This summer along with being in a Jazz camp, my family and I drove up to 70 mile. This was a great experience as long with I beautiful place. Now if your wondering where that is, it is a little bit farther then Kamloops. And in 70 mile it’s not just in the middle of nowhere (even though it kind of is) the is a lake called green lake that we were on. Along with that was a horse ranch where I was able to go for a ride one day. Now that was one of my favourite parts of the trip because I absolutely love that. Also I was able to do some pottery because there was a wheel at the cabin we were staying at. So on a day to day experience we would get up go down to the lake read a book, go for a swim maybe do some pottery or paddle boarding then come in at like five because of the mosquitos. And that was it for a week, a pretty hard life 😀.
Overall this summer was pretty great and I got to experience lots of knew things!
In the midst of summer who new I would be in school! But the3 school I went was a little bit different then what you would think. I was in a camp for a week about Afro-American Jazz. This was a great experience for me, because I play the trumpet and this camp taught me so much wether it was actually playing, improvisation, theory and playing within a group. Now as you may have already figured out through the title but this was at the VSO school of Music. My amazing teachers here were a wide variety because it wasn’t only for trumpet players but it was for players from Stand up Bass to saxophones even singing and from all ages, from my age to 60 year olds(though I was one of the youngest players there). And the teachers how taught us so much were Jodi Proznick, Miles Black, Bill Coon, Kelly Proznick, Steve Maddock, Jesse Cahill, Rod Murray and Steve Kaldestad. They were all so amazing and taught me so much. And I got to know most of them because in a day you weren’t just assigned to one teacher, in the morning you would do a group game or something to get to know each other. Then you would have a theory class and there were three levels you could choose Beginer, Intermediate and Advanced (they all had different teachers) I chose begins because I really didn’t know much and this was taught by Jodi Proznick. After that we had master classes, this was where we would get together with the other people who played the same instrument as us so for me trumpet, and this was taught by Rod Murray. Then it was lunch and since the school was on Robson st there was a wide selection for that 😀. And after lunch we had combo rehearsals , where we put with a couple of other people and one of the coaches above and would practise songs because we had a concert on the last night to play for our family and friends, and in my group our coach was Steve Kaldestad. And then finally to end the day we had big band where not everyone but horns and a rhythm section played big band songs for the concert on the last night. And all of this from 9am-5pm was exhausting but you couldn’t wait for the next day.
This all taught me so much and was an amazing experience. It taught me how to solo WAY better ( I had four solos in the one concert) it taught me how to play, how to play with people and it just built my confidence! I’m hoping to go in this next summer as well so that I can learn even more.
In scimatics recently we did a project on how the Raven stole the sun. Now you may be wondering what does that story have to do with science? Well there is light and symmetry and that is all what we were learning.
So for the project we were just supposed to make something to do with the story of the Raven stealing the light, symmetry and light. I decided to make a box type thing, with a Raven I made out of clay, a convex lens and then have a flashlight shining through the back of the box.
Overall I did learn from this it was an interesting way of learning!
It is that time of year again for student lead conferences, where we show our teacher and parents what we learned during the year.
For the first part we look at what work is the best evidence of learning and work this year. I chose both my blue sky project and the museum exhibit. I chose these because I think that I worked very hard on them and was a leader in both of them, and I have been working towards that.
Next is what I thought was the best evidence of what I could have improved on. For that I chose my Raven stealing the light project. I feel that even though it did work and it had all the criteria for the project I still could have improved on it.
Overall throughout the year I did learn a lot and I really enjoyed it. I also as said at my last SLC’s said I would improve on being a leader and taking charge. And this term I feel like I did just that. Though I can’t wait for the summer to come!
Recently in class along with all the other projects we had, we also researched what the European exploration was. Well we learned everything from syphlisis to fur trading, and along with that we each decided wether we though that it was positive or negative. And as we learned this we were told that we were going to put all this information in a museum exhibition.
