Hi everyone this post is on identity!! This is just the first part of the unit so don’t expect to much writing.
So far in this unit we talked about our driving question which is, how does the land impact our identity? For this unit we started writing our ideas on what we thought about the driving question. I wrote about how where you live can effect what you do and how that effects you. I also wrote about how the culture of others effects how you go about your daily living.
Then we were split into groups and told to make a video. In my group was Jason and Kyle. Here’s our video.
Hello dear reader I’m back with yet another post and I have some bad news. This is the final blog post of gr.8. Unless I completely fail gr.8 this year my next blog post will come next September when I enter PLP 9. So I hope you stay tuned till then. Now on to the topic of this post!
Its the end of the school year in PLP whic means its exhibition time! If you don’t know what the PLP exhibition is then you should go check out my winter exhibition post right here.
The topic for this end of year exhibition for gr.8 was, How can you design a solution to a problem a non-PLP peer has? Other then this Question our only constrant was that it had to be ready for the night of the exhibition.
All of the exhibitions in PLP follow the L.A.U.N.C.H. Cycle which stands for
So there’s the launch cycle for ya and if you want to see you we used it in blue sky my book that I made is right there.
Just like in the winter exhibition we had to decorate the room that we were in to make it look nice. I was in the physical health group. We decided to split the PLP room into two sections a sports section and a hospital section. We didn’t have a lot of time to plan and we almost didn’t have the room ready in time for the exhibition, but we managed. When the doors open our room looked really good. Here are some pictures from the night of.
Thanks for reading and have a good rest of your day 👋
Hello everyone and welcome to another amazing post. This post is about TPOLS!! This is my first one but it’s a lot like the MPOLS post I did awhile back. The only difference is that this one is about why I should be accepted into PLP next year. So here I go!
I have learned a lot this year. From photoshopping to blogging to sewing to using an iPad to taking better pictures. The list goes on and on.
Maker
Maker this year has been a blast! I learned a lot how to learn in a group from DI. I also learned some very key things that I’ll get to later but the first thing I would like to talk about is DI.
DI was great I learned a lot about how to be a good group member. I chose to include this unit is because it really shows you how key working in a group is. It also taught me how to look at thing from a different prospective because if I hadn’t my groups final project would have been very bad.
Another unit that really help me improve was both exhibitions that we did this year. This unit tought me how to prepare for a presentation and why you don’t leave it to the last minute.
Humanities this year flew by. It feels like it was just yesterday when I got on the bus to Oregon. Of all the things we did this year there are a few I will never forget.
The first is the advertisement unit. I think this was an important because it used all the things we worked on this year but I just didn’t realize it back then. The Oregon ads really helped me develop my skills in photoshopping and using still images.
One thing that learned from this unit is that you should never rush through any project and hurry to hand it in.
Another project we worked on in humanities that I think really helped me was the religion unit.
The reason I really believe this unit helped me improve as a learner is for two reasons. The first is that I lived a very sheltered life so getting to go out and see different types of people and how they live was very amazing. The second is because it taught me that you can’t procrastinate work when your in a group because if you do then your group members are going to yell at you and its not good for the group.
One unit that I definitely could of worked harder on was our stitch in time unit. I know I could of done more on this unit because when I go and look at our quilts that we did. Not much of the stuff that we did for it I can say I did. This was one of the units were I slacked of a lot.
Scimathics
This year in science was very unique and the units we did helped me learned and practice a lot of things. One of those things was presentation. Ive always been ok at making and presenting work but normally it always an individual project. The unit we did on earthquakes was very good for me to practice presenting in a group and our presentation worked out very well.
Improvements to be made
This year I have really struggled with handing work in on time and not procrastinating it to the night before. One example I have is this presentation I didn’t start it till about 10:00pm last night and didn’t finish until right before we came here. Another example is the winter exhibition. I didn’t really started the final project until the night before and even though it turned out really good I was extremely exhausted the day of the exhibition.
How I’m going to improve
The main reason I procrastinate a really long time is because I keep getting distracted by all my games. So my solution for this is I’m most likely going to delete all my games at the start of next year so that I don’t get distracted by them because I have terrible self control.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the first science post ever on this blog. This post takes place in the amazing classroom run by the fantastic Ms. S. Klausen. In this unit we learn about light, optics, mirrors reflections and refractions!
