Category: School

iBook and Explain Everything

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The iBook
I’m back, did you miss me? No? Just the legendary puns? Same. Sometimes in life, you’ve gotta have a little pun. Today I’ll be writing about the latest & greatest iBook in the history of iBooks! For this project, our teacher left a lot of it to us to figure out during the timeline we were given. Everyone was given roles in groups of two to six or seven. There were many roles given to make this iBook such as the graphic designers, writers, poets, and much more. With Willa, my fellow classmate and friend we were both given the poet role. We had to make poems about each religion and each poem had to be decently long. Making this iBook was a new experience to me and I enjoyed it a lot and found it quite interesting. I had a lot of fun in the making of this and I think it’s a really good idea to assign roles to people so that they know what they need to do.

On the other hand, there’s the EEs. I think that it was a good idea to have us make something like this but in the making of it I didn’t enjoy it. I found the app Explain Everything very hard to use because I didn’t understand it even when I spent so much time playing around with it and creating new things with it. I got very frustrated when using the app. It took me very long to make the EE and it really didn’t help when I was having challenges and feeling frustrated. However, I do think that my group pulled together at the end and so did my sikhism Explain Everything. Working in groups to make the EEs was very helpful because I could ask any group member to help me understand the app and how to use it. I do think I could’ve worked harder to improve the EE and add more animation and pictures. I think this project was a great idea but I found that doing the EEs was very, very challenging.

My Renaissance Poster

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Renaissance Poster
Hello again! We’ve been studying the renaissance in class for the past few weeks and we were assigned a project where we had to make a poster that answers this question: How did the Renaissance influence the Western Worldview? I made my project on my iPad using different apps to create the final version.

Before we started the poster, we had to research 3 different people from the Renaissance. We researched a thinker, artist, and scientist. My thinker was Pietro Summonte, my artist was Gentile Bellini, and my scientist was Jean Baptiste Deneys. For this assignment, we were told to make a triple Venn diagram about these 3 people comparing what they had in common during their life, their beliefs, traditions, etc.

Using the information from the Venn diagram we had to make a poster comparing today to the Renaissance. In my poster, I compared gender equality and I showed that in the Renaissance women were inferior to men because all three of the people I was researching were all male. The next thing I showed in my poster was that all of my people worked for a group. For example, Gentile Bellini was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice. Jean Baptiste was the official physician of King Louis XIV. (14) I think that it means that politics were a lot different back then and that people might not have had as much freedom as we do today.

Here’s a picture of my poster. I had made a few drafts so I decided to include both to show the progress and compare how the first draft was different from the last one.

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And now, some Renaissance puns

How am I supposed to breathe… With no heir?

Who invented Arthur’s round table? Sir Cumference!

I’m afraid that’s all for today. See you in the next post!

Religion Field Study

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Religion Field Study Blogpost
For our religion unit, our class has been visiting sacred religious spots. The places we visited include temples, churches, mosques, and more. We were told to answer a question for our unit. It was: “How is the worldview of these different religions represented in the real world?”

When our class went on the first field trip it was for the whole school day and it took place on Richmond’s Highway to Heaven. All the temples we visited were located near each other.

Up first was the Hindu temple. We were told to take off our shoes upon entering then we headed up the stairs. I noted as we headed up the stairs that there were a few big, bright, and detailed chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings. We were brought into a room with a large painted picture on wall of the walls that represents a big part of the Hindu religion. We were then brought into a large room with chairs lined up along the walls facing the front wall and the far side wall. Along the large wall there were many beautiful statues of Hindu gods. The statues showed what the Hindu gods wore and each represented what the Hindu gods were like. On the far side wall there was a set up there that was used to get legally married. We were taught about the Hindu gods, the history of Hinduism, and the Founder. We were shown some of the Hindu traditions and we were offered food at the end. I really liked the person we had who taught us about the Hindu history and traditions.
Here are some photos from the temple:

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Up next was the Tibetan Buddhist temple. Upon entering, I knew this temple was going to be very well-decorated. This temple was very beautiful with so many bright colours everywhere you looked. There was a huge golden statue of the Buddha with large elephant tusks. There were cloths hanging from the high ceilings and flowers all over the room. Every little thing in the temple represented something and had a deep, important meaning to it. We were taught about the Buddhism traditions, history, founder, and their beliefs.
Here are some pictures I took in the Tibetan Buddhism temple: image image image image

After that we went to visit a Chinese Buddhism temple and we were taught about meditation. At some points, they had us take off our shoes to meditate. They gave us a tour of the temple and we were taught a lot about their history. We were given hot chocolate and they offered us candy and some of their religious books.

In the afternoon we visited the Sikh temple. We were fed Indian food for lunch and I loved it. While we were there, there was a prayer going on so we bowed and sat and watched the prayer for a little while. We were offered candy and then we headed upstairs and we were taught about the history, founder, traditions, and Sikh beliefs.

The next field trip we went on was just for a small part of the day. We visited the Jewish temple Synagogue, and we learned a lot about how they pray. We also learned about the Jewish history, founder, and the Old Testament.

