Tournament of Minds, or TOM, is this competetion that I am entering at the monent. It's about team work and creativity and acting and creativity and singing and creativity . . . did I mention creativity?
You are working in a team of between five and seven people (my team has six members) and you have six weeks to come up with a creative solution to a problem. This year's problem is very open-ended. Here are the basics.
All the books in the world have dissapeared. Therefore stories will have to be passed on in other ways. Your team must -
Determine why and how the books have dissapeared.
Tell a meaningful story in a creative way.
Ensure that your story contains complex character relationships.
It is a vey open-ended problem. And its tons of fun working on it. We have four more weeks to go and we're progressing very well. My team consists of me, Jacqui and Hayley; aswell as three grade 7s - Georgina, Maddie and Tayla. So far our solution goes something like this-
It is 2063 and there is an election comming up. The economic situation is much like the economic situation Australia was 8 to 12 months ago. The opposition is prommising to hand out money, like Kevin Rudd has been. So the government decides to destroy all the books, therefore destroying the evidence that the opposition's plan will work. But, of corse, the government can't just destroy all the books in the world for no reason. They decided that books cause...lukemia! The government scientist complains that they have already found the cause for Lukimia, but the Prime Minister doesn't listen. He just decides that Lukemia would make a very good cover-up for his sinister mission.
And thats how/why the books have vanished. I'll write more later, but for now I gotta go.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Interschools
Sorry I haven't been blogging since...well...a long time ago. I don't have an excuse so I won't pretend that I do; but I hope you all missed me cause otherwise your a bunch of lousy relatives!
In the interschools all that time ago on last Thursday (interschools crosscountry, that is) we had to run 3km and it was basically all up hill. Except for the occasional bit of down hill. I came 38th and there were 52 people. I thought that was pretty bad untill I was talking to Josh Franklin who is very fast and sporty and found out that he came 38th too! Then I decided that I hadn't done too bad after all.
Hannah Davis who is in grade nine and is one of my friends forgot her shoes. So she was going to have too run in volleys or borrow someone elses shoes. She was walking round asking everyone if they had size eight shoes. She decided she'd borrow mine. The grade 8 girls (thats me) run, then the grade 8 boys, then the grade 9 girls (thats Hannah). So I came back from running 3km and Hannah and her friend Jacqui come running over and ask me to run back so that I can switch shoes. I just got back from running 3km and they ask me to run again! If they weren't my friends then I can guarentee that I wouldn't have run even an exta 10m!
BTW;
Hannah and Jacqui in grade 9 are both in band.
Hannah (me) and Jacqui (my friend) in grade 8 are both in band.
Jacqui in grade 9 is spastic. Jacqui in grade 8 is spastic.
Hannah in grade 9's last name starts with 'D'. Hannah in grade 8's last name starts with 'D'.
Both Hannahs sit in the front row in Senior Band.
Both Jacquis have brown hair and brown eyes.
Wierd, hey?
So anyway, after all that was over, we spent the rest of our day mucking around, cheering on our team and relaxing. Not a bad day; it was definately worth having to run.
In the interschools all that time ago on last Thursday (interschools crosscountry, that is) we had to run 3km and it was basically all up hill. Except for the occasional bit of down hill. I came 38th and there were 52 people. I thought that was pretty bad untill I was talking to Josh Franklin who is very fast and sporty and found out that he came 38th too! Then I decided that I hadn't done too bad after all.
Hannah Davis who is in grade nine and is one of my friends forgot her shoes. So she was going to have too run in volleys or borrow someone elses shoes. She was walking round asking everyone if they had size eight shoes. She decided she'd borrow mine. The grade 8 girls (thats me) run, then the grade 8 boys, then the grade 9 girls (thats Hannah). So I came back from running 3km and Hannah and her friend Jacqui come running over and ask me to run back so that I can switch shoes. I just got back from running 3km and they ask me to run again! If they weren't my friends then I can guarentee that I wouldn't have run even an exta 10m!
BTW;
Hannah and Jacqui in grade 9 are both in band.
Hannah (me) and Jacqui (my friend) in grade 8 are both in band.
Jacqui in grade 9 is spastic. Jacqui in grade 8 is spastic.
Hannah in grade 9's last name starts with 'D'. Hannah in grade 8's last name starts with 'D'.
Both Hannahs sit in the front row in Senior Band.
Both Jacquis have brown hair and brown eyes.
Wierd, hey?
So anyway, after all that was over, we spent the rest of our day mucking around, cheering on our team and relaxing. Not a bad day; it was definately worth having to run.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Cross Country
Today we had the Cross Country at school. We have to run 3km.
