My Dream Career

My Career Essay
By Charlie Gilbert

My chosen career is a farm manager. This is because I love farming and feel that is what I would like to do when I leave school.

A farm manager's job is to produce milk/wool/meat and grain products from livestock and your machinery. You care for your livestock and raise good crops that are put into foods. You plan your day to day jobs and you must be punctual. Farming offers freedom of your own little country to do what you want on it.                        
To work on a farm you need a basic knowledge of animals, machinery and agriculture.  Having your driving licence is essential, driving trucks/trailers/motorbikes and tractors is important to run a farm and help with day to day jobs.
After finishing school, you can study agriculture at Lincoln University near Christchurch.  Your course covers things like looking after animals, studying weather patterns, crops, machinery, agricultural spraying and drilling, fencing and other practical aspects of farm work.
Getting on the job experience is important and you can work in a variety of different farm operations, dairying, sheep, crop, forestry, pig and chicken farms etc.
A good basic maths knowledge is important for measuring and working out spraying amounts and drilling quantities.  You need to keep good records of what is happening in your business and work well with others like contractors who come in to do special jobs for you on the farm. You need to be physically fit and strong and be calm when things go wrong. Having common sense is really great when you are working with animals that don't always do what you want them to do.
I enjoy working outdoors, am physically fit and like the freedom to choose what we are doing each day. I am safety conscious around the farm and driving my motorbike.  I am prepared to work in all conditions.  This year I have been helping Dad with lambing, it has been very cold and tough on the animals but it's great to see them doing well and being happy.


       

Timaru 2nd August swim meet

At the beginning of August was the Timaru Winter Swim Meet held over two days.  For the first time, instead of  just entering everything I decided to enter the events I thought I could make better times in.
I entered the 200 IM, 100m, 200m and 400m freestyles, 200m and 50m breaststroke.
I knew the best Canterbury swimmers would be there and the competition would be tough.
I had a great day Saturday and swam great personal bests, on Sunday I had the 400m free which is 16 lengths of the pool.  I often forget to count and so I keep my eye on the best swimmer and when they're finished then I know I'm nearly finished.
I was totally focused on getting a good time, I started off strong and after three lengths i could hear Narcis, my coach, whistling at me to hurry up.  Every time I put my head to the side to breathe I heard his whistle, he knows how to time it just right.  With about five lengths to go I could also see Narcis walking up and down whistling, waving his arms to go harder.  It really hurt and I breathed on the other side so I couldn't see him egging me on.
When I had finished I felt dead.  My body ached and i was exhausted.  I took nearly a whole minute off my best time!  I went back to the team, Narcis said...."listen very carefully Charlie, very, very good...but i get half the credit for that!"  Turns out I qualified for the Junior Nationals with that time, but, unfortunately I turn 13 eight days before the Nationals so I cannot go.
We celebrated on the way home with Burger King!    

Swimming Results

Hello everyone. I have just finished my swimming at the Neptune swim meet in Dunedin and will tell you the results....

[ IM is all the strokes in one race]
[ Relay is a group that swim a part each]

200m Breaststroke I got 6th place
100m IM I got 16th
50m Breaststroke I got 10th
100m Freestyle I got 15th
200m IM Relay we got 4th
50m Freestyle I got 19th
100m Fly I got 9th
200 Freestyle relay we got 3rd
200 Freestyle I got 8th
200 IM I got 12th

There were nearly 500 swimmers from all over the South Island.

Thank you for reading. I will keep you posted....

Hey everyone and welcome back to term two. I hope you all have had a wonderful holidays and hopefully enjoying the new term. I am very excited because on the Queens birthday weekend I'm going to dunedin to do some more competitive swimming against the south of New Zealand. I am really looking forward to it and I will post my results

What i know about St Peter

St. Peter was one of Jesus's disciples. Jesus told him that he is going to deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter said he would always stand by Jesus and so didn't believe him.  When the time came and Peter was asked if he was a follower of Jesus, Peter denied it for fear of his own life. Peter continued to deny knowing Jesus a further two times just as Jesus had said he would. After Jesus's death Peter was filled with the holy spirit and continued to spread the word of Jesus's life.

at the moment i am watching the cricket world cup india vs pakistan i hope new zealand wins and everyone has a good celebration

Grandma

My Grandma died from cancer in november 25th 2014 She died at  only 66!

She loved to play the piano with my brother Danny He has a blog on the yr 6 2015 site.

My grandma didn't cook very often but did amazing dinners. My Grandma used to buy  really hot mustard and my Mum fainted it was so hot.

Grandma lived with my uncle Evan and my Grandad in a small house on a farm that my Grandad runs. My Grandad owns lots of sheep and irrigation but not big machinery. Grandma had lots of brothers and sisters and her  brother is a Minister.

She used to call all of her grandchildren once a week to see what everyone was up to. She loved doing patch work and made us all a quilt each. She was always helping in the community and at church.

When she found out she was dying she had two wishes. One of those wishes was to see our school swim sports. She loved watching our races and told everyone it was one of the happiest days of her life.

