Month: January 2022

mPOL 2022 Here we go

Hello and welcome to my first mPOL (mid-year presentation of learning). Now normally, this would not be my first mPOL, but because we did not do them in grade 8, this will be my first one. In this mPOL, I will be answering 2 driving questions. “How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?”, and “How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?”

I shall start off with the first question. 

How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?

I feel the best way to show the answer to this would be to start with the projects that I think demonstrated my best work for each class (except maker because that is next semester).

Humanities

“Working with Words” 

You can check out my blog post for this project here.

I chose this project because it has been my favourite humanities project that we have done so far. Because of this, I worked hard in the project, and I am really proud of the outcome. I think I enjoyed this project the most because I love poetry and liked how we could really make this project to our own specifications and tailored to us as an individual.

I learned a lot about poetry in this project, as well as presentation skills and public speaking. This project taught me the importance of creativity, looking inward and trying to decipher who you are, and how to bounce ideas off of peers. I think during this project is when I grew most and had the most fun in school since the beginning of the year.

Scimatics

“Chemistry stories“

You can check out my blog post for this project here.

I chose this project because I think it shows my perseverance. I was struggling internally a lot during the time of this project so I am proud that I was still able to produce good quality work. I also enjoyed learning more about atoms and the processes that go into making the matter that is all around us.

How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?

Though I think that my learning plan is has good goals for me to work towards in the rest of the year, I am actually quite content with not meeting the proficiency requirements that I have set on my learning plan. Due to the recent influx of stress, I have come to the conclusion that my mental health was being damaged greatly by trying really hard for extending marks and always being 100% attentive. So yes, I would still like to get extending marks whenever I can but I am not going to be disappointed if my grades do not match what I have set on my learning plan.

Some things that I feel I have done well at that are in my learning plan would be;

  1. I have been using things regularly for both school and non school related tasks and it has helped me greatly.
  2. I have set up routines that help me focus on my homework and help me not to get discouraged.
  3. I have been using more positive affirmations to help me balance mental health with academics.
  4. I have been asking my peers/parents more often when I need clarification on concepts that I do not understand.

Some areas that I want to have more growth in by the end of the year would be;

  1. Asking my teachers for help when I need it.
  2. Give myself more time to write better reflections and responses (humanities).
  3. Take more notes when I think I may forget the information that if being shared. Especially when I am having a hard time being “present” in class.
  4. Starting homework asap so that I don’t put it off until the point where I am then rushing to get it done.

I hope you enjoyed my mPOL and I will see you again at the tPOL’s! (Transitional presentation of learning)

As always, Brooke.

Loooook It’s Sodium Hydroxide!

Hola mi amigos 👋🏼. Welcome to another scimatics post on this lovely blog of mine.  I have quite a few blog posts I have to write at the moment so im not going to drone on and on with this intro so lets just hop right on into the project.

Project Overview

This project was called “Chemistry stories” and in this project we were to create an animated video about chemical bonding. We would be using keynote to create the animation and then voiceovers would be added in a separate app like iMovie (but i used a great app called InShot). Then the final video would be presented to the class.

Project Start Mind Map

As per usual we started the scimatics project off with a project start mind map. I put in any questions I had for the project, what I already knew about atoms and matter, and all of the questions from the QFTs.

At the end of this project we also added to the mind map a section about what we learned from this project and I also answered as many questions as possible that I came up with at the beginning of the project. 

The Project

We did a fun little experiment called “Investigation 2A” in this project where we got to see some chemical reactions up close and personal. But before we did the experiment, we practised creating an animation by showing the steps that we would be doing. We used keynote to create the short animation and I used the instant alpha feature to take stock images and turn them into moving pieces for the animation.

Lab animation

 

We also did quite the bulk of workbook pages to further learn about this new thing called ionic and covalent bonds and how they are formed. We also learned about writing chemical formulas and learning how to say the names of different covalent compounds.

And as per proper video composition, we created storyboards to help us plan out what we would be putting into the animation;

Driving Question

How do the electron arrangements of atoms determine the chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds?

I have to say that the best answer to this question would be the animation video itself as it talks about the attraction of the atoms based on their electron arrangements. So without further ado, here is the final product;

Curricular Competencies

Processing and Analyzing: Construct, analyze and interpret models and/or diagrams

My story boards had accurate Bohr diagrams and clearly showed the processes of both ionic and covalent bonding. I think I demonstrated a sophisticated level of understanding because I added a lot of different components and prior knowledge along with questions that we had for the project. I was able to articulate my ideas cleanly into my mind map layout.

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

My Project Start Mind Map shows how I can display my prior knowledge and prepare for new evidence. The Investigation 2A Lab Report showed that I can form a reasonable hypothesis using what I already know. I demonstrated an accomplished level of understanding with this milestone. My storyboard was well thought out and accurately showed snapshots of what would take place in the animation.

Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon

My voiceovers are mostly clear and synced with my animation. I find that my video has a solid amount of humour in the voiceovers mixed with scientific language and motion in the animation. I feel I demonstrated an accomplished level of understanding with my animated video because I meet the expectations in the evaluation rubric. Plus I think that my video is quite entertaining.

Conclusion

So this project definitely expanded my knowledge of atoms and the different things that they can do. In conclusion this project was quite cool and I think that I did a pretty good job overall. Also shout out to Walter the emotional support kangaroo-

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.

