flinflon :)

Here’s an update. Well, I moved to FlinFlon, and I actually really like it here. At the moment, I am living in a small house, but we are looking at a house sometime this week. I really hope we buy the house, it sounds like a great place. It is really weird living in a small town, then moving to a little city like Flin Flon. School here is nice, there is a lot of people in my school, and I like the classes. I met a lot of new people and I have lots of friends. The thing I miss the most is my friends. Jeez, it is so hard without them. 😦 ❤ I miss you Alysa and Taylor!! <3. Next time I go to Snowlake might not be until the End of July, beginning of August, and it is going to suck. Err, it’s really long. We are selling our house in SnowLake, so hopefully we can buy the other one :O).

Well, this is my last post for a while. Leave some comments, snowlakers! 😛

Bullying .. makeoverpost!

Bullying. This is one tiny thing that grows and simply destroys a person. Bullying a kid, a friend or a coworker is not anything to be proud of. Bullying is never something you ever want to go through, it is something so scary. I really hate when there are kids in the playground fighting and calling each other names. I think that bullies are people that want attention, as they aren’t getting enough.

Seriously, is bullying the answer? No. Bullying is something we are trying to stop but all it is doing is spreading. It has spread from school, to home and to the Internet. Being online is something to have fun with, not to be on your instant messenger getting teased by someone who is supposed to be your friend. I know what it feels like to be bullied so don’t let it get to you. Calmly walk away or just ignore it. If it is getting to you, go to your school counselors and they will surely help you out. You just need to tell someone, and let them know that this is happening to you.

Personally, I think that bullies are people who want some control in their life. Maybe something at home is stressing them out, and they want to take control of everything that is going on. Also, they seem really alone, like they are almost people who need someone to reach a hand and help them through their struggles with life. I know that being a victim is hard, and you don’t want to have to be one.

Don’t let this happen to anyone, including yourself.
– Brianna

Smart Set

We have been working on a project called Smart Set. We had to research a different city. Everyone chose a different city. The city I chose was Athens, Greece.

There is a lot to learn about Athens. There is a lot of ancient ruins and temples there that show you all about Greece’s history. There is a lot of art, and it is beautiful. On my project, I found a lot of pictures and a video that shows you all about Greece.

When we finished researching all of our information, we put the informaition onto a wikispace. In the end, we will all learn about 22 – 23 different cities from around the world. I checked out some of my other classmates wikipages, and they are doing great! Check them out!

Here is a link to my page! 🙂

The Mighty Wave! (Ch. 9-12)

Wow. This book is amazing. I thought that The Wave would have ended by now, but I guess not.

In the beginning of these chapters,  Mr. Ross is not sure what to think of The Wave. His classroom had been expanding, because students were coming during study hall, and everything like that. For pretty much the whole chapter, he thinks of this.  Looking at that made me wonder if Mr. Ross is finally realizing that he is lost in his own experiment.

Mr. Ross has a meeting with Principal Owens. Ben is asked what is going on with this whole Wave idea, and Ben explains it to him. Principal Owens agrees to let it go, and if something comes up The Wave must be stopped.  At last, the principal thinks that it won’t go on for long because Ben has got the whole school worked up.

When Laurie gets to school that day, she goes to the Grapevine Office. She finds a story written for the Grapevine on her desk. The story is about a kid who is asked to join The Wave, and is pretty much harassed about not joining. The student had 2 friends with him, and his friends wanted to join until they met the student that invited them to The Wave. Laurie ends up putting this story into the Grapevine, and it is a huge success.

In the novel, they talk about the fact that the junior did not put his name on the letter. It struck me, and I realized that the Wave was not just a small experiment. It was like the new group, and if you weren’t in it then you would be a loser.

At first The Wave seemed like a utopia. Everyone was equal, and did everything the same. After I read a bit more into the book I realized that doing small things that you may think is better for a place, might cause harm in the end. In the beginning of the novel, The Wave was a hunky-dory group and everything was all well and swell. Next thing you know, Mr. Ross adds small things to the Wave, and it made it into a matter of being in it or not.

These chapters were surely well wrote and I enjoyed them. I had predicted that something would happen to change the ways of the Wave, and the letter that Laurie got shows that. I thought that the Wave was the perfect thing, and in the end it was harmful to many people. After they printed the letter and put it in the newspaper, people realized that The Wave wasn’t good anymore. It wasn’t a good place. It was at first but it completely changed.

Well, this is it for this week’s post.

– Brianna

Has this class experiment gone too far?

Reading the first 4 chapters of The Wave was great, but chapters 5 to 8 were amazing. I predicted that The Wave would go too far, and surely that has begun to happen. At first The Wave was just a classroom experiment, but now it is starting to move through the school which can cause big problems in the future.

In these 3 chapters some of the most important events happen. When The Wave started, it began in Mr. Ross’s classroom. He wrote ‘STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE’ on the chalkboard. When he explains this to the class they understand it. Mr. Ross tells them to sit with their spines straight, and their legs at ninety degrees, and parallel. Then Mr. Ross made the students get up, and go out into the hallway and run back to their seats. Next, whenever Mr. Ross asked a question, the students had to answer with ‘Mr. Ross, yes.’ or whatever the answer to the question was. When Mr. Ross came into the classroom the next day, all of the students sitting quietly in their desks in the correct posture that they had learned the previous day. Under ‘STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE’ Mr. Ross wrote ‘COMMUNITY’. He then took this to the next level. They now had a symbol, a name, a salute, a motto, a membership card and a uniform. At lunch the next day, all of the students sat together at one table. There was no such thing as a popularity contest anymore. Everyone in the Wave’s community was equal, and everyone was included.

