Archive of ‘Exhibition’ category
In December, we had our mini exhibition. Last year our theme was the environment, but this year our theme was Star Wars. So naturally, every Friday leading up to the exhibition we watched all the movies, so everyone who hadn’t seen them before could watch them.
Creating an inquiry
Just like the winter exhibition and the blue sky exhibition, the Star Wars exhibition was based around an inquiry based question. This was difficult to do, because before there exhibition I had only watched three of the Star Wars movies. After brainstorming as many questions as I could, I chose my top three, followed by my favourite. Once I got my question approved, it was time to start my research.
How does the power of belief affect your ability to perform a task?
You may be wondering how this question relates to Star Wars. It’s actually linked to the force, and how you have to believe in yourself in order to use it. This question wasn’t exactly a yes or no answer, because most of the time believing in yourself does help accomplish a task, but not always. Sometimes you will fail.
Research
When it came to researching my question, it would be pretty hard to just get all my information off of websites. So I interviewed my hairdresser who used to be a Registered Psychiatric Nurse (RPN), so she knows about what I was researching. I emailed her dome questions, and this was her response:
Can you tell me a bit about the job you had when you were helping others, and some of your experiences?
The job I had that helped others was as a Registered Psychiatric Nurse (RPN). I provided support in community settings for adults living with mental illness. I was responsible for managing their medications, counselling them, communicating with their doctors and psychiatrists about their health and encouraging their independence with their daily living. I worked specifically with people who had bipolar mood disorder and schizophrenia and I was there to support them and keep them stable. Sometimes, their illness would effect them acutely and they would be in a crisis state and would then need to be admitted to the hospital.
What are some things someone could do to turn their “negative thinking” into “positive thinking”
Turning negative thinking into positive thinking can be tough when your beliefs are deeply ingrained. It is easy to feel powerless when in a negative mindset. Journaling can help you recognize what thoughts you are telling yourself which contribute to your own mood. One way to empower yourself is with thought replacement. The idea is to write down your negative thought, followed by the feeling this thought leaves you with (ie: “I am a failure because I didn’t pass my test. I might as well give up in this course now.” Feelings: Defeated, depressed, like a failure, sad, hopeless, disappointed). Then write down a replacement thought that is reality based and the feeling this leaves you with (ie: “I can get my mark up by hiring a tutor to help me study for the next test and I will pass the course.” Feelings: empowered, hopeful, relieved). Realizing that you have a choice to remain negative and defeated or empower yourself to be positive and feel better are motivating reasons to do the work behind this thought replacement training.
Does believing in yourself impact your performance on a certain task?
Believing in yourself greatly impacts the outcome of your performance. We are always telling ourselves messages that effect our confidence. If we tell ourself that we will fail at something, we will become anxious and fearful. This negative state sabotages our performance. If we expect to fail, we surrender control and confidence and run the risk of fulfilling our beliefs.
On the other side, if we set our expectation to succeed at something, and we truly believe that we will, the determination and resilience to persevere through the process will set us up for a positive outcome.
Groups
Just like past exhibitions, we were split into groups for presenting our projects. This year we were split between the light side and the dark side. I was on the light side because my inquiry question was about the force. The light side had 20 people, grade 8 and 9. The light side had the PLP room to set up our projects and decorate. Within main group (the light side) we had 3 different subgroups; environment/science, (movie) tech, and philosophical. We based the placings off of inquiry questions. I was in the philosophy subgroup along with 7 other people.
environment/science
Jessie
Melika
Kailey
Alivia
Gabbie
Fraser
Jordyn
(movie) tech
Owen
Isabelle H
Robin
Sam
Isabelle L
Kiera
philosophical
Kai
Logan
Emily
Tamara
Emerson
Luciano
Grace
We decided that we would decorate the room as the rebel base on Hoth. The tech and philosophy subgroups were inside the rebel base, and the science group was outside the base. We separated each section with blankets, so it was easier to tell where each section started/ended. We also had an “Admiral snack bar” with different food and drinks, like Jedi juice and princess lays. For audience engagement we decided to put on a short skit every 15 minutes, and we also had a pin the lightsaber on yoga station. I was in the skit from the beginning of “A New Hope” because I was dressed as Princess Leia. We tried improv, but it didn’t work, so we just stuck to the scripted skits.