At her funeral i was asked to do a reading, I was pretty nervous but everyone said what a great job I did and how proud my Grandmother would have been.

I wish I could see her again and some day be with her in heaven.

By Charlie

About me project

              About me

My Achievements in my Life                                            

I have made it to the intermediate squad and have become a successful swimmer. I also have joined the swim club and started doing competitive swimming and trying to get times for the nationals.  These are the best swimmers in the country go to Wellington to compete against the best swimmers.

I got into the cricket rep team and played 50 over games with teams all over the south island and made good friends with people in my team. I love playing senior cricket sometimes in my dads team too.

I was chosen to be Deputy Head Boy at school for 2015 which i am real proud of.                              

I have been an ECB leader and went to preschool to look after kids, this prepares them for coming to St Josephs.

        My Strengths

My strengths are farming and riding motorbikes. I like to swim 8 times a week 5 nights and 3 mornings. On saturdays i play cricket which is my favourite sport apart from swimming. I am also very good at video games and using the internet. I like to hang out with my friends and have them over from time to time. I like P.E and learning new sports and games.

I communicate easily with others and don't mind speaking in front of a crowd.

       My weaknesses

My weaknesses are literacy because i don't like to practise at home. I can get off task quite easy and talk to my friends. I can find it quite hard to do a challenging task and most of the time i dont ask the teacher for help.

       My goals for this year

My goals for this year are to contribute more ideas to the teacher and to ask the teacher for help when i need it. Also to help out my license group and try to get them to become fully licensed students and helping them to make the right decisions in everything they do. Also to get them to learn how to use their google docs. I would like to read more books to help improve my literacy and writing skills.

       What helps me to work best

I like to use google documents to publish all my writing and show my mum and dad when i get home. I like to do research and search up interesting and new things to me. I also like to present things on google docs, make a poster or powerpoint to make the work interesting and fun to read. I like to have quiet time to get my work done.

Looking forward to this year

What i'm looking forward to this year is going on camp at the mountains for a week later in the year.  Swimming will Be an important part of my life  because i have good enough times and qualified to go to a swim event called the Town and Countries. The town and countries is below the nationals so basically everyone that hasn't qualified for the nationals can attend the town and counties.

I am looking forward to visiting St Kevin's for technology again and preparing myself for next year at high school.

  

 What is my future career

I would love to take over my dads farm and continue what my dad farms today. His farm is Lucerne which is like grass but animals love it. My dad hires a contractor that mows the Lucerne and then collects it. He then sells it to the dairy farmers who pay a high price for the Lucerne. My dad has 10 paddocks of Lucerne and gets great money each cut, but then my dad has to pay 33% of the money to the government. My dad also has cows and fattens them up ready to go to the works and lambs too.

I would love to work at the aquatic centre and help teach others to swim, maybe become a lifeguard.

My hobbies

What i like to do in my spare time is in the weekend/Holidays go around the farm with my dad on my motorbike and check the sheep and cattle with our farm dog paige.

On monday wednesday and friday morning i like to get up at 5.30 and start swimming at 6-7.30 in the morning with my squad friends. I like to go to motorbike trails with my friend and race on the off road tracks. I like to catch up with my friends at school and have them over sometimes in the weekend.

 Things my hub need to know about me

I am friendly and dependable and enjoy their company.

By Charlie

Glenn Maxwell

Lucky Break

By Patrick Loughlin

My love of cricket first made me want to read this book, it has a cartoon cricketer on the front cover which I thought looked interesting.

Glenn Maxwell is a famous Australian cricketer, who helps the writer with cricket bits throughout the story.

Will Albright is a twelve year old boy and captain of the cricket team.  He attends a cricket camp for T20 training, that's a short game when you only play 20 overs each.

There are same amazing cricket players at camp and he soon finds one is pretty mean and unfriendly, Darren 'Killer' McKinnon.

A funny part of the story is when they have a big food fight .

Wil has a night game of cricket when the ball lands on his toe and breaks it so Will has to continue with a sore foot.  At an important game he accidentally runs his best friend Shavil out when he wants to impress the selector.

In the end Will and Darren become friends and Will learns that to be successful they have to work as a team.  

The training sessions are very important because there are positions in the academy up for grabs.

I loved that at the end of this story there is a glossary of all the cricket terms and names used and also there are cricket tips,especially batting from Glenn Maxwell himself.

This book was easy to read and had short chapters so you could read it even when you don't have much time.

I would recommend this book to all fellow cricketers and anyone who enjoys watching the cricket and playing

I now have book two and plan to read that one next and next time we have a book review I will do that book - because already I’m halfway through it.

By Charlie

A strong piece of writing, Charlie - I can tell that you really enjoyed this book based on the good feedback and detail you have given about it.

You have a descriptive writing style and it is superb - but lets make consistent punctuation and re-reading of all sentences a focus. Re-read and look for natural pauses - capital letters and commas are important to help your writing flow.  This will look good on your blog - well done. 

Sorry I haven't been posting lately. At the momment I am doing projects that I'm gonna post soon