It’s that time of year again! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to TPOL’S (Transitional Posts of Learning). They happen once a year, and are in many ways similar to MPOL’S. TPOL’S are the blog posts of all blog posts. They are where I talk and reflect on the whole year. So without further ado;
Destination Imagination
I talked a lot about teamwork in my two Destination Imagination posts this year. That’s because there’s a lot of great things to say about it. One thing i didn’t really talk about was the “leader” of our group. There wasn’t one. We were all leaders in different parts. Some of us were in charge of the script, or the songs. Obviously there was more than just the script and the songs, but I won’t bore you with the whole list. I’d never worked in a group where there’s just one leader before. It’s really nice because you don’t have the pressure of being the leader and making most of the decisions, but you don’t feel like you aren’t contributing enough. I think it also helped that we all got along well. We listened to each other well and didn’t argue about much. We did really well in our performance and in our instant challenge. Our second performance was much better than our first. We listened to what the appraisers said and made a lot of revisions based on the feedback that we got. Since we were willing to listen to the feedback the appraisers had for us, we did much better in provincials. I have learned new ways of working in a team after this project, and i now know how much you can improve if you really listen to feedback.
Cloning
I really enjoyed the cloning project, though it was frustrating at times. I found it cool to learn about cloning plants, because I’m personally interested plants and possibly becoming a landscaper. However, (as usual) there were some problems with my group. Not everyone was carrying their weight. We tried to resolve it within our group multiple times, but the two group members continued to not do any work. Eventually I had to go to mr gross with another group member to address the situation, because we knew we wouldn’t be able to get the project done by the deadline if the other two group members didn’t start pulling their weight. This project demonstrated that I’ve learned to ask for help when it’s needed. I’m glad that we asked for help because I’m happy with the final outcome, and how things were resolved.
Lego
The lego project was another example of challenging group work. There seems to be a lot of that in this program. With this project, I ended up doing the majority of the work. Again, i tried many times to resolve the problem on my own, but (just like with the cloning project) it didn’t work. I could’ve gone to mr gross again, but I knew that I could get the work done in time for the presentation. I also didn’t think that going to mr gross would really work this time. I ended up finishing the project on time, and overall Im happy with the final product. I feel like this is a good example of real life learning that will apply outside the classroom. Sometimes not everyone is going to contribute and you can’t always help that. The difference between the lego project and the cloning project is that I knew that we wouldn’t be able to finish the cloning project in time without help.
Comic book
I enjoyed this project, and learning about the treatment of shell shock. Before this assignment I had heard the words shell shock approximately 2 times. Both in Ottawa. So it’s fair to say that Ilearned a lot from this project. This entire unit was very important because we need to learn about the horrible things that happened in the past so we can learn from them and not treat people that way in the future.
We decided to make a comic book as a class, because our goal was to make World War One easier to understand and more interesting for kids in elementary school. We presented to the 6th and 7th graders at Cove Cliff Elementary. The first and second groups i presented to were genuinely interested in what I was presenting. It was easy and enjoyable to present to them because they wanted to know more and they asked questions. The 3rd (and final) group I presented to had a harder time understanding the topic, so they weren’t as interested in what I was saying. It was difficult to present to them, and it showed me that not everyone learns the same way, and that sometimes you need some background knowledge to enjoy things more. I also learned that it easier to present when your audience is interested in what you’re talking about. I will think about this for future presentations so I can try to get everyone interested.
I learned a lot this year about myself, and others. I made many, many mistakes, but I learned from every mistake I made. As I’m sure you know by now, one of my ongoing goals is to get work in on time. I am slowly getting better at this each term, but I still need to improve. I previously mentioned setting timers for myself, to work for 30 minutes, then take a five minute break. This method has been working well, but recently I changed it a little. Instead of setting the timer for the same duration each time I break the assignment up into smaller chunks, then I give myself a time limit. I just started doing this recently, but so far it has worked.
