Reaching my Peak Potential 🏔️🥾

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Welcome back!

I have not written in my blog for a while because it has been summer, but I am back at it! To start off this blog post, I will talk about the many steps we took to working towards answering the driving question this project. Part of this project was interviewing people, and we interviewed people from the tops of mountains, to tea houses in the middle of the wilderness! Keep reading to find out how and why…

Driving Question

The driving question for this project was “How do we become the best versions of ourselves?” Throughout this whole project, we pieced together an answer for this question. Read on to find out!

Banner in the Sky

To prepare our class for our Alberta trip and the hikes, we read Banner in the Sky. After reading the book, we were assigned a character to make a character sketch from. Here is mine for Emil Saxo.

Reading this book was helpful to prepare mentally for the hikes and mountaineering we did! Personally, I didn’t really enjoy this book that much. It was a little hard to read at times because it felt a little repetitive, But I am glad I stuck with it.

Interviewing Skills

To practice our interviewing and video making skills, we started out by making an interview video with a classmate. I interviewed Tyler! I will put in this video to show the progress I made in editing and interviewing people from before the trip to Alberta to after the trip to Alberta. 

Alberta 🏔️

As you may know, one of the main parts of PLP is field studies. You can go and check out my Oregon post from last year. Our class hopped on a bus, and drove all the way to Alberta! I never realized how the climate and landscape could change so much over a short-ish distance. I was so lucky to see the beauty of British Columbia, and how breathtaking the sight were so amazing. I am a hiking pro now after some of the long and crazy hikes we summited! Here are some photos from the trip.

We had to ask ourselves many times, “How can I reach my peak potential today?” Whether it was getting super early for a hike (despite going to bed super late), to summiting a mountain, to trying a new food!

Viral Video

One of the tasks on our trip was to create a TikTok video with a travel theme. It could be a transition video, a photo dump a dance, or any other trends. The one criteria was that it had to show the scenery of Alberta. I chose to do a photo and video dump format, where I pieced together lots of videos of my trip.  Here it is!

 

Silent Film

This was the video I enjoyed creating the most. For a silent film, you have to really emphasize movement and emotions. We went to the Three Valley Gap Ghost Town to film this. If you have ever been to the ghost town, you know that it is a bit creepy… Especially near Halloween with the ghost trains and decorations 👻! It was a very cool setting to film our silent film. We were allowed to think of any plot for our video, as long as it had a beginning, middle, and end. Here is the story spine we created before the trip. I was in a group with Elsa, Julia, and Lian.

Here is the final video!

Something that our group could have revised on was adding music all the way through. That was the main feedback. And to our surprise, our teacher said that the rizz party scene could be taken out 😂. In the end though, we got a mountain climber meaning we were almost there but it was time to move on. 

 

10 Essentials Video

All the practice interviews led up to this moment! The task was to create a large blended video with interviews that we made with strangers we came across. We asked them questions about the “10 essentials of life”.  We asked questions like “Who is somebody who lifts you up in a hard time?”. The questions were meant to teach us life lessons in order to live a happy successful life. My group members were Elsa, and Maya. Here is my 10 essentials of life video.

How Can We Be The Best Versions of Ourselves?

To reflect on this ⬆️ driving question, I think that every little assignment we did for this project contributed to the answer. I don’t think you can ever be the “best” version of yourself, and I think that every day you should wake up and try your best.

Listening to other people’s stories and personal experiences helped give me perspective that everyone goes through hard times and struggles, but there is always a way out. Even just going to Alberta with my class was super challenging and exhausting at times, but I tried to reach my “Peak potential” every day.

This whole project taught me so much about Interviewing skills, editing, hiking, history, life lessons, and so much more!

Thank you for reading!

It’s tPOL Time 🏁!

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Welcome!

This is my first ever tPOL, and I will be reflecting upon my first year in PLP, and I will talk about how I am transitioning into grade 9. I will also talk about Humanities, Maker, and Science. But first thing, the POL declaration.

The POL Declaration

“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.”

The driving question for this tPOL is “How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?” I have chosen 3 success behaviours to showcase my areas of growth, and how I have grown.

Accepting Feedback 🧗

I chose 1 agency success behaviour, and 2 others. The agency success behaviour I chose to reflect on is Accepting Feedback. I think that I consistently accept feedback now. I chose this one, because I feel like I have really grown in accepting feedback from teachers and others.

