My Visual Mihi

Kia Ora. My name is Gabriel and I am Year 8 at Point England. I have created a visual mihi in extension. I love my school because it has got great teachers, great principals and great students. Lucky for me I am prefect this year which means I have to step up into that position. I like heaps of things in the world especially sports. Name a sport, I can play it. I might not be good at it but I will give it a try. My favorite sport is NRL. National Rugby League. Vodafone Warriors is my team. I dream to play for them in the future. Also the New Zealand Kiwis. Drawing is another part to my life. I don’t really like painting but I love sketching, computer drawings and all that. A huge part in my life is the Bible. I am a believer in God. One day spreading the word of the lord. One more thing is my land. New Zealand and Tangata Te Whenua. Maori my culture. Te Arawa my Tribe and my Waka. But the most important thing is myself. I treasure myself in many ways. So I’m so grateful I here. That is my life.

What If I Was Blind??

What if I was blind? How could I live? It would be a hard life. I would be as blind as a bat. There are some ups and downs to being blind and here they are.

YEAH! These are the ups about being blind. It is easier to make it into the paralympics. Instead of versing people that are in good conditions, vs people that are blind or something like me. You could have someone that gets your food and stuff for you. Another up about being blind is that you can wear mean as glasses.

Then there's some downers. Obviously you can’t see anything, having to walk around with a stick, you won’t be able to play video games and you can’t play rugby. To me, it would be like torture as hot as fire. It wouldn't be a good life for me.

What I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be cool being blind. I couldn’t live with myself if I was blind. But if you are blind, that’s how life is.

My Cross Country Experience

“YEAH”! The day had finally come. That day was CROSS COUNTRY....... This is the day I’ve been waiting for. The day to put all my practice to good use. I wanted to push myself because I was determined to win!

“Can all 11 year old boys and girls please come to the starting point” Mr Jacobsen said. We all waited anxiously for Mr Burt’s signal. “BANG!” There we were. Fast as lightning from the starting point we all rushed off in a flash. I was at the back of the pack trying to conserve my energy with Lorenzo.

Very quickly, we reached the first kilometer (KM) down by the reserve. The field conditions were mucky and muddy. The mud was knee high on me. Going at 20%, I picked up the pace and went 40%. Even though I was trying to conserve my energy, I was so puffed out. That was only 1km into the race. I didn’t know if I could make it the rest of the way.

“Come on Gabriel” said Mr Somerville. “You can do it.” Pumping my legs I picked up the pace to 60%. “Upwards and onwards” I say to myself. Running on the gravel I think to myself “lucky I wore shoes or my feet would’ve been aching.” Coming up to the bushwalk, I’m proud of myself for making it that far. 

Pushing myself even harder, I came towards the final km near the end. I was currently in 6th place. The boy in front of me was about  20 metres away. I picked up the pace to 80%. Two minutes later, I was neck and neck with him. Finally I passed him because he slowed down. However, I knew I couldn’t beat the person in front of me because he was over 50 metres away. So I just started to go a bit faster at 90%. Fifth was a good position to be in.

Giving it my all at 110%, I sprinted towards the finish line. Mud splashing everywhere, I was so proud of myself. Finally making it to the finish line, I fell to the ground with a THUMP! All covered in mud, I walked towards the drinking fountain to have a massive drink of water. It felt like I had drunk one litre.

At the end of the day, I was so proud of myself for coming 5th. I represented myself, my family and I did really well. This experience will help me get fit for the future when I become a rugby league player.

Netball Coaching

NOOOOO!!!!! When I found out that Room 21 was going to have netball training with Liz I was so angry. I mean boys don’t play netball. Only girls do. I’d rather play Rugby League or Cricket. Those are real boy games. But I have to go with the flow.

The first thing we learnt was chest passing the ball. To do this, you have to hold the ball at your chest then push it real hard. This is the easiest pass to do in netball, and it is the easiest pass to get the ball to your teammate.

The next thing we learnt was how to jump. So Liz put down some hurdles and made the person opposite us, chest pass the ball while we jumped over the hurdle and caught the ball. Once we caught the ball, we had to do a pivot and chest passed it to the person behind us.

After hurdles, we played a game. It was like netball, but you don’t shoot the ball in the hoop. You had to shoot it on a dot in the corner of the court. But there was a bit of a problem. The dot was inside a diamond. Doesn’t sound hard right? Wrong! You weren't allowed to step in the diamond. At the end of the game, my team won 6 points to 4. I scored two points.

I really like netball now even though I’m a boy. Now I just can’t wait for every netball coaching every Thursday. I CANT WAIT!!!

My Pie Graph

This is my pie graph about what is the favourite fast food in the class. Check It out. Carls Jnr has topped the room 21 fast food.

My Holidays In RotoVegas

In the holidays, I went to my home town in Rotorua. It’s my home town because all my family lives down there and I was born there. I call it, Rotovegas.

In Rotorua, I went to a beach called Pukehina. Their mussels are big as. So we went diving and then found some mussels and pipis to take home with us. When I got home, I cooked them on the barbecue, with the help of my dad.

The next day, we went to Querty falls to jump off the jetty. It was 6 meters deep. My sister was scared because there was a lot of trout, eel, and other fish in the lake. But I wasn’t scared I just jumped.

It was the end of the holidays and back to school for me. But at least I had fun in the holidays.

NO GOING BACK!

Could you ever imagine what life would be like without a net-book? It would be torture. However there are uppers and downers to being a Net-Booker.

The things I like about our net-books are: taking them home in the weekdays, weekends and holidays. You can learn at home and don’t have to at school all the time .

