why reading is better than TV- Jonas Holle

Why reading is better than TV

By Jonas Holle

Many children prefer to watch TV in their free time rather than read a book. Why is this so? Is it because children (and adults) are too lazy these days to even use their imagination? When you read a book you create the images of the characters and the setting, and they are your people, not another human being on the planet will imagine the same images that you will. However when you watch TV you do not do this, you merely sit there and stare at a picture in a box created by someone else. You are not expanding your imagination; in fact you’re shrinking it.

You might think “sure reading might be better for you than television, but its still boring.” If you are a person you thinks this, then you are lazy! This is because TV is no more entertaining than reading. It just doesn’t require you to do as much thinking. Therefore, you find it more relaxing, but what you don’t get is when you read a book, not only do you expand your imagination, you expand your vocabulary at the same time. Whenever you read a new book, you learn lots of new words and you don’t even realize it!

Secondly, reading exercises the brain, which doesn’t just help with things like your vocabulary and your imagination, but it actually makes you a more focussed and knowledgeable person. You just have to stroll into your local library and look at the nonfiction section and you’ll see that there are hundreds of books filled with interesting facts about all manners of things! There are books about insects, there are books about history, there are even self-help books! The list is truly endless. At the same time books are incredibly portable. All you have to do is slip it into your bag (or your pocket, if its small enough) and you can take it anywhere, while a TV is probably one of the least portable objects in the world.

 The scary thing is that our whole planet is being overrun by TV. There is not a single country in the world that doesn’t have television. But the even scarier thing is that nine in ten people will choose TV over reading in their spare time. Now that is a scary statistic and I’m not saying that everyone should go and throw out their TV right now and never look at a screen again. I’m just trying to say that we should cut back a bit guys and if you have learnt anything from the last few paragraphs then you’ll help our planet from being overrun by TV.   

"Is Reading, more beneficial than Television??" By Shivona Chandiramani

                                                                                                                       8^th April, 2011 J                        

                             Is Reading Books, better than Television??

In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."

Day in and day out, the masses huddle in front of the magic box in hopes that it will entertain them. 

No, I’m not talking about a toy box or even about a computer terminal; I’m talking about what seems to sometimes be synonymous with God almighty — the television. It utterly amazes how so many networks can all recycle the same garbage and call it entertainment.

Fifty some-odd channels on and not a thing that most people even remotely are interested in watching. The sole virtue that TV seems to possess is that it can occupy the mind undemandingly. For the record, I do own a TV, and I do have cable (FOXTEL), but I don’t sit there the whole day occupying myself to it.

I do get some use out of it, I just do not think that just because I don’t watch TV that no one else should. 

I just find it disturbing how many fat, lazy couch potatoes there are out there who will engage in such behaviour when they actually do remove their lazy butts from the couch as they to proceed to tear up the entire room just to look for the remote when they could simply get up and manually change the channel. I can think of a million more productive ways to spend one’s time. First and foremost, why not 

try reading a book?

Instead of sitting in front of the TV all day long, you could be reading a fascinating book and broadening your horizons.

I have received a great many rewards from reading, such as an extensive vocabulary and much better grades on papers, because even if it isn’t class-related, writing a better paper never hurt anyone’s grades. 

For movie buffs out there (not saying I'm not one, HaHa), many of the great movies are in all actuality originally based on books, and for the record, the books are always better because they are so much more informative and allow for greater immersion into the story.

So the next time you get the urge to watch some mindless, tasteless, regurgitated garbage on TV put down that remote, do yourself a favour and curl up with a good book.

I hope you have gained a lot of knowledge on my report on “Is Reading Books better than Television??”

By Shivona Chandiramani J

Ethan Davis 2

SHORT STORY – ETHAN DAVIS

BALI:

I was really excited to go to Bali, I had heard from a few people that it was a really good place to go on holiday for and that the culture and that the way people live their daily lives really makes you realize who you are and how lucky you are. I’d also heard from pretty much everyone who goes there is that you all most always score good waves, and that was probably the thing that got me most excited. On the plane I was filled with nervous excitement so the whole way there on the plane I couldn’t sit still. There was also another reason for my excitement, I was going to meet some of my best mates who we hadn’t seen for around a year and a half. We got there in the morning at around 7 o’clock Balinese time, luckily Bali and Australia are almost in line with each other so the time difference wasn’t too bad. We were going to stay in Bali for two weeks. We stayed in a really cool little villa with a pool and there was about 3 bedrooms surrounding it, I got my own so I was stoked about that.

