Y8 Fantasy Narratives

Year Eight have been exploring the game MYST as a stimulus for their fantasy narratives. Below are some extracts of work in progress:

I fell to my feet. Crumpled, a broken form. My mind felt fuzzy, distant. Like I was watching myself, a strange dream. My brain, transformed into a primitive creation. I managed to unfurl my body. I looked around. There was nothing but the sparse-planted, fog-clad, 'island', I was on, seemingly hovering amongst the mist. That was what I decided to call it: mist. No, not mist. Something stranger. Ah, yes; Myst. Nothing but the sound of the wind, and the echo of my footsteps. Dark, fertile soil, crumbled under my feet. There was only a strange totem pole in the centre of the island, which looked like some part of an ancient ritual.

Cautiously approaching the strange-totem-pole-thing, part of it clicked, and slid open. I stepped closer. The emblem of a glowing hand appeared inside, and then I realized it was on the cover of something. A book. I took the book, snatching it in case it closed on my hand. I opened the book; it was blank, apart from a strange picture, of a dock. When I moved my hand over the picture, a strange feeling of weightlessness came over me, and I tried to withdraw my hand. I couldn't. It felt like I was being sucked in, and I closed my eyes. The sound of the wind intensified, and a squeezed my eyes shut tighter. When the wind stopped, and the terrible sensation in my gut ceased, I began to un-shutter my eyes. When they were only open a crack, a slammed them shut again. I knew where I was. I had seen it in the book. The dock. (Henry)


They were coming for me. I knew it, I knew most things spirit users usually did. I could feel the nausea in side of me churning. The Tranecks were three minutes away down by the lake of the Gods. I could also sense them resting. No one had gotten to the lake apart from the Gods of course, and well the Tranecks but they weren't really alive. Immortal beings that had once been. The woods enveloped the lake as if it was in protection. The thick green vines entwined themselves with another so no speck of the water was to be seen. Anyone that tried to get to the lake of the gods didn't make it. Its insides are filled with Goblins and Trolls and Gatharacks that wait hungrily for its prey. The sun glints of the greenery of the forest and I looked hopefully at its beauty, even knowing what' inside I still wish one day that i could be the one, the heroic one that gets to the lake and bathes in its depths and becomes the god of spirit. As The ancient prophecy portrays... (Katie)


It was my turn and I couldn't wait. It was my turn to show what I could do. It was my turn to show what I had been practicing for years. It was my turn; and I wasn't about to waste it. Every year on the summer solstice, all of the children that are at the age of fifteen have to be sent into Myst. They will be tested on their protective instincts and this challenge will show how determined they are to protect the clans. The Calloway clan was made up of the bravest and strongest children from every clan. This was what everyone was trying to get into. If you were a Calloway; you were looked up to; you were a hero in everyone's eyes; but it's me we're talking about. No one in my family had ever gotten into the Calloway clan and I was determined to change it. No one believed I could get in; but that didn't matter; because I believed. (Caitlin)


2036

Prologue

The evolutionary stages for Natural Humans were too slow and soon, they had to find a substitute species that were able to rebel against the Dark Lords (creatures with immense misery and negative energy). The Dark Lords were a band of nine extremely powerful warriors that belonged to Cronix, the planet of Darkness and misery. They now came to Earth, and threatened Humans for the Lights, a force much like Gravity, Death and Life. The Humans creation eventually developed a new species known as Enhanced Humans, beings with heightened stamina, strength, mobility, agility and much more abilities that the Natural Humans couldn't achieve. (Jacques)

Fun Chinese Learning with Voki

We often used Voki to help our learning in Chinese class. We either type in Chinese characters or record our own voice. A cartoon character will speak Chinese for us. It is a great way to practise our Pinyin, Chinese typing as well as listening skills. We can easily share our Voki via email or send them to our teachers to view and comment on. This is also a fun way to write an essay without it feeling like you are! Sometimes, if there is a test coming up, all the Voki characters are great ways to revise what we had learnt, such as vocabulary and language structures.

