Thursday, August 16, 2012

Guest Post- Minecraft by Cheuk Yue



Minecraft is a game about surviving and adventure. You can have lots of fun but there is one thing you need to do first. Survive in this harsh world. If you keep dying on your first night then you have come to the right place! I’m going to teach you basic stuff about Minecraft you need to become a pro!

About Minecraft
Minecraft is a game where you basically try to survive. There are also these achievements to complete when you haven't got anything to do. There are these things out there called mods (or modifications) that changes or adds thing to the games. Minecraft is a type of game called a ‘sand box’ game. The creator of this game is Markus Alexej Persson or ‘Notch’. He made a company called Mojang which was specially made for updating and maintaining Minecraft. Unfortunately Notch is not developing the game any more.
Basic stuff
Here are all the things in Minecraft:




Here is the items tree in Minecraft


Here are all the blocks in Minecraft


From what I know these are all the mobs in Minecraft you should avoid:
Hostile
·      Skeletons                         
·      Zombie
·      Slimes
·      Spiders
·      Cave spiders
·      Creeper


A guide on Minecraft

When you start out in Minecraft you start with nothing. Absolutely nothing. Now depending on where you start (or spawn) there should be some trees around you. If you can’t find any around you may need to walk around to find some. Once you find a tree approach it put your crosshair on one of the wood blocks. Left click on it to ‘mine’ the wood. Once you fully mine the wood a smaller version drops and you can collect it. When you collect it the item appears in your hot bar which is the bar where you can place blocks. When you mine your first wood blocks the tree above does not fall. Only a very few blocks in Minecraft obey the rules of gravity. 

Mine all the available wood from that tree. I suggest you mine all the wood from one or two more trees. Once you have enough wood open up your inventory. On the top left hand corner you have slots to put in your armour. Next to that is a representation of your character. You will notice that your character will follow where you mouse moves. On the top right hand corner there are these slots. Those slots are your basic crafting table. 

Now drag the wood into one of the slots and you will notice something in the output slot. You will notice that there is a number next to them. That’s how many there are in that slot. Now the output is wooden planks and you need them to craft basic things. Now drag all four of the wooden planks into the crafting table by right clicking. Now the output is a big crafting table.
 Now first we have to make a pickaxe. First make sticks like this

We make a pickaxe like this.



Make a house or dig a cave. Baddies spawn in the dark including your house if not lit! We usually light homes with torches.  Craft them like this:

(The black stuff is coal. To get coal just keep mining then you should find some)

You need a furnace. You really need one. To craft them: 



A furnace is like a crafting table. Here is it is interface:



That is about it. All you need to know about Minecraft to get you started! Good luck on what you plan next.


Useful Links:
For the Minecraft website
For more information
For forums go to
For a 2d version of the game
1.          Type into Google ‘mine blocks’
2.        Click on the first link    
3.        You’re now playing mine blocks

What is you favourite computer game?

Is there anything you can add?

What do you think about Minecraft?

Monday, August 6, 2012

Guest Post- AFL By Vishal

AFL
Australian Football League

Australia is full of sports, one my favourite sports is the Australian Football League or footy for short. There are 18 teams, they are: Western Bulldogs, Carlton, GWS, Brisbane lions, Adelaide crows, Port Adelaide, Essendon, Fremantle, West Coast Eagles, Geelong cats, Gold coast suns, Collingwood, Richmond, St. Kilda, Melbourne, North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Sydney swans. Every team has its own mascot and its own logo.


Here are all the team’s logos:


But what is A.F.L? Well it is where two teams verse each other to win so they can go up the ladder and in the grand final the top two teams in the ladder verse each other to win, that year’s premiership cup. The ball which is used in footy is an oval shaped ball with 4 sides and in one of the sides there are eight stiches holding the pumping end. The footy ground is shaped like an oval and the scores are scored as a goal or a point. For a goal you get 6 points and the goals are set up like the poles in the picture:

My favourite team is Collingwood and I believe that they are one of the best. My favourite Collingwood players are Alan Didak, Chris Tarrant and Darren Jolly.



There are only 18 players allowed on a footy oval and those positions are: Full back, Full forward, wing 1, wing 2, Centre half back, Centre half forward, Forward pocket 1, Forward pocket 2, Back pocket 1, Back pocket 2, Half forward flank 1, Half forward flank 2, Half back flank 1, Half back flank 2, Rover 1, Rover 2, Ruck man and Ruck rover. Here are all their positions in the oval:


Here is a little chart of what team everyone in my class goes for:


We are sorry if your team is not in the chart but these teams are all the teams that our class goes for.

Here is short Kahootz animation about what a real A.F.L match can look like:



What team do go for and why?

Do play football for a club?

How many ways can you kick a footy?

Blog Post By Vishal ACPS Grade 5/6

Friday, July 27, 2012

Digestive System


Today we conducted an experiment to see how our body digests food.

We used cooking ingredients to demonstrate how food goes into our mouth, passes through our stomach, small intestine, large intestine and finally turning into waste and exiting the body.



   



This is how your digestive system works-


Here is a video of pictures and some footage of our experiment-


More information about our experiment can be found on our 'How Do Living Things Work?' website.