Here is a bit of feedback I got from my most recent project “The wilderness must be explored”. If I had gotten this feedback at the start of the year, I would’ve though of it as a fail, but I now see it as an opportunity to improve my work and try to create the best version of it. In this certain project, I was creating advertisements. I learned that there is never a perfect draft, and sometimes you need to hand in many, many drafts of one thing in order to get it right. I only made 3 final ads, but they all took a lot of revision 🔄.

Self Regulation

For my second Success Behaviour to highlight, I chose the self-care part of self regulation. This is something that I need to work on still. I recognize that I get stressed out, but I sometimes don’t seek help with my stress. A lot of the time I just want all my work to turn out perfectly! I have began to realize that all the stress about something as simple as a blog post is not necessary. I think the Spring Exhibition was one of the biggest projects, along with the Winter Exhibition and DI. But surprisingly, I didn’t get very stressed. It could have been that I was in a very strong group, or that I am working on managing my stress levels. I only realized I wasn’t too stressed about it until after the fact. It shows how much better I work, and how more free I feel without being stressed out! Seeking help and recognizing my stress levels is something that I can continue to work on for grade 9, and in the future.

Communication and Collaboration

For my 3rd Success Behaviour, I chose to focus on Communication and Collaboration.

With peers: Whenever I am in a group project, I feel like I am a trusted group member, and I will always do my part. I always try to be supportive, and offer helpful feedback. The project I feel best demonstrated this was the Winter Exhibition. I was in a group where some members had trouble doing their part, and communicating. I was always patient, and I feel like my leadership shone through in this project.

 

With teachers: I have become much better at communicating with my teachers. As I have gotten to know my teachers better, I have realized that there is no harm in asking for help and asking questions. If I have questions, I will reach out to my teachers on iMessage and ask.

With technology: I have become very responsible with my iPad in class, and I go on do not disturb to block out messages that may be distracting. At the beginning of the year, I would be easily distracted by messages, and I would go to respond but now I refrain.

 

Humanities 👩🏼‍💻

Humanities is the subject that I have probably learned the most about resilience from. It can be a very difficult subject at times, but throughout the year I learned so many things in that class, from how to be a good group member, to renaissance and medieval times. We have done so many projects throughout the year, and they ranged from songs to books, but a project that I feel demonstrates the 3 success behaviours I chose was the most recent, the Spring Exhibition. This project was sort of short notice, but I feel like our group was very strong, so we put in a lot of work in the short time. In the end, I was really proud of the whole group for putting in their part.

I actually enjoyed this project, and I had the most fun in this project than any other so far. Probably because we got to go to Oregon 😁! We also got to create our own advertisements and make a whole exhibition out of it!

I got a lot of feedback from my classmates, and teachers. Like I said, I had to revise my ads quite a few times. I used the feedback as an advantage to make them better, and more effective. Yes, there was stress involved. But somehow, I wasn’t that stressed. I trusted my group, and I put in my hardest work. In the end , it all payed off! I communicated and collaborated to my group members through sending checklists, giving helpful feedback, and supporting the group.

During the year, we always reflected back to how things change our worldview. I think that almost every project we did in humanities connected back to our knowledge of worldview. I have grown a much greater understanding about what worldview is. This trip to Oregon definitely changed my worldview in a few ways. One of them being that there is so much to learn about every small place to go to, and that helps we gain understanding in the world. Another was being away from my family for a long time. I have been gone for a week without my family before, but I think it feels different being “At school” for a whole week 24/7.

Maker 🎨

Although we haven’t had maker since first semester, I have carried my skills through until now! I learned a lot about apps, and how to use them. We only really had 2 main projects, because we used Maker to work on Humanities sometimes. One of the projects was where we learned to draw on our iPads. Here is the blog post for that project!

Looking back at that blog post, I had trouble looking at the drawings… I know so much more about using the drawing apps now, so I really think I could improve these drawings now.

With the design skills I have now, I could definitely improve the emoji and make it way neater.

 

 

 

 

 

These shapes could have been way neater too!

 

 

 

 

 

Science 🧪

I really enjoy science. I think I have really learned a lot about multiple different things in science class. Last year, we never really got to do hands on experiments, but in this class we got to do lots of fun activities and experiments. The project where I demonstrated my learning best was “Small but Mighty”. I got to demonstrate my drawing skills, my scientist observational skills, and I got to communicate it all in a fun way. While creating my field journal, I worked on accepting feedback from peer critiques, and my teacher telling me how to revise. The part that I originally struggled with was being very specific with observations.

This project also helped me work on design skills, as we created a campaign about vaccines.

