Hello and welcome to this post about CELLS!!! So the last project I did in scimatics was on called “Comic Cells” and basically we had to write a comic about cells. We started by making a mind map about how cells interact.

 We also watched an intro movie called Osmosis Jones about a guy who’s immune system fights a disease. 

We did a khan academy quiz about cells and I did the WRONG quiz and had to start over, but when I redid it I got 100% so yay. 

Our next step was to chose a virus to research and make a wanted poster with the information you learned displayed on it. I chose to do coronary artery disease and here is my wanted poster:

But shortly after creating my wanted poster it was time to make a storyboard for our final comic, and I found that I wasn’t able to find enough information on CAD. I eventually changed my virus to 🥁🥁🥁 Covid-19! There was so much information on covid so it was easy to research so I could put lots of information into my comic. I wrote my story board (yes I’m aware it is pink, I happen to like that colour) and here it is:

Then after I had done the storyboard I was ready to writ my final comic. I did a tiny bit more research first then I started to write it and here it is:

Here are my Core Competencies:

I feel like I used most of my class time efficiently in this project. I was off task some of the time but I did use class time to work on my scimatics work.  

I used a lot of scientific vocabulary terms in my project and I did lots of research to make sure everything in it was correct. 

My characters interacted scientifically (with a little room to make it a story) and overall I was pretty happy with how other out!

Hi welcome to the last blog post of grade eight and because I am not doing PLP next year this could very well be my last post EVER (cue the dramatic music). We just had the summer exhibition and it was pretty cool (well the food was). We got to work together with the grade nines which was fun. 

The driving question for my section (conclusion) was “What is a PLP learner” 

I met with my group members and because the grade nines had already planned most of the exhibition the best we could to was try and give our inputs and critiques, which they were very open to.

In the conclusion group there were a few sections. In one of the areas we had all of the PLP trophies on display, in one we were doing a instant challenge, in one we were having people answer our driving question “what is a PLP learner”, in one we were displaying the grade nine documentaries, and in one we had some work displayed and skittles to hand out. I was stationed in the hall of hard work. 

Here is a map of our section

In the hall of hard work I displayed two paragraphs I wrote. I described the meaning of them in my artist statement below.

Basically my job was to stand in front of my work and tell people about it when they walked by. It was pretty fun but most people were just looking for the grade elevens.

We had breaks but because I drank two iced waters before the exhibition I had to go use the bathroom ever five minutes.

The exhibition was a really fun experience and it was a great way to end the school year!

Hi welcome back to my blog (or welcome if this is your first time) the project I just completed in Humanities was the New Beginnings project. In that project we learned all about the fur trade and we worked towards the final goal: creating two visuals depicting two perspectives of some aspect of the fur trade.

At the beginning of the project we made ads for Seycove because at the start the PLP teacher had planned for the final project to be an advertisement. We used the skills we had learned in the medium is the message project to construct our advertisements. 

My advertisement

We also went on some nature walk and took photos of nature to use in our final image. Here are some photos I took

One of my favourite things we did in this project was the beaver simulation. We were put into groups (HBC company, Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Northwest company), I was in HBC. The goal of the simulation was for the HBC and the Northwest company to get all the beavers and  for the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee to get all of the supplies and the gun. Unfortunately in the simulation my group didn’t do a good job and we had to make DIY beavers to stay afloat because nobody would trade with us.

I chose fille du roi as my topic and researched all about it, I created this slider:

In my first visual I used a girl looking through a doorway at a life she might have if she moved to New France. I used symbols to show the things that she might get in New France clothing, food, money, and love. She is thinking she could start a new life in New France because the life she is living isn’t very good. In visual two it shows the same doorway but instead it shows her alone, without food, without money, and with torn clothes. Basically my visuals are showing that the girl is considering going to New France but she is unsure whether she will have a good life in New France. Part of her is excited to go to New France but the other part is scared it will be worse than what she has.

I demonstrate my learning in that paragraph and thank you for reading my blog. Cya!