Our past unit in humanities was World War One. WWI is a huge topic to cover in just three months, but somehow we did it.
War Horse
We started off this unit by reading one of three books; War Horse, Private Peaceful, or Generals Die in Bed. As you can probably tell, I chose war horse. The book is about a horse that was separated from his mother when he was young. Joey (the horse) is bought by a family to be a farm horse. At first joey doesn’t like his new home, because Albert’s father comes home drunk and hurts Joey. However, as time goes on Joey forms a strong bond with Albert, but his happiness doesn’t last long, because Albert’s dad threatens to sell Joey if he doesn’t start ploughing. Albert really doesn’t want to say goodbye to Joey, so he trains him every day until his father will “keep him”, but their family is struggling financially because of Albert’s dad’s drinking problem. So Albert’s dad ends up selling Joey to the army. The rest of the book goes on to talk about Joey in the war. Once we finished this book, we made a book report over spring break. We chose between 5 options for our book report (but we could also come up with our own). I chose the book soundtrack for my book report. The songs I chose were tears in heaven by Eric Clapton, and Wildfire by Michael Murphy.
Ottawa
For this unit we went to Ottawa with ENCOUNTERS WITH CANADA. Our week was based around the battle of Vimy Ridge, but we learned about more than just that. We learned about a lot of different battles within WWI.
Comic book
Once we got back from Ottawa it was time to start on our comic books. Before we started to create them however, we read an online graphic novel called Shattered Ground. Reading it let us see what war was like for the people involved in it, and how much of an emotional toll it took on people. Before we left for ottawa we were told to think of a topic about WWI that we wanted to make our comic on, and I picked shell shock. I picked this because it seemed really interesting when it was brought up, but it was never really properly explained. So I naturally wanted to figure out more about it. EMILY and I were both making our comic about shell shock, so we decided that she would make her comic about the stigma around shell shock, and I would make mine about the treatment. I put a lot of time, and research into this project. I put a lot of work into each draft of my comic book. Since i spent so long researching I didn’t have to change any of my facts which was nice. After everyone was done their comic, we put them all together into a book. You can read my comic below.
Presentation
At the beginning of this project we were told that we were going to be presenting to a group of 7th graders. We made our comic book with the question “how can we tell the story of WWI through visuals and text?” We ended up presenting to a large group of grade 6’s and 7’s. The groups that I presented to were genuinely interested in what I was talking about. It was fun to be able to present to them, and after we even gave them their own copy of the book. This was a really fun way to end off a really fun unit.
As you may know, recently I participated in the Destination Imagination regionals and provincial tournaments. In my last post I talked about regionals, and the process leading up to it. You can read more about that HERE. In this post, I will be talking about the process leading up to provincials, and how that went.
Regionals
As you may or may not know my group came in second place. We got scored on our performance, and different aspects of it. My group used our score sheet to prioritize what to work on. We decided that our main priority would be our set, because it didn’t work at regionals.
The Set
As I mentioned in my regionals post, our set didn’t work like it was supposed to, the cave didn’t roll up well, the drill fell off, and stuff behind the set fell over. So we decided to just scrap that set, and make a new one from scratch. Jessie constructed the new set. Lauren and I helped her paint it, and glue the cave onto the wooden dowel. When we painted the set we decided to keep the same design as before. However, we replaced the cave fabric so it didn’t bunch up when it rolled up. We also added a key ring into the end of the dowel to attach the drill to so it wouldn’t splinter again. Remaking our set was a big risk because we only had a few weeks between regionals and provincials. We barely had any class time because of spring break. So the set had to be made over spring break and it had to be done by the end of spring break so we could rehearse with it. Luckily our risk or rebuilding our set payed off. This set stood up easily on its own, had a working cave, and it looked great. Needles to say we got a much better score on our set, since it actually worked this time. I think the main reason that our set worked was because of the photo of Cole Sprouse that we taped to the back of our set.