Another project was the Scratch Video Game. 

I am proud of this project, but looking back, I think that I could have asked for more help. I was still working on communicating with teachers back then, but I did ask my classmates for lots of help. Coding is not one of my strong suits, and it is a skill that I will continue to work on throughout my years I am sure.

 

Some strategies I have used to help me throughout the year!

Attending tutorial time: Something that I have learned to take advantage of is tutorial time. It has been extremely helpful during big projects to get the group together!

Using Things: Using the app things has been a really good way for me to keep track of my assignments, and even personal things. I wish I took advantage of it earlier.

Texting the teachers: As I mentioned, Texting the teachers on iMessage had been really helpful. I don’t hesitate anymore to ask questions!

 

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Looking back, I just started grade 8 with little knowledge about how PLP works, and new teachers and classmates. I slowly started to learn the ways, and through the year I improved on the subjects that were quite difficult at the start, like humanities! I have learned that not getting a ✅ on my first try is ok, and there is always room for improvement.

A goal that I am going to work on for next year is managing my stress levels. I am going to try to identify the source of my stress, and think if it is worth getting worked up about.

Now, looking forward! I feel like I am a confident learner, and I am excited for next year and all that it entails. I have become much more confident speaking in front of my class, and teachers. I am looking forward to doing PLP next year!

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY tPOL! 🏁

Spring Exhibition 2024 ☀️

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WOW, this year has gone by so fast! Before I even knew it, I was headed to Oregon for the PLP yearly field study! And then before I knew it, I was prepping for my first Spring Exhibition! Time flies when you’re having fun….

How does language inspire adventure?

That was the driving question for this project. I am sure you can guess, this whole project was about advertisement, and how they affect people. There were so many steps to this project and thinking back, I can barely remember how it started! Oh wait, yes I can!

It all started with Quarry Rock!

A you know, this project was about advertisement. As a class, we hiked up to quarry rock. The task was to talk to strangers and ask them why they came to Quarry Rock. The majority of the people said that they came because of instagram, or the view. That shows how people make decisions all the time based off what everyone else is doing. When we got to the top, It was a beautiful sunny day. We were also told to take a picture to use for an ad. This is the picture that I took:

Of course, the next step was to create an advertisement! I also had to come up with a slogan for Quarry Rock. “Take on Quarry Rock for a rewarding view”

I thought that this ad was really good, but my teacher said that something was off. I didn’t think the small font was good either, so I changed it to a more simple font. I then realized that that font might look good on both texts, so I tried that.

My teacher said that this is the one! At first it looked bland to me, but I realized it might be more effective to other people looking at it.

 

Oregon 🌲🥾

I won’t talk too long about the trip because we did so much stuff! The good thing is that I made a book keeping track of every single day! I will put the book right here.

Every day we had different tasks in book creator. Each activity we did had a task to go with it. It was hard to keep up with everything, so I had to use all of my spare time.

Those are some photos from different places on the trip. I think this trip was better than I could hope for. Our class bonded so much, and I had so much fun.

 

Exhibition Time!

All of a sudden, the Spring Exhibition was looming over us! The spring exhibition project was to create an ad campaign to promote Oregon. There were categories, and each group was assigned one. Ours was Discovery and Learning. We had to create advertisements to get people to go there, but in the sense that they were going to learn and discover there. My group members were Cece, Julia, Ella, Griffin, and Marcus. As a group, we needed to decide on a consistent font, and layout for our individual ads. We decided on all of that, then I added our colour palette and font choices to Basecamp. I was in charge of adding everything to Basecamp. There were also a few other preparation things we had to do. Making merch with our slogan: “Oregon, discover your potential.” Here is the hoodie that I designed.  

Here is my individual ad:

With only less than a week until the exhibition, we needed to start mapping out hat we were going to display. We chose Fort Stevens, Tillamook Creamery, and the Yaquina Head tide pools. We thought that those demonstrated learning and discovery well. (And we had good ideas)

Stations

We decided to go into groups of two and each make a station. Me and Julia made a tide pool, complete with rocks, sea anemones, sea urchins (Big hit), and starfish. Ella and Cece made a cheese factory with a cow milking section and the steps to making cheese! Marcus and Griffin made a model cannon and explained to the people about Fort Stevens.

 

 

After making ads, scripts, tide pools, setting up and cleaning up, it was over! I think it was a big success. I felt like I really did my part and put in my hardest work, and I think that my whole group did too! I thought that I had the most fun in this project too.

