Hello there welcome to my second ever tPOL. For those of you that don’t know a tPOL is a lot like an mPOL except we reflect on the second half of the year and talk about why we should be allowed to continue PLP. With that said lets get into it.

Humanities

First I am going to talk about humanities. We have done many great units this year and the information that I learned this year will stay with me for the rest of my life.

This year I learned a ton about filming and editing. The most important skill I think I learned was definitely the rule of thirds. I also now have a lot of respect for the film crew behind every movie, tv show, and animated cartoon because now I truly understand how much work it takes to make them.

My favourite humanities project this year was definitely the heritage minute unit that we did about confederation. I really enjoyed this unit for many reasons. The first was the video form. I really enjoy group skits, because my acting is not very strong so I don’t have to be the centre of the film. I much prefer to film and edit videos so I can do that instead. It’s not just that I also really enjoyed the topic we were learning about.

The unit I disliked the most this year was probably the unit about animation. This unit was especially hard for me because I am a very bad artist and hate drawing. So the fact that we had to make a 2-3 minute animation frame by frame was terrible. This is probably my least favourite unit that I’ve done since the start of gr.8. If the video hadn’t been animation based I would of enjoy this unit very much as I like to learn about history and famous people.

Overall I learned a lot about video skills and editing. I enjoyed this year of humanities a lot better then last year. Next year I am looking forward to learning about WW2.

Scimatics

We did many very intriguing things this year in scimatics. But I would like to focus on one part that I really enjoyed.

This year in scimatics I really had fun and learned a lot about biology. My favourite unit in science this year was definitely the clone army. This was the unit where we grew clones of plants and then chopped them up to find mitosis. This unit really stood out to me as I found the cells very interesting to look and learn about.

Maker

Next we have Maker, I would say that I took the most risks in the class compare to any other. Mostly because of DI. In DI this year I took a big step/ was force into it by my group. That step was playing the main character in our performance at provincials. As I already said I dislike acting very much as I feel uncomfortable talking/performing in front of others. So being forced into a major acting role I would say helped me become more comfortable with acting as practice makes perfect.

PGP

This is the course that I struggled the most in this year. Everything I handed in was late and it wasn’t my best work. This course was definitely my weakest subject. I think this is because of my lack of use of some helpful apps such as things. I am going to re-do my time blocking so that it is easier for me to see how much time I have each day. This year of PGP really helped me plan out what I want to do and where I want to be. Next year will be the year where I now start getting to my destination.

Conclusion 

This year I did very well in most subjects. In some however I definitely struggled. I plan to do a lot better in some courses mainly PGP by using the tools that help me better manage my time. From my mpol to now I haven’t really improved but I plan for major changes for next year. This summer will help me a lot as I have much planned. I’m going to start working at a job which will help with my overall awareness of time. I think I am ready for PLP 10 because I have grown a lot. My video skills at the beginning of the year were sub par but they have improved greatly from then. Even though my time management still isn’t great I have a plan to improve it for next year.

Matter cycles are important to our survival. Without them life as we know it would cease to exist. Welcome back to another one of my post. Today we talk about the importance of the matter cycles and peril that they face.

There are four main matter cycles. Nitrogen, phosphorus, water and carbon. Each one is very important in there own way. If one was to cease to exist the other cycles would not be able the function properly and would cease to exist as well.

In this project we had to pick a matter cycle then identify a human caused impact that negatively effect said cycle and then find a way to fix it. It didn’t have to be 100% realistic as it’s gr.9 science class. We aren’t expected to solve the worlds problems so young.

My partner Jordyn and I picked the water cycle. We descided to base our project around the negative human effects on groundwater.

Ground water is the water in the ground. In dry places like California and Nevada they use a lot of ground water which isn’t good for the water cycle as it upsets the water table.

Here is a video of our presentation.

Curricular Competencies 

1. Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. We showed this by identifying multiple negative influences on the water cycle.

2. Contribute to finding solutions to problems at a local and/or global level though inquiry. This was shown in our presentation because our idea was original and was a serious attempt to address the problem.

3. Communicate scientific ideas, claims, information, and perhaps a suggested course of action, for a specific purpose and audience, constructing evidence-based arguments and using appropriate scientific language, conventions, and representations. We showed this by making a physical model that was crafted with precision and detail.

4. Evaluate the validity and limitations of a model or analogy in relation to the phenomenon modelled. This was shown when we addressed the limitations and unknown/know consequences and impacts from this idea.

Hi again how you doing? Welcome back to the sequel of DI. This post is mainly a reflection of what we did and what we could of done better. If you want to read more about what our challenge was and how we decided to solve it then go check out my regionals post here.

Now that your caught up on what was going on let’s get into it. We shall start with how we improved our performance.

For provincials Nik could not attend as he was away at a golfing tournament. We had to change roles, my character (Ryan) was removed from the play and I had to play Nik’s role as Connor. We also decided that Taylor was to be the person that placed the weights on the structure.

