Category: PLP 9

tPOL 2022, Here We Are

Before we start, here is the POL declaration- “Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Hello and welcome to my TPoL (transitional presentation of learning). In this post I will try to answer the question “Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade?”. In short, I am ready to go on to grade 10 because I have become proficient at the skills that I learned in grade 9. And hopefully the rest of this presentation proves that. I have chosen one project from each class to represent my progress as a learner  this year.

First, a quick look at my learning plan. I think I did a good job at trying to reach my proficiency goals for each class. At my MPoLs I stated that due to stress I lowered my goal for maker from an extending to an accomplished. And I think that that was probably a good call because It set a realistic goal for myself to achieve.

Some things that I feel I have done well at that are in my learning plan this year 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 asking my peers/parents/teachers more often when I need clarification on concepts that I do not understand.

Some areas that I want to have more growth in my grade 10 year would be starting homework asap so that I don’t put it off until the point where I am then rushing to get it done.

Evidence From my Classes

Humanities

“A War to End All Wars” 

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

I chose this project because I found it to be the project that I had the most interest in researching. I have always been intrigued by world wars and I found it really fun to be able to research a topic that I was genuinely interested in. Because of this, I was really determined to know the battle of Monchy Le-Preux inside and out, and make my comic book a tribute to the battle. I usually have a hard time doing art in projects because I am not the most talented artist and then my self-proclaimed perfectionism gets in the way of  being able to pump out a lot of work. But in the end I am super proud of the work that I created because I know that I put a lot of hard work into it.

I think the skills that I really improved on in this project would be my researching and summarizing skills. My notes were extensive and I was able to work with a fellow researcher to understand a cohesive summary of the topic. I held a sustained interest and was very passionate in the topic I was representing.

Scimatics

“Time is Money”

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

I chose this project because I think it shows my perseverance and reflection skills. I have always been interested in owning my own business/practice and the type of math that we learned is super important in that line of work and just general adult life. So that was an extra push to help me get through all of the math that I didn’t understand at first. And as I was reflecting on my business in the video, I was able to see where it was not sustainable and how I could’ve improved upon it for next time. 

Maker

“Believe in Good ”

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

Believe in Good was a chance for me to expand my creativity and think critically about myself as a person. I feel as though over the course of this project, I matured as a person and learned how to be a more effective version of myself. I was able to reflect on how I maybe need to put first things first more often and think carefully about what actually needs to happen and when it needs to be done by. I think these skills will help me in being an effective grade 10 student next year.

So hopefully you can now see how I am ready to be a grade  10 student! I hope you enjoyed my TPoL and I’ll see you next year for my grades 10 MPoL’s!

As always, Brooke.

Spring Has Sprung – Gardens and Exhibitions

Hello party people and welcome back to my Learning Portfolio, or simply, my blog. The year is almost at an end and that means that a lot of these posts are going to be coming out at once so don’t forget to check out my other posts as well! So here is the summative post for my last grade 9 maker project, “Your First Film”

Project  Overview

You may remember that I recently did another project with videos called “VIBRANT VIDEO POST”, and I would say that this project was basically the final product of that project. This project was all about using all of the video skills that we’ve gained top make one final video, a documentary with a topic of our choosing. The documentary had to include an interview, storyline, message, and original music. At first I had no clue what I wanted to do my documentary on, and after a few ideas I landed on a general topic of “gardening”. You see, a few days ago I moved into an apartment and I really want to grow a little garden on our balcony. Originally, I was going to focus the doc on my journey of planting a potato, but as I got to filming I realized that my original idea may have been too “vlog like” and that I could use the influence of my interviews to guide the story instead. This project was also going to be the grade 9’s focus for showcasing at the spring exhibition. Now unfortunately I was sick so I wasn’t able to be at the exhibition this year, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Driving question 

How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?

By using all of the skills that I have learned about making videos, I can create something that is of good quality and interesting to the viewers. A well written logline and treatment indices the viewer and can help get your video to the right audience. Hopefully as I explain a bit of the project, you will be able to see how I was able to use my video and storytelling skills to engage and entertain my audience.

The Documentary 

As I mentioned briefly in the driving question, we created loglines and treatments for our documentaries. A treatment is a short summary of your documentary, and a logline is a few sentences that you would put in the description or be the tagline of a movie trailer. This helped us start to envision a storyline to create a structure for our documentary. Then we created a screenplay. A screenplay is a written view of what you will see and hear in the film, who will be in each scene, where things take place, etc. My documentary ended up being quite different from my original screenplay, you will probably be able to tell later on when you finally get to see my doc.

