Cat and Maus

faiths Humanities

This project was based around the question “How can multi-modal communication enhance our ability to humanize and understand complex issues?” While I’ve always wanted to know more about the Holocaust (since all I had known before this project is what’s in the Disney plus show called A Small Light), I’ve always been cautious about the topic. The first thing Ms. Madsen said to us about this project is that we had to watch what we were saying because it is such a horrific and serious topic that still greatly affects us our world today. 

For this project we learned about the Holocaust and the events leading up to it through reading articles, lectures, video testimonies, a symposium and a visit by a granddaughter of a survivor. Each one of these sources added more and more horrible information that I couldn’t imagine. We started with learning about the rise of the Nazis, and then the growth of antisemitism ending with the Holocaust itself. For the first investigation, I wrote a paragraph talking about which type of format resonated most with me and why. 

This assignment got to me more than I would’ve thought. When I’m in class listening to every horrible thing about this time in history I would try to focus on just writing things down, or on the content, and not the person side of it, but for this assignment all of it was the personal and thinking side. This assignment was meant to demonstrate my analyzing skills and I think I really did that. I not only shared what I learned from the activity that most resonated with me but I believed I showed in depth thought into why. I chose the activity about the granddaughter of a survivor because she made it seem more real and not just statistics. Every person she mentioned was a cousin or uncle or dad of her grandmother and all I could think about was my own family. If you want to see what my paragraph was listen to the voice memo below (I chose to do a voice memo because it seemed more personal to me).

Investigation two was reading Maus which is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman and the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. This book is about the author learning and writing about his father’s experience during the Holocaust. Reading this book was crazy because  every few pages there was a way his father could’ve been caught or died. His father was also treated terribly and went through so much pain and loss that you could see still the experiences affecting him when the book changed between past and present. With this book we were instructed to do a literacy critique in an essay format. While we were supposed to choose to write on the psychology aspect of the trauma depicted in the book, or on a comparison of two characters or on the literary elements, I chose to combine the first two because to me they seemed very intertwined. I wanted to show how the trauma Vladek experienced affected how he interacted with everyone around him and how those people then reacted. I’m actually very proud of my essay which isn’t always true for past essays. I had so much to write (maybe too much …… 7 pages…..) and had lots of examples of everything because unlike reading novels, I could remember it because I had pictures to go with the words. I have very strong narrative memory skills. I liked my writing and my friends thought it was good so I decided to see what Ms Madsen thought. Earlier this week I got the essay back with few parts needing revision so I changed those but most parts earned an ✅.  Overall I thought my essay showed in depth thinking and is an essay I’m actually proud I wrote. 

The final product was “With a partner, choose an upstander (historical or current), research who they are and how they stood up against intolerance, and create a multimodal exhibit to contribute to our class showcase celebrating difference making!” Which was meant to be showed at the spring exhibition. If your curious what an Upstanders is here are a few definitions my teacher gave us:

My partner for this project was Fraser and together we came up with awesome plan to research the incredible Irena Sendler who saved 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and then make an interactive timeline in milk bottles. At the same time in BCFP I had started to research the mistreatment of Indigeous people in healthcare. While I was trying to manage the two projects the plans for the exhibition changed. Ultimately, the new choices led to Fraser and I merging our “Upstander” project and our BCFP project although there was plenty of confusion. Personally, I  wanted to do both from the beginning so was glad when they got combined. I am very proud of how I acted when they got combined too, as most people got very stressed and didn’t know where to start but I just got a white board and a pen and started planning. In the end our exhibition exhibit was educational and engaging. Fraser and I had multiple interactive parts including our original timeline idea, effective visuals including orange origami roses to make into a heart, and a call to action which was a physical card the visitors could bring home. Everything was presented well from the crisp edges of the paper, and the interesting layout.  I was super passionate about both topics (Irena Sendler’s life and the terrible mistreatment of Indigenous people in the healthcare system) and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. While all of those things alone were great I was really impressed with how I explained the project to everyone who walked by. I really enjoyed explaining and showing everything I knew from when Irena got in a fight at school to when she was almost executed and found myself realizing how in the younger grades I wouldn’t have been able to do that so confidently.

This project was filled with horrible history that I’m glad is being taught, because it is so important to where we are today with antisemitism rising. Please check out the links and read the images below to learn about Irena Sendler and her incredible her life and as check out my BCFP post connected to this as well. 

