Bigfield Blackbirds

The eggs a few weeks ago



The birds last week

A couple of weeks ago, we discovered some small, blue eggs, at the back of the big field. Quite regularly, we noticed a blackbird (mother) flying over to the nest every so often. So, in order to find out what was so interesting, we stedily climbed up the tree, making sure not to disturb whatever was up there, and took some pictures. Slowly, over three weeks, we found that the eggs had hatched. The second photo is of the birds when they have hatched.
Did you know that a blackbird grows up in only 3 weeks?

Reporter: Jasmine

Exciting Music

The Westburn orchestra has recieved an exciting piece of new music written by the famous John Emeleus written especially for our orchestra. He is the granfather of Rebecca P in our orchestra. This song is called 'Parade', and it has a FANTASTIC ending, with a christmas song that everyone knows. You will hear the orchestra perform this piece in the final prize-giving assembly in the last week of the term. So come along and support the Westburn School orchestra.

Reporter: Justine

Maths Extension

Today, as a part of the year 7 maths extension, we looked at Pascal's Triangle. This was not actually invented by Pascal. The Chinese invented it but Pascal worked on it so it was named after him. He was French.

This is the triangle.

1

1 1

1 2 1

1 3 31

1 4 6 4 1

1 5 10 10 5 1

1 6 15 20 15 6 1

(It keeps on going.)

We also realised that the first line is 11 to the power of 0, the second line is 11 to the power of 1 and ... it keeps on going. With two digit numbers you add it together. Take line 6 for example.

1

5

10

10

5

1

You add it together like this. So 11 to the power of 5 is 161051.

Reporter: Justine

Christchurch Schools Music Festival! Hooray!

On the 27th of October (last Friday) Westburn School's Senior Choir performed with around 20 other schools at the CBS Arena. There were 3 nights in total, and they were all a great success! We performed some very well known songs, like Climb Every Mountain, Funiculi Funicula and A Te Tarakihi. Some students from Westburn participated in the special groups such as the orchestra, choir, recorder ensemble and concert band. Big thanks to Mrs Pritchard and Mrs Wilford for teaching our choirs so well.

Reporter: Rebecca & Selena

Maths Extension

Today we learnt how to calculate the volume of prisms, pyramids and spheres and what makes a shape a prism or pyramid.
The rule for calculating the volume of a prism is the cross section's area times the height.
The rule for calculating the volume of a pyramid it the bass's area times the height divided by 3.
The rule for calculating the volume of a sphere is 4/3 times Pi times radius cubed.
For the area of a circle times Pi and the radius squared.
For the area of a rectangle just times the sides together.
For the area of a trapezium add the bottom and top edge together and times it by the height then divide it by two.

We then calculated the volume of some common things in all sorts of shapes.