Here is how it works and some great examples, you can try with many different languages too!

Y7 Isobel Dolan & Y7 Zachary McCarroll

Y8 Fennie Easton & Y8 Rebecca Kearns

1. Go to http://www.voki.com/create.php
2. Then go to the 'Customize Your character' tab to change what your character looks like.
3.When you are done customizing your character click on the done button.
4. Then, you can either type your message or record it, by going to the 'Give it a voice' tab.
5. For example, lets say you pick text, then you click on the text button, type in your message (in chinese) and give your character a voice, click done when you are finished.
6. Then, to here your message, you can click the play button.
7. You can also go to the backround button and choose your backround, and choose the color of your player, click done for both when you are finished.
8. When you are completely finished with your voki, click publish, call it something, then when it finishes saving, a page should come up with giving you options, you want to click email, then you can email it to someone.

by Y8 Fennie Easton

8 Falcons and the Sacred Orb- L2L

In Learning to Learn, 8 Falcons have been studying teams. They have been learning about their strengths in a team, what an effective team is and most importantly, how to achieve one.

Today, they put their team to the test by building a tower for a "sacred orb" (more commonly known as a polysterene ball). The teams had to present a plan for their structure and sealed bids for what materials they wanted to use- within budget- before they began.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the students build their towers. Everyone in the team fully participated in different ways. Some students were delegators, some shrieked with excitement and hopped, others stood back and evaluated the handiwork, others worked quietly in a corner on a small detail of the tower. Everyone fully participated in their own way.

We talked about how an effective team often results from a situation where everyone in that team is working whole-heartedly towards the same goal. We talked about how different people are motivated by different tings, such as an element of competition, or a desire not to let down team members. We talked about the challenges of trying to motivate people in teams sometimes.

That aside, we had fun, got some great photographs... and then enjoyed dismantling it all again!!

The Organic farm

On Friday, year 8 went to The Organic Farm in Yuen Long, to experience and learn about organic farming. We started off by listening to a talk by Mr Stanley Wong. He told us the difference between freshly grown organic vegetables, and supermarket vegetables. We could see the difference straight away! The organic tomatoes were much heavier, redder and had a much stronger tomato smell.

He also explained that to make something organic, you use no pesticides or chemicals. So, on their farm, some of the ways they kept the pests away are: they used shiny objects such as CD’s to keep the birds away from the plants, they used pots of beer in the ground to get rid of the snails (make them ‘happy snails’ - they fall into the beer and drown), they used chilli powder to repel insects and they also use companion planting (planting different plants together).

I enjoyed hoeing, raking and then finally planting the lettuce. I never knew how to prepare a garden bed, so it was a new and different experience for me.

We also harvested carrots, which was much harder than we would’ve thought! Overall, it was a very fun experience, and I learnt a lot.

By Rebecca 8.1

Derek Landy

On Wednesday 10th of March 2010 a plane flew into Hong Kong Airport from Dublin. As it travelled through the air a writer sat aboard; Derek Landy. Thoughts raced through his mind of his cats, dogs and ramps that caused widespread terror through his home. Somewhere at the back of his head he remembered his 78,000 girlfriends who were in every country in the world.

We, the remaining year sevens and eights, rode in our bus from Shau Kei Wan to The Central Library. We had no idea of what a man we would meet to discuss his books and to hear him speak. As we entered the hall we were greeted by a booming Voice which then changed to a tiny voice like a mouse squeak and then back to a bellow. Confused, I looked around for the owner. He stood on the stage holding a microphone limply in his hand. As we sat down I realised that we were the first school to make it.

“Hello, how are you?” He asked with a slight stutter and a pleasant accent. I was shy to reply but some of my friends weren’t. They replied by saying we were alright. Without a moments hesitation he said, “I am fine too, thank you for asking.” The irony was we hadn’t asked him. For the next few minutes he made a point of how much he liked us because of how we had not asked him if he was ok. We rapidly caught on to his humour and by the end of the talk my sides ached from laughter.

