Transatlantic Slave Trade⼁Critical Literacy

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post! Today we did our reflection sessions, this week I decided to summarise a text that I have read for our units in Social Studies. This text was about the transatlantic slave trade. 

Title: Transatlantic Slave Trade 

The text was an informational website that explained how the transatlantic slave worked, its impacts and how many slaves had suffered throughout the years. It also mentioned the names of the passages in the slave trade, what the slaves experienced during that time and how they survived. 

Text Type: Article 

Text Creator: Thomas Lewis

Text Purpose: To inform viewers of what happened during the Transatlantic slave trade. 

Whose views are excluded or privileged in the text?

In this text, the merchants who took the slaves were very privileged as they were gaining money and manufactured goods from when they trade the slaves with their buyer. This kind of view was very far from what the slaves experienced, they were treated as people who were only there to do work and they lived a very hard life when they were transported to their states. The citizens in America are also very privileged as they were the owner of their slaves. In this situation the slave is in a worst situation because they were owned by that specific person, meaning that person can do anything they want to the slave. Children of the slaves also suffered, they were taken away from their families and separated never to see again. Slaves didn't have a say in any of this, their views were excluded and if they escaped they would be given a punishment from their owner. While the owners, merchants and citizens were very privileged; living in a house, eating proper food, studying ans living their lives. 

transatlantic slave trade, by Encyclopædia Britannica is licensed under 

cc- by-sa-4.0

Heating Zinc Oxide

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, today for science we did an experiment on Zinc Oxide. For this experiment, we had to observe what would happen when we heat Zinc Oxide. 

Aim: To see what change happens when we heat Zinc Oxide.

Equipment: Safety Glasses, Bunsen Burner, Heat Mat, Tripod, Crucible, Crucible Holder, Zinc Oxide. 

Results: When the Zinc Oxide was heating, the colour of the Zinc Oxide turned yellow. When the heat was taken off the Zinc Oxide the colour was back to its normal colour, white.

Discussion: When the Zinc Oxide was heated, the electrons that revolve around the zinc move from one level to another, which made it change colour. 

Original

Heated

Original

Reflection Sessions | Ｗānanga

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, this year for wānanga we are going to be doing reflection sessions, where we have to summarise a text that we have read or watch throughout our week, we then had to choose some critical literacy questions about that particular text that we have summarised. This week I chose to summarise a book we have started reading in English.

Title: Children of Blood and Bones

This was a book that was written by a Nigerian-American novelist about some myths from her country. it is about a girl who lives in a world that was once bustling with magic, but something happens that takes the magic away. So she goes on a mission to bring magic back with the help of her family and a princess. 

Written by: Tomi Adeyemi

Text Purpose: She wanted to present a story where it would feature African-Americans and show how she wanted to respond to police brutality. 

What views of the world is the text representing?

In the book Children of Blood and Bone, they talked about how there was a war between two races where one race believed that the other did not belong in their land because of the difference between them. This is where war was initiated by the king, mainly because they want to rid of a threat to their kingdom, the maji, which were people who were gifted with magic. During this war or what they call the 'Raid', many innocent lives were lost and maji's lost their magic and their culture. A prospect of the world that this represents is the police brutality to African-Americans and how their culture and language were taken away from them. I am mainly mentioning the transatlantic slave trade and how west Africans were taken away from their homes to be treated like slaves in another country where they were downgraded and criticized. In that time they were taken away from their home, they had nothing at this point, their home, culture and language were taken away from them and they couldn't do anything about it, because they were slaves. Both of these are similar because of how people of other lands were treated harshly due to what they look like and how they live. 

Spirituals in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Hi everyone! During social studies, we learned about how music was used during the Transatlantic slave trade. We learned about how the trade worked and how the slaves live throughout the whole slave trade. Our main task was to learn how music was used to help slaves escape and to learn more about how slaves use spirituals to escape. 

What are spirituals?

Spirituals gave slaves hope and help uplift their moods. They were also used to relay messages to other slaves. 

Spirituals are songs that were made for religious use, they were used in the slaves' bush meetings which were basically their own version of church.  They were also used in gatherings of slaves in "praise houses", in these meetings slaves would sing, chant and dance. They would help slaves, pass their time, they would also sing at funerals and if they were allowed, they would sing it at weddings.