BC First Peoples Exhibition

faiths Uncategorized

This semester I took a newly required course called B.C. First Peoples.  While we did a lot of work in this course this year, which you can look at some of work here, this post reflects on our most recent project answering the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?”

First here are some of my products from other projects and weekly notes that I wanted to highlight:

 

I knew from the start of the year that I would have an exhibition for BCFP and one for PLP and while I hoped they would be on the same night, they actually turned out to be back to back. Originally we were told that PLP 11 would be showing our humanities Holocaust project (which you can read about here) but a bit over a week before the exhibition the plans changed. Firstly we were going to only create something small for humanities and focus on BCFP for both exhibitions, then I heard we would be able to choose, finally it settled on a combined approach where students could combine the humanities and the BCFP. 

This is the part of the project I’m especially proud of because when some people heard this they started to stress and I know I can get like that, sort of stuck, but that day I found a white board and started writing down everything I wanted to do and how to connect them. 

Working with my partner, Fraser,  we created an amazing project. I originally wanted to do something with making people aware of the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian health care system. I got interested in this because of a weekly note I did which you can find here and after reading many articles I knew it was a very pressing and important topic. Then when planing for this exhibition my mom actually told me about what she saw the last time she was in the emergency room. She saw an Indigenous Staff member come and connect to Indigenous patients waiting in the ER. She heard him talk to them and assure them that he would be checking in wth them during their time in the hospital that day. In my research, I learned that in multiple hospitals in BC there are Indigenous Patient Navigators who are Indigenous people who help other Indigenous Peoples through everything in the hospital, basically being their spokes person. So I decided to do a project talking about the mistreatment, the statistics, and the systems set in place and where. So when the two projects had to combine my humanities partner Fraser and I decided to use my BCFP project idea and our humanities one and connect it through the idea of people needling to be up-standers today. 

We created multiple interactive parts including a physical timeline, an online quiz with statistics, effective visuals one where some of my friends and I made orange origami roses to make into a heart, and a physical card the visitors could bring home with a link to our calls to action describing how you can be an upstander even in a small way (look below if you want to scan the QR code yourself to see what you can do). Everything was presented well from the beautiful painting of BC (I did the islands and Fraser did the mainland) to the edges of the paper on the table, and the layout was eye catching.  I was super passionate about both topics and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. I would end up in discussions with people who would tell me what they knew about the topic as well and personal stories they had heard.  

 

In the end I am really proud of the project Fraser and I created and I think it answered the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?” And if you want to see a few things you can do please check out this link. The link shows some of our research as well as places you can sign your name, volunteer, or donate to in order to help stop the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian healthcare system. I’m very glad I took this course because not only did I learn this information but in multiple exhibitions I was able to help raise awareness to others who I hope might tell it to even more people causing even a small step forward in reconciliation. 

tPOL 2024

faiths TPol

Driving Question:
How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?

 

“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.” 

 

I’ve loved the growth I have shown and the work I have done this year and by looking at these success behaviours I understand why I feel like I’m doing much better.

Yearly Update on Communication with Teachers 

  • I have set goals each year to talk a lot more with teachers and this year, I am finally really proud of my growth in this area.
  • On plp trips I would engage in conversation.  
  • Will never been super comfortable talking to teachers about school work but I’m getting a lot better at casual conversations making talking about school easier. Mr. Hughes knows a lot of facts about Los Vegas Hotels including how one of them had people trapped in the top when it was on fire. I also learned Ms. McWilliams does not like silence during hiking but would choose to talk about her favourite TV shows with me and Gwen. 
  • BIG WIN FOR ME 

 

Agency

Resilience

  • I can tell that I have improved in this part of agency this year based on how I felt and responded when everything with the exhibition projects were changing.  For this past exhibition I felt like the plan and expectations for us changed a lot and we didn’t even fully know what was happening till the Thursday a WEEK before the exhibition
    • I  argued for us to be able to do both the Humanities project and the BCFP project, because I was really invested in both, but especially the humanities one where Fraser and I had a great idea. 
    • Then when we were told to merge them, instead of being paralyzed by anxiety like I have been in the past when expectations were changing,  I was the one in my group to started planning it out – I got a white board and wrote down all of the ideas we were coming up with then after checking with a teacher we were good to go.

    • And as you saw at the exhibition, our final projects were educational and engaging!
      • Fraser and I had multiple interactive parts, effective visuals, and a physical card the visitors could bring home with a link to our calls to action. Everything was presented well from the edges of the paper were crisp, and the layout was interesting. I also felt that I was super passionate about the topic and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. That feeling shows growth because it was not something I wouldn’t have like doing in the younger Grades.