 

Next, step we created the storyboard. A storyboard is basically the screenplay but in drawings.

Then we had a whole butt ton of filming to do. I went through quite the roller coaster of trying to find a person to interview, but in the end I managed to have a great interview with Alex Johnson, the assistant manager at my local Gardenworks. We also had to create original music using GarageBand and I found it quite tedious but fun. And of course will al of the filming, there came even more editing. The editing was soooooo meticulous but it is a really improvement part of creating a good film. And then Ta Daaa! Documentary finished. I am super proud of the final result for this project, as it is the last maker project of my grade 9 year. 

Exhibition 

So as I already stated, I didn’t actually end up going to the exhibition but I will talk about the part of the process that I was a part of. Exhibitions are a chance for every grade to tell a story and answer a question, while using their work to enhance and show as an example. The grade 8s+9s worked together to tell the story of “What Does It Mean To Be A PLP Learner?” Throughout the first part of the school, and then guests would walk to the gym to see the main event of the 10/11/12s. I was part of the the conclusion of our section, where our driving question was “What is a PLP learner?”. We decided that a PLP learner was hardworking, creative, thoughtful, collaborative, and detailed. 

It was our job to design the layout of our section and make all of the decor that we would need. It was a lot of work to design everything and create something visually appealing. We were also given a group of grade 8s to help us at the exhibition and give them a chance to display their work as well. Most of the work was put into the “Hall of Hard work”, where we tried to show the process of developing work to extending quality work.

Our group’s documentaries were displayed on a projector in our “Dungeon of Docs”. And I am quite disappointed that I wasn’t there to see all of the masterpieces.

We also were running some instant challenges and getting the guests to self-asses on how they preformed. As any good PLP student knows, we don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflection. Self-assessment is heavily incorporated in PLP’s structure so we thought that it was a perfect showcase of what its like to be a PLP student.

 

 

 

 

And that’s it for my section of the 2022 spring exhibition!

Conclusion

So this will be my last blog post of the year. Wow. If you’ve made it this far I really want to thank you for taking the time to read these because it takes a lot personally for me to write a whole post. I’m so proud of myself and all of my classmates for making it through this year, we did it guys! Anyhoo cya in September!

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.

Linear Labs Artisan Jewelry

Greetings fellow earthlings. Welcome to another scimatics post on this ghastly blog of mine. I am currently writing this in my bedroom where I have been glued to a tissue box and a whole plethora of cold medications in my system. If you didn’t get it already, I’m sick (not covid).

Project Overview

This project was called “Time is Money” but for some reason I’ve been calling it “Time Beith Money” like in an old-English type of flare. Anywho, in this project we were to create a small business selling products or a service and learn about finance though linear relations. I chose to make a small jewelry store through Instagram and sell some cute lil’ accessories to my friends. Now I am no wiz at math but eventually I did catch on to this whole algebra thing and boy is it helpful to know how to do.

Driving Question

How can we predict our finances for the future?

With calculating your expenses (living), startup costs, sale price (income), and time, you can get a pretty accurate estimate of how sustainable your finances are. Using a linear relations equation like where and putting the equation into a graph where the y axis represents profits and the x axis represents hours of work, you can get a visible representation of your financial situation.

Curricular Competencies

Communicating and representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic form

I successfully used a linear equation to determine my profits. I calculated my hourly wages, predicted NET earnings for a year, and how much money I had made (and lost) over the actual amount of time that I worked for. My graphs are clear and functional, and I labeled them for easy understanding.

Understanding and solving: Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations

I calculated all of the time, materials, equipment, and impact, in the cost of making my products. I used recycled materials and used a digital method of selling my product in order to create less waste. I chose to make products that I already had most of the materials to make, and still calculated the cost of the items that I had bought long ago.

Connecting and reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.

My business is sadly not sustainable as a full time job. I think this is partially due to the fact that I grossly under-priced my products for the security of making transactions. Realistically I should’ve priced my products in a way that would have me make more money on every transaction, which wasn’t the case mainly for the engraved items. Other businesses in the class, like Dana’s cookie sale, would make more money annually than I would but they both would not be sustainable as a full time job. Maybe with some remodelling and another go at this I could make a more sustainable business.

Conclusion

Honestly we do a lot of connecting our projects to the “real world” but I think this one was the first project that I think actually has an important connection to my future. I have always been interested in owning my own business/practice and this type of math is super important in that line of work and just general adult life. So now I can proudly say that I can do algebra and understand linear relations!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

As always, Brooke.