So,

How does language inspire adventure?

When I see an ad for a place, I look at the photo, but in order to know where the ad is for I need context. I am not going to look around for a place that looks cool without knowing where it is, or what it entails. If there is a catchy slogan or catchphrase, I am more likely to go there than if it was “Go to Vancouver”, for example. I need to know what to do in Vancouver! Maybe, “Hikes, Beaches, Stores, Beatiful views, come experience gorgeous Vancouver!” Now that sounds way ore appealing to me. I need to hear what I can do there, how I can have fun and explore. Language is a big part in inspiring people.

THANK YOU FOR READING

This is my final post of my first year in PLP!

 

How does our Knowledge of Cell Biology Contribute to Public Health?

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The driving question for this project was “How does our Knowledge of Cell Biology Contribute to Public Health?”

When you look at that, you immediately think about health and the body. Or at least I do! That gives a sneak peak into the project we just did. 👀

 

Pull out the Petri Dish!🧫

After learning about bacteria, it was time for our experiment! The experiment was to swab a surface and see how the growth of bacteria changes depending on the surface. My hypothesis was depending on the surface that is more public, there will be more bacterial growth. The next step was to swab the door to outside (more public), and my iPad (less public). The next step after that was to just wait for the growth to happen!

 

Field Journal 📔

I created this field journal to keep track of my hypothesis, prediction, and to keep track of the growth. In order to make a good, effective field journal, I needed to focus on a couple things! My design skills, and my observational skills. For my design I chose to do a green theme as you can probably see. I think this field journal helped me with design because I got to pick my style! In order to keep track of the growth, I needed to take very specific, up close observations. I payed attention to small things like colour, texture, size, and shape. Being very specific can be weird because I dont usually think like that. (Spot all the tiny things). Keeping a field journal was a really good way for documenting the growth.

Immune System Cell Cards

Moving on! The next thing we learned about is the immune system! Specifically the adaptive immune system. We learned about all the cells: T-cell, B-cell, Macrophage, White blood cell, and even what they protect the body from! (Pathogens). We were assigned a very fun and creative ways to show our knowledge about the adaptive immune system. We had to make character cards for each cell. I chose to theme mine about minions! I gave each cell a name, wrote their function, and I wrote a little description for each. I tried to personify each cell so it was more fun.

Those are the cards! Something that we worked on with this project was communication. I worked on communicating my knowledge in a fun way. I feel like I did a good job in the communicating aspect of this project. Overall, I really liked making these cards and I think that they were effective in helping me learn about each cell.

 

Who Don’t People Get Vaccinated? 💉 🤔

There are a lot of reasons why people choose not to get the COVID 19 vaccine. As a class, we brainstormed some reasons why people are against vaccination.

Here are some we came up with: The vaccine was too rushed, Side effects, Gives you autism, Religious reasons, and micro-chips.

Those are only some reasons. Some of the reasons seem pretty silly, but some people are actually worried about those things. It is important for people to be properly educated about these things. Especially with social media, information travels fast (if it is right or wrong). That is where science comes into place!

My partner for this assignment was Gemma. We worked pretty well together! Oh yeah, I need to say what the project was 😂. The project was to research one of the reasons people don’t want to get vaccinated. We chose “The vaccine was too rushed”. Then, we made 3 posters with clever sayings or ways to prove that statement wrong. We made a point about all the verification steps that come with verifying a vaccine. Here are our posters!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So… How does our Knowledge of Cell Biology Contribute to Public Health?

It is that time of post to answer the driving question! Before doing this unit, I honestly had little knowledge about our immune system, and about how vaccines actually work. Will all the new knowledge, I know how my body deals with sickness, bacteria, and vaccines. Lots of people don’t have that knowledge. It greatly affects the way people see vaccines, and therefore a lot of those people choose not to get vaccinated. When people do not get vaccinated, they are at higher risk to getting COVID 19. That puts more people at risk. To sum it up, the more scientific knowledge you have, the healthier you will be! You will think about being sick differently. The symptoms you have are actually your immune system trying its best to fight off the virus. The immune system is powerful, and so are vaccines! Sometimes all you need is to learn more about it.

 

Reflection

I learned so much in this unit! I learned everything from how dirty surfaces are, to what people think about vaccines! I think it is important we are educated about this stuff so we can stay healthy, and help other people. I also learned more about how communication and observation are important things to think about with these topics.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project!

