Monday, November 2, 2020

100WC

 100WC


I shove a heavy metal ball down the barrel, then rushed to the back, "aim for the frigate at the front of the fleet" I hear my commander yell. Finished aiming, I step back and cover my ears. BOOM!!! The cannonball only tears a hole in the sail of the ship behind the frigate we were supposed to be aiming for. "Lower this time" The commander shouts as I load another cannonball into the cannon.  BOOM!!! It's a perfect shot! A hole ripped in the hull of the ship and it leans to the side and started to slowly sink.


Tuesday, September 1, 2020

OIS Needs Homework

Mrs FGDS Healey                                                           Lucas TYSNIUD

Oamaru Intermediate School                                               983 GFSER Road

Pembroke Street                                                                                       HSGY

Oamaru                                                                                                           Oamaru

9400                                                                                                                      9492

Thursday 27th August 


Dear Mrs Healy, 


In this letter I hope to persuade you that OIS needs homework, I believe this for many reasons including that OIS is meant to be preparation for high school, which has loads of homework. I also believe it will increase students' academic achievement as well as making them more independent and time wise. 


Firstly, OIS is designed to be preparation and have a smooth transition from primary to high school, but I feel as though this cannot be achieved when the difference in homework is so great. At the moment OIS has no homework and high school has 1-2 hours a night, with those figures, all hope of a smooth transition is ruined! The sudden ‘avalanche’ of homework may cause more tiredness and less motivation for everything else.


Secondly, having homework will increase students' academic achievement. Having that extra half hour of revision will cement what they have been learning in their minds and everybody knows two sessions are better than one. It will also boost learning time for maximum achievement in the classroom. Having homework will also mean that those academically minded students can be further extended while they are limited in-class.


Finally, homework will help OIS students to be more independent. Studies have shown that homework helps establish a better routine, great for going into highschool and university. It will also show the students real grades, if they are copying off their peers in class, homework will show the teacher what they still need to learn, crucial in a good education.


So, in conclusion, do we want students to get into a good transition at high school? Do we want students' academic achievement to go straight up? And do we want OIS students to be more independent? For those reasons and more, I know that you will agree with me that OIS needs homework.


Tuesday, August 4, 2020

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam war 

The Vietnam war was in a time of huge controversy. What had started off as sending engineers and medics turned into one of the biggest events in the 1960’s. Since the Vietnam war started in 1955, the US government had been putting New Zealand under pressure to send troops to the war in Vietnam and then, in 1963, New Zealand Prime minister Keith Hollyoake agreed to sending some ‘non-combatant’ troops (engineers, doctors and nurses) over. In 1964, New Zealand sent another 25 army engineers and then, in May 1965, the government announced that they would send fighting troops to Vietnam. The Vietnam war was the first war that New Zealand did not fight alongside Britain, its traditional ally. Instead we fought with America and Australia. The Vietnam war was fought between Communist Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam or Viet Cong) which was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other Communist countries. They were fighting The Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), backed by the US, Australia and other anti-communist countries.

Most of the fighting in Vietnam was done in the jungles. One Vietnam war vetran said “when I was on a patrol, the jungle was so thick that my patrol and an enemy patrol passed within only 5 metres of each other, we just didn’t see each other. It was only when the last person on the enemy patrol spotted us and opened fire that we knew they were there”. At its peak, there were 543 New Zealand soldiers, about 50 other NZ personnel and one artillery battery serving in Vietnam. That artillery battery was the 161 artillery battery, deployed into Vietnam in 1965. In the battle of Balmoral, the gunners that operated the battery were highly praised for their accuracy and volume of fire.

 While the war was going on overseas there was another war happening right here in New Zealand. From 1964 all the way to 1971 there were hundreds of anti-Vietnam war protests, all around the country. People believed that this was not our war to fight and disagreed with the way we were using our weapons. There were many times when protesters covered themselves in red paint to represent the innocent vietnamese civilians bloodshed. Other protests were about just wanting peace. Those protests were first of a kind in New Zealand as in the past, civilians had not expressed their opinions about war in such a public way.

 The Vietnam war is a huge item in New Zealand history. There was pressure from the US government, extreme fighting conditions and hundreds of protests. We will always remember this event in history.

