For ESM, I learned about freshwater eels, called tuna. Female eels travel all the way to the ocean near Tonga to breed, and the baby eels hatch there. Then the young eels swim back to Aotearoa and move into our rivers, lakes, and streams. Native eels can live in freshwater for many years, sometimes even for decades, before they change into silver eels and migrate back to the ocean to breed.

Tuna also have an important relationship with freshwater mussels. Freshwater mussels start life as tiny larvae that attach to native fish, including eels. The fish carry them through the river, which helps the mussels spread to new places and survive in different parts of the river system. Freshwater mussels also filter the water, removing dirt and tiny particles. This helps keep the water cleaner and the habitat healthier for tuna and other native species.

I learned that banded kōkopu live in cool, shady streams and are most active at night, hunting insects and small fish. Their life cycle really interested me because the eggs are laid near the stream, the larvae wash out to sea, and then come back as whitebait to climb upstream and grow into adults.

For kākahi, I learned that they live buried in soft mud or sand and are filter feeders, cleaning the water by sucking it in and trapping tiny food like algae. Their babies  have to attach to native fish for a few weeks before dropping off into the sediment, which showed me how strongly they depend on healthy fish and clean water.

Overall, I learned that both species are taonga for Māori and are signs that the water is still healthy, so if we protect our rivers and lakes, we also protect kōkopu, kākahi, and the mauri of our freshwater.

Last weekend, I successfully completed my Hand Tools and Safety unit standards, earning 12 credits. I am very proud of what I have achieved so far. On Tuesday, Wiremu and I were given the opportunity to work in the Ag/Hort shed, where we installed 4×4 sheet plywood according to the set-out plan. The task was challenging, particularly as we did not receive clear guidance or constructive advice from our PCBU, Vellon, which made it difficult to fully understand and correct our mistakes at the time. Despite this, the experience helped me recognise and take responsibility for the errors I made, and I gained a better understanding of how to improve my work moving forward Working in the Ag/Hort shed with Jack was a valuable experience for me, as it was my first time in that environment. I found the experience very positive and hope to have the opportunity to return and carry out similar work again in the future.

Here is our group project we created in Health.

Please leave some feedback in the comment section, hopefully this connects with someone.

Ngamihi.

This Term in 1 Agriculture And Horticulture I and My Class has recently worked  on Planting seeds in Our School Garden and My Class and I just went over to the garden and gave our plants that we just planted a wash and Now we went on Hapara Workspace and updated our Agriculture Assessment.

Here is my Mahi of this Term.

This is My short Personal Response to The Seahorse and the reef ( Short Text).

A Key message the author wants us to realise about our Impact on the Environment is….

Human activities such as pollution and overfishing and destroying ecosystems like the coral reef. The story highlights that our carelessness does not just harm the environment, but it destroys our own cultural and spiritual “food basket,” ruining our ability to live in harmony with the sea.

My Favourite part of the text is…Because….

When the children discover the seahorse in the pool and the father teaches them to respect it and  take what they need and  captures the balance between appreciation.

Having read the text I think/realise/understand/appreciate/feel…..

I appreciated the father’s lessons on respect—taking only what is needed from the sea’s “food basket”. However, as pollution destroys the reef, I feel the family’s profound grief. The image of the “boiling yellow” effluent makes me realise how easily human negligence can shatter a delicate ecosystem. I think the fragile seahorse, searching for “crystal waters,” serves as a haunting reminder of our duty as guardians of nature.

Last week i was mainly focused on getting my assessment done but other than that me and my group were heading up the hill with our wheelbarrow filled with scoria that we then filled in parts of the pipe that was either not covered properly or in places that we thought needed covering, Whistle being up there we loaded leftover debris that previous students left behind into our wheelbarrow and took them to the rubbish.

Last week we had a paper work driven week, our main goal was to finish and get up to date with our paper work modules. Although our week was paper work driven we had a bit of fun cleaning up and finishing off our drains, this consisted of picking up some of the debris left from past projects and mess made when we cleared the site. During all of this Mr scott the p.e teacher has asked us to build him some bench seats, these seats needed to be 5 metres long and the perfect height so that students could use them as seats but also so they could be incorporated in exercises. I drew up a scketch and a plan that Mr Scott loved, our next step is to make an order list so we know what to buy.

Last Friday me and the bros went up the hill to  spray paint markings for where each fence post is going to be dug.

Also to move a string line where we thought Matua Jason wanted it. But when we got back to class  we learnt that the string line was not in the right place and that we were actually meant to move it so it’s straight with the post, parallel to the fence. So that afternoon me and Javon went up the hill with spray paint to fix the problem , when we went back  up .