Thank you for reading!!😄

What were the Consequences of Colonization? 🇨🇦

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🚘 Driving Question:

The driving question for this project was: What were the Consequences of Colonization? This driving question may seem easy to answer for some people, and I thought it was easy too. But it is such a broad question, and there are so many consequences that it was hard to come up with an answer. This blog post is about how I came to understand the driving question! Stay tuned!

 

Using Craft

To start off this project, we learned how to use a note taking app called craft.

This is what it looks like. Craft is now my favourite app for note taking because it is very easy to use. You can use colours, add photos, create folders, and much more. There is even an AI assistant. We started out with reading documents and then taking notes on diseases, traditional homes, New France, and many other things in the topic of colonization. Craft helped me keep track of all my documents and keep it all in one place.

 

Keynote

As the final product for this project, we were assigned to create a keynote presentation (10-15 slides). We were in groups or three. My group was Ella, Emilia, and I. We were allowed to choose 2 or 3 main topics for our keynote. The two topics that we chose were Indigenous resources, and Indigenous architecture.

The hard part about creating the keynote was that we had to have links for every picture and site that we used. Our group had a shared craft research document where we put all of our sources. Once we picked a theme it was much quicker to lay everything out. Once the keynote was finished, we had to (here is the scary part) present to the grade 11 BC First Peoples class. Here is the final keynote!

At the end of our presentation we had a Kahoot Quiz to make sure they were listening 😜.

Two Focuses

Indigenous Architecture: We researched types of architecture and homes 🏠 that the Indigenous people lived in at the time of New France. We mentioned the Haudenosaunee group, and the Algonquin peoples. But, the main thing that we talked about was how it affects them even today. That is something very important to recognize

Indigenous Resources: Our second focus was resources 🦫 , how they gathered them, and how their resources are affected still to this day. We talked about plants, salmon, and most importantly at the time, beavers!

 

Struggles

Some of the struggles that our group came across was design, sources, and lots of little things like speaking loud enough and making eye contact.

 

BUT THEN….

We completed our presentation! 😁 🎉. But it wasn’t over yet. The grade 11’s gave us feedback. One of the most common bits of feedback was to answer the driving question. I began to understand that we could have had a clearer answer. I knew something was coming… and then our teacher told us that we were going to make an individual keynote. At first I thought 💭 “nooooooo”, until I heard that it is only two slides long, with 3 words per slide. That was kind of weird, but I had already had all the information I needed!

 

Individual Keynote

Like I mentioned, it could only be 2 slides, with 3 words per slide. Here are my two slides:

I felt pretty confident on my little presentation! The limit of words really helped me with not reading off of a Q-card or the slide. I had everything memorized.

 

Back to the Driving Question

“What were the Consequences of Colonization?”

The consequences go from loss of identity, land, traditional life ways, resources, language, and so much more. It is a very broad answer like I said. There are so many answers. But the main thing that stuck with me was loss of identity. That can refer to language, traditions, etc. In my individual keynote I talked about residential schools, and how they impacted lives of Indigenous people until today. They are still trying to regain all of those things.

 

Reflection 🌊

This project has actually taught me so much about how much colonization affected(and affects) Indigenous people. On top of that, I also learned a lot about presentation and speaking skills. Overall, I enjoyed this project!

 

THANK YOU 😁

 

 

 

My First MPOL! 🚦

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The Pol declaration!

HELLO!

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.”

Intro:

This is my first MPOL, and I am going to talk about some things that I am proud of, I can improve on, and what is going well. I will also circle back to my learning plan to reflect on how I have grown, and how I will show learning growth.

Projects that I am proud of!

There have been quite a few projects that I am proud of. The one that I feel best demonstrates my leadership and teamwork is the winter exhibition.

 

For me, it was quite stressful, but also very rewarding in the end. The assignment was to create a tryptich representing medieval, renaissance, and the present day time periods! Up above is a photo of the final digital tryptich. I had a lot of fun with using photoshop to creatively display the art. The reason that I felt like my leadership skills shone through, is because you will always get a different group, and a different set of skills along with it. I felt like I had to take control in time management, and helping our team stay on track. This circles back to my learning plan that I made in September. This project helped me grow a lot in the preparation area. I have shown a lot of growth. I attended tutorial when needed, and made sure the group was on task!

Scratch game 🎮

Something that I did well was my scratch game. Coding has never been my favourite subject, but I definitely improved with my coding skills. You can read about my scratch game on my blog!