 

Engagement 

Enthusiasm 

  • This year I have made so many products and presentations that I am really proud of. In other years there were maybe one or two projects I would maybe show off to my relative or something this year I have so many more!
  • In the “Who Cares? Why Bother” government project, I made really good notes and shared my insights in the seminar which makes me feel very proud of myself.  I’m pleased that I spoke first and more than once.
  • I notice that enthusiasm also influences how a group works together.  In the “who Cares? Why Bother?” My group worked together so well and was able to create an informative and engaging project with a memorable performance from Noah.
  • Also in BCFP I created an awesome final product for the honouring the children project. In that one I really did have a good idea that inspired me to make it great. This is the project where there was the tree that had a residential school built around it and everything from the ground to the disconnected leaves had a connection and purpose for it. 
  • Lastly, my overall engagement and enthusiasm was really evident in our “fear factor.” I am so proud of this product. Like in the BCFP project I was inspired. I took my animation abilities from BCFP and decided to make an interactive keynote animation that was like a choose your own adventure to show the decisions people had to make during the Cold War. Not only did I have simple animations, I had drawing animations and I embedded YouTube videos that looked like they were playing on a tv, and I had audio of videos and interviews. It can be a bit glitchy and I needed an extension but that was because I had so much I wanted to say. I also had taken a risk to do it in a format that I love to see from others, but don’t usually choose for myself. I am not an artist!  However, I am very proud of this product and I definitely did it to the best of my ability. 

 

While for this TPOL we needed to focus on just three success behaviours, when I looked over my chart I could check off the “consistently” box for all but one. This helps me see why I am doing so well this year. Who knew walking around a NEON museum would actually be interesting? Or learning about a small town named Kingman. Or why we should never go to a Barbed Wire museum.  Overall , with these consistent success behaviours, my stress levels have gone down and my abilities to take risks have gone up. 

Radiation, Bombs, and FEAR

faiths Humanities

Who knew you could see and do so much stuff in ten days! This was the project that incorporated my field study trip in grade 11. As you can probably guess from the title the project was about fear, more specifically answering the question “How has fear been used as a political, defensive, and cultural tool to shape our society?” 

 

One of the first things we did to launch 🚀 this project was read Hiroshima by John Hersey. This book follows the lives of 6 different survivors of Hiroshima, before, during, and after the atomic bomb was dropped. We did in class discussions, wrote theme analyses, and just considered the different views on the decision to drop the bomb. I found reading this book very interesting because I’ve never known much about Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though they were such an important part of our history and I’m glad I got to understand more of what happened. I also learned more about how an author can use different ways of story telling to show us a theme or message. Most information after the war about Hiroshima was about the statistics, where as this book showed people the influence the bomb had on individuals.

Then we BUILT A SECOND BRAIN! (Technically we just started building a second brain but still.) Have you every heard of a Zettelkasten??? Well before this project I hadn’t heard about it either; its based on the idea that our brain can’t hold all the information and thoughts you have in a day so you write them down in different formats and use your brain more to make connections between everything you write down. Out of the three types of notes (fleeting, literature, and permanent) I found that I normally do fleeting, I find the second one hard and I found the permanent most useful. I am not going to lie but for a while there when we were learning this in class I was thinking “this is never going to be useful to me,” “whyyyyyyyyyyy” and “what the heck is going on,” but guess what? I used the links for permanent notes in my writing on the project I’m working on now. Ms. Madsen told us to write a paragraph on why stories are a good way to learn and I was like “hey I wrote a permanent note about this” so then I linked it and used the previous things I had link to as examples for this piece of writing!!! It actually works!!!!!!! I’m trying to still keep the system in place but I am finding myself falling behind on it so I might need to change how I do parts of it to find something that works better for me. Overall I liked how I could show the connections between topics instead of just having them in my head for a day then forgetting them. 

Using our Zettelkasten system to record information and our thoughts, we watched different films about atomic warfare, and just the Cold War in general. During this time we also read a book called Fallout by Todd Strasser which I found really engaging. It focused more on the impacts the Cold War had on individuals and it was my inspiration to my own question for the project. Unlike most PLP projects we got to choose not only what our final product would be but we also got to create our own inquiry question to answer. Being interested on individual people’s decisions during the Cold War I decided on the question “How did fear influence people’s and society’s decisions about personal safety?”