When all the schools had finally arrived the manager held a small speech and then he introduced Derek. Expecting him to start talking to us, we all got ready but he was nowhere to be seen. Without warning there was a suspicious slamming sound and the author was caught crawling out of the bottom of the golden curtain at the back of the stage. He then got up, brushed himself off and remarked; “It is funny how I can do that and still not lose my dignity.” We all couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He politely asked us what our name was but because we all had different names it was a crazy sound. In the end he decided to call us all ‘Pablo’ and he addressed us all with Pablo for the rest of the day.

For the next half an hour he told us about his childhood. This was basically working on a farm in Ireland and going to school. His strongest subjects were English and Art. He went to high school to study art in drawing cartoons. Hilariously he got expelled but not for some thing he did but for something he didn’t do, or more precisely he didn’t do anything. Instead of taking a three year course he ended up getting kicked out after the first year. Derek first said that he didn’t mind but then went on to say he had a tantrum, a fit and there was a lot of crying.

He told us about how he had written screen plays and how popular they were; seven people had gone to see them. This obviously wasn’t a lot but we knew he was exaggerating. Next he explained about how he has six cats. Firstly when he first moved into the house it came with a cat. He hated cats so he tried with no prevail to get it out of the house. For a while he didn’t know and didn’t care what gender it was but he soon found out, partially because of how it got fatter and fatter until two baby kittens came out.

However, he did have a few reasons he liked cats. These were mostly ridiculous reasons like: when you kick a cat it goes flying to the other side of the room, and so on. All his friends advised him to get the cat sterilised but, as usual, he didn’t listen. Just a month later the cat started getting fat again. This time there were six baby cats and before Derek knew what had hit him his house was filled with cats.

One day when Derek was typing up his book; a cute little baby cat crawled up to him. Without warning it ripped out its claws and dug them hard into Derek’s shin. The kitten then repeated this painful action with the other paw. The cat slowly worked his way up the dumbstruck author’s leg until he reached the top and sat on Derek’s knee. The cat then looked up and saw Derek’s face; annoyed with disgust it hopped down and ran off. Derek explained what the cat must have been thinking, “imagine if you climb a mountain and there is a moron at the top!” The mountain, Derek’s leg, and the moron, Derek, had tried to explain that it might be a little bit difficult for his leg to be there but not the rest of its body, but for some reason the cat just didn’t listen or maybe it was the slight fact that it didn’t understand a word of what the author said...

After this we asked questions. He told us what he expected the questions to be like; “so how did you get so great?” or “I wish I was as great as you.” Not surprisingly, no one asked these questions and after a while of what, he called, ridiculous questions we had to leave. With a smile on my face I left the hall. Someone shouted, “Pablo” and we all succumbed to contagious laughter once more. All in all it was a brilliant experience and I will remember it forever.

Robin Y7

Year Seven History

Year 7 students and I have swapped places... temporarily! They are busy being the teacher and I am enjoying asking all the awkward questions, which makes a nice change!

Each student has been assigned a Medieval monarch and given the responsibility of planning and delivering a half hour lesson to their class. All students have produced, or are producing ,excellent Power Point presentations and worksheets for their students. There have been some fun quizzes and even film clips too.

If you want to know who met their death via a red hot poker, or which king might have murdered his nephews, then ask a Year 7 student. And if they don’t know?... well, I blame the teacher!

Miss Everett

Happy Chinese New Year 恭喜发财

To celebrate Chinese New Year,

Y7 & Y8 Chinese Studies students had a chance to make Tanghulu-

traditional winter sweets in Beijing.

Making sugar syrup

Tanghulu- strawberry skewers dipped in sugar syrup.

Tanghulu dipped in ice-water

to have a hardened sugar coating

The taste is a combination of sweet and sour, hmm.... yum!