Something that I really benefited from in this project was asking my classmates for help. I think it is always nice to get help from someone who is in the same boat, but has problem solved before me. I also liked how I could show my knowledge of atoms through my creative ways! Coding is definitely a strength that I could work on, but I was proud of my first attempt at making my own game!

Poetry Ebook🌸

I thought I did my ebook very well! I find poetry as a cool way to express feelings. I also added to that by using my drawing skills to bring the book to life.  I am quite proud of this project. Although this was for humanities, in the first semester when we had Maker, I liked being able to use my art skills, and designing things. One of the projects I liked was designing my own shoe! It was a cool way to learn how to use keynote.

A project that I could improve on

One project that I think I could have improved on was our most recent one, Bon Voyage. We used ar Makr to bring our stories to life. Our stories were based off of the Age of exploration. I am proud of the work leading up to it, and my preparation, but I think the final result could have been a bit better quality. I was feeling a bit rushed, and I should’ve taken more time focusing

My learning plan 👩🏼‍💻

 

 

My learning plan was something that I wrote at the start of the school year. It showed what I am good at, what I can show growth in, and how I can get support in those areas.

How have I, or can I grow as a learner?

One of the areas of growth I talked about in communication and collaboration was to not be afraid to ask teachers for help. I think that I improved on that very much, because I am no longer hesitant to ask for help if I need it. Attending tutorial times in the morning is also a very helpful way to get help. I have greatly benefited in going to tutorial for humanities. We have had a lot of big, and stressful projects for humanities so this has been helpful.

Another area of growth that I talked about was managing stress (Under self regulation). I still struggle with stress management, but I am beginning to find new ways to deal with it. A strategy that I recently found out was writing checklists in the app ‘things’. I really wish that I had started doing this earlier, because it like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders when I check it off! This willl be an area that I will continue to work on throughout the year!

A subject that I have grown in is humanities. For a lot of people, it is a tough subject. It can be hard with all the revisions, assignments, and the workload. But again, one of the strategies is using things, and making sure i’m on top of all my work.

Thank you for coming to my first MPOL!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine sailing across the world just to trade!

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Is there a way to bring you stories into real life?

Yes, there is a way! There is an app called ar MAKR. It can be a little tricky to use at times, but once you get the hang of it, your imagination can become reality!

If you want to watch my ar MAKR story, click here!

The Age of Exploration

The age of exploration was a time where the world united through global trades. Trade routes opened up, giving access to new materials and resources across the world. In this blog post, I will share my knowledge about the age of exploration, and how that lead to my AR MAKR movie about it! But first, let’s dive into some of the assignment we did leading up to that! 🌊 ⛵️

Cause and Consequence

This project was based around the causes and consequences of the age of exploration. It is very important to recognize the consequences of actions. We did some activities to help us understand causes and consequences better. One of the main cause and consequence assignments were our padlets. Pallet is a website that is used to make brainstorming boards, and idea boards. Here are my two padlets:

 

I think that making these gave me a better understanding of what motivated the Europeans to explore. There were three main motivations that caused them to explore, God, Glory, and Gold.

God, Glory, and Gold.

There were three main motivations that caused them to explore, God, Glory, and Gold.

At the time, Christianity was spreading around the globe. The Europeans wanted to convert many people to worship god. When exploration started, they thought of it as an opportunity to divide and conquer. (Convert people to Christianity).

Glory is something that I still see today. A lot of the time, people do things to gain respect from people they look up to, or back then, the king. If they discovered new land they conquered it, took over, and therefore got the glory. They would get recognized by the king 👑, and they felt the power!

Gold. Yes, they did discover actual gold, but it is also referring to wealth and money. People are very greedy, and when the thought of money and wealth entered the picture, the Europeans became even more determined to explore. They seeked wealth from investment and trade. Many of the trades were
unavailable in Europe at the time.

Story mountain and draft

Like all stories, you need to map it out before hand. First things first, I started thinking of some ideas. The story needed to demonstrate our knowledge of the age of exploration, and the causes and consequences of it. I knew that I wanted to address discrimination to the indigenous people. In the story mountain, we had to have rising action, failing action, climax, and added details.