Spectacle
Another main thing that we changed about our performance was our spectacle. In regionals, our spectacle was the first song. We decided to use props and masks, but that didn’t work very well, so we decided to change our spectacle. This took a long time to change, because we couldn’t agree on anything. We were originally going to change the spectacle to later on in the performance, in adventure awaits (one of our songs). Eventually we decided to keep the spectacle at the beginning, but we changed it a lot. Instead of using props we used dance, and instead of using masks, we used acrobatics. This gave us a much higher score, and it was much more fun to perform the dance. We scored much higher on our spectacle the second time.
Our performance!
As I’ve mentioned, our performance went really well! The set worked, (thanks to Cole Sprouse) the spectacle went smoothly, our songs worked well, and we only had to improvise once or twice. It was really fun to perform with my group. We did really well on our instant challenge, but i can’t tell you about that, it’s top secret information. We ended up coming first in our main challenge AND our main challenge. I had a lot of fun this year and I’m sad that I won’t be doing it next year.
Recently, we had our Destination Imagination regionals tournament. It was held at seycove this year. In this post i will be talking about our work leading up to regionals, regionals itself, and what we are going to change for regionals. I won’t be talking about the instant challenge, since we are not allowed to talk about them until globals is over.
The process
This year, I’m in the fine arts group (again). Our challenge is called “Change of Tune”. The task is to create a two act musical, in which music and lyrics are used to help tell the story. The first step was to come up with deals for our story.
this video explains it better:
Idea generator To come up with ideas for Destination Imagination, we wrote as many ideas as we could onto pieces of paper and cut them out. Once everyone was done, we spread out all the pieces of paper on the table and went through them one by one. We organized them into groups based on what they were about (ie. stage, story, setting, spectacle….etc), then went through! And got rid of the ones we didn’t like. I don’t think that we actually used any of the ideas from those pieces of paper.
Our story The idea for our story came from one of our practice instant challenges. The instant challenge was about getting stranded at an island and meeting a tribe that communicates in a different way than you do, and you have to figure out how to communicate with them. Our story change many many times, until we finally came to the conclusion that we would be campers, going on an adventure to find and reunite two halves of a stone.
The set If you have read any other blog posts from people in my group, you will know that we had many difficulties with out set. If you watched the video above, you will know that one of the challenge requirements is to use technical methods to create a set change. Our original plan was to have 1 big piece of fabric wrap horizontally around our backdrop. We had two wooden dowels on the side of the backdrop that the fabric fit in between. The idea was that when the rollers rotated, it would’ve rotated the whole set around to reveal the cave. Once we were done building the frame, painting the backdrop, and securing the dowels, we realized that it wouldn’t work. The fabric wouldn’t stay up along the top, because it was too heavy. We were originally going to fix it by tying it up with string, and unhooking it when we had to rotate it. However we quickly realized that it wouldn’t work.
Our next design
Our next design (which worked much better) was pretty different. We started by cutting out the cave from the rest of the backdrop, and hot glueing the fabric to the frame so it wouldn’t droop. We then moved one dowel to the top of the set. The idea was that we would spin the dowel with a drill, to rise and lower the cave. This actually worked when we were rehearsing, but the night before, we noticed that the wood was splitting at the end. Apparently the other dowel was also splintered, so we couldn’t use that one. So we just had to perform without a fully working backdrop.
Our new and improved hopefully working design for next time It was decided that the set needed to be fully redone. Frame and everything. The plan for the new design is pretty different. For starters, the set will be able to fold in half (to make transportation easier). We will also be repainting the backdrop on cardboard this time. To make sure the cave rolls up better, we will be getting grey fabric (the paint is what bunched it up). We are also inserting an Allen key into a new dowel to prevent it from splintering.
The performance
As you would expect, there were good, and not so good things about our performance.
I’m going to talk about some of the things that we did well first.