The Wonderful Reproduction of Cells

Wassup y’all. Welcome to another scimatics post on this benign blog of mine. I am currently writing this in the San Francisco airport on my way back home from my cousins wedding. Congrats David and Sam! Ok lets just get this over with;

Project Overview

This project was called “Meiosis Models” and in this project we were to learn about the cellular reproduction processes of meiosis and mitosis. We would be growing our own garlic samples to put under the microscope and take pictures of the cells during different phases. We also made 3D models in Tinkercad to show the different parts of the cellWe then put all of your pictures and models into a video and added voiceovers to explain the processes and our representations of it with the photos and models. Then the final video would be presented to the class.

Project 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 cells and reproduction, the project, and any of the questions that I had.

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. 

Driving Question

How is the reproduction of cells essential to the survival of organisms? 

Cell reproduction helps help organisms growing and healthy. They replace cells that are dying with new cells that can take over the jobs of the old cells. They also can make new organisms and therefore prevent the species from going extinct.

Curricular Competencies

Planning and conducting: Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods, including field work and lab experiments, to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative.)

We did a few of workbooks as usual in any scimatics project. I started this project not knowing much about mitosis and meiosis and so I found the workbooks very helpful. As you can see by how much I added in my project end revision of my mind map, I learned a lot of new things. We also did a Khan Academy quiz to test our knowledge on what we had learned from the workbooks. I think this was one way that I really strengthened and solidified my understanding of mitosis and meiosis. It also was a good indicator for where I was with my understanding and what I needed to review. The microscope slides of plant tissues from my garlic were prepared properly using the correct method but unfortunately my garlic did not produce strong images of individual cells so I used the professional cell slides for photographic evidence of mitosis. (Tbh the pictures that I took are pretty cool :p)

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

 I used all of my class time efficiently for learning without distractions. I was on the opposite side of the room from my beloved friends and even though I felt lonely on my little island, I did get work done a lot faster.

Scientific Communication: Formulate physical or mental models to describe a phenomenon

This competency is well represented by the final narrated video. This was the final moment for us to demonstrate what we learned and created through at the entire project, in our own style. My recorded video with voice narration explains the reasons for and processes of mitosis and meiosis with accurate 3D models and Photographs. I also accurately describe the similarities and differences between the two processes. Check out my narrated video below.

Conclusion

This project has been one of the coolest biology projects I think we’ve done so far. I really enjoyed being able to use the microscopes to look at the cells. I am exploring going into a career in dermatology so I found this project to be very important for that career path. I definitely learned a heap of new vocabulary and can’t wait for the next bio project we do, although since this year is almost over I might have to wait until grade 10 :(.

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.

The Vibrance of Video

It is time for another Maker blog post. So welcome back to this blog of mine where I explain things I did in school. This project was called Vibrant Video and it was all about making videos and learning film history. This was not a very long project so this post may be rather short. But in the end its not about the length of the post is it. So I hope you enjoy and lets get right on into it.

The History of Video 

There is a lot to learn about the evolution of film and movies. We learned about the first moving images and the beginning of the film industry, which I found to be quite the interesting topic. We also learned about early special effects and how they added colour to film. I got to practice using my note taking skills in a keynote doc and I must say that I got pretty good at it. 

Videos

We of course got to practice making videos/movies in this project, with each video focusing on a different aspect of film making. We learned how to use all of the features of iMovie and Clips and how to use a storyboard, logline, and treatment. 

Our first video was a story about one of our favourite hobbies. It was supposed to show a blend of pictures and videos, have a complementary soundtrack, and have a beginning, middle and end. Here is the video I made;

The next video was a silent movie. It again was supposed to tell a story, use the “GASP” poster, aged film effect, and again have an appropriate soundtrack. I told the short story of a girl on an egg hunt and I think it was pretty good. Here is my silent movie;

Our next 2 skills were going to be creating a DIY video showing the audience how to do something. We had to create a treatment and logline for the first time and we were also in groups. My group wanted to show how to tie your shoes and I think that our treatment and logline are quite comical. 

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Logline

Are you still a loser and still wearing Velcro shoes? Well worry no more because in this tutorial you will learn from professional shoe tie-rs on the best methods to tie your shoes.

Treatments

At the beginning of our journey a young fellow does not know how to tie his shoes. But then helpful professionals come along and show him the proper method of tying his shoe. In this helpful tutorial you will see the many different methods of tying one’s shoe in a proper manner including the bunny ears method and others.