The other thing is, it’s better to have our net-book to post things on our blog, unlike last year when you had to wait for ages, on the iMacs. So those are the upper sides of having a net-book. But there are some downers.

Now for the bad downers. First of all, the Internet connection. Most of the time it is working, but sometimes, it’s not. It is just like having a pen and paper when Internet isn’t on. I mean, when you don’t have connection, you can’t show anyone your work. So that’s a big downer.

I would never go back to just a pencil and paper. I’d rather stay with the our net-books.
THE END.

"Senior Prize Giving"

It was the end of the year and there was prize giving. I was so excited about the dance that team four had to do. My teams song was Beat It by Michael Jackson. I was so nervous with my mum watching. So I just gave 100%. At the end of our performance, I just smiled at my family and walked off the stage. It was a cool as dance. Even though I didn't win an award, I still had fun doing my team item.

Outta This World

There is too much pollution in the year 2167 and everyone has to leave Earth and start fresh on a new planet. Check out my movie

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Running For My Life Cartoon

In our reading group, I have been reading a book called When I Grow Up by Barbara Berge.

We had to choose a cartoon to draw out of three options. They were Running for my life (that's the one I done), Prise my fingers off or Legs turning into jelly. I picked the easiest one.

Gabriel Haka

For our hyperstudio stack, we had to put together a movie about New Zealand doing the haka. This is my movie. I hope you enjoy.

This is a presentation that I done about caring about a baby bird. I hope you like it.

RWC NZ

Just like my Ireland page, I done another presentation but I just chose it myself. This one is for NZ. My own country. I believe they will win the 2011 RWC. They have got heaps of star players like Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and many more. I have got the fixtures and the team, plus captain Richie McCaw. Click on this link to go to the page.

Rugby World Cup Keep Your Eye On The Ball

I believe that holding the RWC (Rugby World Cup) in NZ is a good idea because the money we get will probably go towards rebuilding Christchurch. Also, we can we can build houses for the poor and give them food.

The All Blacks will win if the put heart into what they need to do and train hard. This all leads to winning the William Webb Ellis Cup (the trophy) or in other words Keep Your Eye On The Ball

Partly Cloudy

The main characters in the story were Mr Atmosphere and the Stalk.
This was set high in the sky.
This Story starts when stalks deliver babies and pets to houses.Mr Atmosphere was trying to make babies but in stead he made a crocodile and a hedgehog. Plus many more things. Mr Atmosphere thought that Stalk was going to another cloud, but instead, he went to go get armor. The armor was football gear. Shoulder pads, a helmet and gloves. Then they laughed and laughed. Mr Atmosphere tried to make one more thing but......... He made a electric eel. They lived up in the sky forever.

Extreme Makeover Courtyard Edition.

Darius and I were thinking about redesigning our courtyard. This is what we wrote.


Why I chose basketball hoops?
I chose basketball hoop so then we can have more and more fun in the courts. The court is just not fun because there is nothing to do. We can even have comps.

I want basketball hoops in our courts to play in the summer and maybe in the winter.


The things that I found like the prices were....... for the ones bolted into the wall were only $59.00 each. They aren't to much money and then not too little.


Me and Darius chose picnic tables as well as a basketball hoops. We chose picnic tables because when we sit on the deck, it hurts my bum. So if we eat on picnic tables, then we can eat better.


This is our design. (Above)

Podcasting Zapped In Space.

Stay Tuned, there is a podcast that is coming up soon with this animation. This is a sneak peak from the book. And this is the two headed alien that I drew. I hope you enjoy the movie.

Since the first week of the term, we studied about the Samoan artist named Fatu Feu’u. He just doesn’t do his art-work for fun, he does it for culture. He does many patterns and motifs. It has just been really cool studying about his work. This is the thing that I wrote of him. Where he was from, what village and all that. To go along side it, I put a picture here.

Artist: Fatu Feuu
Tala Lasi Samoa-Painter of Tales

Born: 1946 Samoa


Village: Poutasi Falealili, Savai'i


Fatu Feu'u was born in the village of Poutasi Felealii on the island of Savai'i in Samoa. He was educated at Apia's Samoa collage, he emigrated to New Zealand in 1966 in order to study art. Fatu is a role model and mentor for other Pacific artists in New Zealand and the Pacific.


Fatu has transformed traditional design motifs intor in his paintings, prints and sculptures into fresh meanings: tatau, siapo, ufimata, lalaga and gog - tattoo, barkcloth, masks, weaving, and the figrate bird.His visual presentations reflect his passion and spiritual understandings of Samoan legends and fa'asamoa of Samoan Culture.

Bravery Heart-Break Loss and Hope

Did you ever wonder what it would be like for the women who had to stay back in NZ while the NZ and Australia men went to war. It would have been really sad. This is a little movie that our group done. I hope you enjoy.

Brave men AND women from SchoolTV on Vimeo. That was our movie that we filmed. I hope now you think about the past was our NZ and Australia men sacrefised their lives to defend our land.

Redesigning My Computer Mouse

This morning we had to use BAR (Bigger, Add, Replace) to redesign our mouses. I did a Spongbob mouse. I made the whole thing bigger. Just by a little bit. Added 3 mini speakers and replaced the clicking bits with Spongebob’s eyes. That was my mouse.



I made it bigger because some mouses that I use are just too small for my hand. But with this mouse, it will be just right. I replaced the Spongebob eyes with the clicking bits because those were just old. With the eyes of Spongebob, they are more detailed. I added the mini speakers because it is just too quiet from out of my net-book. But with the speakers, shared lunch and special places will never be quiet. So I would buy this mouse if it were real.