Gold for Our Champion Valerie Adams

This morning Valerie Adams has won gold for shot put. Many of you are thinking no she got silver, well you’re wrong. The reason why Valerie has the gold medal is because the Belarus woman was stripped of her gold medal because she tested positive for drugs. The president of the New Zealand Olympic Committee Mike Stanley has described Valerie Adams gold medal as 'justice served'. The drug that she was tested positive was methanol.

Running Animation

This week in room 20 we have all been learning how to animate people running. This is my finished animation of a person running. Enjoy!!!

Valerie Adams

With a valiant attempt Valerie Adams threw a distance of 20.10m in the shot put. In her build up to the Olympics she had worked tirelessly for the gold she was desperate to win. However this was not to be. Coach of Valerie Adams Jean-Pierre Eggar was proud of her achievements unfortunately she had only just come second place.

Precious McKenzie

Precious McKenzie is a well known New Zealand weightlifter but he wasn’t originally from here. In 1936 in Red Cross hospital in Durban South Africa was where he was born. Unfortunately when he was born he had a chest condition. Luckily he survived it and that’s how he got his name ‘Precious One’.

In his early childhood his father Joseph was killed by a crocodile. After he had died his mother Christina started drinking heavily so Precious and his sister got put up to foster care. Life in foster care was horrible, where his foster mothers were evil and treated them very poorly. The foster mothers malnourished them and that caused their growth to stop at 4ft10.

Later on in life he had been practicing gymnastics and his dream was to be in the circus. He wanted to be in the circus but got turned down because they said his skin colour was wrong. When he got rejected by the circus he tried a different sport, which is weightlifting. McKenzie went to try out for the South African weightlifting team and sadly didn’t get selected for the team.

Precious McKenzie moved to England and he hoped that he didn’t get treated the same as he did in South Africa. Once he got settled in England he tried out for their Olympic weightlifting team, without a doubt he made it in the team.

After he competed in the olympics for England he got emigrated to New Zealand in 1970’s. He became very well known for weightlifting here in NZ because he won gold medals in the commonwealth games. Precious McKenzie still lives here in New Zealand and is aged 75.  

Brown Brother

Joshua Iosefo is a prefect at Mt Roskill Grammar. Recently the prefects at Mt Roskill had to prepare a speech to say in front of the school so Joshua decided instead of writing a speech he would write a poem. The name of the poem is “Brown Brother”. His friend Rashad recorded him while he was saying his speech and then he posted it up on youtube.

Joshua Iosefo’s poem “Brown Brother” is about not believing stereotypes. Stereotypes are labelling a whole group with a characteristic often negative. Some of the stereotypes are like how brown people can't get proper jobs because their not qualified enough or that they

When Joshua’s poem was posted on youtube Rashad (friend), his dad, and Joshua ended up being on campbell live. When he was on live television he got the opportunity to recite his poem “Brown Brother”. I think the message in the poem is that you should never underestimate yourself and that be who you want to be.

Precious McKenzie

Precious McKenzie, the weightlifter, was preparing himself mentally for the final lift. The weight of the bar showed no mercy and bought tension to his body. As his muscles grew taut his veins were bulging. He was struggling to continue. Reaching towards the end he was determined to succeed.


Mino and Sylvia helped me produce these few sentences.

At Alive