🔬 Looking at cheek cells! 🦠

Even though this term our theme is Life's a Stage, Room 4 will still be continuing on our genomics learning topic from last term because we didn't get a chance to cover all of the information about genomics due to our busy schedule. This is why, Room 4 got a chance to look at cheek cells. To help look at the cheek cells properly, we used a few microscopes to help us give our observation more description. We had to go into groups and I was with Bethan and Paikea. 

As always, we sat on the mat and followed instructional video on how to look at a cheek cell. The man who was instructing the video was very specific in what we were doing. What we needed:

-Microscope
-Slide
-Popsical Stick
-Sodium Chloride
-Methylene blue (stain) 

The man in the video said we had to rub the popsical stick gently, but at the same time try to get all those little bits - we were looking for all those dead cells. We didn't have enough slides so only one person from our group had to do it, Bethan Volunteered while I was disgusted by the fact that we had to do it. 

Mrs Stone handed out the slides to each group and we were strictly forbidden to not smear our all over it and hold it by the corners. If we were to smear our hands all over, then we wouldn't be looking at our cheek cells, but our germs and hands. Bethan took the popsical and rubbed it all around one side of her cheek. She went in there! After that, Bethan rubbed the popsical remains onto the slide. I was soooo disgusted.

I then added the sodium chloride which made no change, but when Paikea added the Methylnene Blue it made a quick change. This was to help us look more into the cell in depth. After that we waited for it to dry because we didn't have any covers to look at the cell without it drying.

Once we came back, we all scattered the microscopes we had around the room and carefully examined and observed what we saw. We had different objectives that helped us look closer into the cheek cell. Mrs Stone also gave us paper and we had to actually draw what we see and write an explanation below. Here's mine:

🇰🇷 🎶 The History of K-Pop 🇰🇷 🎶

If you've seen my previous blog post then it talks about our new topic this term, Life's a Stage! In team 5 our main focus is performing arts which is mostly drama & dance. We are learning about the different styles of music and dances from around the world and where they mainly originated from, basically the background of the dance/song and all about it. To learn about this we will be shifting around the classes in our block. We started off in our home class where out teacher has prepared a style of music for us. In Room 4 we learnt about K-Pop!

EXO ACCEPTING AN AWARD
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION

K-pop means "Korean Popular Music", and it plays a huge part in the music industry which makes it known all over the world. Inside the K-Pop culture we have K-Pop groups which consists of 'Idols' as they call them or members. Groups like BTS, Blackpink, iKON, Twice, Red Velvet, GOT7, NCT 127, Straykids, TXT, Astro, Everglow, F(x) (R.I.P SULLI), SuperM, EXO, Pentagon, Ateez and a tons more of K-Pop groups are known everywhere across and around the globe. 

To start off our K-pop learning session we watched an K-pop music video. This music video was DDU-DU DDU-DU created by the famous group BLACKPINK. Our task was to observe the music video and process those thoughts in our heads. The dance made some of us pop some moves during the song it was so up-beat! Mrs Stone stopped the song and let us share our thoughts and observations about the video. A lot of us spoke about how modern it looked like and how even though we couldn't understand the culture the vibe and visuals it was giving off gave us some idea about the song.

BLACKPINK ALSO ACCEPTING AN AWARD
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION

Mrs Stone continued to share with us some facts about K-pop. Some facts surprised some of the students like how K-pop wasn't actually an original type of music from South-Korea, instead it was inspired by American music which was shared to Korea. Korea then decided to mix it in with their traditional music. Then, K-pop was born! We also looked at the Kim Sisters, they performed a american folk song and wore an very old fashion attire which many of us pointed out.

We also went on to learn that years ago Korea had very strict dictators, meaning that these dictators banned this type of music. The reason for this is probably that they wanted to keep the traditional Korean music alive. Around the 80's, the music started to come back alive, but their was a limit to the kind of topics they would sing about. One of those topics that weren't to be sung about was kissing! They were not allowed to mention this topic in there song in anyway. Crazy right!

BTS LOVE YOURSELF CONCERT
IMAGE ATTRIBUTION

Now we look at the present, the Korean music and culture has changed drastically. No more strict rules and the current presidents in Korea actually enjoy this type of music because its an enormous way of promoting their country to the world. I myself enjoy this type of music along with a few of my friends. There are many cons of K-pop as there are many scandals within the K-pop community however, I hope that this will change overtime and we can all have a positive perspective of the K-pop music industry.

💻 Quick Write: Immersion Assembly 💻

Quick Write: Immersion Assembly

It’s back to school whanau! You know what that means…..Immersion Assembly! Immersion Assembly is a time where all the students of Point England meet in the school hall, where all the teachers and staff prepare an item or mtv to present our school topic! I walked into the hall, eager to see what was instore for us. I see the huge screen with the words Life’s a Stage! While we were getting ready to be seated, I could hear the music playing in the background. Various songs played which were remixed by Mr Jacobsen were smoothly blasting across the hall. Once we were all settled, we let the show begin!

Mr Burt was at the front doing his normal greeting. Since it’s Niuean Language Weeking Mr Burt yelled out loud FAKALOFA LAHI ATU PT ENGLAND! We all replied back, giggling at his amusing costume. It consisted of a messy wig coloured blue, red and white. Funky! He wore a skirt that I found pretty weird, and a bright t-shirt to top it off. He went on to explain how many cultural dances can explain different stories. Mr Burt was blurbing out words of excitement when Mr Jacobsen cut him off. “Mr Burt! Can I tell my story?!”, he said with eagerness. Mr Burt replied with a yes and the first item was underway!

Mr Jacobsen held the mic up and spoke with enthusiasm. “Well you guys know this story...🎶There once was a little boy, who lived in Eketahuna.🎶 Mr Burt was acting out all the words of the classic, original Pt England song - Is it Kind. Mr Jacobsen and Mr Burt both entertained us with that one verse. We chuckled at the site of the two crazy men. Mr Jacobsen proceeded to sing the second verse. 🎶Delilah was a little girl, she lived in Eketahuna. She likes to ride her motorbike- 🎶 VRROOM! A sudden noise of an engine cranking scattered across the hall. We all draw our attention to the back where the noise came from. HAHAHAHAHAH! The whole school bursts out in laughter at the site of Mr Sommerville. VRROOM! VRROOM! He was wearing a fuzzy blond wig which just made us all lose it.

Mrs Tele’a also made some short appearances when it came to the line. 🎶 Taught to them by their moooootttthhheeerrrr. 🎶 Once it came to the chorus the whole school sang the song. This was my favourite item because I found it amusing and hilarious. What a great item!