——————————————

And here is our video;

Our last video and skill was creating a special effects sequence, again in a group. This was a really fun one to watch all of the videos created because it was a chance to get really silly and stupid. Before we recorded we had to create a shot list so that we could know what we needed to record. We also got to use the green screen and that was super cool. Here is the final video that we called “Fish Boy is Born”;

Challenges

We also had to do at least 2 of the 5 video challenges that were given to us. I chose to so the “Add a Song” and “Playing With Angles” challenges. If you didn’t get it already, the “Add a Song” challenge is where you add a song over a video in a way that they sync up and relate to each other. I chose to use a video that I put on my Instagram that was my friend and I running around an arena on a Timelapse to that really annoying hamster song. And I collaborated with my friends Noah and Cooper to create the “playing with angles” videos. It was pretty fun. Here are those videos;

Angle 1 Angle 2 Angle 3

Conclusion 

So I definitely learned a lot about the history behind videos. I think that it is really cool to learn about the behind the scenes of how movies are made and am now able to identify different techniques and shot types when I watch movies at home. I actually went to see a movie with Dana on the weekend and we were having some annoying fun naming all the different shot types in the commercials. I definitely can use iMovie and clips to their full potential now that I’ve learned all of the tips and tricks. The next video I make will take full advantage of the special effects and transitions that I can now use confidently. So yeah I think I am a professional movie maker :).

As always, Brooke.

Being Effective

Helloooo fellow moderately effective human beings. This blog post will be a bit different from the usual ones because this is for something we did in Maker. We learned about a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or in our case, Teens. You may have seen this book before or even just heard someone talking about it. And as you may have guessed from the title, this book is supposed to teach you how to be your most effective self. And before we dive into this project I have something I would like to say about being “your most effective self”. Mainly why is the expectation that we should be functioning at a high level? I am perfectly fine functioning at a moderate to low level depending on my mood. I think we are setting the standards a little to high for a bunch of exhausted highschoolers. But maybe thats just my opinion. Ok so lets jump into the rest of this post.

The Habits

Throughout the book there are 7 habits for you to start including in your life. Those habits are categorized into 4 groups of your life. Here’s an overview of all of the habits and categories.

The Set-up

The set up phase talks about why you would want to complete the 7 habits and how they can help you. We also talked about paradigms and principles and how to identify them. For each category we did something called an “assessment choice board activity” which was supposed to show our understanding of the topic. Here was my playlist I made for this category and the written explanation that I created to go along with it;

Songs;

Follow My Feet by The Unlikely Candidates

Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons

I Will Wait by Mumford & Sons

Sing Together by Train

I think that these songs represent part one because they are all about finding yourself. Follow My Feet is about choosing right or wrong, the low road or the high road. Little Lion Man is about being honest with yourself and knowing your weaknesses. I Will Wait is about loving yourself and others and supporting. And Sing Together is about coming together and supporting everyone and the ones you love.

The Private Victory

The Private Victory was the first category that included habits. These habits are all about taking responsibility, planning things out, and being a visionary. The Private Victory will help you become independent and in charge of your own destiny.

Habit 1- Be Proactive

Habit 2- Begin With The End in Mind

Habit 3- Put First Things First

The assessment choice board that I did for these habits was a little animation about a girl planning her life out. Here it is along with the written statement;

Animation

A brief explanation of the animation ;
This girl, lets pretend its me, is bored and confused on what to do. But then she starts making plans about her future. Starting from what job she wants to have and working backwards from there. She keeps that in mind and it gives her purpose and a set of things to work towards. She is so happy and fulfilled that she does a cartwheel. The end.

My connection;

I have always loved planning ahead into my future ever since I was a child and I find it fun to research how I need to get there. Thinking about how I can be an agent for my own success is something I want to work on because I know that it will be an important skill to have. Stewardship delegation if you will. I also use my Things app similarly to The Weekly Schedule™️, showing me the most important priorities for the day and the things I need to accomplish.

The Public Victory 

Once the public victory is solid, you can move along to the Public Victory. Because “Before you’ll ever win in the public arenas of life, you must first win the private battles within yourself.”  

  • Excerpt From: Sean Covey. “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” Apple Books.

The Public Victory teaches you how to become interdependent and how to work with others for the ultimate success.

Habit 4- Think Win-Win

Habit 5- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Habit 6- Synergize

My assessment choice for this segment was writing 3 poems, one for each habit. I have always loved writing poetry so I would say that it was my favourite part of this project;

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Win

We all can win

Can we?

No

But somebody doesn’t have to lose

I’ll lose so you can win

No 

You will lose so I can win

No

Actually I can help you

If you would lend me a hand?