Creating
Of course, I couldn’t just stand in front of a table and talk about the research that I did. That would be pretty boring, and whenever I left my station (to do my skit or to help with pin the lightsaber on Yoda) there would be nothing for people to look at. So I decided to make a poster board and a box with a rock on top, (I’ll explain more about that later). The poster board was mostly so people could know what my project was about while I wasn’t there. I also had a “guessing game” on one side of my poster board, where you would read the description, then guess who it was about. When I was finished gluing stuff to my poster board I decided that it didn’t look like I wanted to. So I decided to paint stars on it, using white paint. 
The other display that I made was a cardboard box with a rock on top of it. The rock had a magnet on the bottom of it so I could move it with another magnet attached to a stick inside the box. I used this as a way to “demonstrate the force” to my audience. When I made this box I decided to use one of the lava rocks from Iceland, because they resemble “space rocks”. I added a white tablecloth to the box to give it a more finished look, and I added “The Force” to the front of the box with stickers.
The exhibition
At the exhibition we (the light side) decided to dress up. I dressed up as Princess Leia, mostly because my friends wanted me to do my hair in the famous Princess Leia buns, but partially because it was actually related to my project. I linked it to the fact that Leia couldn’t use the force until she believed in herself.
Overall the exhibition was really fun. It also went by a lot faster than the past two exhibitions. I presented to a wide range of people, but my favourite people to present to were the little kids who loved it when they got to “use the force”.
What I would do differently next time
Next time I would either make a better poster board, or not make one at all. My poster board was pretty boring to look at because there weren’t any photos on it. I would also spend less time researching, and more time building.
Winter exhibition
I know I talked about the mini winter exhibition in my last SLC, but this time I want to talk about a different part of it. For the exhibition I was the DRI of my group. This meant I was in charge of keeping my group organized, and going to the teacher whenever we had a question, request etc. To be honest, I don’t know why I signed myself up for this position in the first place, if I can barely keep myself organized. Our group had *some* difficulties with agreeing on stuff, and actually COMMUNICATING. But other than that it was fiiiinne I definitely learned about leadership skills during that *fun* time. I think it was worth it, but I wouldn’t exactly want to do it again. Even though I will probably have to.
Oregon
Oregon, like many other things this year has taught me more than I thought it would. You know, I’m starting to see a pattern with our work. It taught me about being responsible for my things. Girl Guides HAS taught me about this, but not as much as Oregon has. With Guides I’m only really responsible for my clothes, sleeping bag etc. With Oregon however, I was in charge of my passport (only for short amounts of time luckily), and I was in charge of money, and how I spent it. I also had to keep track of my iPad and Apple Pencil. Oregon also helped me become a lot closer to my friends.
DI
Destination Imagination was… fun? I don’t know how to describe my experience with DI, we (my team and I) definitely experienced some challenges along the way. Most if which I explain in my DI BLOG POST. 
If I were to quickly sum it up though, I would have to say the main problem was the work distribution. I’m not going to mention any names, because that’s not important. Some people did more work than others, and some people put in more effort and energy. DI taught me to see things from different perspectives, I’m not just talking about the main challenge when I say this. I’m talking about the main challenge, the instant challenge, and seeing the problem of work distribution from different angles.
Math
Math is a subject that comes somewhat easily to me. So far anyway. Since it doesn’t usually take me long to pick up on how to do something in math
, I usually help others. This sometimes means that I don’t finish all the textbook work, but that’s mainly so we get the idea. I actually enjoy helping people with math, which might come as a surprise to some. I think it mainly comes from my nature of wanting to help people
Notebook/sales pitch
I think the notebook and sales pitch taught me more about group work than it taught me about actual history, and how to pitch an idea to someone. It taught me about how to deal with *difficult* group members, and people in general. It taught me to pick my fights. But most importantly, it taught me to stick up for my friends, and for myself.
Science paints
I haven’t presented this project yet, so I can’t exactly tell you how it went. 
However, I can tell you about the slightly disgusting process. First we ground up some different coloured pigments. That was the fun part. We ground up Verdigris, Oak gal Ink, Red ochre, Charcoal, and Violet. That’s not the part I’m going to tell you about though. I’m going to tell you about our “fun” experience with making the pigments into paint. The less disgusting way of making them was to mix an egg yolk with the pigment, then slowly add water. This way was fun, because it didn’t smell like fish eggs. The second way of making these pigments was to grind up fish eggs with our saliva. It made the entire classroom smell like “soft but satisfying” salmon eggs. It also made our hands smell like eggs.
Areas for further improvement
I can definitely improve on many things. For example handing my work in on time, staying on task, not being a complete perfectionist when it comes to my school work. Last time, I focused on being a perfectionist. I haven’t accomplished much on this because, like I mentioned before, this will take quite a while to accomplish. I plan to be better at this by the end of next year. I will also work on balancing my work time with my spare time. I have already been working on this by setting a timer to work for 20 minutes, then taking a 5 minute break.
