Peace and Freedom; plus a little harmony.

The Past

January 2011
February 2011
March 2011

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Indigenous people, Aborigines

Aborigine or aboriginal refers to indigenous people. The name derives from the Aborigines in Roman mythology. Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. They currently together make up about 2.7% of Australia's population. There are significant differences in social, cultural and linguistic customs between the various Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups.There were more than 250 languages spoken by Indigenous Australians. Their recreation is a non-competitive "co-operative kicking volley game" played with a ball made of possum hide, using soccer type skills of teamwork and ball control. Students as a group leave school earlier, and live with a lower standard of education, compared with their peers. Although the situation is slowly improving. Indigenous Australians experienced high unemployment compared to national average.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aborigine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

This lesson is interesting. The lessons now are better. Thank you Mr Kuek for putting in that effort! We know you had tried hard in making the lessons to be fun and at the same time easy for us to understand. Thanks :) And your drawing is very cute ^^ haha.

Peacefully blogged at 11:06 PM

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Today we learnt about forests as resources. Forests have several uses- Maintaining water supply, maintaining air quality, maintaining soil quality, natural treatment f waste water, flora and fauna, habitat for people, recreation. research and education, and protecting coast. Forests enable water to be collected and stored within a water catchment and are able to maintain the quantity and quality of water. Forests play an important role in the water cycle. Also, we learnt about

1) Increase in surface run off
2) Increase of soil erosion

Increase of surface run off is due to the leaves and branches that intercept and reduce the impact of falling water. It decreases the surface run off and increasr in water seeping into the ground. This increases the storage of groundwater which flows into rives, and reservoirs.

Increase in soil erosion is dure to the absence of roots, which increases soil erosion and increases the soil deposited on rive bed. This causes the river to become shallower and decreases the rrive ability to contain water awhich allows easier for floods to occur.

Today's lesson was quite interesting, better than usual. Thanks Mr Quek for trying to make the lesson interesting. And how did we do for our test? xP

Peacefully blogged at 4:10 AM

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Today, we learnt about a new type of forest- coniferous forest. Coniferous forest is found in places that experiencea cool continental climate, Its temperatures range is from -40 degree Celsius to 21 t has a low amount of precipitation. it is located 45 degree North to 70 degree North. The leaves in this forest are evergreen and they are needle-like. Because they have a small surface area, it reduces transpiration during strong winds and low moisture. Flowers and fruits in coniferous forest bear both female and male cone. Female cone produces seeds while male cone produces pollen.

Trees have thick bark to protect them from long, cold winters. It has flexible branches that slope downwards to enable snow to slideoff easily. The roots are shallow, and spreading. This enables trees to absorb water easily from soil surface when snow melts.

Today's lesson was quite interesting and it is better than the previous lessons. Thanks for trying to make the lesson interesting, Mr Quek! :)

Peacefully blogged at 5:50 AM

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Today, we went through the worksheet that Ms Lee gave us. We have to answer the question based on the marks allocated and decide what we should write. After that, we went through the workbook answers of 3.4 . We also learnt more about the tropical climate. Tropical climate is divided into two groups. Mangrove forest is found in tropical climate, as long as it is near the coastal area.

Peacefully blogged at 4:24 AM

Thursday, February 10, 2011

After reading the post, I have more interest in visiting the mangrove swamps. Indeed, when we talk about mangrove, people will link it up to diry with lots of insects. However, to me, im interested in visitiong it. Personally, i like visiting nature places even though im scared of insects. But it is a fun place to visit and take a walk at. If we can forget about the dirtyness and mosquitoes in the mangroves, it is actually a nice place with nice view of beautiful flowers and fruits. And I believe that if you went there before, you would definately want to go again, because it is such a great experience!

About todays lesson, it is quite interesting with videos. But mr Kwek, please speak louder because we could hardly hear you . thank you!! (:

Peacefully blogged at 5:28 AM

Saturday, January 29, 2011

On 25, we did a table comparing tropical monsoon forest and tropical rainforest. I think that this table is useful and allows me to learn more easily whenever there is a test. We learnt about the wind directions of Monsoon at different period of the year. I learnt that thw flowers in tropical rain forest are colourful and attractive. This is to attract insects to help them to pollinate as there is very little wind in the forest. Also, we watched a video about the canopy and we can see that at the canopy layer, all the tress interlock each other.

This lesson is much more interesting than the previous lessons. Thanks for showing us interestiong videos and i look forward to more in the future.

Peacefully blogged at 11:42 PM

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Today, ms lee taught us about natural vegetation, which is what we had been taught before the previous lesson. Today we get to know more about where is the types of vegetations should be at. For example, tropical rain forest are located at 10 degrees north or 10 degrees south from the equator. Also, the rate of rainfall determines the main groups of natural vegetation it is and the temperature determines the types forest, grassland and desert vegetation found in a place. I also learnt that the further a country is away from the equator, the colder it is. We also seen a climograph today and we are able to know which is referring to temperature and which is referring to rainfall.

I knew today that one hectare of land is about the size of one football field. Leaves in tropical rain forest is broad and waxy, with drip tips. This information is useful to us because it is all about our Earth. It help us answer all our questions about Earth. Today's lesson was okay. But i hope that there will be more interesting lessons in the future.

Peacefully blogged at 5:21 AM