I wanted to read on, but I could not. When I read these chapters, I felt that The Wave had already gone too far when they started with the salutes and the motto. I thought that these chapters were amazingly written. I cannot wait to read on to chapters 9-12. I predict that Mr. Ross will do something crazy, like have an assembly explaining The Wave, and how the students in the class have been being so well behaved since the start of The Wave. U also think that the teachers might start trying this in their classrooms and that is how it will be spread into the whole school. I want to think that the students will stop it, but I figured that they won’t if it already went that far with it. I think that the character Robert likes the group because everyone is being nice to him, and they are being equal.

I thought that these chapters had a lot of meaning in them, with all the events that happened. I chose a picture that represents control because I thought that the class was being controlled.

– Brianna

Flin Flon, Here I come!

Well, this weekend I found out that I am moving to Flin Flon because of HBM&S closing down here in Snow Lake. In ways I am excited to go, but I will miss my friends like no one would know. My friends are like my second family. Lol.

I am planning to keep up with my blog so that I can keep up with my class here. My house in Flin Flon is small, but I think I will manage there. Who knows, a bit of change might be good for me. I move on March 27th. That day, my dad is coming to get me for Spring Break. That week is going to be very hard for me, because I have never moved from here. On Easter Weekend, I might be coming back here for the holidays. It would be great, and I would get to visit my friends again. Well, this is all I have to say for now.

– Brianna

Riots in Athens in December 2008

Looking through my RSS tab, I found a post on GlobalVoices. It was about the riots that took place in Athens in December. When I first saw the title of the post, I was thinking that the government had done something wrong to tick of the people of Athens but it ended up to be about people in protest at the shooting by a police officer of 15-year old boy.

Here is some of the things that people did in Athens. I got this information from GlobalVoices Online.
‘In central Athens, protesters, including high school and university students and anarchists, have battled riot police, smashing shop windows, burning vehicles, throwing petrol bombs and Molotov cocktails and setting public buildings on fire.’

This must have been something very important to the people of Athens because they took it to such a violent level. I think that this was scary for the people of  Athens. I don’t understand why the people got so violent though.

– Brianna

Here is some videos I found on Youtube.

The Beginning to ‘The Wave’ (Ch. 1-4)

  In the beginning of the novel, the setting takes place in Mr. Ben Ross’s history class. Mr. Ross is teaching them about World War I. Mr. Ross shows the class a gruesome movie about Hitler, the Nazi’s and the concentration camps. During the movie, 2 girls Laurie and Amy realize that all the millions of people that were murdered, were innocent. After the movie, Amy and Laurie go to lunch. All they can think about is the concentration camps and the people that were murdered. The movie did not only struck the students, but it also struck Mr. Ross. Ben Ross takes out books from the library and reads all night learning about all the Nazi’s and Hitler. The author leaves us here, at the ending of Chapters one through four.

  When I first started reading the novel, I thought that it was going to be a boring novel that went on and on about one small topic. After I read the second chapter, my idea of the beginning of the novel changed because some important events happened. My thought about the novel’s beginning changed within the first few chapters.

  My favorite part of these chapters was when they described how the students looked after the movie. ‘As Ben looked around the room, most of the students looked stunned. Ben had not meant to shock them, but he’d known the film would.’ I thought that this was interesting because it not only shown them what it was like, but it actually got into their heads, and made them think more about it. I thought that the students would be like whatever, it’s just history, but actually I was wrong. I predict in chapters 5 through 8, that Mr. Ross will go all out extreme like he did with the native studies. I think he might try using the methods that the Nazi’s used against the Jews ( minus the killing). I think that this might influence the class, and kind of scare the students.

Please Comment 🙂

– Brianna

 

NGO’s : Sierra Club Canada

Sierra Club Canada is an organization that is trying to protect and preserve Canada’s natural environment.  They fund a wide variety of environmental projects across Canada.

Sierra Club Canada started in 1963. The have active chapters in every region of Canada. There is offices in Ottawa, Victoria, Sydney, Corner Brook, Halifax, Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto. Today they have about 10, 000 members which is very good for Sierra Club Canada. The members are volunteers who work in club campaign activities. They also work with outings and club development.

The Sierra Club has been working for a long time and over this long period of time they have successed with a lot of their missions. In 2007 SCC cleaned the Sydney Tar Pools, they delayed the Mackenzie Gas Project,  and they did much more.

Blister Radio

Looking through my RSS tab on my iGoogle page, I found an interesting post. Just recently my class was working on things with Global Warming and simple things we can do to stop it. The blog that I found had a post about a radio that is ecofriendly and made of biodegradable materials.

This radio is called the Blister Radio. It was made by a man with the name of Klaus Rosburg. It is solar-powered which is good too. On the post I read, it did not have much information about this product. I thought that was a problem, as I could not learn more about the product. What the blog said about the product was good, but there was a downside to the product.

On a blog called Ecofriend they said : ” Gadgets solely dependent on solar energy don’t have much of a practical value, unless their batteries are just like a watch that remains powered for long on a single charge.” I do agree with Ecofriend because that is true. Products that are dependant on solar power work with less value then one that runs on a battery.

Although the product is eco-friendly, I wouldn’t want to buy it because on a cloudy day you aren’t going to get much sun as you would on a sunny day. The battery would take longer to charge and the value of the radio would not be as good as it should be. I think that there should be a place for batteries to go if you want to use them.

– Brianna