I will

I will

We both win

In their shoes

Put yourself in her shoes

His shoes

Their shoes

When do they get to be in my shoes?

Later.

Synergy

We don’t work well together

You are so different than me

This will be disastrous 

My strengths could make this so good

But they are your weaknesses

So that won’t work

Right?

I didn’t see your strengths

I only saw where you didn’t meet me

But you far surpassed expectations

And I wasted all this time

Thinking that we couldn’t work together

I’ll do this 

I am good at this

You’ll do that

You are good at that

This is looking good

Better than I thought it would

Just because we aren’t the same

Doesn’t mean that you’re to blame

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Renewal

Ah Renewal. This part is all about self-care. The 4 dimensions of renewal are mental, spiritual, social/emotional, and physical. Mastering renewal means mastering how to take care of your spirit and your vessel, and how you can enhance your greatest asset-> you.

Habit 7- Sharpen the saw

I created a song in garage band but for some reason it has not been exporting properly so I can’t insert it here. But here is the written explanation for it; I chose to make a song for this activity. I wanted to make the song soothing and powerful in a way that makes me think of walking into the woods on a path. The path leads to the future and I am ready to go onward and keep improving with all of the knowledge I gained from this book. I used to go to the Vancouver symphony orchestra a lot as a little kid and I have always been connected to classical music so this piece is near and dear. I think the piece conveys feeling and for me that feeling is the strength that is deep inside. 

Audio, Visual and Kinesthetic

To show our final overall understanding of the philosophy of the 7 habits, we created 3 final assessment pieces. These were also supposed to be related to the 3 core competencies that we work on in highschool; Communication, Thinking, and Personal and Social. 

For the competency of Thinking, I thought that habits 1, 2 & 3, or the Private Vicory, fit the criteria for the competency in every way. My idea for the visual piece was “A photo of me thinking with sketch notes around me: the sketch notes will be similar to the animation that I did for the private victory assessment choice. About visualizing the future and making a plan to get there.” And here is the final visual;

Then for the audio idea I was going to link it to the communication competency. I think habits 4 and 6 were the best habits to use because I think they are both very important for communicating. My audio idea was as follows “A background audio of a muffled conversation, everything goes too loud. Then there is silence. One person speaks, everyone cheers. : represents how cloudy communication is not functional. Kinda sounds like Charlie Brown teachers.”. And here was the final audio/video;

Communication video

And then for the kinesthetic piece I wanted to create rock sculptures. I thought that rock sculptures would be a deep metaphor for the personal and social competency and represent habits 5 and 7. “Rock balance sculpture on the beach: everything requires balance. Work / life, alone / social, school / activities. A balance of all of the renewal categories ; mind, body, spirit, emotion. Being understood and understanding. The rocks represent that balance. Because they themselves are balancing.” I made one big rock sculpture on the beach and one small rock sculpture that I could bring to school. And here they are;

Rock building Timelapse

A Reflection  

The habits are basically my stepping stones to preforming the core competencies. My favourite competency + habits would definitely have to be Thinking with habits 1,2 and 3. I enjoy thinking about the future and taking actions towards my goals. My assessment choice board for the private victory shows this as I imagine that I could be the person in the animation. I also think that there is a lot that I could do to procrastinate less and be more comfortable making decisions, which I think specifically falls under the “Be Proactive” habit. I think that my visual idea of an annotated photo is a good way to show my journey with those habits. 

I am quite proficient at the Personal and Social competency and I think I can consistently utilize habits 5 and 7. I am a good listener and very empathetic. And I am also getting better at taking care of my mind, body, spirit, and emotions. The balancing rock sculpture is something that I was very excited to do because I think the symbol of balance is very important to understanding those habits. 

The communication competency is a pretty easy one for me because I think I am a good communicator and collaborator. Synergizing comes naturally to me and I think I am effective at thinking out options where there is mutual benefit. I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my audio idea to sound like and I hope it conveys the importance of communication. I kind of hear it sounding a bit like the teachers in Charlie Brown.

I don’t think there really is an end to this project because this will be something that I will always be able to improve on. I hope to look back on this project in the future and see the effects it had on the way I lived my life. I hope you learned something from this because I definitely did. And even though I am not always going to strive to be the MOST effective version of myself allllll the time, I think that following through on the upwards spiral will help me become more effective.

Thank you for reading.

As always, Brooke 

This War Did Not End All Wars

Howdy all, Welcome to my blog. Today I’m going to be talking about a project called “A War To End All Wars: Graphically Told”. This project was about WWI, specifically Canada’s involvement, and the causes and consequences that came along with it.