 -By Lucas H

Monday, June 29, 2020

100 WC

100 Word challenge


POP! I and the other Raguls suddenly appear in dense forest. The Raguls are ancient people, long thought extinct by all except a few. Our legs resembled a goat and we had pale, furry torso, leading out into pincers for hands. We always cover our heads with a black hood, and all that is visible are one huge purple eye. Within minutes the twenty of us had taken our positions. We only had to wait twenty minutes before hearing hooves and our leader whispering "The messenger is coming, do not let him go past, he is carrying an enemy message". And then I saw it. The messenger was an elf, I thought they were extinct, I stood there and gasped, the last thing I did. He saw us, raised his palm, and shouted "Dár'gu küba" those words made all of us fall to the ground, dead.

By Lucas H

P.S I know it is a little over 100 words

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

My stop motion.

It may have a warning mark but it will still work if you click on it and exit out a few times it will work, it is worth the wait :-)

Sunday, June 14, 2020

immune system

How does the immune system work? The immune system is a hugely complex system that stops us from getting sick or dying, it is like an army, fighting viruses and bacteria everyday. From tiny antibodies to large macrophages, every cell in the immune system plays a vital role in keeping us safe. The first barrier of the immune system is the skin. Bacteria and viruses can’t get in unless the skin is penetrated. When something cuts your skin, nearby bacteria use the chance and enter through the wound. Once inside, they start to use up the body's resources and double in numbers every 20 minutes, they will go unnoticed until a certain number is reached and then they start to harm the body. The first cells to arrive on the battlefield are macrophages. Macrophages are found all over the body and they can devour over 100 intruders each. They kill bacteria by swallowing it whole and then enzymes inside it break the bacteria down like our stomach acid to food. Macrophages also produce messenger proteins that tell the bloodstream to release water into the battlefield to make fighting easier for them, you may notice this as a mild swelling. If the macrophages fight for too long, they will call in backup. They use messenger protein that can communicate location and urgency. These proteins then trigger neutrophiles, who leave their patrol routes in the blood and come to the battlefield. These neutrophils are extremely deadly fighters fighting so hard that they sometimes kill healthy body cells in the process, because of that, they have evolved to commit sucide after 5 days to prevent them from causing too much damage to the body. If this is not enough, then the brain of the immune system kicks in, the dendritic cell. This cell is the most important cell in the immune system. First, it collects samples of the invaders and keeps them on its outer layer. The dendritic cell then has to make a critical decision, does it need antivirus cells or bacteria killing cells. Right now, it needs bacteria killers. The dendritic cell then travels to the closest lymph node to activate T-cells. T-cells are one of the most important cells in the immune system. When T-cells are born, they go through a complicated training process, of which only a quarter survives, those remaining cells are equipped with a specific setup on their outer layer. They then go to a lymph node, and wait for a dendritic cell to ‘activate’ them. When the dendritic cell reaches the lymph node, it starts looking for a T-cell with just the right setup to vanquish this certain type of enemy. It does this by ‘bumping’ into heaps of different T-cells until it finds one with a setup that can bind to the intruders it has displayed on its outer layer and when it does find one, a huge chain reaction happens. The T-cell is activated. It then duplicates hundreds of times. Some of the T-cells turn into ‘killer’ T-cells and head to the field of battle to help macrophages and neutrophils, while some others turn into memory T-cells that will remember that specific enemy and make you practically immune to that enemy in the future. But most of them travel even further into the lymph node to activate a very powerful cell, the B-cell. Like T-cells, B-cells are born with a specific setup. When a T-cell and a B-cell with the same setup meet, the B-cell rapidly duplicates hundreds of times and then starts to produce millions upon millions of tiny little weapons, called antibodies. Antibodies are tiny Y-shaped proteins that are specifically made to latch to a certain type of bacteria. The T-cell tells the B-cell what type of ‘bind’ they need for this particular invasion. EG: The antibodies are now heading straight to the battlefield. When they arrive, they flood the battlefield killing or stunning hundreds of bacteria, the battle has now turned sides. The antibodies kill or stun the bacteria by ‘latching’ onto them with their specifically designed ‘arms’. If they have only stunned the bacteria, macrophages are extremely good at eating the helpless bacteria. With the new backup, the immune system can now vanquish the bacteria. At this point, hundreds of body cells have already died and without the constant battle signals, the remaining cells commit suicude, as to not waste the body's resources. But some cells stay behind, the memory T and B-cells, these cells will remember this certain enemy and will react so quickly if it is ever encountered ever, they will deal with it before you even know it is there. That is why you will only ever get one bad dose of the chicken pox. This whole process can take anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks depending on the type of bacteria/virus. From the bacteria entering your body, to macrophages and neutrophils, from the dendritic cell to T and B cells and finally antibodies. The immune system is complex but lifesaving. If we didn’t have our immune system, we would be, well, dead!