Then our TRIP. I loved this trip, it was even better then last years (which was also amazing) and last year’s was to Disney World so you know the bar was high. We flew into Tucson Arizona, then went to a missile silo (where I gotta be one of the people to turn the key), copper mine, a long hike, museum/zoo, air and space museum (I absolutely loved this part, especially talking to the people there), an all you can eat buffet, all you can eat buffet and a wild West show. Then on our way to Sedona we went to the biosphere 2, visited the Casa grande ruins, and heard an organ player at a pizza restaurant. Then still making our way up Arizona we went on a really cool hike with beautiful views (this was my favourite hike), another really cool hike, a church in the mountains, and saw an IMAX video that had a cougar attack in it! The next day we woke up at 4 o’clock and saw the sunrise on the south end of the Grand Canyon (if you ever go see the sunrise there WEAR PANTS it is cold), then we hiked, partly down into the canyon, which was beautiful, we got to explore, we drove up and stopped at this town on Route 66 which had lots of cool shops, and ended the day at a delicious steakhouse. The next few days included museums, the Hoover dam, the Neon museum,  Fremont Street, National Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas crazy casinos, talking to AI robots, seeing the sphere show, another all you can eat buffet and undercover mansion, more malls, three hours in a place called Omega mart and so so much more. It was amazing to visit these places first hand and especially to talk to the volunteers at the Air and Space museum because they had actually been kids during the Cold War. 

When we got back from our (amazing) trip we were in a bit of a rush to finish our final product. I am really proud of what I created for my question but it took a long time and I should’ve done a less time consuming style of animation. For this project we got to pitch whatever final product we thought could show our answer to our inquiry question and I wanted to do something I wouldn’t normally get to do for a project. Since my question was about peoples’ decisions being influenced by fear I wanted to show some of those possible decisions by making an interactive story!!! The hardest part for me (other than the drawings which took a really really long time. P.S. do not look at any of the peoples hands in the illustrations… I gave up on trying to draw hands years ago), was showing that it was fear that made people make these decisions. From my research, I could see that it wasn’t just “oh I feel like making kids hide under desks today,” but that people were scared and had to make hard decisions with different impacts. For my animation I designed it to seem like you were a mother in 1960 in Tucson, Arizona where you had to make all these decisions based off different information that I gathered on my trip and in my search. Throughout the animation, with almost every decision there was an option to “give up and move on with my life,” which I included because fear can also drive you to push away the fear, or you may also realize that you just did not believe in it and I thought that was an important perspective that I needed to add. Overall, I’m especially proud of how I included evidence in so many different forms: I had voice interviews, videos, photos, pamphlets and drawings. Creating this final product was very fun (even the drawings…sorta) but mostly I enjoyed it because I actually am very proud of what I made and felt I showed a lot of my learning in a very creative way. If you click here you can see and go through my final product (unfortunately you have to have an app called keynote in order to see the animations and videos) 

Fear has influenced the world in so many ways, and if you want to see other ways from during the Cold War I suggest you check out Teva’s about secrets, or Fraser’s about Canada today or Nolan about technology, or Ava’s about the red scare and McCarthyism or Sabrina’s about politics or any of the other PLP 11s who all showed different sides and ideas.  I never knew much about the Cold War but I definitely never realized just how big an impact it had on our society. It was a war not fought by soldiers or guns, but with fear. This isn’t the only example of fear shaping our society but it does help show how our world is so connected and defined by fear.

Who Cares? Why Bother?

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🤷‍♀️ Where I started

In Grade 5, I distinctly remember learning that there are municipal, provincial, and federal governments in Canada. And that there are taxes. Since then, anything about government has seemed to disappear from my memory. When we started this project, I remember internally complaining about the fact that I had to spend the next month or so learning about something “so boring.” I never knew why there were different names on the election signs in North Vancouver than the signs just across the bridge. I didn’t really understand why we had different parties or that the Governor General even existed. This is where I was at despite my family being somewhat knowledgeable about the government and a great grandfather who was a speaker for the house for Alberta. 

📍Where I am now

The driving questions are: “why do politics matter,” “why should we bother,” and “how can we engage young people in the voting process.” At this time, not only has my knowledge about the government increased but also my understanding of why it should matter to me.  

 

🧭 How did I get here

The Inner-workings of our Government:

To start this project off we built our knowledge of how our governments are run. We listened to lectures from Ms. Madsen, watched videos, looked at visuals, and did daily activities to apply why we learned.