Driving Question

“How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?”

You may remember that we did a comic book project last year in Scimatics called “The Body vs Bacteria”. And I still can recall almost all of the information that I put in that comic without even reading it. Now what that says to me is that I can retain information better when I draw/write it out in a fun way that is interesting to me. By choosing our own topics, it became more interesting to follow a story along and put effort into our work.

Causes and Consequences 

This is not the first project that has involved causes and consequences so this was a bit of a review for me. We learned about the definitions for cause and consequence and the difference between long term and short term. We then took a look at what the inciting causes were for WWI, and what consequences followed.

Building Knowledge

Before we got into our final topics for the project, we needed to form bit of a backstory about where we are in history. We learned about a bunch of different battles and how different countries came to be involved in the war. We also read a graphic novel called World War One: 1914-1918, which was told as a first person perspective from the war. We reflected on the novel and identified more causes and consequences. We also watched the film 1917 and compared it to the graphic novel. It was my second time watching the movie and that gave me more of a chance to notice all of the little details. We also read chapters from the Nelson Text about New Instruments of War, Precipitating Factors, Canada at War and Lasting Consequences. There were various worksheets that went along with these readings where we would rank the significance of certain events, weapons, etc. We also learned about how to create a good graphic novel and some new vocabulary that we would be using.

The Graphic Novel

Finally, we got to choose our top 3 topics to write our graphic novel on. I ended up getting Monchy-Le-Preux and I was quite happy with the topic. We immediately started doing research on our topics and what we like to call the 5 Ws; Who, What, Where, When, and Why. 

The finial product of this project was a short graphic novel (approximately 10-20 panels). So as a start to something that requires a story to be told, we started filling out story spines and storyboards. It was difficult to decide what to include in the story and which characters to portray. But eventually I started adding images and dialogue to my ComicLife and the story started coming together.

A lot of work went into the drawings and research so I am very proud to present to you my final comic book;

Conclusion

Overall, I think this project was super fun and i really enjoyed it. Wars are probably my favourite thing to learn about so I was super pleased to gain so much knowledge about WWI. I also gained a lot of skills on how to condense information into a story and got to work a lot more on my drawing and tracing skills. I cant wait to learn about WW2 next!

Thanks for reading.

As always, Brooke.

 

p.s. Here are some links that I used for information on Monchy-le-Preux;

The Rooms – Newfoundland Regt. War Diary 

The Vimy Foundation – Monchy-le-Preux

Govt. of Canada – Monchy-le-Preux

Am I Imagining This Destination?

Have you heard of Destination Imagination?

Destination Imagination (or just DI) is an international competition that our school competes in. I am now going to direct you to the DI website because I think that they do a great job explaining what DI is all about. The Destination Imagination website is here. (I really suggest that you go to the website before reading further.)

The time had come for another gruelling term of Destination Imagination . This year, I was a part of one of two Seycove Gr 9 Improv teams. We got to present in person this year instead of a video like last year. It was a lot more fun but definitely more stressful. Our team “Leap Before you Look” was an improv team. So what was this year’s challenge? Well this year’s challenge was called “Festival Frenzy” and in this challenge, we would try to achieve a random goal at a festival from around the world. We had to research festivals, learn how to successfully carry out improv performances, practice running through the challenge, and enhance our skit with imaginary items, represented by a set of cardboard boxes.

The following is a list of all the festivals. Since we are in the secondary level, we had to research 10 festivals. Our chosen 10 are highlighted.

All of our research went into what we call the “festival binder”. The festival binder started off as a shared pages document that all of our research was recorded in and we later printed it out, so that we could bring a hard copy of it to the final competition. Here is an example of what one of the pages in the festival binder looks like;

When we are about to preform at the tournament, we draw one of those ten festivals randomly, along with a random goal (i.e. go skydiving) and a random “fork in the road” that will come into play later (I.e. make soap or find a way to keep your tools from rusting). The goal does not have to actually be accomplished in the skit but it should be heavily incorporated. The fork in the road comes into play during a 30 second intermission between Act One and Act Two. You then declare which fork in the road activity you will be using and then resume the skit to finish up act 2. 

Since we didn’t actually have to create a script or props for our challenge, we had a lot of free time to prepare. We were fairly disorganized at the start and didn’t really start to put tons of work in until later on. Our festival binder was lacking a lot of detail in the beginning but we did end up fixing it towards the end. The unstructured time to practice was quite challenging for certain members of our group and so subsequently we spent way to much time slacking off. Needless to say, this was definitely going to kick us in the ass later if we continued on that way. After a few failed practice performances, we started to get our act together. On the more positive side, I think we definitely showed a lot of growth by the end. Our final performance was pretty good (definitely the best one we had ever done). And even though I screwed up by not finding a watch to bring so we ran out of time for the end of the skit, I think that it still ended in a successful way and I am super proud. Our team was able to bounce ideas off of each other and we worked very well as a group (with maybe a bit too much banter apparently :p).