Improv
What’s a Destination Imagination performance without improv? During our performance there were a few times where people forgot their lines, or weren’t ready to say them. This may seem like a bad thing, but our team is great at improv. The fact that half of them were on the improv team last year probably helped with that. Rewatching our performance, there were a few points where it didn’t even look like improv, which I think is amazing.
Singing Watching other performances, and comparing them to ours, out of all the groups performing we were some of the only people smiling, while we sung. For the most part, we stayed on pitch, and on time.
The set
This is something that didn’t go well. As I mentioned above, it was splintering the night before, so it didn’t work for the actual performance. Luckily, we have plans on how to fix all of that.
This year I would say I definitely enjoyed Destination Imagination more. Our team worked really well together and didn’t fight (too much). I am looking forward to provincials, and working more with my team.
Recently we have been learning about Canadian history. We have learned about Upper and Lower Canada, confederation, and everything in between. This of course isn’t the first time we have talked about (Canadian) history. Last year we were taught about New France, and this year we did a huge project on revolutions.
Upper and lower Canada
Canada was very different in the 1820’s. It was split into two groups, Upper and Lower Canada. If you lived in Lower Canada, you were most likely French. If you lived in Upper Canada however, you were most likely English, and of the middle or upper class. Life in upper Canada wasn’t always easy though. Farmland was scarce, and people sometimes had to wait years for a single crop. It was also often quiet, with the only noises being the farm animals, and the weather. In Lower Canada however, there was plenty of good farmland, but a lot of it was owned by English men. Upper Canada wanted more control over Lower Canada, but Lower Canada wanted more freedom. There was a constant struggle with power between the two groups. This only really ended once they joined confederation. Class meant a lot to people back in the 1800’s because the colonizers wanted upper Canada to be an extension of the British empire. So that they could keep their class from when they were in Britain, and continue it when they arrived in Upper Canada.
Confederation
Confederation was basically how Canada was formed. Of course, not every province joined in 1867. Only Ontario(Upper Canada), Quebec (Lower Canada), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined. Some provinces didn’t join until much later however. For example, Nunavut didn’t join until 1999.
The Project
Throughout this whole unit we have been watching heritage minutes. Some of me favourites being Wilder Penfield (burnt toast) and Winnie the Pooh. We watched these to learn about different parts of history, and film techniques used in heritage minutes, because we were going to make one ourselves.
Once we were split into our groups, our first task was to decide what we would make our heritage minute about, based on our categories. My group’s category was art and culture. We decided to make our heritage minute about Emily Stowe. Once we chose our topic, it was time to research. When we researched Emily Stowe, we didn’t just learn about one part of her life. We looked at almost all of it before we decided what part of her life to base our video about.
Once we were done our research, we scripted the video, and made a storyboard. Once we were done researching, scripting, and storyboarding, it was finally time to start filming. Our first draft was….. not great. We had to refill the whole thing for our second draft, but it was definitely worth it. We showed our second draft to another socials class, to get critique. When we showed our second draft to the class, we were actually proud of our work, and only had to fix a few things. Between the second and the third (and final) draft, we definitely didn’t change quite as much. The main thing we did was change the voiceover, and edit a few clips.
For my mPOL I have been reflecting on my experiences in PLP and thinking about what I do well and how I can continue to improve as a learner. In my mPOL I will be talking about my PLP experiences, and it would be impossible to talk about my learning in PLP without talking about my struggle to complete work on time. I am also going to talk about what I do well.
Group Work
I feel that my strongest skill as a PLP student is my ability to work in a group. I am comfortable acting as a leader in a group but I am also okay with letting others take the lead, as long as they are being respectful and are making sure that everyone’s voice is being heard. If someone in the group is being unfair, I speak up about it. I always do my best to take on a fair share of the work and take on extra when there is a need. I get my group work done on time as I don’t want to let anyone down. Sometimes I have to stay up late to get the work done, for example, the work at the beginning of metaphor machines. Or for my Star Wars project.