What I did well: Knowing more and more how I learn, I didn’t just type everything the teacher was saying, instead I drew what she was drawing on the board. I added other drawings to it so I could remember and understand the content more. Whenever someone asked me a question, I found that I could visualize where in the chart the information was, which helped me access it. Something else that I did really well was making a storyboard. This was not required for the government video, but I knew I could help my group be organized if we had a visual plan (even if the drawings were stick people), and help myself see what we needed to get done. 

Where I pushed my thinking: The goals of the Government video pushed my thinking. We had to create an informative video for teenage on a topic I knew many of them found boring and somehow keep them engaged. Together my group decided that to do this, we should include different medias by having a video of us and animations that moved around. We also made it seem less than a just an informative video and more like someone helping someone out by explaining it. I also needed to push myself when I not only helped write the script, but did more animation than I thought I would need to do. Animation is not one of my strengths but the video turned out well.

Lord of The Flies:

To learn about the idea of social contract and human nature, we read William Golding’s Lord of The Flies and did group discussions. 

What I did well: I TALKED. A LOT! (for me, at least). For this part of the project, we had to do a group discussion with Ms. Madsen. I was very nervous about this since I don’t enjoy talking in groups or to teachers, and this was both. But I was determined and ended up talking more then I have in any past class discussions. It may not have actually seemed like a lot but I was very proud of myself that I tried to talk every time I had something to add, including being the first student to talk in my group at the beginning.

Where I pushed my thinking: Along with reading the book, I also listened to the book so I could take better notes. The analysis of my notes and the specific questions we were asked, was the basis of what I shared and contributed in group discussions. Where I pushed myself was in the analysis of the book. I had heard of this book from my Mom and many non-PLP classmates but when I started reading this book it wasn’t my favourite. I found the word choices and the amount of descriptions very confusing. When I was done the book, I was very concerned because I did not think I could make connections between the book and the questions. In the end, I talked to friends, family members, and processed the book more and wrote my ideas down, making good connections that you can see here.

The Final Product:

For the final product, we had to create a 10 minute presentation that included our government video, showed our research about current issues, all to convince young people to vote.

What I did well: My communication skills and collaboration skills were strong in the final product. I made sure that everyone had something to do, that they were doing something that was one of their strengths, and that they came in early the day of our presentation so that we could practice. I also helped write the script and researched the political issue I was in charge of as well as helping others find sources for their research. 

Where I pushed my thinking: In the creation of the final presentation about “why young people should vote,” I pushed myself to find ways to make the presentation engaging, and also to problem solve when we ran into issues. Our judge’s panel was made up of Grade 10 and 12 students, which meant that everything in our presentation needed to capture their attention. My group decided that Noah should be an old man with outdated views and who kept interrupting us. This was funny and broke up the longer sections. We also made it seem like we were “FaceTiming” a person who then talked about one of the issues and we set our whole video up as a ted talk. I personally had the idea to split up the long government video into two parts so that the judges did not get bored. Overall, I pushed myself to be very aware of who my audience was and how to get them to care about the information we wanted to get across. You can read their feedback below:

🔍 Where I could improve: 

When reading over The Lord of the Flies, I needed to make connections for the discussion. I found this challenging. Looking back, I should have talked to Ms. Madsen more for help and to see if I was on the right track, because trying to make those big picture connections was difficult. This novel was important because it teaches us about social contracts and why government is important and it talks about human nature. Also, for the final presentation, I wish I had practiced my own lines more because I found myself tripping over many words. 

🤔 Why does my learning here matter: 

In trying hard to convince other young people to vote, it showed me many reasons why I need to vote when I am 18. I was not against voting, but I was not thinking about it. Now I want to and I know that many of my classmates feel the same.  In the last federal election, 10% less young people voted than the election before that one. Decisions about climate change, tuition prices, homelessness, the war on drugs will affect our immediate and long term future. By voting, young people will have a say in what their future looks like.

Thanks for reading!

Article 44

faiths Uncategorized

Hi. This is a short blog post showing part of the work I have done in BC First Peoples so far this year.

UNDRIP stands for the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it got royal assent (making it law) in 2021 in Canada. It is a framework of rights for the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples. For this assignment I had to pick an article from UNDRIP, research it and share what it is and why it’s important in a story formate. I hope you like my puppet pals video below.

I hope you learned something watching the video. Article 44 states that: All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female indigenous individuals.