Here is the video from our provincial performance. Below that is our performance at regionals.

As you can see there were some drastic changes (for better or worse). Somehow we still managed to get second out of 4 teams and beat one of the teams that beat us at regionals.

Now we move on to the fun part where I explain what we changed, how well I thought my team and I did in general, and what I was feeling on the day of.

Between regionals and provincial there is about 4 week for you to change and improve your solution but most years spring break falls in between regionals and provincials. Due to scheduling difficulties my group and I were unable to meet up during spring break leaving us with one week before the break and one week after.  So instead of 4 weeks to fix our solution we had 2.

In the week before the break we spent most of our classes making these things called burn charts. The idea of the chart was for it to show the progress you made on each part of your challenge that you want to fix. After each team meeting you would lower the scale effectively “burning” the chart down. You would know when you were done when the chart was burned all the way down.

Personally I did not like the burn charts. I thought they were a great idea and they worked. My problem with them was when the teachers introduced them to us. I think they would have been just as effective if not more if the teachers had shown us these when we were building our original solution (before regionals). I thought that for where we were and the tight deadline we were on they did more harm then good as we had to use 1-1.5 classes making these charts, when we could of been working on our challenge solution.

Now we move on to the day of and more technical aspects.

As I said before I had to play Nik’s part in the performance as he was unable to attend due to a golf tournament. So I had to fill in for him. I was very uncomfortable about playing Nik’s role as I am not a good/confident actor. It also didn’t work in out in other areas like the weight placement on the structure. Our structure was designed differently from the last, one of the columns holding the structure up was a lot because of this if not placed correctly the pressure board would tip causing our structure to be DQ and us not being able to continue placing weights on the structure. Guess what the pressure board tipped so we lost out on a lot of points.

As you can see in this helpful table the difference in our scores from regionals to provincials. We improved in most categories which was great!

Reflection 

This year in DI I enjoyed it a lot more then last. There are many reasons for this first is because we got to pick our challenge. I liked this a lot better as you have more of a say in what challenge interested you. Another reason is because we had some say in who was in our group as there are some people in the class that I don’t work very well with. Also this is our second year doing it so we just have more experience about what works and what doesn’t.

Some things I should change for next year are:

We should go watch other groups that are competing in our challenge. If I had watch other groups I would probably have found a better solution to triggering our special effect as that was one of the weak points in our performance.

Communicate more with the group because there were a couple times where we realized that the person that need to know the information the most wasn’t present due to us not communicating well.

Well that is the end of this post I hope you enjoyed year 2 of DI. I only have 1 year left. Till next time

-Emerson

It’s that time of the year again. The time when all PLP student stretch their creativity to the limit. Yes ladies and gentlemen it’s time for DI! If you haven’t been reading my post for a long time you can go check out my past DI posts here and here.

This year the challenge masters of DI had brewed up some cool challenges. From building a drone to acting as ancient coin heads, DI this year truly had it all.

However this year had a twist. Instead of getting group by the challenge we wanted to do. We were put into groups first and decided our challenge after. My group this year is Taylor, Anika, Nik, and Kiera. The challenge we chose was Engineering: Monster Effects.

To get an idea of what our challenge had to include watch the video below.

So we got right to work. Kiera was in charge of the story, Nik did the backdrop, Anika built the structure, Taylor made props, and I was in charge of the special effect. As the weeks ticked by things came together nicely.

Actually that’s a lie, we were scrambling to get everything done on time. But eventually we got it done.

Our performance at regionals was well, a train wreck. So many things went wrong that I can’t name them all but in short we know what to fix for provincials.

Anyways here’s our performance from regionals.

We have provincials is about a week so you’ll be able to read another post about DI real soon so stay tune.

-Em

Welcome back to my amazing blog. Today for you, I have a math post about polynomials.

Your probably asking yourself, what is a polynomial? Well all that and more will be answered in this post.

This unit the project was to create something that can be expressed using an equation which features a polynomial. A polynomial is an equation made up of terms. A term is a number, variable or number and a variable. Here is an example of a polynomial.

But as you know for math and science unit we have a mind map that we have to do here is what I knew before and what I knew after.

My partner was Aedan and we decided to do our project based around hockey as we both enjoy the sport. For our project we decided to make an equation/ equations about how much a hockey player makes after tax. We used Elias Pettersson as an example.

As you can see hackney players still make money just not as much as everyone thinks.

Curricular competencies 

As for all science and math post we also have to list competencies that we thought were shown in our project.

1. Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests. We showed this in our project by making the main idea about hockey, as me and Aedan both enjoy the sport.

2. Visualize to explore mathematical concepts. This was shown in our project with the equation and just the unit in general as there were some questions that involved blocks.

3. Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. This was in our project because we had the letters(variables) be symbols for what they represented.

4. Communicate mathematical thinking in many ways. We showed this in our project as we correctly used the right vocabulary during our presentation.

