Term 2 Week 5 (Weekend Assignment)

Write a short essay of about 300 words on the following question:

'Students should be given more freedom in deciding school rules.' What are your views?

Post your essay on your blog. This will be a good practice for your common test. Think about what I've taught you about writing a good essay.

School rules are what keeps you in school. Without rules, there will be no learning and without learning, there will not be any use in schools. In school, we are faced with challenges made easy that we are going to face in the outside world. Discipline or Detention, choose your path. Rules are made for the sake of the students, but the maturity of the students will determine the rules. Thus, I feel that rules can be implemented by the students after pre-university levels.

Firstly, school rules are here to protect the student and to prepare them for the outside world. From this statement, you can tell how important the school rule is. Without it, there will be chaos within the school and there will not be peace or any form of discipline. Students from primary or secondary schools will most likely not have the maturity to even know what the school rule is for. This goes especially for secondary schools as students are now in their adolescent years. They will be rebellious and they would hate the school rules. However, students after secondary levels should have the maturity as they are already over 17 years old. Once they know that the school rules are set for themselves, they would implement the rules carefully not for their own selfish reasons but for all the students' sake.

Secondly, when there are rules, there will be punishments for 'law-breakers'. Punishments will be necessary because when the students break rules, they feel that "Hey, I've broken the school rules... So what?". They will move on even serious breaking of rules. I feel that this part of the school rule must not be implemented by students even in universities. It is because which student would want to have themselves caned or expelled out of school? They will most likely make the punishment lenient and thus resulting in further rule-breaking.

Thirdly, students will gain leadership from this practice. When you set a school rule, you must follow it no matter what happens. If your best friend gets into trouble, he will still be punished. You will be hated for the rule-implementation, but you still have to do it. This helps the students to make decisions based on general situations. They do not rely on relations to help them pass through the grasp of law. When making decisions, it is always a hard thing to choose between friends and your duty. With this, the students can learn from this and be better at making decisions without hesitations. Of course you must treasure relations, but its your choice. Sacrifice one or a hundred.

In a nutshell, I conclude that students can be given more freedom to implement the school rules, but only after pre-university levels. However, the punishments must still be set by the teachers as students will tend to be afraid.

Term 2 Week 4 (Weekend Assignment)

You have read about the nuclear crisis in Japan; you have also probably read about the nuclear crisis that happened in Chernobyl in 1985.

Does nuclear energy still have a part to play in the world?

Write a response of about 250 words in length. Post it on your blog.

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Personally, I feel that the crisis in Japan was really unfortunate. thousands of lives were lost and mutated. This is a really sad story that is going to be on the book of the history of Japan.

The creation of nuclear energy puts many lives at stake, it is like a C4 bomb, waiting to explode at the right time to cause the maximum damage. When it really explodes, not just humans, many animals will be mutated and radioactive and when our markets start to sell those fishes, a lot of people in the world will have the radioactive materials inside their stomach and this will cause a lot more mutation. It is like a virus, spreading to all our healthy body cells.

Let me ask, is there a shortage of energy around the world? I do not think so. Then why should we risk our life just to have another power source? We want the power plants and not need it, we think that the power plants will be a good power generator, but have you ever thought of the consequences? Countries like Singapore have a small land area, 1 nuclear blast and the whole country will be affected and the country will have to be in isolation.

Before you make a concluding statement, let us think again. How often does this happen? As you can see, the previous Nuclear leakage happened in 26 years ago. Furthermore, it was stated that the leak in nuclear plant of Japan was due to carelessness, thus this led to a destroyed country. If we were to take more safety precautions, this would not even happen. Its an earthquake of magnitude 9, does this happen every day? It is not like a simple earthquake but a magnitude of 9 is insane.

Thus I feel that Nuclear Plants still have a part to play in the world.

Experiece of the Japan EarthQuake

This is my letter to a close relative living in Singapore.

Dear Uncle Grob,

How are you? It is very depressing a story to tell you that my parents are fatally injured in the recent Japan Earthquake, it is a very strong earthquake as its magnitude is as high as 9.0! My parents are now in Dokyoshou Hospital located in the center of Japan and I am currently living in an orphanage, waiting for a new school to be built and the repair works to be made. I feel so lonely and sad as though a knife has been stabbed deeply within my heart.

It was a very sudden earthquake, I was on my way home from doing some errands Mom asked me to do. Maybe it was destiny but I survived the earthquake because of the errand. When I walked past the town library, the earth beneath my feet shook vigorously. Losing my balance, I feel down. I was puzzled upon what has happened but time waits for no one. Immediately, a large wave came into town but was luckily stopped by the buildings in front of me. I climbed up the platforms of the library to get to safer grounds. Everything was destroyed in a flash of a second.

I was so scared, I was alone, thinking about my family. Luckily the library was built with strong metals that could withstand the raging floods. People often say that the Tsunami came once every 100 years, but according to the history of the world, there was one in year 2004. Why me? There are many countries in the world, why Japan!? I was rescued by the military soon after the flood came, my parents were found in coma 2 days later. My parents saved my life.

So, may I ask you if I could stay with you in Singapore? Unlike Japan, Singapore is very well-protected by several countries and is most unlikely to get natural disasters. I wish to start my life anew in Singapore, together with my parents who are in coma. Please consider this as Japan is a very sad place for me.