Me and the bro ended up moving the string line to the correct position and we re-marked our post holes.

What I learnt from that was if the string line was in the correct position we would have finished the job a lot sooner and saved a bit of spray paint as well .

Last week me and some of the boys and girls from construction Trades Academy went up to where we dug our Trenches and dumped a couple more loads of Scoria rock then picked up some rubbish planks and old concrete posts and dumped them by the bin , we also did a string line about thirty metres long so we can prepare to put our fence in .

Last week me and some of the boys went up to our trenches with a couple wheel barrow loads of scoria rock to finish our job off by filling in the trenches with the scoria.
We then set our string line for our future fence that we are going to build and the fence is going to be roughly 26 metres long.

I learnt that in a group we should gather all the materials and resources before going up to work to save time.

Last week we finished filling in the trenches, we used 4 wheelbarrows of scoria to fill in the trench. We had to push the wheelbarrows of scoria from our class all the way up the hill. When we were doing this I found out how hard it is to move the weight of the scoria even if it’s in a wheelbarrow and going uphill made it even harder, so much that multiple people dropped their wheelbarrows.

Last week the yr 13’s including Jerome, Dale, Nigel, Wiremu, Te Waipuke and myself were handed over a job to create a outdoor seat to be replaced outside the swimming pool changing rooms as the seat before had rot and collapsed so we investigated and worked out measurements on a new seat that we could be able to make. Originally the length was 6.4m long therefore we had 100×50 lengths of timber @4.8m long so instead of making one seat we decided to build two seats one being 3.3m long and the other seat to be 3.1m long to cover the entire space.

We designed, discussed possible ideas for seats we could make and obtain ideas from some of the decks around the school to determine the overall height that we thought would suit most students liking. Once we all had agreed on an idea, while also putting into consideration of how we would arrange and build the seats. We worked in two groups of 3, one groups main focus was to measure and cut timber down to the required length, we put into our cutting lists therefore using our off-cuts to stabilise the seat. The other groups focus was mainly put towards thinning the timber down and removing rough surfaces that would be sanded down later on.

Before we reached the end of the day finishing off our week our whole yr 13 group worked well, gained some building experience and got to do some hand on work while working with new power tools. Also the other yr 13’s spending most of their time sanding timber, but we managed to get most of our material ready for our first seat to be fixed together.

Last week in Building Academy, we moved the rest of the Scoria rock to fill the drain and cleared the unusable materials that were up by the drain so we have a clean area for when we build the school fence. Then we had to move the string line, and we marked every 2.2 m with the spray paint so we know where the posts are going to go. However, our teacher told us we moved the string line to the wrong place. We also did some planing for some seats we are gonna build for the gym, we had to find a idea and the materials. We used wheel barrows for the Scoria rock and we used spray paint, measuring tape and a reciprocating saw for the string line.

Last Friday I went to Kerikeri to build a deck with my dad. When we got to the place we started to pull this really old deck apart and start from scratch. When pulling the deck apart I learnt that when you pull decking timber off and there are nails you need to bend the nails back into the wood so that no one will step on them. The tools I used to take the deck apart was a dog bar, hammer, sledge hammer and skill saw. On Saturday we went back and started to set up string lines so that we can see where to put the pile holes. We then had to dig a hole to put the piles in and concrete them with rapid set. We also had to measure and cut the joist with the drop saw/ Mitre saw. On Sunday we needed to cut and lay the decking timber but we didn’t have enough time so we will go back next sunday to finish the job. I also used the planer to make sure the joist we all level. Some other tools that I used was a nail gun, 1800 level, hand saw, impact driver, drill and a laser level.

Last week when I was at school I didn’t use much tools and I was in the class instead, but during that week I took a couple of days off of school so i can go do yard work at my man’s house. while I was working there I used a saber saw and mostly spades and shovels. we used the reciprocating saw to cut trees and branches down. in the last few days we did a lot of work that involved using the saber saw.

last week we found out that the concrete in the ESM shed was unlevel making the roof of the shed unlevel so we removed all the sp80 screws from the truss on the roof where it was unlevel then we used aq bottle jack with a  4 x 2 on top the bottle jack was used to  lift the truss up making it level once we got it level we bolted the SP80  back in to the truss making sure it  don´t move and stays level after we put the SP80 all in we could start putting the ply-wood up now knowing the roof  level so the ply don´t dive down as we put it up.

Last week I had to nail up some 12 meter plywood having to use a track saw making sure the measurement is correct and using a skill saw and hand saw to cut the gap for the flashing to slide above the window. when we are nailing up the ply after cutting it then we tack the nails in my hammering skills have improved a lot also my cutting skills have improved as well.