This is important because it means that Indigenous women legally have to be treated the same as men. Indigenous people always faced a lot of discrimination and their rights have always been late to come into place but Indigenous women rights are even worse. Up until 1951 Indigenous women couldn’t even vote on their own band members and it was only in 1985 that Indigenous women could marry someone without status without losing their own status. And we see this more recently with the MMIWG. Those are just some examples of why this law is so important it makes it official that indigenous guys and girls have to be treated the same. I hope you learned something and maybe feel like you want to do your own research to learn more. 

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The Destruction of my Friend Ava through (a super hero) Debate

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How can we use a formal debate to convince an audience we’re right?

When I heard that we were starting a debate unit my first thoughts were “I’m going to have to speak in PUBLIC? Noooooooooooooooooo!” But throughout the project I actually had a lot of fun and surprised myself.

To start the project off we watched the movie The Great Debaters and if you have seen the movie you will know that their teacher has them practice speaking with a cork 🍾 in their mouths. While this movie was very interesting to watch and got us in the debating mindset, I was very glad that we never had to do that (it was offered though). I enjoyed the movie because I never have been interested in debate so I felt like this introduced our class to what we would be doing. 

Now that we were in the debating mindset, we needed to practice using persuasive writing. “The Best _____ Ever” was our prompt and I chose to do the best sport (which you all should know is volleyball!!!!!!!). Here is the link to all the different versions I made including the one where I had to identify logos, pathos, and ethos as well as the one where I had to rewrite to add parallel structure. Parallel structure was the format we were going to use in our debates so we practiced with this writing skill. Interestingly, I found that my writing actually showed several parallel structures already which gave me hope for my debate. 

Then we got to pick our topic and nemesis (opponent). My friend Ava and I had already decided to go against each other so as soon as we got the list of possible topic we started highlighting. We went through the list crossing off things we didn’t want to do (basically anything to do with money and school) and highlighting all the ones we would want to try to debate (this was a long list of everything else). Eventually we narrowed it down to multiple serious topics and one fun one. We found that most people were doing serious topics since it was going to be a serious debate, so we picked the opposite (the fun one:) ) to challenge ourselves to turn a fun topic into a serious debate. We chose “Super Villains are Better Then Super Heroes”.

Once we chose our topic we begun researching which allowed me to show growth in my questioning competency. I chose the affirmative side of the statement and because we weren’t supposed to know our opponent’s arguments, the affirmative and negative were put on different sides of the classroom. One engaging part of this project was how my opponent/nemesis/Ava and I made the competition entertaining. For example, you can see from the title of this blog that we would find creative, and fun names for our documents. Other examples are the title of my Need To Knows and the tittle of my Research. For our debates we were told to find lots of research and put it in the form of an annotated bibliography. The trickiest part of this process was finding sources about Super Villains that met all the reliability requirements. We needed at least three reasons why each source was reliable before we could use it (if it was made recently or maybe its a university paper) and there aren’t many research papers from universities about Super Villains. This is one part that definitely showed my researching growth and how I had to change which criteria I was using. Instead of trying to find university studies,  I found articles written by reliable authors with jobs like psychologists and others that made sense with my topic. 

 

Now that I had the research I wrote the actual debate. We broke the debate speech into three parts:

1. The 4 minute opening with most of the research and arguments. 

2. The 1 minute rebuttal which was our reply to our opponent’s arguments. 

3. The 30 seconds closing remarks.

I think the was the hardest part for me was writing the opening 4 minutes as I had lots of ideas but found that…. It might have been too many ideas. My first draft was about 9 minutes….. it took me a long time to cut it down to the four minutes. During this process no matter what people said when I asked them what I should cut I would always keep a certain part. That part was “Are you trying to decide between blond, or brunette? Cruella Deville shows us that you don’t have to decide – make a statement, go for both.“ I don’t know why, but I loved that part and I wouldn’t get rid of it. Eventually with lots of feedback and edits I had a draft that I was excited to present.  Next was the rebuttal. We got many rebuttal examples so when it came to writing mine it wasn’t as hard as writing my 4 minute speech. What I did find hard was knowing that Ava was going to think of some abstract and not obvious point, that I didn’t know, so I couldn’t prepared for it. Then I wrote my conclusion (that I threw out the window during my debate so it doesn’t matter what I originally wrote). 

I grew in my communication competency in the practicing and presenting of the debate. Before I tell you how I am proud of how the debate went, you should understand that public speaking has never been my strong suit so I was pretty nervous going into this project. The feeling of not wanting to talk in front of people got worse when I came early one day to practice in front of of Ms Madsen, my teacher. It didn’t go terrible but I could’ve done better and it didn’t instil me with confidence and nether did the practice later that week in front of her in class. I did practice a lot in front of friends and (what I found very helpful) in front of my whole family but I was still very nervous.