Biggest accomplishment?
If I had to choose my biggest accomplishment this year I don’t know what I would choose. 
There’s all of the in school awards, like my seyhawk award, or my outstanding grade 8 instrumentalist, or my trophy, medal and ribbons from DI. There’s also my outside of school awards and accomplishments, like my medal from my first ever tap competition, getting into pre-TapCo, doing a front tuck in trampoline, and. Then there’s my in school accomplishments. This includes coming to PLP, being a DRI of my group for the winter exhibition, becoming a mini teacher in math, and making all of my amazing friends here.
This past school year we have learned about a ton of cool and useful things, things like different camera angles, advertising and advocacy, how to code, we’ve even had a mini exhibition! One of the most useful things that we have learned about (in my opinion anyway) is learning to have a growth mindset. We have been working on having a growth mindset all year and I think that I have improved since the beginning of the year.
What is a growth mindset?
having a growth mindset means that you are willing to push yourself out of your
comfort zone and maybe even fail at something. You think things like, what could I do better next time or, if I fail I can learn from my mistakes and improve for
next time. If you have a growth mindset you want people to congratulate you on how hard you worked not on how smart you are. You believe that you can learn anything and you can get better at anything. You know that your effort determines more than your current abilities.
What is a fixed mindset?
Having a fixed mindset means you would rather put less effort into an 
assignment and get a good mark than put a ton of effort into an assignment and get a great mark. If you fail, you get frustrated and give up. If you have a fixed mindset you want people to congratulate you on how smart you are, not how hard you worked, because let’s be honest, you know you didn’t work as hard as you could have. You believe that you’re either good at something or you’re not. You think that your abilities determine more than the effort that you put in.
Most people have a mix of a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. In some areas
they know they can improve and they want to improve so they work really hard at that certain thing. In other areas however they don’t think they can get any better, so they don’t bother trying. Probably the most common thing to happen is for someone to know they can get better at something but they just don’t want to put in the time and effort it takes to get better at it.
My growth mindset experience
In my mini exhibition blog post I explain how I had to completely change the design of my house a few days before the exhibition and normally that would make me really annoyed and think “why me? What did I do to deserve this?” But for some reason I wasn’t even that annoyed. If this happened at the beginning of the year however, before i knew about having a growth mindset versus having a fixed mindset I probably would’ve gotten really stressed. The final product would’ve probably reflected my mood at the time (meaning I would have done a poor job, just in case you couldn’t figure that one out). In the end I ended up loving my project and it was all thanks to my growth mindset.
In class we made long term goals that we were willing to work towards and maybe even fail at. 
We had to make it one (max 2) sentence long and put it on a selfie or just a picture of us. We submitted them to showbie, our teacher Petra Willemse would either tell us something she wanted us to change or she would say “print” which meant that we didn’t have to make any changes and she was going to print it and put it up on the wall. When I handed in my first draft Ms Willemse told me to put some shading behind the letters, so I went into photoshop fix and drew it in by hand. I submitted it again and I got a print! My goal is now hung up in the classroom on public display next to the goals of my other classmates.
Here are the links to all the apps that I used to make my long term goal: pages, photoshop fix, showbie and snapseed.
Creation process
For humanities we had to come up with a question based on the environment and try to find an answer to it. Obviously it couldn’t be a yes or no answer. We wrote down our top three choices for what we wanted to research and submitted them to our teacher so she could approve one of our questions. My three questions (in order) were: 1) How can we differ housing to adapt to the rising sea levels? 2) How does changing currents affect prey? 3) in what ways can a lack of knowledge about sea life cause some sea animals to go extinct? The teacher (Ms Willemse) chose my #1 question and helped me reword it to this: How can I adapt my coastal housing so it won’t be washed away from the rising sea levels?
So I was very glad that I got my #1 question. I started by researching what is causing rising sea levels and how fast they are rising. After I discovered that sea levels are rising an average of 3.3 mm a year I had to think of why that would be a bad thing. I came up with a few reasons, if it takes that long to rise people won’t bother with rebuilding their house because they will think “oh I have lots of time. I don’t need to do this now”. In other words, they’ll keep putting it off then it might be too late to “renovate” their house. Another reason is: the water will saturate the ground near/underneath your house so after a while your house (most likely the basement if you have one) will rot. As soon as my question was approved I knew that I wanted to build a model of the house. My initial plan was to build a house on stilts, 
but then I was thinking about different ways to create a house that wouldn’t get washed away with the rising sea levels and I thought about possibly creating a floating house because a house on pillars might be too expensive.