Of course, some group work has gone better than others. In the beginning of metaphor machines, I was frustrated by other group members who were not doing any work. I tried to get them to help, but they seemed reluctant . I decided that I wouldn’t force them to work, because I didn’t want them to think I was going to boss them around for the whole project. Eventually, as the project went on, the others started doing their share of the work, but by the end some people had still done more work than others.
Scimathics
I recently was told to not work too far ahead in math which is funny since I am always behind in my other subjects. I find both math and science easy and because I can stay on top of my work it doesn’t cause me any stress. I help my friends whenever they need it, especially in math. The math card game took me a bit longer to complete because I was putting a lot of work into the art involved. I was able to make some changes to my original plan when I was running out of time which worked out well because I was still happy with the end result even though I made some compromises.
French
French may not be part of PLP, but it is a part of my learning experience so I am going to talk about it as well. I am doing French online, but I started it three and a half months late as I was using my spare block to catch up on PLP work. I am happy to say that I have completely caught up on my french in one month. I find French really easy, so I can do it quickly once I get started, but I sometimes have a hard time motivating myself to get to work.
Humanities and Maker
This is definitely where I struggle the most.
I have trouble getting motivated with some of my work, which makes it hard to get started on it, especially if it is a big assignment. One example of this is my two revolution blog posts that I didn’t complete. At the time I was behind on the rest of my work, and I was still doing most of the work for my metaphor machine group, so writing two blog posts seemed like a lot of work. My Star Wars exhibition turned out well, and one of the reasons for that is that I was motivated to get it done on time, because I knew that I would have to present it to people no matter what I had. I wanted to be proud of the work I was presenting, so I worked hard(er) to produce high quality work. The exhibition blog post however, was late. A lot of people who handed the post in before me worked on it over Christmas break, but I needed to use that time to catch up on French.
Progressing forward
Moving forward, there are definitely things that I want to continue to work on. One thing I want to work on is becoming more motivated, especially on big projects that seem overwhelming. If it involves other people, I get the work done quicker, but if I am working on my own I am often less motivated to get the work done right away. For example, I was motivated to work on my Star Wars exhibition, because I knew other people would be looking at it. Or how I prioritize my group work, because I know how frustrating it is when someone hasn’t done their part of the work. Another thing I want to work on is being more comfortable speaking up to my peers about my problems with the group without worrying that I sound bossy. This is something that will just have to come from practice, and pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.
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.
As you may or may not know, recently in class we have been working on a project called metaphor machines. For this project, each group was given a different revolution to study. Our group studied the Haitian revolution. We spent some time researching our revolutions, and once we were familiar with our revolution, we started to plan out our machine. The type of machine that we all created, was a Rube Goldberg machine. Our machine also had to have a steampunk ascetic, to tie it into the book that we read, called Leviathan.
We split up our revolution into six main events to represent in our machine. After that, we created metaphors for each of the six stages. We then planned it out, and started to build.
Before we started making our machines, we studied Crane Brinton’s theory about the four stages of a revolution.
Once we finished our machine, we made a video, about our machine, and our revolution.
The Haitian revolution
Stage one This revolution started because the slaves were being mistreated. Not only did they work in the blazing heat for long hours without many breaks, but they were often whipped and beat by their owners. After years of mistreatment, they eventually realized that they could fight back. Once this was realized, word spread quickly among the slaves, and eventually thousands of slaves attended a ceremony, and planned an uprising. Later that night they killed masters, and plunged the state into war. Within the next ten days, the slaves had gained control of the northern province. Just one month into the war, over 100,000 slaved joined the fight.
Stage two
In 1793 approximately 600 British soldiers invaded Santo Domingo in an attempt to prevent the slaves’ revolt. Eventually, on January 1st 1804, the British surrendered, and Dessalines proclaimed Saint Domingue to be the second independent state of the Americas, under the name of Haiti.