The year is ending and so is my time as a PLP 8 learner. Before I move on to grade 9, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on the work I have done this past year. I’m splitting the subjects in to three groups for a more thorough reflection of what I learned. 

MAKER

I learned many things in maker this year but what stood out to me the most were the skills that I acquired during the “Constructing Creative Communication” project. If you are not familiar with that, it was a two part project in which we learned how to use tools such as photography and sketching to create meaningful artwork. 

In the first half of the project, I was in a group called CARR, which was the drawing group and   named after the artist Emily Carr. In CARR, I learned drawing techniques and was able to create work I was happy with. Overall it was pretty fun for me. In the second half, I was in HERZOG (Fred Herzog) which was the photography part of the project. Unfortunately Herzog didn’t go all to well for me. My work was sloppy, my reflections careless, and my work wasn’t my best. At the time, I was pretty confused why I didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as I had enjoyed the first half. I blamed my lack of success on silly things like the ugly lighting in the school or it being difficult to take photos with a big chunky iPad. I really didn’t know why it was happening but I figured I would catch it in my reflection post, but I didn’t. Luckily for me the PLP teachers are a teeny tiny bit obsessed with reflecting, so I got a second chance to look back and think about why one clicked and one didn’t. Then while I was looking at work to write this tPol I figured it out. So what I think happened…

Usually when I take photographs for recreational purposes, I’ll spot beauty in the everyday life (similar to Fred Herzog’s art) so I found it difficult to have to just create a photograph without inspiration. My photos I find look best when not looking for a place to take a photo, when the idea just comes to me. Wen the photos I took didn’t look good it discouraged me and that’s why I think I didn’t like the project. Now when I have projects I find difficult I push through with the mindset if I try my best it will be okay.

From MAKER 8, I got powerful tools to help enhance my work and give it meaning, and the will to persevere and try my hardest in future assignments.

SCIMATICS

I’ll start by saying it right away – I’m not the best student in scimatics. For one, I really need to say that I personally dislike the combination of those two subjects, but it’s bearable so I’ll move on. In scimatics 8 I learned all of the stuff on the curriculum from fractions to the Pythagorean Theorem. I generally like math because of its simplicity like how there is always a right answer and its easy to tell if you are doing it right, but just because I like is doesn’t mean its super easy for me. What usually happens with math is that it will be tricky for me to learn how to do it but once I know what I’m doing then it’s pretty easy for me and I’m off to the races. (So mostly its a matter of having someone who I can ask a billion questions to). For science I think its interesting and I love learning about it but it has sort of a bad rep in my mind because is elementary school we literally just learned about the scientific process on repeat every year, but I like science. 

In the maker section I talked about motivation issues and truthfully it was also in scimatics, but good news by the end of this year I’m now out here trying my best so good for me. Mainly what happened was at the beginning of the school year I was super on top of scimatics and I was getting things in on time and good grades for all of the first and second project. Then in the third project (laser laws) things started to go badly. I had kind of a bad week and forgot to pay attention for three classes and suddenly I was really behind. I couldn’t keep up and I didn’t know what I was doing and incomplete worksheets were snowballing until I just couldn’t keep up and I did the worst possible thing: I gave up again and did the bare minimum just to keep my grade slightly afloat. In the first project I tried really hard in the beginning but the same thing happened and I was still dwelling in my epic flop in laser laws. Then in the fifth project I decided enough was enough and reached out for help. I got a tutor, which I was super embarrassed about, but I was worth it because my grade came up and by the sixth project I was back to having good grades. Yay!

One of my main errors was not handing work on in time which caused it to pile up and become super stressful and when I didn’t have the tools to deal with that stress it was so much easier to just stop trying but it feels so much better when I do try and I am on top of things and so in the future I will do my absolute best to try my hardest. I also learned that it was okay to ask for help and even though it was super uncomfortable it was worth it and I have no regrets about asking for help. I’m so happy that I was able to bring my grade back up and end the year in a good way!

From SCIMATICS 8 I got math & science knowledge & also the confidence to ask for help when  I need it.