 

I know that there are a few things I can work on/hopefully change for participation in DI next year. Our group argued too much and that may just be because we had some clashing personalities but I think it overall did put ourselves at a disadvantage. The banter was never super serious as we all kind of consider each other friends, but I think it was just a bit of a time waster. Speaking of time wasting, we were all easily distracted by unimportant things such as having a irrelevant conversation with someone else. I think that in the end I am super proud of my group and spending time with them was actually quite fun.

And the moment we have all been waiting for, the video of us performing our challenge;

Overall, DI taught me leadership, teamwork, persistence, creativity, and so much more. I am really excited to see how I face future DI challenges in the years ahead. I want to say a huge thank you to my team members, Ben Y, Jocelyn, Noah, and Carter, without whom none of this would’ve been possible. I had a lot of fun with you guys and hopefully we are not in the same group next year 😁.

See you next year Destination imagination 👋🏼!

As always, Brooke

THE MACHINE

Salut mes amis! Welcome to another scimatics post on this bland blog of mine. I have a few blog posts I have to write at the moment so I’m 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 “Metaphor Machines” and in this project we were to create a Rube Goldberg machine that represented the steps of the scientific method. We would be using big wooden boards as the base and then we could use any materials to build the pathways. We then recorded the machine working and added voiceovers to explain the scientific method and our representations of it in the machine. 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 electricity and the project, 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 where we got to test out making and measuring different types of electric circuits up close and personal and in a simulator online. We worked with making a lot of electric circuits in  this project and it is something that I would say I can do confidently now.

 

We also did quite the bulk of workbook pages to further learn about electricity in all of its wonderful ways. We also learned about the math that can help you find out the current, voltage, and resistance of a circuit. 

We built our first Rube Goldberg machine in the very first class. We used things from around the class to crate a machine that has as many interactions as possible. And I think it was a bit rough but good for our first try.

And a lot of class time went into building our final machine. We each created blueprints individually and then got together in our groups to create one awesome blueprint that our machine will look like. The final machine had to have both parallel and series circuits and we even created switches to turn those circuits on and off independently but only one switch actually ended up working in the end. Ok so here is our final video that was shown to the class

Driving Question

How can we represent the scientific method? 

I have to say that the best answer to this question would be the machine video itself as it shows the representation and definition for the scientific method.

What factors affect the function and efficiency of electric circuits?

Resistance diminishes the current of the circuit. Examples of resistance would be loads (lightbulbs, appliances, etc.) and wires. The voltage also affects how much power is going through the circuit at a time. This can overload loads and cause failure or burnout of the circuit. To much voltage is also dangerous.

Curricular Competencies

Reasoning and Analyzing: Estimate reasonably

Our final blueprint was complete and accurate. It also contained a grid scale. All of measurements are labeled and relatively accurate. It was clean and organized with all lines easily distinguishable.

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

 I used all of my class time efficiently for learning without distractions. I was a team player and always able to help out my group members.

Planning and conducting: Select and use appropriate equipment, including digital technologies, to systematically and accurately collect and record data

Hand built series and parallel circuits are used to good effect with efficiency in your metaphor machine. Accurate circuit diagrams are included in the final blueprint. Our diagrams use proper symbols and are neat and easy to understand. Measurements of current, voltage and resistance are included.

Scientific Communication: Formulate physical or mental models to describe a phenomenon

A video is recorded of the complete operation of the machine and voice overs are added which explain the sequence of the scientific method as the machine progresses.

Conclusion

So this project definitely expanded my knowledge of electricity and the different things that can affect it. 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.

Our Second Official Language – French.

Hello all, Welcome to my blog. Today I’m going to be talking about a project called “A Case for a Nation”. This project was about Nationalism and the ripple affect that comes along with it. We did most of our whole class learning on Nationalism in Canada, but some people later picked different cases of nationalism to research.

Driving Question

“How can an understanding of nationalism of the past, help us make sense of today?”

I think that the best answer to this question would be the caption that my group came up with for our instagram post (this will make more sense later on in the post).