We started of this unit with a work sheet about the basics of light. My partner for this was Ben. After this we watched a video about how animals use light to survive and use it for even more amazing stuff!
After we watch the video we learned about convex and concave lenses and how they alter light.
To demonstrate the power of lenses we went out side with a big concave lens and used the sun to burn a girl guides cookie box.
!!WARNING!! NO GIRL GUIDE COOKIES WERE HARMED IN THE PHOTOS YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE…. WE HAD ALREADY EATEN THE COOKIES 😀😀
We also watch this video about the biggest solar furnace in the world which is so hot that it will melt birds that fly close to it.
We then got with different partners and we worked on a BFLL which stands for Big Fat Lenses Lab. My partner for this labs was Mr. Sam Cui. For this lab we study light rays after they passed through a liquid. The liquids we used for this lab were vegetable oil, water and rubbing alcohol.
Oil
Water
Alcohol
The other big thing that we did in this unit was watch a Documentary on light in Islam. Which was a video about a guy who talked about a dead guy who proved the Greeks wrong about how light works. The Greeks said that light came from the eye but he proved that light entered the eye instead. He also wrote a famous book called Kitab al-Manazir or the book of optics in English. As well most of the thing we know about light came from him.
I know I did a terrible job at explaining this so go ahead and watch the video for more information, and if you really want there is an entire series about this so feel free to watch them all if you desire.
Thank you dear reader for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post. This is everything we’ve work in in science this term.
Hello world how you doing today? Today I’m writing about exploring is the 16th century. The purpose of this unit was to understand why explorers were sailing in search of new land.
The explorer I chose was Henry Hudson and the first thing we had to do was some research about our explorers to get to understand them better. The research sheet looked a lot like this.
Now your probably thinking PLP is supposed to be slightly more difficult then regular school and yes I know that research is pretty easy but we had a lot more going on on top of this.
At the same time we were researching our explorers we were also doing a novel study on comics. There were 4 different types of comics and each group was assigned a different genre of comic expach week the different genres of comics were Tintin, Anti-Hero, New Age, and Superhero. At the end of each week we had to fill out a comic chart and discuss the genre of comic with our groups.
My group made up of Taylor, Keira, Gabby, Aedan, and I all had basically the same thoughts on all the comics and genres.
On top of all that we also had to make our own comics. This is the reason why we were doing a novel study on comics. You can see mine later on in this post.
One not so great thing that happened was that Ms Willemse was in Cuba during this unit so we had a sub. Our sub was really great and she was very informative but she was not Ms. Willemse.
Now the reason we were doing all of this is because the final project for this unit was we had to present to the king and queen to convince them to fund me for an expedition. Luckily my friends filmed me so I could show it to you people.
Reflection
I learned a lot in this unit like how to use a lot of different apps like superimpose and many others. I also learned a lot about the navigational tool used in that time period as well as how much trading impacted countries around the world.
Thank you for reading and I’ll see u in the next one 👋.
Hi everyone welcome back to another amazing post! In this post I will be talking about something very interesting and something you probably have never done.
One thing in PLP that we do a lot is projects and in some of those projects we use something called the L.A.U.N.C.H. cycle. Launch stands for
L stands for look, listen, and learn about the project
A stands for ask questions about the project
U stand for understanding the problem
N stands for navigate and brainstorm ideas
C stands for create a prototype
and H stands for highlight the good and fix the bad
The project we have been working on in maker the last 2 weeks have helped me understand the launch cycle a lot better.
Now the project, our task was to make an interesting sport with the materials of 2 racquets, string, duct tape, 6 balloons, 5 cups and a wiffle ball. My group made up of Jason, Grace and Taylor had some interesting ideas about what we could do with the supplies.
One of the first things we did when we were creating our sport was to make a survey to see what aspects of a sport our other classmates liked. My question was, What body parts do you like to play sports with? As you can see in the survey below most people in my class like to use multiple body parts when playing.
The next step was to brainstorm questions that people might ask before they play our sport. We made a web on a piece of paper and went around the group writing any questions that we had even if they were really obvious. After we did it as a group, we then went around to the other groups webs and added anything they might of missed. After everyone went around to all the webs ours look like this.