Why is the digestive system important?

What are two new things you learnt from conducting the experiment?

What was your favourite part of the experiment and why? 

Monday, July 23, 2012

Term 3


Welcome to Term 3!

What a start to Term 3! So far this term we have started Glogging, continued Blogging, are participating in a Virtual Exchange Student program and a Virtual Olympics! It is sure to be a very busy term.

Meet Andrea- our Virtual Exchange Student from Colegio Del Sol in Paraguay. We will be participating online in activities to learn about her school, country, culture and life. Kyla from our grade has been sent to Andrea’s class so they can learn about us!
Keep updated with the Virtual Exchange Program here- http://acps456.blogspot.com.au/p/virtual-exchange.html



READING:

In Reading, we will continue to develop a deep understanding of reading skills based on the CAFE reading model- Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Extended Vocabulary. We will be focusing on activating our prior knowledge and schema, making and supporting our predictions, extending our ability to make inferences and increasing our understanding of new and interesting words in texts. 




WRITING:
In writing, we will continue to use our VOICES menu to develop our understanding and knowledge of the six traits of writing- Voice, Organisation, Ideas, Conventions, Excellent Word Choice and Sentence Fluency.

Students will continue to work in small groups and participate in teacher conferences to work on individual writing goals based on the VOICES menu.


MATHS:
Maths this term will be very busy with students learning about patterns, number sequences and being introduced to algebra.

Students will also focus on volume and capacity, converting units, 3D Shapes, surface area, angles, fractions, decimals and percentages and chance and probability.

This is our Maths Menu that we have recently started.

INQUIRY:
Our Inquiry topic for Term 3 is ‘How Do Living Things Work?’. Students will investigate and compare functioning systems in animals and plants, in particular digestive, circulatory, respiratory, nervous, skeletal and muscular systems. They will investigate how systems operate; for example, the human body as a large system consisting of smaller separate systems working together, and life cycles as systems for survival. 

Our learning for 'How Do Living Things Work?' will be documented on the following website- https://sites.google.com/site/howdolivingthingswork/



HOME READING:
It is a requirement that students are reading at home every week night. We ask that readers are returned to school every Wednesday and Friday SIGNED by a parent.

HOMEWORK:
Homework has been placed on our website again this term. https://sites.google.com/site/acps4562012/assignments/untitledpost-1 
Students are required to bring their homework in EVERY Friday for check in. 

What are you looking forward to most this term? 

Monday, July 2, 2012

Happy Holidays



Hi Grade 5/6,

These holidays, I am visiting my family in Newcastle, NSW.


View Larger Map

My mum lives in Stockton and I am staying at her house. 

Today, my mum, brother, his friend and I went to the Hunter Valley Gardens 'Snow Spectacular'. The 'snow' wasn't very spectacular but it was still a fun day. It doesn't actually snow in Newcastle, the 'Snow Spectacular' was a special event put on at the gardens for the winter school holidays. We are also planning on going to see the new Ice Age movie in the next few days too. 




I hope you are all having a fabulous holiday.

Miss Spink 

What are you doing in the holidays? 

Have you ever been to the snow? 

What exciting places have you visited in Australia?

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Blog Challenge Winners

Over the past term Grade 5/6 have participated in a blog challenge. They had to try and get as many of their friends and family to comment on our blog as possible. This was a good way to get more family members interested in and become apart of what we are doing at school. It was so great to see the enthusiasm of students and family members!

Yesterday was the day when our winners were announced. It was a close call and after some last minute comments, it was Kyla who won the prize for the most comments.

Kyla had many of her friends and family come to visit our blog and leave valuable comments. Kyla won some Smiggle Gel Pens, a $15 Smiggle voucher and a Guest Post Coupon for our blog. Congratulations Kyla!


As part of our challenge we also had a prize for the person who had someone from another country leave a comment on our blog. Congratualtions to Duarte and thank you to his uncle in Portugal for taking time to visit us and leave a comment. Duarte won some Smiggle products!


The blog challenge also encouraged many students in our class to become more interested in blogging. So many students took time to leave quality comments. It was great to see the improvements and developments being made in commenting skills. Campbell, Cheuk Yue and Vishal all exceeded Miss Spink's expectations in their development of their commenting skills and as a result each won a Guest Post Coupon for the blog!



A fantastic effort by everyone involved!

What did you like most about the blog challenge?

Do you have any advice for students who get to write a guest post?


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Online Safety

free glitter text and family website at FamilyLobby.com 

Over the past few months in Grade 5/6 we have been learning about keeping safe online.
This is a very important issue and it is extremely important that both students, parents and teachers know the appropriate ways to behave online. 

We have been participating in a unit called 'My Digital World' where we are investigating the many issues involved with becoming responsible digital citizens. 

This includes:
  • :  Respect
  • :  Who am I online? Who are my friends online?
  • :  Protecting my online identity
  • :  Protecting my online privacy
  • Protecting myself from cyber bullying. 
We have watched these two videos and it has made us more aware of what is accepted as safe online behaviours. 


 

 




We also made this Glog to share our ideas-


Explain some ways you are being safe online.

Why is being safe online important?