“French Canadian nationalism started with France’s exploration of North America. New France showed their distinct culture through their language, religion, & way of life. Harsh conditions led to their defeat in the 1756 Seven years’ war. After the war, British rule suppressed French Canadian culture while the economy in lower Canada dwindled. In 1837 French Canadians started the “Patriot’s War”, a rebellion in Lower Canada. Holidays like Saint-Jean Baptiste Day were created to give the French Canadians a further way to celebrate their individuality & nationalism. Today, Quebec even has political parties that are devoted to the idea of separatism.”

In the last few sentences of that paragraph, it links the two timelines together by showing the connection of French Canadian nationalism to present day, which is exactly what the driving question is asking.

Current Events

After briefly looking into the concept of nationalism, we worked on an assignment to understand nationalism in todays world, thus revealing the “Current Events Presentation”. For this, we researched a relatively current event that was happening around the world that could relate to Identity and Nationalism. We than made a document with some images, sources and facts. We than presented our documents to a small group of people through the first portion of the project. I did my presentation on the boil water advisory crisis affecting First Nations communities across the country. This little exercise helped me practice my research skills/presentation creating and was a start into identifying nationalism.

Building Knowledge

Before we split into our final groups for the project, we needed to form bit of a backstory as to where we are in history. We learned about the formation of Upper and Lower Canada, the Canadian Confederation, and cases of nationalism across the world. We did a few different knowledge-building activities to dive into each of those three topics. First, we started to learn about nationalism as a concept across the globe. We read printed out pages from a textbook that discussed different places and their struggles with nationalism, and conferred with our groups to take notes and discuss. Then, we learned about Upper and Lower Canada. We did a pseudo-simulation called the “Rebellion Scene Investigation”, taking us back to the two colonies to explore their differences and learn about the people who lived in the majority French vs majority English parts of Canada. This part of the project helped us practise taking historical perspective of life back then to learn why they may have acted certain ways or made certain decisions.

The Product

Finally, we split into groups of 3 based on which topic we chose, but I accidentally picked a group who already had three people so we became the only group of 4. There were many topics to chose from and the topic we chose was “Quebecois / French Nationalism in Canada”. I chose this topic because I felt like I had enough prior knowledge to do a good job at executing the work that would coincide with it. Plus I think that it is important to learn about the French existence in Canada because it is a big part of how our country was formed. 

The finial product of this project was an Instagram post. We had to create 3 images with our group that would be the images displayed in the post. So to start off with, we individually had to create 3 images. One had to be a image digitally drawn on, another had to be a quote, and the last one was a choice. My first three images were as follows ; 

The people in my group also created 3 images, Declan, Faith, and Zach. We picked in class one image from everyone to make a compilation that we think best showed French Nationalism in Canada.

Next, we worked on the caption. We looked at our topic and thought about the story behind it. We used different strategies like the “story spine” and started to condense the years of change and nationalism into just the most important points.  Again we first created a caption individually and then later would combine ours with our group. Here was mine; 

“French Canadian nationalism has been prominent in Canada since upper and lower Canada were formed way back in 1791. From Politics and economics to social ramifications, French Canadians have a history of being oppressed by British rule in the formation of the country that we now call Canada. Citizens had to fight long and hard for French representation in their government systems even in areas where it was a 95% majority of French Canadians. Modern day Quebec even has political parties that are calling for Quebec to separate from Canada and become its own independent nation.

#frenchcanadian #quebecois #canadianhistory” 

We then sat down as a group and looked at all of our captions in a shared pages document. We highlighted what we liked and wanted to keep on each others captions and then glued them together to create one final masterpiece. Here is my groups final caption;

“French Canadian nationalism started with France’s exploration of North America. New France showed their distinct culture through their language, religion, & way of life. Harsh conditions led to their defeat in the 1756 Seven years’ war. After the war, British rule suppressed French Canadian culture while the economy in lower Canada dwindled. In 1837 French Canadians started the “Patriot’s War”, a rebellion in Lower Canada. Holidays like Saint-Jean Baptiste Day were created to give the French Canadians a further way to celebrate their individuality & nationalism. Today, Quebec even has political parties that are devoted to the idea of separatism.

#frenchcanadian #quebecois #canadianhistory #francophone 

@that_snail_kid @declan.rattray @zachv24 and Faith”

Conclusion

Overall, I think this project was rather enjoyable. I learned much more depth into the formation of Canada, and the impact that French Canadian history has on Canada today. I also gained a lot of skills on how to write your opinion and support it with all the stuff it needs to make your writing effective.

Here you can check out the instagram account that the whole classes posts will be up on soon. Hopefully you will go quickly check those out and drop a few likes :D.

Historical perspectives instagram account!

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.