Then we were put into groups for three separate parts of the exhibition, the desire, the means and the results. I was put in the result group with Willa, Alex, Aiden, Ryan, Robbie, Tatum, Marcus and Adam. We were the ones who told people what happened because of the exploration, we also asked whether they thought it was positive that hey explored or if it was negative. I personally think that it was negative simply because of the amount of lives lost or harmed and that everything was fine before they explored, that it wasn’t needed. Though that is simply my thought on it if you want to comment on what you think either comment below or comment on our Instagram account that we made especially for that purpose, themenwhosoldtheworld is what it is called.
On Thursday June 16 if you were to go to Seycove Secondary you would see a variety of things, and one of those would have been blue sky. For blue sky I made a dog brush for my dog Henry because hair used to go everywhere whenever I brushed him. But with the brush I made it catches the hair as it goes the the brush. Now this brush as difficult as it may seem took many different designs and tries to figure out what would work. And I finally found one, that one was made with a price of hardwood flooring, leather and a dog comb that was already made that I attached onto the wood.
As for the actuall exhibition I was in the Welcome Home group, we were all grouped together because we have inventions that had to do with home. To present this we got balloons, lemonade and cookies to make it look like a party. Also at the exhibition to show of my brush I brought my dog Henry, and he certainly helped me present it and everyone enjoyed it.
Here is a video of me using the brush on my dog.
So overall in whole my first official non-star wars exhibition went very well, and I can’t wait until I get to make something new next year!
On Saturday night in the Seycove gym you would have seen that it was totally transformed into Bourbon Street, this was because all the Jazz sections were performing. This was an amazing night and everyone played great. I also did a solo in one of the songs which I was really nervous for but then once it was done felt good about it.
Here is the song I soloed in
Overall I loved it and can’t wait till next year to do it all again!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in the 1400’s? Well that would have been the time period of the Renaissance when everything was changing. That’s exactly what we did in class, we looked into the Renaissance and the people in that time period. I chose to research Flaminio Ponzio (an architect) Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (a mathematician) Lodovico Dolce (a thinker). To fit all the information and the differences and similarities together we made a Venn diagram.
After that, to finish of the Renaissance we were to create a poster that shows how the Renaissance influenced the western worldview. This took a couple drafts for me to get right but I am proud with the one I have now.
First draftFinal draft
As you can see this has stayed similar but I have added and subtracted things to make it clearer.
On Saturday May 7th at the VSO there was a concert called Broadway Rocks going on. This was 3 singers called LaKisha Jones, Christiane Noll and Rob Evan. Along with them was the symphony and the UBC choir. This was amazing to listen to and the orpheum is always an amazing -place to see a show. And even better Seycove got 50 free tickets to it from London Drugs so it was all free! With those tickets London Drugs gave us the opportunity to meet the conductor Steven Reineke who is from New York, the second trumpet player and the bassoon player.
Some of the things they played/sung were from Hairspray, Mama Mia, The phantom of the Opera, the Jersey boys and many more musical peices.
This was great to see and experience and I can’t wait until I get to see another live concert!
In my last post I talked about a project we have been working on in class. Where we are creating two Explain Everything’s about two religions and then from there inserting them into an iBook. To learn more about these different religions that everyone was researching we went on field trips to multiple religious buildings to learn more. This took one full school day and then two other half days. When we did this we went to a Sikh temple, a Christian church, an Islam mosque, a Vedic culture center, a Tibetan temple and a Jewis synagogue. These were all amazing places to see and observe other people’s religions. It also confirmed a lot of information that either we weren’t sure about or didn’t know.
Here are a few images of the places that we went to:
This trip taught me tons about all different people and religions. I also got some great Indian food out of it 😉 Also it showed that you can’t always trust what the Internet says. So overall these trips were great experiences!
Thanks for Reading and soon I will be doing another post cloncluding this project
