to write an explanation on how aluminum cans are made. The explanation had to be only 10 sentences long. The template had an introduction the explanation and the conclusion. I had two sentences in my introduction, two sentence in my first paragraph and 1 in each of the rest of paragraphs for the steps, and 2 sentences in the conclusion. We did this because last week some of us got confused with a information report and an explanation. We watched a video on Venus fly traps with Mr Wong for an example and looked at a few sites. Mr Wong made a example of a 10 sentence explanation and a 10 sentence information report. Then we watched a video about how aluminum cans are made and wrote the 10 sentence explanation. We couldn't write anything more or anything less.

Nervous System

L.I: To plan and write an explanation.
This week for writing we had to write a explanation on the nervous system. First we watched a rhyming song on the nervous system which you can watch here - How the Nervous System Works. The video helped us learn about what the nervous system is before writing about it. Mr Wong created a coggle which he used to do a little bit of planning as a class. On the coggle there were parts for an introduction, explanation and conclusion for ideas we could write, words to search up, and Scientifically words. I have an image of the coggle above. We need to remember the DLO we made on an explanation to help us remember how to write one. Then we had to make a copy of a explanation planner which had 3 boxes for the introduction, explanation, and conclusion planning. Under the planner we had to write the real explanation. Our focus was writing a good introduction and conclusion. My writing turned out to be more of a information report than an explanation but my introduction and conclusion was good.

Explanation | Structure and Language Features

L.I: To identify an explanation text through its features.
This week for writing we had to create a DLO that can remind us the structure and language features of an explanation text. For this writing session we are talking about explanation, one of the type of texts, since we already covered recounts. Explanation is telling how something works or why something happens. We were divided into groups and looked at an explanation text and a recount text. Then we had to use a Venn diagram to write down the differences and the similarities between them. To help us we used a writing site that has all the different type of texts but we clicked explanation because it was the text that we were talking about but didn't know much details about it. After that we did the must do/task for writing. Everyone used the writing site for help. I created this on a google draw because it was best choice.