So that’s all for this post I hope you enjoyed 👋

January it’s a new year, new goals and a fresh start. But for the PLP students of seycove its a time of reflection. I’m talking about mPol’s. I’ve done a couple last year but thing have change since then.

Now I have the difficult task of explaining my achievements, success, growth, goals, and improvements. As well as talking about the new course and my thoughts on it.

PGP

This year in PLP we got a new course. This course PGP is the place where we dream. What we want to do, become, achieve, the places we want to be years from now. So far I have found that this course at first just seemed like a lot more work had assembled into arguably the most important course in PLP.

We also had to read this book. The book was called “What do you really want” by Beverly Bachel. In it I learned about goal setting and what truely inspires me. One of the forms that we need to do was not actually a form.

This was the dream board. The dream board was something that really pulled back the curtain into my true inspirations and goals. I really enjoyed this form because I got to put everything I love onto it. 

Next I would like to talk about my success this year so far.

Though out the year so far there has been two themes that has been obvious the first is video making and the second is story telling. Using these two things has been pretty much required in every project thus far.

Identity

This unit was the introduction to the true power of video editing. In this unit we went to Alberta. Our project was to film and edit a video the showed how the land impacts peoples identity. We had to feature at least 3 different places and have an interview. The hardest parts of this unit for me were first we only we able to film at each place once as we weren’t going back. So you had to plan ahead so that you could get the shots you needed. I struggled with this because I am not good at planing things out ahead of time and then following though. The second was the interview. If you didn’t know I get very nervous when I talk in front of lots of people and when I have to interview strangers. In this unit I learned a lot about filming, editing, audio, and problem solving if you don’t have the right shot. Also I have developed a new found respect for editors, as editing is really hard to do if you want to make it good.

Metaphor Machines

Next up we have metaphor machines. In this unit my group members were Kiera, Jason, Sam, and I. In this project we had to research a revolution and create metaphors for important events then we had to combine all of the metaphors together and make a machine out of them. I thought that our team did well. I picked this unit to show because I had to persevere though a lot. We had a sluggish start to our research and some parts of are machine were not built correctly due to lack of communication. But we managed to corral ourselves and get it done. All in all I think we did a great job on our video and our end result was great. 

Winter Exhibition 

This year our exhibition was different then lasts. This year we were assigned groups. For this exhibition we had to animate a story about chemical bonding. We then had to combine two stories together then after all that we had to pick one spot in our story and turn it into an immersive experience. For this project I thought I did pretty well. We had some rough spots and at one point we collapsed from problems with communication. But we managed to reel it back in and make an awesome room. I felt that in this project I could of done a lot more when we were designing our story.

Live event

Up last we have my live event. For this project we had to make a video featuring an event that was real or made up. The challenge was that we only had one shot at filming it so again you have to plan out your video. This project for me was definitely the hardest one. I can say 100% I F.A.I.L.ed this project. I thankfully after a long talk with mom was able to save it and get something in. Unfortunately it was weeks after the due date. From this I learned a lot about what to do if I get stuck.

Reflection

Since grade 8 started I have done some pretty great things. Before I even knew the benefits of goals the PLP teachers had already made us make some. The goal I set last year in the growth mindset unit which was “I want to take criticism as advice rather then a put down” has definitely been checked off. Another goal that I set at my first mPol unfortunately has not been completed. Although I have definitely been improving. Thanks to the new apps that we were taught how to use it has been easier to complete my work. Now my question for you “how did you manage sports, music, and school with out getting overwhelmed?”

Hello everyone and welcome to another SBC post. If you haven’t been reading my post this is week 9 of the student blogging challenge. I hope you enjoy.

geralt / Pixabay

This week the challenge is coding! Coding is really cool. It is the reason that all your devices like the one your reading this post on work. You might think it sounds hard to learn but it’s actually pretty easy. Lucky for me I had previously done some coding in a free app called swift playgrounds. It’s really easy to use and code with and there are many different options depending on you ability.

Unfortunately for this challenge the task was to use the hour of code website. After doing one of the challenges (which I will talk about in more detail later) I found it was a lot like swift. Now on to what you do with the code.

First I would like to say that even though it says hour of code the exercise only took me about 10 minutes. Most of them should take you from 10 to 20 minutes to complete.

I decided to do the Star Wars themed one. It was a pretty easy one that I recommend for people who don’t know anything about coding or if you are a younger person. I picked it because I like Star Wars.

The first step was pretty easy. You just have to move the blocks from the column to the box.

Now I have a challenge for y’all. I will put three different images of code from the exercise. You have to figure out the different moves from the movements in the column to get BB-8 to each of the scraps of metal.

1. 

2. 

3. 

Leave your answers in the comments.

If you enjoy coding you can get even more complexed and move to Java which is more of a code.

Anyways that’s all for this SBC post hope you enjoyed

-Em