Stage three
Slavery in all french colonies was put to an abrupt end in 1794 by the government in an attempt to prevent military disaster. At this time, black men were given civil and political rights.
Stage four
The war of knives lasted from June of 1799 to 1800, between Toussaint Louverture (the leader of the Haitian revolution) and André Rigaud (a free coloured person of mixed race who controlled the south.) they fought for control of Saint Domingue during the war. Eventually Toussaint won, and took control of Saint Domingue, resulting in André Rigaud fleeing the country.
Stage five
Toussaint was the leader of the slave rebellion in 1791. Throughout his years in power he worked to improve the economy and security of Saint Domingue. He restored the plantation system, this time paying the workers. He negotiated trade treaties with the UK and the US and maintained a large army.
Stage six
On 1 January 1804 Dessalines proclaimed the colony of Saint-Domingue to be the second independent state in the Americas, under the name of Haiti
Creating the machine
Before we started building, we planned out our machine on sketches pro so we knew what supplies we needed in order to build our machine. Once we finished the blueprint on our iPads, we got a piece of paper to do a full sized sketch. After our full sized sketch was done, we got to start working on our machine. First we spray painted our board with a faulty can of spray paint, to give it a steampunk ascetic. Then we started to build, going in order according to our blueprint. We ran into many many problems when we were creating our machine. Most of the problems we had were involving the circuits or the tracks. Almost everything on our machine broke at least once (not including the deconstruction). We also had the most crowded board out of all of the groups. Everything on our machine worked separately, but we couldn’t get our machine to do a full run through.
Scimathics
This project was about 50/50 between humanities and scimathics. In humanities we learned about the revolutions, and Crane Brinton’s theory, and in scimathics we learned about circuits, and we built the machine. When we were in scimathics we mainly worked on our machines, but before we started building we had multiple labs to learn about series and parallel circuits. We were also taught the symbols for different things in circuits (like batteries, wires, switches, etc) so we could properly draw circuit diagrams on our rough sketch, full sized sketch, and final blueprint.
Group work
Most of my group worked really well together. We all had different strengths, so that worked well. We had some struggles with work distribution at the beginning of the project, but once we got further along with the project the work became more evenly distributed. At the start of the project I was doing more work in humanities, and less work in science, but as I’ve already said, it didn’t stay like that for long.
My group: Luca Logan Daniel
What I would do differently next time
The first thing that comes to my mind is the machine itself. The design of the machine was very flawed, especially the three tracks at the start. The timing didn’t work out at all how we planned it, so I would definitely put more thought into the machine before actually starting to construct it. The other thing I would’ve done differently, is I would’ve tried to get the rest of my group to do more work at the beginning of the project.
Wednesday November 1st was take your kid to work day. I went to my mom’s work for the day, she’s works as a landscaper for Blooms ‘n Botanicals. For take your kid to work day, the grade 9s at seycove had to interview 3 people, and write down their responses, but since we’re in PLP, we didn’t do that. Instead, (because our theme this year is story finding and telling through video) we filmed our interview, and we were assigned a blog post along with it.
My day:
Wake up at 8:00
Work from 9:00-12:30
Lunch from 12:30-1:30
Work from 1:30-3:00
Blooms ‘n Botanicals
Blooms ‘n Botanicals specializes in landscaping design and maintenance. “At Blooms n’ Botanicals we strive to create a colourful year-round garden or patio with shrubs, trees and plants that are best suited to your lifestyle and the environment where you live.” – The blooms & botanicals website.
My mom’s work
As I’ve already mentioned, my mom works for blooms ‘n botanicals. While I was at her work I got to help out. I didn’t do too many things, because in real life there isn’t an undo button. Plus I’m not actually trained in that job/job field. I just did small things, like raking leaves. I enjoyed raking up the leaves, probably more than most people would. I also pruned lots of plants. Pruning is getting rid of the dead parts of plants, and just trimming them down in general to prepare for winter.