During the two weeks that we stayed there for we ate out pretty much every night and no-one luckily got a case of “Bali Belly”, the two words tourists use to describe food poisoning in Bali, it happens a lot. The food was so good and the people were really helpful and I was surprised to hear that many people spoke English.

The roads in Bali are ridiculous there are about 100 cars and 1,000,000 motorbikes it’s scary. In Bali there are often major traffic jams and so having a motorbike to weasel through cars is pretty helpful. That’s why I guess most of the population have motorbikes, they literally cram 5 people on a bike meant for two and there were newborn babies just sitting on the handlebars, it looked like they were trying to kill them. Bali is also a lot poorer than Australia and there are so many homeless people, living in construction sites or just anywhere under shelter, especially as in Bali you can get some pretty horrendous thunderstorms.

The animals there are pretty wild too, when we went to the Uluwatu monkey temple they would steal everything that hung off you sunglasses, thongs, hats and as a result I had my brand new thongs chewed up. In the process they bit me and about 3 hours after I started to vomit (all over the rental car) and I felt really bad, I got taken to hospital because they thought that I might get rabies, so I had a vaccination and then went back to the villa later that night.

While we were in Bali, we also surfed, we had a local guy called Yudi who knew the waves really well and everyday he took us to different waves: Nusa Dua, Balingan, Cangguu, Uluwatu, Rainbow Bay etc. This was the highlight of the holiday for me as the waves were super fun and we had one perfect day at Nusa Dua. Bali is the best! 

Bella Kable Task 2

I was so excited for board training; it was this afternoon from 4:30-6:00pm. The waves were big and an on shore wind was causing rough conditions that were also causing bluebottles to wash up on the shoreline. When I arrived at training we were all sent out in the corner of the beach and were told to paddle down the beach to where we were going to be training. Massive sets were rolling in and we all caught massive waves into the beach. As we were paddling in and out doing a couple of paddling drills from the beach a massive set wave hit us when we were all paddling out, as it was massive, the biggest wave of the day everyone let go of there boards, and since we don’t have leg ropes all of the boards flew into the beach dinging and cracking each other. When we had all finally swam in to the beach we all ran to our boards to see what condition they were in and if any damage had been caused. Mine and the coaches’ daughter Harriett were the only two boards that had smashed together and dinged each other’s boards. My board and Harriett’s boards were stuck together with my fin going into the middle of her board and making a massive whole in the bright green fiberglass surface. Her board was completely damaged and had to be taken to the ding repair the next day whilst mine was only a slight scraping to the fin, which didn’t make a difference to my board and hasn’t had to be repaired for the past two years. As training was cancelled due to the board dinging incident I ran home straight away and started crying on the way there because I was upset about dinging Harriett’s board. When I was running past the surf club my coach screamed out to me in an angry tone, Bella you must be careful of your board and not let it out of your sight or else you will cause danger to a person next time. These lines Brucie my coach had said to me made me even more upset and sent me running home as fast as my legs could take me so he wouldn’t be able to say another nasty word to me. When I arrived home I explained the whole situation to my parents, my dad sent an apology to Brucie and Brucie rang my Dad back explaining that he had only said those mean words to me because he had had an argument with the man parked next to him just before he had seen me about being too close to each others cars. I felt a lot happier once Brucie had explained why he was so annoyed at me.

This was in the under 11’s age group and now two years on every time I see Harriett’s board around the club house or being paddled I see the repairing of the ding in bright blue a completely different colour to her green board.

Jordy Frish Task 1

Camp Experiences

It was the first full day of camp and I had two of the best activities. After a long walk to where my groups’ activities were we finally arrived at a tiny metal door that I doubted I would fit through. We were told that this was where we would be doing caving. After a quick demonstration on how to put on the safety helmet and some rules we plunged into the darkness.

