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 blog post will be filled with highlights from the year so far. It will include an example if the work that I’m most proud of, an example of my learning, an example of my growth mindset and three goals that I have set for myself.
What work am I most proud of?
https://youtu.be/Pkugu4JRBfg
The work that I’m most proud of is definitely my work for destination imagination. I’m proud of how well my team and I worked Together and I’m proud of how well we did at regionals, despite the fact that our vanishing act didn’t work very well. The story that we created was very creative (in my opinion anyway) and we managed our time well (most of the time). We worked very hard and in the end you could definitely tell. When I heard that we came in third place out of all the groups that were competing in the fine arts category I was thrilled!
https://youtu.be/gvlQINZ8zNA
One example of my learning this year
One example of my learning this year is my work on advertising an advocacy. We started at the beginning of the year, where we made an advocacy ad about disasters caused by earthquakes. A tourist ad about one of our favourite places to go that is somewhat secretive or hidden. And a business ad where either our parents were the boss, or we knew the boss. I’ve written more about these ads in my advertising and advocacy blog post. During our trip in Oregon we made three more ads. We all made an advocacy ad about tsunamis, but we were split up into separate groups for our business and tourist ads. For our tourist ad, my group was assigned Fort Stevens non historical. Our business that we interviewed was the South Beach Fish Market. I wrote more about these ads on my going coastal post. I think I have really improved on my ads since the start of the year. I now have a better understanding of how to use pathos logos and ethos in my ads to make them better.
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.
My goals
I have set three goals for myself for the remainder of the school year. I will now explain what they are, and how I plan to achieve them.
My first goal is hand more work in on time. I will achieve this goal by staying on task, and not talk to my friends as much during class. This is definitely something that I will have to work on for the rest of the year, because I like to talk, A LOT. I know I can improve by the end of the year because at the start of the year I was much worse at focusing, but now, I’m not so bad.
My next goal is to make sure that all the work I hand in is work that I am proud of. To do this I will make sure that I proofread my work before I hand it in. If I ever wonder if my work is good enough I will revise it and make some edits until I know that it is more than just good enough. I will focus in class more, so I have more time to revise my work.
My third and final goal is to be more organized when it comes to my school work. I will do this by prioritizing my work when I am doing my homework and I will organize my work in my binder or on my iPad at the end of class. I will set aside five minutes just to organize my work so I don’t lose any of it.
During Oregon we did many cool things. This blog post will be an example of just a few of the things that we did.
Why we went to Oregon.
Oregon was more than just your average field trip where the only reason you go is to learn. We didn’t just go to Oregon to Learn about marine life. We went to get to know each other better and work better as a team, or as Ms Willemse says a family. Being close with your classmates not only helps make you closer with your friends but it helps a lot with group work, which we do a lot of in PLP. One of the other reasons why we went to Oregon instead of just learning in a classroom was because it’s fun! When something is fun, you tend to remember it better. For example if I asked you what you and your friends liked to do at recess in grade three you would probably remember it, but if I asked you what you learned about in grade four, you probably wouldn’t remember.
Oregon ads
During our trip we made ads about Oregon. We were split into 5 groups and were assigned a place and a business to make an ad about. We have been learning about advertising and advocacy since the beginning of October. So we had a pretty good idea of what to do. If you read my post about advertising and advocacy you will see that we made a tourist ad, a business ad and an advocacy ad. You will also notice that above I only talked about a tourist ad and a business ad. This is because we didn’t have to do an advocacy ad! Ha, just kidding we actually did =(. Our advocacy ad was about tsunamis.
Business ad
For my business ad my group was assigned South Beach Fish Market. To make
the business ad we had to come up with a list of questions to ask the manager of the restaurant. We recorded the interview (with the owner’s permission of course) so we could listen to it again later. To make the company’s logo I took a picture of the back of the manager’s shirt and painstakingly traced every line on the crab. Then I coloured it red with a blue background because when we asked in the interview they sais that their colour scheme was red and blue.
Tourist ad
I didn’t have to do quite as much for my tourist ad as I did for my business ad. For my tourist ad my group was assigned Fort Stevens non historical. Otherwise known as Jetty Observation Tower. When we were there it was very windy and rainy, but it was still a really cool experience. To create the ad I chose a photo of the water because that was my favourite part of Jetty Observation Tower.
Advocacy ad
Just like the tourist ad my advocacy ad didn’t involve as much work as my business ad. For the advocacy ad everyone in the class, not just my group was assigned an ad about tsunami awareness. For this ad I illustrated a tsunami wave over a city.
Our Book
During Oregon we were working on a book that we made using Book Creater. The book explains what we did and where we went each day, it also has some facts about the places we visited. When we were making our book during Oregon we drew things like what animal we wanted to see, or what our favourite meal was. We also wrote about different things like how big haystack rock is, or explaining how we set up our experiment. If i were to go back and do this book again I would spend less time worrying about the drawings and work on it more on the bus. Here is my iBook.
If i had the chance I would go back in the blink of an eye. Oregon was a life changing experience and just one more reason to be in PLP.
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, 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.
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.
, 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
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.
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.
