Briar’s Blog

I have a new blog and will no longer be using this one, my new blog is

http://briari2.edublogs.org

Elephants are endangered. Both African and Asian elephants are being hunted down and killed for their tusks. This is because their tusks are made of ivory, and ivory is an extremely valuable material 

Elephants are the largest and mammals in the world. They are the second tallest at 2 – 4 meters tall and they weigh around 7,500kg. They are fully grown at 25 years old and can live to be up to 65. 

African elephants are the biggest and both the male and the female have tusks. Asian elephants are smaller and only the male has tusks. 

The basic features of elephants are mostly the same; their eyes are small and brown with long lashes to keep out the dust. Their trunk is actually a very long nose that they often use to pick up food and small light objects. Their tusks are really teeth, but unlike the elephants other teeth they are made of ivory and are continually growing. At the elephants death the tusks are usually around 1.5m long and weigh around 45 kg. Elephants use their tusks to dig, fight and lift. Elephants all have individual ears like human fingerprints and have very good hearing.  The skin of an elephant is2 – 4 centimetres thick, it is grey, sensitive, and wrinkly and plays an important part in keeping an elephant cool. The wrinkles trap water and the water evaporates slowly, keeping the elephant cool and damp. 

Elephants are herbivores; in the wild they have a diet of grasses, roots, leaves and shoots. In captivity they eat hay, oats and potatoes. They are eating for 20 hours of every day and they consume 250 – 330kg of food in that time.They sleep in short naps taking up only 2 – 4 hours a day and they spend most of their time grazing in their homes in the mountains, deserts and tropical forests of
India,
Africa and
Southern Asia. 

Elephants live in large family groups of almost all females as the bull elephants are cast out to find their own way as soon as they reach puberty. The young calves are looked after and kept safe by the whole group. To communicate, the elephants trumpet, bellow, cry and snort and they use their trunks to perform a sort of sign language. 

There are many groups who do a lot of things to protect elephants from ivory poachers. These are great, honourable people that should be recognised as leaders and people who take action instead of just standing around thinking of all the reasons that they shouldn’t do something but not thinking of the reasons why they should.

Last Saturday we played netball* now I know what you’re thinking, it’s just another game of boring middle grade netball, but not this time, this time was special, this time we were playing a team that has not once lost a game of competition netball this year, we were playing Georgia(a girl in my class), and her Soldier’s(I’m not kidding, that was the name of their team).

During warm-ups, I gazed over at them wondering how we could beat a team as strong as them. I had never actually seen them play, which might have given us the upper hand, but I had heard the stories.

We made our way down to the court that we would be playing on, and stood on the lineup mark to await the starting buzzer. The buzzer rang and we each headed to our starting positions, and guess who my partner was! Georgia, probably the best player in her team! The whistle went, and I dashed out to defend Georgia. But the ball whizzed straight over my head and into her hands. She passed to the GS and the GS shoot scored!

 The game went on like this for most of the first quarter, with a few exceptions when we got the ball. By the second half the score was 8-11 to the other team, and our best defence available for the GD position(me) was injured but I bravely kept in the game. We desperately needed a boost, and Holly, perhaps our best player, was not there!

We fought and fought to get some more goals, but the soldiers were standing strong. By the third quarter we were losing badly and my ankle was hurting so badly that I could hardly walk(I had sprained it really badly the week before). I watched in dismay as my replacement jogged about, hardly defending her partner at all.

We lost our game 11-21 to the soldiers. Georgia is never going to let me live it down.