At the beginning of the cave it was a nice width but as we started to crawl through the pipes I realised this was not going to be fun. At the first open room it must have been thirty-six degrees with about eighteen people breathing in one enclosed room with no fresh air. After that it only got worse. After we got past the point and went into the next open room, it was not only the one room that we had to turn off our torches, but it was ever smaller and still those twenty people breathing in and out.

 As we continued things widened but still the spaces were cramped and stuffy. After a gruelling thirty minutes in that cave we exited and we were given a choice, either go back with only one torch or take the ten second walk back to where we started. I was kind of bewildered that thirty minuets in a cave transfers over to ten seconds of walking.

Then we did the most challenging activity, it was called “Adventure Valley”. This course was built by the army and it was properly built for army training. The first obstacle was jumping down through tyres and landing in muddy water. Most of the course went on like this for quite some time all the courses were hard but one course in particular was the worst. This obstacle involved climbing up a slippery pipe with no grip and then had I to climb down it without doing too much damage to myself.

Then we had dinner. It was one of the best (camp) spaghetti and mince ever. After dinner we went to a waterslide to have some fun.  The water temperature was perfect and it was a good length, everyone had some fun on itJ.

The next day was the last day of camp and my group had the best activity. We had the giant swing. The swing was a 15 meter drop and a 4 second free fall. We were all give a number in order to go on it. My number was 16. After waiting for 15 people in front of me, I went up and it was scary. At the very top you have the choice to pull the rope that starts the swing or go lower. At the very top I pulled the rope and I felt a powerful jolt, and I was falling after the four seconds that felt like an eternity. I swung back up and then down again this repeated for quite some time until it finally stoped.

 Overall, I think it was an amazing camp. Everyone had lots of fun and it gave the new students a chance to make friends and  I also challenged myself and learnt new things. J

Jordy Frish Yr7 English

Ruby Biancardi Task 1

It only takes one day for you to fall in love with Paris. Trust me that’s all it took for me. From the moment I stepped out of the plane and an associated 21 hour flight I knew I was destined to be here.

It was back in 2007 when I took my first trip to Paris. The four of us went - my mum, dad, brother Hugo and I. We were warmly greeted by the French at the airport although my parents weren’t impressed when my mum’s suitcase was lost. It was only after at least an hour and a half of negotiating that we finally got out of the airport (except my mum was still angry because she didn’t have her bag). From there we instantly got a taxi and were transported to our luxurious apartment right in the heart of Paris. The apartment had an astonishing view of the Eiffel Tower or in French “Le Tour Eiffel”.

My first priority was to check out the place. There was quite a bit to check out with its 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom a reasonable sized kitchen, a living room and 2 floors and a TV of course! I liked the place and was ready to settle in for the 1 week stay. We had arrived early in the morning so we had a whole day ahead of us to explore.

At around midday, after a lot of fussing about over sleeping arrangements and unpacking and of course the awful torture of homework, we were all set for a picnic in Champ de Mars (the park in front of the Eiffel Tower). We had a nice little picnic which included fresh warm baguette from the baker with fresh meat from the local butcher (my mouth is watering even thinking about it). We also had splendid view of the Eiffel tower.

Given Hugo and I were only young at the time, mum and dad took us to see a French play in the park after our picnic. The play was hosted and performed by children around my age (eight years old). It was a lovely little play based on the story of little red Riding Hood but my brother cried when the wolf appeared!

 That evening we had dinner out to celebrate the fact that it was the first time in Europe for Hugo and myself. The restaurant was of high quality and in fact it had 1 Michelin star (which means it’s very high up in the ranking of restaurants). Hugo and I had continuously been warned on approach to the restaurant to be very well behaved, although this meant nothing to him as he was only three years old! My mum made me order very exotic food and in the end I tried SNAILS (in French “escargot”). They weren’t that bad thinking about it now.                                                                                                                                                                                                

The day was wonderful and we all really enjoyed it for our first time and we didn’t want it to end but there was always tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So really we had nothing to worry about except mums lost bag!!!