The next thing we did was we got to play around with the materials to get a better idea of what we wanted to use them as.
Once we had our concrete idea we had to make a video about rules and how to play the game.
Once we did all that it was time to launch to an audience. Our audience was another group that designed another sport with the same materials. We set up and started to play our game. It was lots of fun and the inspiration for the name came from Taylor.
Some images when we were playing.
And that was our sport. I hope you enjoy playing llama ball and I’ll see you in the next post 👋
Hello welcome to another humanities post. This one is on the renaissance! And everything that happened of the feudal age. Which basically changed the world as we know it.
What is the Renaissance?
The Renaissance was the time when most of the greatest well known minds lived. Renaissance means rebirth or reawakening so when you think of it that way the Renaissance was the turning point in technology and the principle beliefs which shaped the world into what we know today.
This unit was broken up into 3 main ideas that as you will see all fall into one big project.
The Changing Ideas
In this part of the unit we study famous Renaissance people. Each person was given a Renaissance thinker, a scientist or mathematician and an artist. We then had to fill in a triple Venn diagram with the things they had in common relating to how they helped reshape the world.
The spreading of ideas
For this part of the unit we looked at how the new ideas from the people we study above spread throughout the world. For this assignment we had to fill out a cause and effect blossom to show this.
The impact of ideas
The final piece of this unit was how the ideas from the Renaissance impacted our worldview today. This was basically the part where we summarized everything we learned in this unit so far.
The final project
Now your probably wondering what the importance of these three assignments are. For all you know I just put these in here for no reason but I actually did. The reason I put this all in is because we turned these three assignments in to….. A Triptych!
A triptych is three images next to each other. They can go together to make one whole image but they have to all tell a story individually as well. This was our final project for the unit and you can see mine right here ⬇️.
Reflection time!
I learned a lot in this unit the Renaissance was a very interesting topic. The thing I think I most improved on are my photo shopping skills as well as expanding my knowledge on the Renaissance. One thing I need to work on is time management, so that I don’t have to stay up late trying to finish assignments and all that.
Hey dear reader I’m back with another Destination Imagination or DI post. If you haven’t seen my first post about DI then you can click here to go read it. If you don’t want waste your time reading that post and want to find out what Destination Imagination is click right here for more.
Hopefully you read my first DI post if not you can read it here (this is your last chance). Now you have definitely read my first post so you know something about DI.
My group of Ben,Anika,Gabby and me were put into the challenge maze craze. For our challenge we had to…..
Because you have read my regionals post you will know what our solutions were to each challenge, but let’s recap anyways.
Our device or maze traveler was a toy loader that we modified to make it work in our performance. For our prop transformation we customized the shovel so that it could hold liquid yeast. Then we had a container with other liquid in it that the maze traveler was supposed to pour the yeast into but as you will see in the video later on in this post it turn out to be very…. challenging. For the object removal we decided to tape popsicle sticks to the back of our maze traveler then stick a magnet on it to remove a key from the maze.
I thought our story was very well written given that we are only kids. Click Here to read the script.
Now for our team choice elements. Our first element was our costumes as you will see in the video further into this post we all had homemade costumes which were pretty good if I do say so myself. Our second team choice element was the makeup for the monster in our story which was played by me. We made a video of Anika, Ben, and Gabby applying the makeup to add to our performance.
How we improved from regionals!
As you all probably know I am in the PLP program. In PLP we strive to improve our work as much as possible so DI was a great opportunity for us to practice this. We improved our maze travelers shovel, re-wrote some of the story, and made a backdrop to project our video on.
The worst part of DI!
The worst thing that happened the entire time we did DI was that Gabby couldn’t make provincials because she was at a cadet thing(you should click on her name visit her post because she explained it in much more detail)but because Gabby couldn’t make it Ben had to take over her role. Now this is bad because our script is written for four people no more and definitely no less. So now we had a problem because we didn’t know she couldn’t make it till a week before the performance and we didn’t have time to re-write the script.
Our solution💡
Ben was originally the driver for the maze traveler but he change roles to become the main character Demos.