Exhibition day!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was it where all my hard work hopefully was going to come together. I watched multiple people debate (which I found helpful for my own) and saw part of the other PLP students’ work (though not as much as I would’ve liked). Then it was my turn; Ava and I both did really well. A few things I am especially proud: I didn’t speak too quickly which is a tendency of mine when I speak publicly, I used my research to make up an appropriate rebuttal in the moment, and I completely redid my conclusion while talking. What I found surprising was how Ava took a shot at my argument in the conclusion (it was a smart move to be honest) but I definitely wasn’t expecting that. She also made a lot of points that I wasn’t expecting making it challenging for me to rebut her. 

In the end, I did win the debate which might have had something to do with 6 of the audience members being related, but overall, I was very proud of how I did and I loved having Ava as an opponent/nemesis. The experience was fun and challenging. I found that I surprised myself in how I spoke in my debate and even though I need to work on annunciation I was glad I didn’t just speed through all my writing. I really enjoyed communicating in this different format, as it was something I hadn’t tried before and I found it very enjoyable. Overall I enjoyed this project and I hope you look below and watch my debate as well as the debates of my other classmates. 

The Manhattan Project Project

faiths Humanities

How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?

All of  my information regarding the Manhattan Project before this unit came from the TRAILER of the Oppenheimer movie. I knew the US built a different type of bomb and that it had devastating effects that ended WWII. I didn’t even know enough to have an opinion on the driving question.

We started the project with lectures about the people, science, and effect of the atomic bomb. We then wrote a piece on any event or person that we wanted talk about and argue why it was historically significant. My choice was to write about Pearl Harbour which led me to research and gave me a chance to revisit the idea of historical significance which we would be using throughout this project. You can see my argument for why Pearl Harbour is historically significant here.

Next, instead of keystones or milestones like most humanities projects, we dived into the creation of the final product by being put into groups of 6. Our goal over the next few weeks was to research, write, design, and publish an interactive book on the historical significance of the Manhattan Project. Our group took a loooong time to brainstorm ideas for our book but in the end we came up with an original and creative idea for our book that no other group did. Instead of writing the book from an outside point of view, we wrote the book from Oppenheimer’s perspective, and turned it into his journal.

 

For part of this project, two group members went on a field school to New Mexico, and visited the Trinity site and a museum which is where they interviewed people and took photos for our book. Back at Seycove, the rest of us split up the book into sections. As the project manager, I helped split up the tasks and research topics to start the process of creating out book. I personally set goals for each class and made sure everyone knew what their job was when they left class each day. I was in charge of finding and writing the information for the “classified file” and the opening writing about Oppenheimer becoming director of Los Alamos.

 

One of the requirements of our book was making sure each team member was in a video so my group came up with the idea to do a reenactment of Vice President Truman becoming President and then finding out about the Manhattan Project. This emphasized how much of a secret the building of the atomic bomb was even at high levels of government.

Overall my group worked really well together. Everybody did their part and helped to come up with ideas when our book got off track or when our thesis needed to be revised. I really liked collaborating in this project and I think it would have been difficult to do on my own. We could build our ideas off of each other and research and develop the part of the book we were interested in doing. I also liked how we each had roles as it made things go smoother. We knew who would edit the videos, for example, and who to ask for help when designing the layout of our pages. We could rely on each other to do our part while still being able to ask for help and get a response when we needed one.

Much of this project was about communication and research skills. As a group we found it really challenging to find sources that talked about Oppenheimer’s thoughts, which caused difficulty considering it was supposed to be from his perspective. This led to deeper research and creativity. I really love how we had different ways to show our information. We had the classified file at the beginning, newspaper to show the historical significance the end, as well as interviews, a video, and photos. To make our book to feel more like a journal we called the chapters “entries,” crossed out words, and coffee stains on the pages.

Now at the end of the project, I realize how much more to the Manhattan project there is than I thought. It was interesting to learn “little’ details like the government actually built a full town so the scientists could bring their families. It was also interesting to learn more about why the decision to build, and drop the bomb is controversial. Below you can see my group’s final product. Make sure you check out the top-notch reenactment video as well as read why this event is so historically significant.

 

F.A.I.L (Faith’s Advice In Learning)

faiths Humanities, PLP

How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners? That was the driving question for the first PLP 11 project. This project was a lot more English based then many humanities projects, which I found challenging. Writing and grammar have never been my strong suit so when we started a project called “Mightier than the sword” I was a bit worried. 