HUMANITIES

The last subject in PLP is humanities. Humanities was the the class I think I had the most growth in. I learned how to write compelling paragraphs and I learned all about the renaissance and the fur trade but most importantly, I learned how to reflect on what I learned. Reflection sound easy – writing a summary about what you did but it a little more complicated. At the beginning of the year when my teachers would ask me to reflect on my learning I honestly didn’t know what I was doing.  For example when we were doing an instant challenge and in my reflection I wrote that we were inclusive of all ideas, my teachers asked me to go deeper with my reflection and I had zero idea of how to do that. Over the course of humanities 8 I have developed skills the construct accurate and meaningful reflections. 

From HUMANITIES 8 I got historical knowledge and the ability to write meaningful text and reflect on my learning 

 LEARNING PLAN

Earlier in the year I wrote in my learning plan that my learning intent was to “At the end of the year I want to be able to smoothly interact with real world adults and improve at public speaking. I want to get better at remembering science terms by using systems for remembering things. I want to expand my design skills and I want to be able to work well with the people in my learning team.”  I feel that I accomplished my public speaking skills (in a non school example I sang I solo in a choir concert which I never would have done earlier this year) and I feel more comfortable interacting with real world adults so I feel that I accomplished what I wanted to have accomplished.

WORK I AM PROUD OF

This is the change engine project (humanities) and I am proud of the paragraph I wrote and my photoshop skills in my triptych  

https://www.blog44.ca/caitling/2022/03/27/reflecting-on-renaissance/

This is the outsiders project and I feel like I did a good job on the reflection of the character’s worldview

https://www.blog44.ca/caitling/2022/01/08/the-outsiders-project-summary-blog-post/

This is the first half of the constructing creative communication project and I like some of the artwork I did

https://www.blog44.ca/caitling/2021/11/24/the-power-of-a-pencil-summary-post/

CONCLUSION

To address the driving question (why I feel that I’m ready to advance to he next grade level) is because not only have I learned everything that the school curriculum needs you do learn but in PLP 8 I have learned some valuable skills along the way such as public speaking confidence and writing strong paragraphs. It has taken a lot of F.A.I.Ls and sleepless nights to become the learner I am today but it was definitely worth it. Looking back at all my old projects I can really see the growth I demonstrated over this past year, and that is why I feel ready to transition to grade 9!

Thanks for listening / reading about what I learned this year.

Hi! Welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be talking about the project I just did in Humanities. It was called “arg matey” and it was about European exploration. 

When we started the project we just were tasked to write a story on pirates and this was the story i wrote

It wasn’t very informative and it was pretty random but at the time i didn’t know very much about pirates

We also did an activity called sketch and tell 

Then we brushed up on out knowledge of pirates and European exploration and before I knew it we were writing our final stories. My final story included all of the necessary information!

Here is my final story!

Then i created some drawing and put them into AR maker so I was ready to film. 

We all walked down to cates park and ate some pirate packs as a celebration of us being done the project. Then I filmed my final video and here it is!

In conclusion what i learned form this project was that how European exploration affected the world. I displayed what i learned in my story where i got in to depth of my pirate knowledge. I think the causes of European exploration were countries wanting riches and glory / power, and I think the consequences were disease and defamation of population. Bye

Hi welcome back to my blog! Today I will be reflecting on the humanities project I just finished. The two main goals were to use SuperimposeX to photoshop a triptych and to create a persuasive paragraph on why I think a certain topic is the most historically significant.

 First lets go back a little bit to when we first started the project when I knew little to nothing about the renaissance time period. We start off with a simulation activity where we were assigned a role. We could be anything from a powerful monarch or a serf who’s only role was to sit in the floor and give all their possessions away. Right away I checked out my card and I got serf. So I spent the whole simulation on the floor. I was thinking it was boring because I had no freedom but then I realized that this was a reflection of what some peoples lives were like. I started thinking about how demoralizing it would be to have no freedom at all. It was at that moment when I started to understand the project and why it might be of importance.