On our last day we visited a Christian church first. We learned a lot about the religion and we were allowed to explore all over the church.

The last place we visited was the Islamic Mosque. I learned so much about Islam there and it was a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed these field trips. I think it’s amazing that how during our religion unit my teachers would go out of their way to bring us to so many places so we could learn even more about religion. I learned so much about religion after these trips and I think it was really awesome that we could actually visit temples, churches, and mosques. We were offered food and we even practiced meditating to deepen the experience.

Student Led Conference

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imageWork I’m Most Proud Of

Some of the work I’m most proud of is my quilt square. I was really creative when I made the design of my quilt square because I made the layout look like bricks stacked on top of each other to represent how the people in the city we created all need each other in order to stay up and how everyone helps each other out. I filled in the bricks with different colours to represent different characters and events that happened in the story. Along with the quilt square and story, we each had to make two blogposts about our quilt. In the first one, I wrote more about my quilt individually and the challenges that I had while making my quilt. In the second blogpost, I wrote about my part is of the story I was representing and I included the other parts of the story along with links to the other group member’s blogposts about their quilt.

Work That Demonstrates my Growth as a Learner

Work that demonstrates my growth as a leaner would be my Destination Imagination project. By taking part in this project, I learned how to work in a group and be patient with others when working under pressure. This project taught me how to be more open minded with other people when they share their ideas. By supporting others, I learned to work cooperatively with other people and I developed some leadership skills by being more assertive with my own ideas.

Work That Shows How I’ve Developed A Growth Mindset

My Destination Imagination project is a great example of how I’ve developed a growth mindset because at the beginning of the project I thought that with my group, it was going to be very difficult to write a script a make a whole play. My group wasn’t doing very well with the instant challenges so I didn’t think that we were going to do very well in the Destination Imagination regional competition. I didn’t try very hard to brainstorm and contribute much to the group at the beginning but later on I started to understand the project more and I contributed more to the project during classes.

Marcus Brutus

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Awhile ago we started a new unit in class. The unit is about Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. To get to know the characters better, we did a small project in class where we had to create a large paper cut out of our assigned character and put a bunch of images and a few words to represent major events in the Roman’s life. We were split into groups of about 5 people and my group was assigned Marcus Brutus.
His life was very…interesting, to say the least. He was born on June 85 BC and a little while after his father died and he was adopted by his uncle. When he was older he got very involved with politics and became an emperor. Brutus had joined the conspiracy against Caesar and took part in the assassination of his friend. Marcus Brutus was involved in two war engagements where he battled against two forces. Brutus won the first engagement but had been defeated in the second. He retreated from the battle and not long after decided to commit suicide. Here’s our group’s recreation of Marcus Brutus:

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My Star Wars Blue Sky Project

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A few weeks ago, we were assigned a new Star Wars project. We each had to answer a driving question for our projects. My question was: “How do the designs and colours on a costume signify the character’s status?” I planned on doing a lot of research regarding colours, designs, fabrics, etc to help answer most of my question. After doing all my research, I planned on making Queen Amidala’s headdress as an example and I would explain how her headpiece added to her role as Queen Amidala.

As for the process, I planned on finishing and taking notes of all my research in the first week, in the second week, I wanted to have all my resources and I wanted to have finished my plan to make her headdress, and in the third week my goal was to have finished my project. I followed this schedule outline pretty well other than when the headpiece had broken and I needed much more tape to put it back together again.
Here’s my planning chart: Star Wars Blue sky form 2015

Here’s the information I’ve summed up about Queen Amidala’s regal gown and headdress:

Queen Amidala’s regal gown consisted of mostly red, to signify power, strength, and determination. Being a queen, she needed to express her commitment to maintaining Naboo’s cultural history, and her role within it. Queen Amidala wore a golden headpiece, which had the well known Jewel of Zenda, and had her hair combed over a padded form. This exceptionally bold yet formal appearance disguises her young age, expressing an air of confidence beneath white makeup. Queen Amidala had worn her regal gown during her coronation and once again right before the invasion when she met Nute Gunray via holographic transmission.

What I learned from doing this project:
I learned a more about how simple things such as colours and designs can make a bigger influence on us than we thought and I also learned so much more about the costumes that not only Padmé Amidala wore but what the other characters wore too.
Driving Question: How do the designs and colours on a costume signify the character’s status?
My answer to my driving question: Using colours such as black, red, or other dark,bold or intense colours could represent evil while brighter shades such as white could represent hope. You could also add on extra accessories such as capes, crowns, etc to make it more clear what type of role the character is playing.

And now, I become pun with the force.

Q: Which program do Jedi use to open PDF files?

A: Adobe Wan Kenobi

Star Wars episode 2: Bar Wars

Luke and Obi-Wan walk into a Chinese restaurant. Ten minutes into the meal, Luke’s still having trouble with the chopsticks, dropping food everywhere. Obi-Wan finally snaps, “Use the forks, Luke.”

Episode III: If Darth Vader’s Final Words Were Dad Jokes

“Luke… I’m reading a great book about Force levitation… I can’t put it down.”

I hope you enjoyed those corny Star Wars jokes. See you next time!