Hey there! You probably saw the title of this post and asked yourself, why P.A.N.T.S? What do pants even have to do with matter cycles anyway? Good question! For this past unit in Scimatix, we’ve been studying Matter Cycles and their positive and negative effects and how they contribute to the world. The four main cycles we looked at were Carbon, Hydro, Nitrogen and the one I focused on, Phosphorus Cycle. Once again, I got to work with the awesome and trusty Fraser to brainstorm and create a solution to one of our cycle’s problems.

As usual, each project we do has a purpose in learning. We call these curricular competencies. Basically, they’re the main points and skills we are learning. In this case, let’s begin with questioning and predicting. Fraser and I brainstormed our knowledge of what we already knew and didn’t know about our cycle. The main points you need to know is that phosphorus helps nurture plants and helps them grow healthier and stronger. It’s naturally found in the ground and is preserved in rocks. From there, the two of us researched and took note of the main negative side effect to the cycle and how it was caused. It so happens that humans and their use of fertilizer are the main problem as fertilizer contains extra phosphorus which gets soaked into the ground. From there, the minerals get washed into bodies of water such as oceans and cause something called algalbloom.

After carefully analyzing the situation, my partner and I evaluated the situation and drew up a diagram with our solution. We knew what the problem was but also knew that plants used phosphorus to grow. Keeping that in mind, we created our solution that we called P.A.N.T.S. It stands for Phosphorus Abundant Nutrients Terminal System. It uses plants as a sponge o soak up excess phosphorus before it reaches the oceans. At the beginning of the post is an animation Fraser drew up and I wrote a short essay to explain the problem and our solution.

Finally, to  present and communicate our solution, the two of us made a short slide show explaining our system. This was presented to the class during school along with many other presentation pitches on other solutions for different matter cycles.

Thanks for reading!

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye! I’m glad to go, I cannot tell a lie! Goodbye DI! With Destination Imagination at an end, it’s time to look back at this remarkable journey. Since Regionals my team and I spent hours working together to improve our solution and performance. We knew the things we did well such as our story but we also knew the many things we needed to improve such as our special effect, costumes, etc. DI has taught me so much about the importance of trusting your teammates and time management. After coming back from Spring Break, my team and I were in a bit of a time crunch leading up to the Provincial Tournament. Our backdrop and props needed retouching, the costumes weren’t done, the wood wasn’t cut and our special effect was inexistant. Anika and I worked together in Basecamp to create a time management schedule to help keep us all on track and put priorities first. From this, I learned that basecamp can be a very helpful feature for my next group or team project.

With a schedule set, my team got to work. We divided up the tasks to get assignments done faster. While Taylor and Emerson filled out the forms, Nik and I went down to the wood shop to cut the wood for our structure. Together, we were efficient with our time. Considering the amount of things that needed to get done, my team and I were making some pretty good progress! Pretty ingenious right?! …well, maybe except for the special effect… oh boy, that was probably the one thing that went worse in Provincials. Although Emerson, Nik and I spent hours after school working on some sort of special effect, everything still went wrong on the day of.

The day of the Provincial tournament came too soon. Luckily, we didn’t have to compete until later that day leaving for many hours of prep and practice time but this also meant that Nik wouldn’t be able to compete due to a conflict. Therefore, Emerson had to take on the challenge of memorizing and playing Nik’s role in our performance. To be honest, I was a bit concerned at first about us being underprepared and that Emerson hadn’t ever done a full run through in his new role, but we continued to practice from sitting in the middle of hallways to the very last second before stepping onto the stage.

The performance itself went fairly well. I mean, anyone who has performed before knows that things rarely go as planned so of course there were a few scruff ups which I’ll get to in a second. For now, let’s celebrate what went well! During regionals, we had some technical complications for our music that was meant to play during our team Choice elements. I’m glad to say that at least one of those soundtracks played during our Provincial performance and the Firebird costuming was much better and way more dramatic than the first time. Our team Choice elements and instant challenge went well too! We worked as a team and relied and trusted one another and that worked in our favour.

As for the rest, our team missed Nik more than we knew. Without him, Taylor had to drop the weights for our team. Even though she was given a brief lesson from Emerson, our weight placement part of the performance was a disaster. Because our structure had one shorter support beam for our special effect, the pressure board and weights had to be placed a certain way. This was not the case during our performance and as soon as the first weight dropped, our structure was disqualified as the pressure board no longer was touching our structure. This was very disappointing, but what can you do? Reflect, talk about it as a team and move on.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ichHp9hHqE

Few things I learned from this past DI experience, put first things first. Be proactive when it comes to this kinda stuff. Our team left one of the biggest challenges (the special effect) to the last minute and that came toppling on top of us. These were things and skills our class learned from the new PGP subject this year so I’ll definitely get another shot at improving this. Secondly, I learned to play to each other’s strengths. During our instant challenges, each person on our team was given a task such as keeping track of time or score. These tasks usually played to one’s strength which makes it so much easier for both the team and individual.

Overall, DI 2019 was another unforgettable learning experience and, regardless of all the stress and hard work, still turned out to have a fun component, even if that part was small, it was still great getting to work as a team and land another unexpected second place win!

Your Blogging Friend,

Kiera