Last year, during our advertising unit, one of the ads that we had to make was for a business. The business I made my ad on was blooms ‘n botanicals, so it was cool to actually experience what I was advertising firsthand.
Interviews
While everyone was eating lunch (including me), I went around and asked people if I could interview them. I asked one question for each person, and here are their responses:
This is difficult to answer specifically, because there are many careers involving landscaping, and there are even more “mini jobs” within those careers. Let’s start with the “bigger” careers within/involving landscaping. Some of my top choices would be a landscape architect, and working as a garden Center employee might be fun. When I was in grade 7, one of the projects that I did was on a possible career. The career that I chose to research was a landscape architect. So I know that being a landscape architect would be a good job for me. I can also see myself working as a residential landscaper, because I enjoy gardening, and I have had experience with it on multiple occasions because I like to help with the garden in our front yard. I also usually help plant the vegetable garden.
A Frankenstuffie is an animal that has adapted to its surroundings. For this project we were each given a region of Canada to base our story around (setting, and animal(s)). My group’s region was the Canadian Shield. The Canadian Shield covers over 50% of Canada, so we had a wide range of animals to work with.
What is project Frankenstuffie?
The project was split into four main parts, learning about the regions of canada, writing our logs/diary entries, writing our script, and making our videos.
Part one This was the very beginning of the project, where we were learning a bit about each region of canada, so we could later choose which region we wanted our project to be based around.
There was originally some confusion with the groups, because we thought it was a group project (a group of four people working on the same story), but we later found out that the groups were only for peer critique/editing.
Part two This was split up into two mini parts: log entries 1, 2, & 3, and log entries 4, 5, & 6. All of the log entries were from the perspective of the main character. They were meant to be like a kind of diary(/personal log) Lets start with 1, 2, & 3, these entries were mainly about getting to know the main character, and their surroundings. The first three entries, are the days (or months) leading up to the climax. There’s also some foreshadowing included in the first three log entries. Episodes 4, 5, & 6 are about the climax, and what happens afterwards. These entries are about a change that happened in one of the matter cycles, and a change (or multiple changes) that happened to your animal because of that change in the matter cycle (eg, growing moose antlers). The last three entries (4, 5, & 6) also talked about the other animals and how they were adapting to the changes. We also revised each entry.
Part 3
I found writing the script easier than writing the log entries, because I wasn’t having to come up with a story. I was just converting a story written in first person, to a narrative script (for a video). However, it was still a time consuming process. The script writing was also broken up into two mini parts: converting entries 1, 2, & 3 into a script, and then converting entries 4, 5, & 6 into a script. As I was changing the stories, I noticed that I was changing small parts of the story/taking out the unnecessary bits of the story.
Part 4 The last part of this project definitely took the longest, because our last step was to make our story into a video. Luckily, we were given time to write (and revise) a script beforehand, so this step was much easier. Making the video was split into three parts this time. The first thing that we had to do, before we even started to film was make a storyboard for our video, and get it approved. Once the storyboard for our entire video was done, we were able to start filming the first half of our video (that was episodes 1, 2, & 3). The storyboard helped with this, because I didn’t have to spend as much time thinking about each scene, what angle the camera would be at, etc. We then revised the first half of the video. Once we were done the first half of the video, we made the second half (episodes 4, 5, & 6). Then, of course we revised the second half of the video.
The video
Now I’ll talk about the creation of the video. I started off making the video using a green screen, because we have/had one in the classroom. I ended up using explain everything as well.
Green screen vs explain everything
Using the green screen was difficult at times, because it was hard to get the stuffie in the right place. While filming, I used do ink The green screen was crowded at times, because there were multiple people using it at once. The other downside to using the green screen was that you usually had to get someone else to hold your iPad (Tamara held mine for me) and film while you moved your stuffie across the screen. Once we were done filming one of my scenes, we would switch, and I would hold Tamara’s iPad while she moved her stuffie across the screen. This ended up taking too long, so I switched to using explain everything. Using explain everything was easier. The only downside to switching to explain everything halfway through, was that it looks different from a green screen. Other than the difference in styles, overall I’m pretty happy with how the visuals of my video turned out.