Anika role stayed the same as the narrator but she had to do a bit of the driving.
My role changed quite a bit, I was just the monster in our first performance but now I also had the task of driving the maze traveler.
Why we do DI?
After reading two post about it your probably wondering why do they do DI? The answer, acording to this study with you can find right here. Kids that get involved in DI are much more creative and are able to problem solve much better compare to kids that don’t do DI. Which to sum it all up is what we do a lot in PLP.
Thank you dear reader for reading yet another post by me and I’ll see you in the next one 👋.
Hello again, it’s me, back with another post and guess what? this one’s about Destination Imagination! Ok, before I officially start this post, there’s one thing I’m not going to explain: what Destination Imagination is, because it’s really hard to do in text. If you want to learn more about it, click here.
Now, I’m going to officially start the post. Hopefully, you’ve clicked the link and found out what DI is. If you didn’t, go do it now!
First, Ms. Maxwell and Ms. Willemse put us into groups of four. I got put into the Maze Craze challenge and it was so much fun to work with my group members Gabby, Anika, and Ben.
Once we got to understand our challenge better, our next step was to create our team name. After a lot of brainstorming and careful consideration, we decided on the name The Improbable Impossibles! Now, the explanation for the name is, it is improbable that we won’t complete the impossible.
Hopefully, you watched the video that’s right there ⬆️. If you haven’t, you should now. Anyway, the next thing we did was decide how we were going to solve our challenge. Just before I do this there is something very important that you should see before you read on, and that is our team roles.
Team roles are very important because if two people in the group are having an argument about something, we can look to the team roles chart we made to see who has the final decision. If you would like to see my groups chart it will be right there⬇️ for you to look at.
Our first idea was to build a remote controled car but no one in our group knew how and unfortunately for us YouTube wasn’t the most helpful in this situation. So our second idea was to buy a remote controlled truck and take everything off so it was just the chassis and then use that. Lucky for us this idea worked! So once we had that all figured out it was time to start.
I’m going to take a minute now to explain something called an instant challenge. Now I can’t say to much as I’m sworn to secrecy but I can explain the jist of it. So an instant challenge is exactly what it sound like. You show up on the day of the competition and try and complete the challenge. You don’t know anything about the challenge except that it’s either going to be a performance based meaning you have to act or sing, tasked based where you have to build something or a mixture of both. So on top of having to solve our main challenge we also had to practice the instant challenges
If you watched the video you would know that we also had to include a prop transformation and an object removal. Our idea for the transformation was the use chemistry and make elephant toothpaste. To make this even cooler we decided to design the maze traveler to set it off.
Our idea for the object removal was to use magnets. Our object was a key and we glued a magnet to it and then glued a magnet to the maze traveler.
Now to explain the title. You know how I said that we designed the maze traveler to make the elephant toothpaste. Well on the day of the competition the shovel we modified to carry the liquid started to leak when we tested it by pouring water into it. Our first solution was to duck tape up the holes. Once we did that, we tried the water again but the tape didn’t cover the holes because we had moss hot glued to the sides of the shovel. So we decided that I would just pour the liquid into the container to trigger the reaction. Now if you want to watch our entire performance you can see it right here ⬇️.
The appraisers gave us some sticky notes on the things that they liked, and on stuff that they think we can improve. We also got raw scores, which are the exact amount of points we got for each bit of the challenge.
Our raw scores
Sticky notes
To rap this up we ended up getting third place out of 7 teams, which, when you think about it is pretty good.
Third place ribbon
This is the end of the post thank you for reading, peace out
Hello everyone I have an interesting blog post for today. This one is on poetry. Now if you didn’t know I’m not a big fan of poetry, But I decided to give it a shot. In this unit we covered all the different types of poems such as ABC, haiku, and metaphors just to name a few. We also had to keep a page that included all of the definitions that we learned. On top of all this we had to write one of each of the poems we learned and put them all into a book, and to make things even harder all the poems had to be about aspects of our worldview.
My poetry terms and definitions!
What I learned
In this unit I learned a lot about poetry. I also deepened I understanding of how to book creator and unfortunately I am still not a fan of poetry. I gave it a good go but it’s still one of my least favourite things about school.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see u in the next one.