Darcy Burgess story

VECTOR MARSDEN

by Darcy Burgess

We sat in the luscious green grass of the beautiful Sandam School playground. Sandam was my friend Jimmy’s and my regular destination when we went to his place. Jimmy lived in an apartment just opposite Sandam and we would get a football and go for a kick in the freshly cut grass.

Sandam playground had everything from a smooth road for skating to a wall to play thumbles (a game we used to play). Another thing about this spectacular place was if you walked to the far side of the playground (from Jimmy’s place) there was a mulberry tree. Jimmy and I used to climb right up to the top of the tree to get the ripest and juiciest mulberries. We would come back home with blood red and black stains all over are new school clothes.

As much as we loved Sandam there was only one problem: the park was actually a school ground for the kids of Sandam Public School. This would have been completely fine but the Principal of Sandam was a horror­–just a real nutter.

I had never known this until one day.

Jimmy and I were kicking a football against the school wall when we heard this firecracker-type explosive noise, the hairs on the back of our necks stood up. Out walked a giant of a man with wide shoulders and muscular arms. His head was shaved and he was almost completely bald and had a tattoo of a skull on his right bicep. He started approaching Jimmy and I. We had no idea what do. We froze. It was like our feet were stuck in mud,

I couldn’t move.

I saw the man’s eyes widen and turn an awful murky green. He stepped one inch in front of our faces and bellowed, “Get outta ‘ere. I don’t wanna see youse ever come ‘ere and kick the ball against our wall again,” he shouted. “So go on get out.”

“Yyyyes sir,” we stuttered and then we started scurrying away like mice running away from a human with a broom, until we got to Jimmy’s place. Jimmy was the most innocent kid you have ever met and within a second he had told his mum what had happened. Jimmy’s mum was a bit the same. She knew who this man was and she told us: “Vector Marsden,” she said. “You don’t wanna mess with him boys.”

I called Jimmy over. Although I was scared of Vector Marsden
I wasn’t going to let him get away with what he did. I mean Jimmy and I weren’t doing anything wrong, we never hurt anybody, we were just kicking the ball against the wall like we had been doing for 4 years. “Hey Jimmy you wanna go tick him off again.” I said. “No way,” Jimmy blurted out. “I’m never going near that guy again. He scared the living daylights outta me.” “Oh come on,” I said, “Don’t be such a wimp.”

It took some persuading, but I somehow managed to get Jimmy to come with me.

Disobeying his mum’s orders we ran towards the school with our ball and again started kicking repeatedly against the wall. “Now,” I started saying slowly, “When Mr Bozo comes out and tells us to go away we shall do it, but when we start walking back shake your finger in the air like so (I then showed Jimmy what to do).”

We saw shadows running down the stairwell and then once again out came Vector. He ran towards us and then stopped even closer in front of our faces. I could see his huge nose hairs come curling out of his nostrils as he shouted. “Haven’t I told you rats to go away?” We didn’t say anything. “Take a bloody hint and get the hell outta my school”. We still didn’t say anything and very bravely we started walking away a lot slower than we did before and with great reluctance stuck our hands in the air.

I looked at Jimmy and our nervous face began to twitch. I started to wiggle my finger from side to side. It took less than
a second for the principal to know what we were getting at. We suddenly heard, “I’m gunna get ya you rats.” Jimmy and I bolted, running as fast as our little legs could go. I looked behind and saw Vector getting closer and closer and then the fatal blow happened. BOOM! Jimmy’s face planted onto the soft but sharp grass. Jimmy was my best friend I could not leave him behind. I stuck out a hand and he grabbed it.

Jimmy was of chunky stature and as I pulled with great strength his weight made me fall over as well. There we were, two little helpless boys with a giant of a man sprinting behind us. But we were not about to give up we lifted ourselves up off the turf and jumped the fence with tremendous strength. Our smartest move was that we kept on running. We were faster than this man and we had to lead him to the wrong house which is what we did. We got way ahead and stopped, caught our breaths and ran back to Jimmy’s place. When we got home I was surprised to notice Jimmy didn’t tell his mum what happened, he just shrugged it off. Ever since Jimmy has been a different, more confident person. We still talk about that day a lot now and it’s one of my best adventures with him.