Insert Name Here – Worldview in Poetry

Salutations! I am back with a very exciting humanities blog post. This project was called “Working With Words” and its all about poetry. Now you may have remembered that i actually did a blog post on poetry in grade 8 for the student blogging challenge -> A Dive Into Literature – Poetry, and if you read that post you would already know that I am a big poetry fan. So lets find out what this project was all about!

The Driving Question

The driving question for this project was “How might I construct text that shows who I am right now?”, and the answer is… through using different types of poetry! This project taught us how to find creativity and joy in poetry, comprehend poetry to make meaning, and how to use creativity, joy, and meaning to create effective texts. I chose to try and improve myself in the competency of “Positive personal and cultural identity” because I felt that it was the perfect competency for a poetry book about my worldview. Wait did I just say worldview? Yup! This project also brought back the idea of world view and its 7 different aspects (time, geography, beliefs, economy, knowledge, society, and values). And overall I think that I did a great job at demonstrating and growing in the area of personal and cultural awareness throughout this short project, so keep an eye out while reading my eBook and see if you think I did :).

The Project

Of course a lot of people do not know much of the technical side of poetry so we started off with building our knowledge on poetry terminology. Over the course of the project we would be learning 18 new vocabulary words and creating 9 different types of poems. With each new term  came a new activity and a lot of practise analyzing and presenting poems. Here are some of the poetry terms that we learned;

And as we were starting to make all of these poems, we had to create a place to put them all… 

A super duper amazing eBook! The eBook would display all of our poems and include texts and audio messages to complement each one. We also had a bio page where we have an about me video and link to this wonderful blog that you are currently on. Ok enough of this, I think the best way to learn about what we did in this project would be to just look at my book! Here it is;

Conclusion 

The final showcase of this project will be a live-streamed “coffee house” performance that we are putting on tomorrow night at school. I am not entirely sure what it consists of yet but I’m sure it will be quite entertaining! Overall i think that this was my favourite humanities project that we have done and I am hopeful that this will motivate me to write poetry more often. I think that it was at times a little challenging to think about how to put my worldview into words but i think that I got the hang of it by the end. I am very proud of the work that I did in this project and hopefully we can use poetry in another project soon!

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.

Guilty as Charged!

Bonjour and welcome back to another Humanities blog post.

This project was called “Revolutions on Trial”, and in this project, as you may have guessed, we took famous revolutions and put them into a mock trial.

Crane Brinton – The Anatomy of a Revolution

Most of us started this project off not knowing much about revolutions, so one of the first pieces of building knowledge that we did, was learn why revolutions happen and what the different stages of a revolution look like. We studied Crane Brinton’s theory of revolutions, consisting of 4 main stages. The stages were incubation, moderate, crisis, and recovery, followed by a question of either peace or war? We were asked to create a diagram to showcase Crane Brinton’s theory, here is mine;

Animal Farm

A new thing that we did in this project, was study and read a book that was related to the topic. This book was called Animal Farm was written by George Orwell. This story of animals rebelling on a farm was created as an analogy for the events and characters in the Russian Revolution (Mar 8, 1917 – Jun 16, 1923). Every week we had new chapters to read and after every one, we had to write a little summary of the chapter with any questions we had. When we came into class, we would have to discuss what we read and our thoughts and feelings towards the chapters. We analyzed the events in the book to coincide with what we had learned about the anatomy of revolution. This was a good chance to practice identifying the stages of a revolution because we would need to use these same skills later on in the project.

The French Revolution

We were split into two different class rooms and assigned to a group with a revolution that we would be studying for the rest of the project. My group was the French Revolution, and we would be the ones arguing in defence of the revolution in the mock trial. After countless articles read, podcasts listened to, and YouTube videos watched, I had gained quite the chunk of knowledge on the French Revolution. We created graphic organizers to display some of what we had learned and if we identified any patterns of continuity and change. Here is my graphic organizer;

The Mock Trial

Once all the building knowledge on our revolution was done, we moved on to preparing for the trial. This included building an affidavit with the prosecution group from the other class, preparing a witness, and writing a script. We chose our witness to be Maximilien Robespierre, a prominent leader of the Jacobin club and headlined the famous “Reign of Terror” era in the time of the French Revolution. We worked side by side with the prosecution to concoct a script that we would be using for the trial. We had to come up with opening statements, closing statements, direct examination questions, and cross examination questions, all to hopefully prove that the revolution was, in fact, NOT guilty.

Now lets talk a bit about that. What do we mean by the revolution being guilty? Well, the PLP 9 court established a list of 6 criteria/goals that an effective revolution would have demonstrated. The revolutions would be judged on how many, if any, of those goals they achieved and to what extent they actually accomplished them. The criteria was as follows;

A revolution to be effective must include the reformation political systems aligning with the voice of the people, an increase of rights and freedoms for the people, a removal of a dictator with sweeping power, the achievement of financial stability, an improvement in standard of living, and the removal of internal conflict.

And as the defence, my team was arguing that the revolution was effective, and the prosecution was arguing the opposite. The mock trials would be taking place at the winter exhibition where we would have our live audience (a jury if you will) decide the fate of the revolution, guilty or not? Now unfortunately I was unable to be at the winter exhibition but luckily we were recording. Here is the video of the French Revolution, on trial.

Conclusion

Unfortunately we lost the trial to the prosecutors. But nevertheless I am very proud of how far my team came from the beginning and I am so sorry that I couldn’t be there in the end to help us win. Kudos to the prosecution though because they definitely were a very strong team and to be fair, we never stood a chance against them. Overall I really enjoyed learning about revolutions and I think that a mock trial was a super cool way to have us showcase what we had learned.

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.