*Netball is a game played with a round ball that is covered in grip. The aim of the game is to get more goals than the other team, you do this by getting the ball to your goal hoop and shooting a goal into the hoop, this is a lot like a basketball hoop but it doesn’t have a backboard. Players pass the ball to other people in thier team to bring it to their goal circle at one end of the court while the other team tries to make an intercept. Players are not allowed to step with the ball, they are not allowed to bounce the ball or throw it up and catch it unless it touches somebody else or if you were trying to shoot a goal it has to bounce first if it hasn’t touched the hoop, netball is a non-contact sport, so players have to be three feet (1 metre ) from the player that has the ball and cannot put their arm across another player to obstruct their ability to move or catch. There are two teams of 7 players (often with one or two reserves) each with a different position, GD (Goal Defence), GK (Goal Keep), WD (Wing Defence), GA (Goal Attack), GS (Goal Shoot), WA (Wing Attack) and C (Center). They all have a job to do. GS and GA are shooters, they need to get into the goal circle to shoot goals, GK’s job is to defend GS and get the ball away from the other teams GS, GD does the same but is defending the other teams GA instead, WD defends the other teams WA and helps get the ball to her teams goal circle. WA gets the ball to the goal circle, C defends the other teams C and get the ball from the other teams goal circle to her teams goal circle, C also does the centre pass off, this is when the C takes the ball, goes to the centre circle and passes the ball to another of the players in her team(who go to their positions at the same time as the C), but she must pass to someone in the center third.

Below is a diagram of a netball court showing each players position. It also shows who is partnered  with who in each team. One team is blue, the other is red. (click it to see it in full size).

Science Fair is coming up, and I am so excited! I have had an idea for what I am going to do but I am not sure if I am allowed to do it.

This is it: How does the volume of air in your lungs affect your voice?

I think that this is science but my teacher might not.

What do you  think?

Do you do Science Fair?

Do you have any ideas for me?

What is science in your eyes?

Thanks for coming to my blog, please leave a comment!

I love drama, I do speech and drama lessons, and have already had a part in a musical at the woolshed theatre. I do as much as I can to make my acting better and give myself better opportunities for acting and other performing arts. When I am 18, I am going to do a degree in drama and maybe in singing and once I have finished my degree I will work untill I have enough money to move to one of the big film producing countries like Britain or America. You may think that dreams like that are too big for a small town girl like me, but if Missy Elliott can go from living on the streets to living in style, then I can go from small town girl to big city celeb!                                                                                                                                               

We are studying ANZAC day for our social studies and I found this poem while I was researching;

Today the lonely winds are loose

and crying goes the rain,

while here walk the fields they knew

the dead who died in pain,

the fields that wait the slow hours long

for sounds that shall not come,

in other fields, in other earth

the laughing hearts are dumb.

- by Elsdon Best

I love this poem, I think it is so heart felt.

What do you think of it? What do you think it means?                                                       

My goals this term are:

1. Manage my workload now that I am challenged in my work.
2. Work hard in choir and learn all my songs.
3. Be organised and try to remember important things.
4. Work hard in French.
5. Write lots on my blog and try to get visitors from other countries.

These are my goals. Can you relate to them? What are your goals?

We had to do some poetic writing at school it was really fun. This is what I wrote:

Echoes bounded off the walls as I ran through the Ivy covered passages, listening to the joyful laughter of my peers.The sun was bright and warm as it filtered through sharp cracks in the stone walls.The walls flew past as my pace quickened and my breathing deepened. I screamed around corners and leapt over puddles until it was only my own laughter I could hear in the depths of the maze of tunnels.Eerie darkness closed in on me as I reached the damp core of the maze.A door! Bright as the shining sun, lighting up the many passageways!

I stealthily crept closer and closer until I slipped over the threshold . . . . . .

Almost three years ago my best friend moved to Hamilton which is half an hour away, because her dad got a new job. We were really close and her moving tore my heart out, but it happened and I had to get used to it. But now I feel like we’re drifting apart, I hardly ever get to see her it sucks but I can’t work up the courage to talk to any one about it, I guess this was just the easier way.

If you’ve been through it too maybe you could leave a comment and give me some advice.

I just started my first year of Intermediate, I got into the accelerate class and was really happy about that but all my friends were staying at primary school. I was really scared that I would be a complete outcast or be bullied, but on my first day I met a really great girl called Naveen and we instantly became friends. The next day I was feeling really confident and I made another friend who is really funny her name is Nicky.

I still miss my old friends but at least now I have some new ones to hang around with.