The corse goes around the beaches and along the bike track. I'll see if I can find a map of it for you.
You'd better apreciate this map - it's taking for ever to sort out.
And here it is...
The corse goes around the beaches and along the bike track. I'll see if I can find a map of it for you.
You'd better apreciate this map - it's taking for ever to sort out.
And here it is...
It doesn't look like far here, but it feels like a really long way when you're running it. And guess what??? I came sixth!!!
Now, to you, sixth might not sound too good. But let me remind you that it is compulsary to do the cross country, which means I was racing against around 40 people (all the girls in my grade). So thats sixth out of forty. And to make it even better, there were some pretty good runners coming in after me!
To me, sixth is just good enough. Its good enough that people think, 'wow, thats good'. And even more inportant than that; its good enough to get to go to the interschools!!!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Estedfords
I went to the estedfords yesterday with band. I played with the Junior Concert, Junior Stage and Senior Concert bands. So thats one of Simon's bands, one of miss Badcok's bands and one of Mac's bands.
The Junior bands were both in the same section, along with Newtown's junior band and Ogalvie's junior band. Our Stage band played first, then our concert band - which is complecated for me and Hayley, cause we have to switch instruments. It's hard to say how good our bands were, cuse they sound different in them than they do when you're listening to them.
Newtown was good (unfortunately, cause I'd love to say they were awful - I'm schoolist against all guy schools). Ogalvie was bad. They weren't together and there was no sign of dinamics.
The Junior Stage Band came first (yay!). Newtown came second, but I'm not sure if thats cause they deserved it, or cause the aduticater felt it would be mean to give both the awards to Claza.
That aduticater really anoyed me. EVERY time she got up to anounce the winners, she would launch into this speach about how we all did well, and it was only her oppinion deciding on the winners, and if we thought we were the best then we were probably right, and to keep playing, and to not get all disapointed if we don't win. But she didn't just give us this speach once. She gave it EVERY SINGLE TIME SHE CAME ONTO THE STAGE. Which means I heared her ten minute speach on NOTHING, ABOUT FIVE TIMES!!!
Senior Concert Band lost to Friends. Thats cause even though the aduticater feels bad about deciding the winner on how well they played, she thinks its completely fair to give the award to Friends cause of their privet school uniform. She didn't like how we were a miss-matched bunch of stste school kids, she didn't like how half of us had our hair loose and 'covering our faces' and she especially didn't like the collection of long-haired boys in our bands. The fact that we were the only actuall state school (Newtown and Ogavie don't count) participating didn't get us extra points now, did it?
But at least this aduticater could hear what we were playing, even if our uniform ment more to her. The aduticater for the Clarence Eatedfords towards the end of the year is nearly deaf. It must be a really hard job to find decent aduticaters...*sigh*
The Junior bands were both in the same section, along with Newtown's junior band and Ogalvie's junior band. Our Stage band played first, then our concert band - which is complecated for me and Hayley, cause we have to switch instruments. It's hard to say how good our bands were, cuse they sound different in them than they do when you're listening to them.
Newtown was good (unfortunately, cause I'd love to say they were awful - I'm schoolist against all guy schools). Ogalvie was bad. They weren't together and there was no sign of dinamics.
The Junior Stage Band came first (yay!). Newtown came second, but I'm not sure if thats cause they deserved it, or cause the aduticater felt it would be mean to give both the awards to Claza.
That aduticater really anoyed me. EVERY time she got up to anounce the winners, she would launch into this speach about how we all did well, and it was only her oppinion deciding on the winners, and if we thought we were the best then we were probably right, and to keep playing, and to not get all disapointed if we don't win. But she didn't just give us this speach once. She gave it EVERY SINGLE TIME SHE CAME ONTO THE STAGE. Which means I heared her ten minute speach on NOTHING, ABOUT FIVE TIMES!!!
Senior Concert Band lost to Friends. Thats cause even though the aduticater feels bad about deciding the winner on how well they played, she thinks its completely fair to give the award to Friends cause of their privet school uniform. She didn't like how we were a miss-matched bunch of stste school kids, she didn't like how half of us had our hair loose and 'covering our faces' and she especially didn't like the collection of long-haired boys in our bands. The fact that we were the only actuall state school (Newtown and Ogavie don't count) participating didn't get us extra points now, did it?
But at least this aduticater could hear what we were playing, even if our uniform ment more to her. The aduticater for the Clarence Eatedfords towards the end of the year is nearly deaf. It must be a really hard job to find decent aduticaters...*sigh*
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