Underground Railroad

Underground railroads were used by slaves to escape to other parts of America, they are secret passages used to sneak slaves out.

Harriet Tubman who was an ex-slave assisted over 200 slaves to the underground railroad then helped them escape. Here, spirituals were used to communicate with other slaves. An example of a spiritual is a song called 'Wade in the Water', this song had a special meaning because it would basically tell other slaves to wade in the water meaning to swim in the water. Slaves used water to get to other states too, this was a better choice because there would be fewer chances that they would be found. 

Following the Drinking Gourd 

When the Sun comes back

And the first quail calls

Follow the Drinking Gourd.

For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom

If you follow the Drinking Gourd. 

The riverbank makes a very good road. 

The dead trees will show you the way. 

Left foot, peg foot, travelling on, 

Follow the Drinking Gourd. 

The river ends between two hills 

Follow the Drinking Gourd. 

There’s another river on the other side 

Follow the Drinking Gourd. 

When the great big river meets the little river 

Follow the Drinking Gourd. 

For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom 

If you follow the drinking gourd.

This was a song sung to communicate with other slaves. It suggests escaping when the season is spring, where the days are longer. The drinking gourd is a water dipper which was a code name for the Big Dipper which points to the pole star towards the north. When they can't see the Big Dipper, dead trees will guide them there. This is because moss would normally grow on the north side of dead trees. 

Present

Now, spirituals are well known all over the world, they are used as music for people to express their opinions through song. Nowadays, there are still many protests about African - Americans which affect many innocent lives. 

Some events that are related to this are the Civil Rights Movement which started in 1954 and ended in 1968, the Black Power Movement which started in the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter, which started in 2013 and was recently brought up during 2020. 

Map of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Elements

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post today for science we learned about the elements and how the periodic table works. Before that, we learned about atoms and made some models using the first 10 elements. So for this task, we had to choose an element and then create a poster or we can use a format to write about our chosen element.

If I were a gas element I’d like to be a Krypton and my symbol is Kr.

My atomic number is 36 which means I have 36 protons in my nucleus and 36 electrons around my nucleus. 

At room temperature (20C) I will be a gas. 

My melting point (the temperature when I turn from solid to liquid) is -157.36°C.

 My boiling point (the temperature when I change from liquid to gas) is -153.22°C. 

 

I was first discovered by Sir William Ramsay and Morris M. Travers, Britain, May 30 1898. 

I am found in nature as a gas in the atmosphere, though there is only a little amount found. 

My uses to humans are: 

Flash Photography, Kyprton is used in flash photography. When there is a high temperature explosion, krypton is used to surround the high temperature filament. Krypton was also used as a measurement to determine the length of a meter. It was states that a meter was based on the orange-red spectral line of the krypton isotope 86Kr.

Some interesting things about me are:

Krypton is one of the rarest gases on Earth, it only composes 1 part per million of the Earth's atmosphere (volume). Krypton is a noble gas, which means that they are not able to react to anything and they are also called 'inert gases' for this reason.

Krypton is colourless and odorless and it has an outer shell full of electrons. To get the gas, scientists extract air that has been cooled until it has turned into a liquid. It is then separated, using a process called distillation. 

Credits: https://www.cafepress.com/+periodic_table_krypton_tile_coaster,1389305969

Cyber Safety Tips

 

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, today we learned about how to protect ourselves on the internet and how to handle the information we put on the internet. We learned about how to keep our passwords to ourselves and what would happen if our password was given away. We also learned about why the internet is dangerous. After learning about that we then had to create a post on what we learned while watching the video.

Passwords:

Passwords are something that is private because if you share them, there is a high possibility your account will be used to do something. The only people you can share your password is with your parents because they are your guardians. Sharing with friends is also something risky, they might turn against you and use your account for different reasons. 

When choosing passwords, you need to form something that you can easily remember and is hard to guess. For example, we can combine words to create a password, then you can add numbers and symbols to make the passwords stronger.

Social Media:

Social media can sometimes be a dangerous place to be on, there is always a risk of being catfished or hacked. There are many things on social media that can harm the safety of yourself. So when going on social media don't give out too much information. Scams or frauds can trick you into giving information out.

Most importantly, you should never share your address, phone number, and bank credits online. Other people on the internet may use that information for other purposes where you could get into trouble for.