 

When we got feedback on our story mountain, we could start writing a draft for the actual story. This did not take me that long, and after a couple days, I was ready to start illustrating my story. Click there to read my story down

Once upon a time there was a man named William. William was a worker at a trading post in Canada. Day after day, William would assist the trades happening between the European and indigenous. He worked very hard, as he was trying to earn money to provide for his family back home in England. One day, William saw a European ship coming to shore. The ship seemed to have a large abundance of metals tools and weapons. William watched as one of the men approached the indigenous man. The indigenous man held furs in his arm, and motioned to trade. The European man started to laugh, and said, “haha! This is pathetic. I can’t believe I came all this way for fur!” The indigenous man seemed confused, as he did not speak English. The man continued to insult him. William felt like he should step in to stop it. It felt wrong to watch helplessly. The next morning, the European man returned to the trading post to see if there was anything else. William watched as he approached the man, and started yelling at him! William finally made up his mind, and rushed over. He said to the man, “You should be more polite! That is not nice. If you don't like what we trade here, just leave!” Immediately he regretted it. The man snarled at him, “You have the nerve to say that to me? You should think before you speak!” He charged at William, knocking him into the cold shallow water. William got up, and ran away. Over the next two days, the tension between the indigenous and Europeans grew. William hid away, not wanting o get involved. He decided that he would leave the next day. He couldn’t bare to stand there and do nothing about the situation. As he left, he was mad at himself. He couldn’t do anything about it, but it felt wrong to just give up. William kept hearing stories from the returning explorers of discrimination, and fighting. All he thought about was how he gave up. As William went on with his life, he began to realize that he should stand up for what he feels strongly about. And in the future, he will try to be the best version of himself.

I tried to bring awareness to the Europeans starting to treat the indigenous very badly. That lead to racism, and it is a very bad consequence. The actions of people back then rub off today. In my worldview, there is ongoing discrimination and violence going on in the world. All from the actions of the past.

Drawings

I used keynote to draw my characters. For a couple of them I traced people from the internet, but for most of them, I drew them myself. Here are some of my drawings:

The drawings were the most most important aspect because they brought life and colour to my story! They portrayed emotion and feelings. I think that is an important part of storytelling.

How can we use storytelling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact?

For me, reading fictional stories can help information to stick better in my mind. Storytelling is a creative, and fun way to connect with people. I showed evidence of how the Europeans started treating the indigenous badly, and that lead to them taking land, and all sorts of things from them. I also included my cause and consequences padlet to give more depth to understanding cause and consequences of the Age of exploration.

Reflection

In conclusion, I think that this project was very interesting. I learned  lot about causes and consequences of the age of exploration, and why it is important to be able to recognize that. I loved drawing my characters and using the ar MAKR app. It is always really cool to see your drawing show up in real life!

THANK YOU FOR READING!!

 

DI PART.1

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After months of planning, building, rehearsing, writing, and hard working…….

It was finally the day we had all been waiting for…. The Destination Imagination regionals tournament! We put so much hard work into creating a unique project to present at the tournament. My group was Brooklyn, Gemma, Emilia, Daniel, and Marcus. (I wanna thank them for being very fun to work with!)

Keep reading to find out what we created, and how it went.

What is Destination Imagination?

Destination Imagination is a global academic  tournament that has multiple categories and age levels. The tournament go from regionals, to provincials, to globals! The age levels range from preschool, to university levels. It teaches  teamwork, collaboration, creativity, and much more. The categories are fine arts, scientific, technical, improv, and engineering. Along with your central challenge, there is an instant challenge. The instant challenge is confidential, so I can’t say very much about it! (I also can’t say very much about what were adding to our performance because, you know, we have competition!)

 

Our challenge:

Our challenge was the fine arts challenge. We were assigned to create a peice of reimagined art. But there is a catch! The art must be kinetic, meaning it should move. The peice of kinetic art was our leaning tower of Pisa! (Our story was based around the Leaning Tower Of Pisa).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those are some photos of the performance. You can see the Leaning tower in the background.

 

Preparation:

Something that I wish we would’ve done, is taken advantage of the prep time at the very start. I feel like you say, “Oh, we have plenty of time!” But then the day is here before you know it! There was A LOT to be done! We needed a script (Memorized), costumes, props, team choice elements, we even wrote a song and had a dance! Let’s just say, there was a lot. Near the end, we met up every free time after school, and on the weekends. I think compared to some other group’s situations at the end, we were pretty caught up. It was a lot of stress, but that is all part of it!

 

What went well…

Even though there is a lot of doubt and nerves going into it, we actually performed very well! Some things that I thought went very well was our teamwork and team spirit! We were kind to each other, and accepted each others ideas. Next was the comedy 😂 We had some really funny scenes, and the room was filled with laughter. Another thing was our costumes and our props. We had creative costumes that really added to the characters.