P.S. : The medical fees are being subsided by the hospital up to 75%.

Your Nephew,
Kiyama Hiroto

ShaoLin Soccer

This is a great movie I have recently watched on the television. It is about 6 students from ShaoLin temple, believing in martial arts. But as time goes on, they slowly turned their backs against it, except one. Slowly, they begin to use the ancient technique for something more modern, SOCCER!

SHAOLIN SOCCER TRAILER


This is nice show that I have watched as it clearly shows my favourite sport, soccer.

Comments on other BLOGS

Justin's Blog

MouseHunt said...

I feel that what the pictures chosen are very well as the man looks shocked in the starting. However, in the second picture, the man looks more angry than shocked and he looked sad in the following picture. The choice of the characters are too dull though, as they are repeated. You should try to include more movements of the character. I am also quite confused at how the man successfully glued his ear to the handphone but I know that these pictures are hard to find.

Also, there is not a very clear theme stated, so I will assume that it is "We must always remain alert". This theme teaches people alot of things as people nowadays get robbed easily especially teens as they like to show off what they have. But I am not sure how to be alert or how to defend yourself against these kind of phone scams.

February 22, 2011 4.53 AM

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MouseHunt said...

I feel that the book "Village By The Sea" is a great book to read as it applies "Show not Tell". Many of the things are realistically shown in the book, the descriptions and the characterisations are really welll done. The story talks about a boy travelling alone just to make ends meet. He travelled a long distance across India, luckily he met a kind old watchmaker than gave him a good job.

I agree with Justin where he said "Due to their parents not being able earn money, the children themselves have to go out to work for money to buy everyday necessities but have no extra to indulge in other things, compared to us here in Singapore where most of use have a comfortable life. " This phrase tells us that we can never understand the real pain within poverty as Singapore's economy is quite good. We have all been living great lives, having good food on the table almost everyday. Food like hamburgers are very rare in the third world countries but to us, we can eat it for the three meals every day. This will cause us to be fat though.

February 22, 2011 5.00 AM
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Jun Hong's Blog

MouseHunt said...

This comic strip is quite funny as in the second picture, the guy that played the prank should be laughing, instead he is screaming or something. The guy being fooled by the prank is laughing, that is very weird. Also, the comic should have a nice background, to further attract people to see the comic strip. I like the way that you showed little infomation and readers had to find out what the comic meant, but the comic strip is a little too broad and people can easily misunderstand. For example, my dear friend Josiah does not even understand your comic strip, the importance of a comic strip is to tell a story using limited amount of pictures. To me, drawing a comic strip is much harder than just to write a novel.

I feel that a theme is needed to narrow down on the meanings of the comic strip. For example "Payback". Just one word can depict the story and be more easily understood.
22 February, 2011 5:06 AM
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PS: Please Mind the MouseHunt name as I have another blog using this account.

Reflection on LA Lessons

Term 1 Week 7: (Weekend Assignment)

18/02/2011

This week's blog assignment requires you to write a 200 word reflection on the LA lessons covered so far. In your reflection, you may include the following points:

• what you have learnt/gained in the LA programme up to this point;
• what you like about the programme;
• the change(s) that you hope to see in the programme; and
• a lesson that you particularly enjoyed and why.

Feel free to add other points.

I feel that the Language Arts lesson has been a whale of my time. I never really thought of Language Arts to be something where you could have fun, but now, I truly understand the meaning and enjoyment. I have learnt a lot of skills in my Secondary 2 life although it has only been 2 months. I have learnt things like Characterisation, where you are required to "make the character come alive". Now, we are learning things like the Point of Views (POV). We have learnt 6 types, which I thought only had 2. I like the teacher a lot, because he makes many jokes, even if he did not meant it, but it adds a whole lot of colour to the lesson. The between my Essay draft 1 and 3 have a lot of difference, as you could see the gradual improvement. I would hope to have the sane type of lesson. My favourite lesson was the lesson which we had to speak up about "All Summers in a Day". That was the first time I have spoken up towards the class in LA class and I was awarded 3 points because of my tone. I immediately went home to teach others of how to speak well (Stated on my blog), ever since, I have been trying to improve on my tone. These lessons have started a new era in me! :D

Description of the Clock Tower

Term 1 Week 5: (Weekend Assignment)

11/02/2011

Using one of the photo that you chose in week 4 assignment, describe the scene in the photo. Your description should include similes, metaphors and personifications in your description. Your description should be about 200 words in length.


The ClockTower was as big as a giant, it is located high up in the sky, as high as a vulture's nest. It is like the light of my life, leading me wherever I go in school. Whenever it reaches half an hour, the ClockTower screams, telling what the time is. The amazing bell would be sounded, it is as load as a lion's roar, just to make sure everyone spick and span of dirt can hear it. Whenever it rings, the class's silence was like a blood-cudling scream of anguish, set out to break my soul. Every minute passed is a glimpse of hope to me, telling me to keep going on, never give up. This tower is like my teachers, guiding my way in life, as it rings, it marks my start of school as well as the end. The noise is like music to my ears as it marks my closeness towards home. School is a gateway to adulthood. Whenever I am close to the ClockTower, my insides scream to tell me to hug it, but I myself know that the ClockTower is too huge for me. It keeps telling me to grow up, as I waited everyday, I day I could visit this amazing old tower again, after I marked a mark in my life.