We then chose four topics that interested us. I selected Access to education, Leonardo Da Vinci, Clocks and hourglasses, and the Primavera. I then had to create a NAME chart for each of them. NAME stands for Novelty, Applicability, Memory and Effect. Here is an example of one of my name charts. 

Then I learned how to use photoshop and using the four topic I researched I created my triptych. 

It featured me in the centre. On the either sides of me you can see the historical inventions and changes that I selected. They transition into modern things when they touch the centre box. I put the Primavera changing into an apple pen because lots of art it drawn digitally now. I have a hourglass changing into a clock and books turning into an eReader to symbolize education materials. The last step was constructing the final paragraph. I collected all of the things I felt I needed to include and then I wrote it. 

I learned lots of things over this project like how to use SuperimposeX and  who Leonardo Da Vinci was, but I also learned about how society was and still is unfair and how it must feel to people with little to no freedom. I feel that the purpose of this project was to learn about the renaissance and how it personally connects to us. See you next time!

Hello wonderful people! It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post so let’s get started!

Recently I went on a school trip to Loon Lake

Isn’t the lake so pretty?

I grew so much as a learner during my time there! It was so much fun and I shared lots of laughs with my peers. I created a book to keep track of everything I did while I was there check it out! (It’s at the bottom)

At Loon lake I did so many cool things from battle archery to learning how to photoshop myself into the lake. You can read all about it in my super awesome book! As a learner I was able to quickly adapt to the new situation so I could continue to learn! I also achieved my goal of meeting new people!

Today I will be talking about what I have learned so far this year. I will be talking about things I’ve done well and things I’ve done not so well.

The first project I’m going to be talking about is a maker project. It was the first project I’d ever done in PLP and it was the becoming a PLP learner project. It involved me finding out more about myself as a learner and I had so much fun doing it. I did things like creating a Memoji that really stand out to me. One of the ways we discover ourselves was using a big life journal which was a journal with writing prompts and activities for us to use as tools!

I learned a lot about myself through that project and because it was my first project I also got to meet and get to know some of my classmates! In that project because it was a maker project I got to do artsy things and art is one of my stronger subjects so I feel that I did a good job on that. One of the things I didn’t do so well on was reflecting on it. It was my first time ever reflecting on my work and I didn’t really understand what I was doing. My reflection was pretty shallow and didn’t dive deep into what I had learned. Now I have learned the skills to go a little deeper with my reflections!

The second project I will be talking about is my humanities Outsiders project. It was a project where we read the S.E Hinton novel the outsiders and then performed it live as a tableu!

What I feel I did well in this project was my reflection. In the blog post I wrote to reflect on it! I felt that I dove really deep into what I had learned and the connections that I made. I also loved the exhibition itself. I thought I was so fun to set up in the library and transform the space into a scene from the book. Now for the bad part, for this project I feel like I did a bad job with the teamwork. I’ve had trouble working with groups for projects in the past but I did not feel like me and my group were getting along. We were constantly fighting with each other and it was hard for us to work together. I have improved with teamwork thought for example just the other day in DI (destination imagination) my group got along so well and we were supportive and listing to each other and we ending up tying for first place!

Another thing I struggle with is my fear of public speaking. Whenever I have to perform something I become a nervous wreak and that is hard because sometimes I have things in my mind that I want to share but I struggle to talk about it.

The third project I will be talking about today is the scimatics tectonic chances project where we had to create a board game about volcanos.

Now right away I will say that science and math is not my strongest area.I often struggle with and find it confusing. In this project what I did well was helping come up with the rules and designing the game board. I incorporated my create mind the help with the rules! What is struggled with was doing the assignments and handing them in on time. Usually this was because I didn’t understand the task and I did not feel comfortable asking my friends and classmates about it. I am working on that though and getting help for things like that. I am also using tools like things to help me so that I don’t forget to hand things in.

In conclusion so far this year I have learned about myself and I was drastically improved my abilities to work in a time.  In the future what I will be working on is handing in assignments on time and practicing public speaking so it gets easier!