I kept working on my “diagram” for the house on pillars though because 33% of people get seasick in “normal conditions” meaning small waves, and 66% of people get seasick in “bad conditions” meaning large waves, things you wouldn’t necessarily want to be on a boat in. 
So I decided to go with the pillar idea, until my friend pointed out that a house on pillars may not be very legal because of earthquakes. So the project was due in 5 days and I was basically back to the drawing board for the diagram. Luckily my research still applied to the new model that I was going to build. I did some more research about earthquake proof buildings in Vancouver to see if I could just add something to my current building and then this picture came up.
So it turns out that there is a building in Vancouver BC called The Qube that people are saying is earthquake proof, because in an earthquake the cables suspending the building would allow it to rock back and forth. As I was looking at that picture I realized that it was slightly raised off the ground, and since I was trying to create a house that wouldn’t get washed away with the rising sea levels I thought that I should base my building/house off it. Obviously I couldn’t make a direct model of the building, so I had to modify. First off, The Qube is not a house, it is a headquarters for Westcoast Transmission Co, and when I wrote my inquiry question I meant a home. So I came up with this 
. I had a lot of fun making the house and garden.
Group work
During the the mini exhibition I was the group leader. This was my first time ever being a group leader and I will admit, it was more stressful than I thought it would be. Since I was group leader I had to organize everything. I was in charge of making sure that everything we needed was going to be there, I had to tell people what to bring and where to set everything up. It would’ve been a lot less stressful if we had another week or so to make our projects but things got complicated with the Oregon trip being postponed. I think it would have also been a lot better if we distributed the work load better. I felt like there was a lot of work that I had to do for the exhibition, like: making a chart of where everyone would set up their projects/tables
Organizing who would bring what for our toss game (fake food, containers, pop cans etc)
Trying to sort out what group would get the projector
Figuring out how we wanted our corner of the room to be set up (ie decorations, what we would do with the whiteboard etc)
And on top of that I had to make my project for the mini exhibition.
Here are all my group members’ blogs/learning portfolios: Syrah , Luca O, Daniel , Lauren, and Tamara.
All though it may not sound like it, I enjoyed the exhibition a lot.
Turning negative thinking into positive thinking can be tough when your beliefs are deeply ingrained. It is easy to feel powerless when in a negative mindset. Journaling can help you recognize what thoughts you are telling yourself which contribute to your own mood. One way to empower yourself is with thought replacement. The idea is to write down your negative thought, followed by the feeling this thought leaves you with (ie: “I am a failure because I didn’t pass my test. I might as well give up in this course now.” Feelings: Defeated, depressed, like a failure, sad, hopeless, disappointed). Then write down a replacement thought that is reality based and the feeling this leaves you with (ie: “I can get my mark up by hiring a tutor to help me study for the next test and I will pass the course.” Feelings: empowered, hopeful, relieved). Realizing that you have a choice to remain negative and defeated or empower yourself to be positive and feel better are motivating reasons to do the work behind this thought replacement training.
We decided that we would decorate the room as the rebel base on Hoth. The tech and philosophy subgroups were inside the rebel base, and the science group was outside the base. We separated each section with blankets, so it was easier to tell where each section started/ended. We also had an “Admiral snack bar” with different food and drinks, like Jedi juice and princess lays. For audience engagement we decided to put on a short skit every 15 minutes, and we also had a pin the lightsaber on yoga station. I was in the skit from the beginning of “A New Hope” because I was dressed as Princess Leia. We tried improv, but it didn’t work, so we just stuck to the scripted skits.
The other display that I made was a cardboard box with a rock on top of it. The rock had a magnet on the bottom of it so I could move it with another magnet attached to a stick inside the box. I used this as a way to “demonstrate the force” to my audience. When I made this box I decided to use one of the lava rocks from Iceland, because they resemble “space rocks”. I added a white tablecloth to the box to give it a more finished look, and I added “The Force” to the front of the box with stickers.
At the exhibition we (the light side) decided to dress up. I dressed up as Princess Leia, mostly because my friends wanted me to do my hair in the famous Princess Leia buns, but partially because it was actually related to my project. I linked it to the fact that Leia couldn’t use the force until she believed in herself.
Next time I would either make a better poster board, or not make one at all. My poster board was pretty boring to look at because there weren’t any photos on it. I would also spend less time researching, and more time building.