What we can improve on for provincials

Something that didn’t work very well was our moving peice. I dont want to give away the solution, but we are going to touch it up to ensure that it works well for provincials! We could also touch up our props so they look neater.

What I learned, and how I contributed

I learned how to work with lots of new ideas. I also learned that sometimes things dont go as planned, but they seem to work out fine in the end. Along with that was stress management. I think DI has been teaching me that stress is a good thing when it comes to group work, because it helps you to perform your best! (Not too much stress though 😂 )

I think that I contributed quite a bit to the team morale, adding positivity when things were bumpy. I also am artistic and creative, so I think that shows up in the project. Each team member has unique skills, that help us work well together!

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for updates! Oh, and by the way, We got second place 🥈!!!

Wish us luck in provincials!!

How can you share knowledge of atoms in a fun way?

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How can we communicate our knowledge of atoms in a fun + creative way?

In this last science project, we made a video game! Well, there was lots more to learn before the making of it. Keep reading!

MATTER TRANSFORMERS

Making observations

We did a couple of assignments to practice making observations. We did an activity called black box. Basically, there was a little black box that we had to try to recreate with cotton balls, marbles, and sand. We recreated it using our senses like hearing, and touch. Another assignment we did was a lab. We had corn starch, baking soda, salt, sugar, and a mystery powder. We added water, vinegar, iodine, and fire to each, and observed what was happening.

   This is what the observation sheet looked like. (Don’t mind the messy writing 😂). I felt like this lab was really fun because we could experiment with different chemical and physical properties.

 

VIDEO GAME!

The final project was a video game! We used an app called scratch .

It is a website where you use coding to create your own games. It sounds easy, but let’s just say, the app is pretty tricky until you get the hang of it. I am not the best at coding, but i’m sure it is different for everyone.

The first step of the making of our game was to create a proposal. In mine, I included the goal of the game, how I showed my knowledge of atoms, and how to play. I did end up changing the type of game because I thought of a better idea.

I called my video game Matter Transformers. The goal of the game was to go from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. The characters I used were and ice cube 🧊, a water droplet 💧, and water vapour 💨. In order to transform, you needed to chase around the sun ☀️ , and catch it 100 times. Once you caught it 100 times, the background changed from the arctic to underwater. Along with that, the character changes from ice to water. Once that happens, you have to get to 200 points (a.k.a water vapour. The background is the cloudy sky). In order to finish the game, you need to reach 300 points! Using the arrow controls, you chase the sun to 300 points.

I will put the link to my game right here: MATTER TRANSFORMERS

 

How can we communicate our knowledge of atoms in a fun + creative way?

I think I did a good job of communicating my knowledge of atoms in a fun and creative way because I made a video game! My video game was catchy, it had fun characters, and I feel like it was pretty fun in general. Sometimes science isn’t seen as fun, but in this project I think I turned it into a fun way to showcase my knowledge of atoms and matter. There our many ways to show knowledge, and present, but this was one of the most unique ways so far!

Overall, I enjoyed this project. I learned many new skills in the process of creating my video game. I also had lots of fun playing my own game!

 

 

The Forest of My Worldview (New ebook By Madeline!)

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Yup, You guessed it! We wrote an ebook. But not just any ebook. A poetry book! It is called The Forest of My Worldview.

Through the course of a couple weeks, we worked on lots of poetry. We learned new terms, techniques, and new types of poems every day. The poems included similes, metaphors, found poems, sound poems, haikus, experience poems, imagery, and a self portrait poem.  All of our poems were focused around our worldview.

I wrote them about how my worldview is like a forest, to the topic of climate change. There are things that shape a worldview, and I thought about that as I was writing.

How might I write poetry that I enjoy and shows who I am?

That was the driving question for this project. I think that question is easy for me to answer, because I enjoyed writing my poetry because it reflects on who I am. I could just be myself through my writing. I could put my thoughts on the page. With other projects, you dont feel the same.

When I wrote the poems, I used my own thoughts, ideas, and I put in my personality. The self portrait poem was the biggest reflection on me, but in my other poems, I used metaphors, similises, and other ways to express my worldview and who I am. You need to add feeling and mood. 

Reflection

Looking back, I think that this was my favourite projects so far. I think it was the least stressful 😂. But that is not the reason that I liked it best. I feel like I got to put myself into my poetry. I got to be a bigger part of my project than usual. I really enjoyed experimenting with different forms of poetry. I learned how to add mood to my poems, so it really hits the reader. I learned how to use imagery, and so much more. Overall, This was a fun project!