To start off the project we did writing workshops and learned about the writing process. This included learning new ways to brainstorm and finding different techniques that worked better for us. If you click here you can see my writing journal where I reflected on this experience. 

In my writing journal you will also find my academic writing which was the next part of this project. For the academic writing we had to think about the audience and tone  so you can see my process in the rhetorical analysis in the writing journal. I found the rhetorical analysis especially hard in the writing process because its a different type of purposeful writing than I usually do. Normally I write down some ideas and some evidence and then just start writing; for a rhetorical analysis, I had to think about what contexts and audiences affect my writing. The requirements for the academic where to write about why PLP is a good choice for students focusing on whatever aspects we wanted. I decided to write mine on hand on learning because I know this is a type of learning I have found very useful in PLP. I have done a bit of writing in the last few years but this one was much harder then most of what I had done before. This writing was serious and needed research and sources and quotes which all took a lot of time. I wrote many drafts (that you can see in my writing journal above) and got lots of feedback I used for my final draft. 

This brings us to the final product which was creating a piece of writing for the PLP Grade 8s. Now as grade 11 student I don’t interact with the grade 8s on a normal basis so figuring out what they would want to get advice on was challenging. We started off with lots of brainstorming and then came up with questions to ask them during a morning snack/discussion time one morning. I participated in the early group for the discussions and it went really well. I was able to get good ideas of who the Grade 8 are and what they are concerned about for high school. Using that information I decided to write my advice on F.A.I.L which in PLP means First Attempt In Learning. I am very proud of the name I decided to call my writing F.A.I.L (Faith’s Advice In Learning ).  For this writing I liked how I added in my own experiences as well as my brother’s as I felt that it added a more personal touch that gave the students first hand advice. I found the type of writing for this much more casual and fun compared to the academic writing so I found it easier to write. 

I unfortunately wasn’t able to get any feedback from the Grade 8 on my writing but I am proud of what I wrote which is my goal this year to be proud of what I hand in. If you click here you can see my final writing I hope it’s helpful to you PLP 8 out there :). 

 

Finances and the Spring Exhibition!

faiths Uncategorized

In this post, I will be reflecting on my last PGP project and our spring exhibition!

This PGP project was all about our financial future!!! We started off playing a Uber simulator to get an understanding of gig work. I would never consider being an Uber driver myself and this simulator didn’t change my mind, it was long hours and didn’t seem like a lot of money.
Then we went into personal budgets. We started with creating a craft document stating all my personal fixed and variable expenses in a month. Taking this information we added how much we should be spending on it versus how much we spend. This made me realize that I need to buy fewer fries in the cafeteria but that other than that I’m not spending too much.
That was the starting point in learning about financial literacy. Having financial literacy means that you can make smart and informed money decisions in your life. In class, we then talked about the five pillars of financial literacy
1. Earning
2. Spending
3. Saving and investing
4. Borrowing
5. Protecting
After defining everything we watched the movie “Moneyball” to see these skills in action.

This brings us to my favourite part of this project the stock simulator. The point of the stock simulator was to deepen our understanding of investing and understanding how it could fit into the real world.
Using an app on our iPad we all got $13,000 fake money in a real-world simulator. At that point, we had to decide what type of investing we wanted to do. We could invest ethically or profit based or in anything we recognized. I found myself researching multiple ethical companies that ended up being about 50% of what I invested in. The other half were companies I recognized (like Apple and Google). One smart investment that I was happy with was Apple I bought it when it wasn’t super high and then only sold it when it got super high during the Apple event. Here you can view all my week-by-week reflections.

This brings us to the exhibition part of my blog post! This year the exhibition for my grade included this finances project, the last marketing me project, and the podcast I made in Maker. This is a lot of stuff but I think our room incorporated it all very well, our main idea was that our room would look like an office where we could each display our podcasts and who we were on business cards while also showing examples of our stock simulators.

I liked how my podcast business card turned out. I did multiple drafts and got feedback from a lot of people and in the end, liked the look of what I created. I was also impressed by how well my class got our room ready for the exhibition. We had a lot of problems at the beginning like how we didn’t have any tables and all of our plans needed tables but as a class, we figured it out and created an impressive office.

 

This was a good introduction to the world of finances, marketing, and stocks (I should never invest real money I would lose it all) and I loved showing what I learned at the spring exhibition.