What I would do differently next time
The fist thing that comes to mind when I think about this is the voiceovers. I think I would have benefited from having someone else voice my characters, so the video is less confusing to the viewer. This would’ve also saved me time, because I wouldn’t have to record as much audio.
Another thing that comes to mind is the log entries. I wouldn’t have fallen as far behind in this project if I hadn’t spent so much time trying to make the entries perfect. I also could have been more organized, especially with the filming, because I would spend too much time looking for a photo to use as my background, I wouldn’t have much class time to film.
There are many things that I still haven’t said about what I would do differently, but that list is long enough to make a blog post of its own.
I talked a lot about teamwork in my two Destination Imagination posts this year. That’s because there’s a lot of great things to say about it. One thing i didn’t really talk about was the “leader” of our group. There wasn’t one. We were all leaders in different parts. Some of us were in charge of the script, or the songs. Obviously there was more than just the script and the songs, but I won’t bore you with the whole list. I’d never worked in a group where there’s just one leader before. It’s really nice because you don’t have the pressure of being the leader and making most of the decisions, but you don’t feel like you aren’t contributing enough. I think it also helped that we all got along well. We listened to each other well and didn’t argue about much. We did really well in our performance and in our instant challenge. Our second performance was much better than our first. We listened to what the appraisers said and made a lot of revisions based on the feedback that we got. Since we were willing to listen to the feedback the appraisers had for us, we did much better in provincials. I have learned new ways of working in a team after this project, and i now know how much you can improve if you really listen to feedback.
I really enjoyed the cloning project, though it was frustrating at times. I found it cool to learn about cloning plants, because I’m personally interested plants and possibly becoming a landscaper. However, (as usual) there were some problems with my group. Not everyone was carrying their weight. We tried to resolve it within our group multiple times, but the two group members continued to not do any work. Eventually I had to go to mr gross with another group member to address the situation, because we knew we wouldn’t be able to get the project done by the deadline if the other two group members didn’t start pulling their weight. This project demonstrated that I’ve learned to ask for help when it’s needed. I’m glad that we asked for help because I’m happy with the final outcome, and how things were resolved. 
The lego project was another example of challenging group work. There seems to be a lot of that in this program. With this project, I ended up doing the majority of the work. Again, i tried many times to resolve the problem on my own, but (just like with the cloning project) it didn’t work. I could’ve gone to mr gross again, but I knew that I could get the work done in time for the presentation. I also didn’t think that going to mr gross would really work this time. I ended up finishing the project on time, and overall Im happy with the final product. I feel like this is a good example of real life learning that will apply outside the classroom. Sometimes not everyone is going to contribute and you can’t always help that. The difference between the lego project and the cloning project is that I knew that we wouldn’t be able to finish the cloning project in time without help. 
I enjoyed this project, and learning about the treatment of shell shock. Before this assignment I had heard the words shell shock approximately 2 times. Both in Ottawa. So it’s fair to say that I learned a lot from this project. This entire unit was very important because we need to learn about the horrible things that happened in the past so we can learn from them and not treat people that way in the future. 
We presented to the 6th and 7th graders at Cove Cliff Elementary. The first and second groups i presented to were genuinely interested in what I was presenting. It was easy and enjoyable to present to them because they wanted to know more and they asked questions. The 3rd (and final) group I presented to had a harder time understanding the topic, so they weren’t as interested in what I was saying. It was difficult to present to them, and it showed me that not everyone learns the same way, and that sometimes you need some background knowledge to enjoy things more. I also learned that it easier to present when your audience is interested in what you’re talking about. I will think about this for future presentations so I can try to get everyone interested. 
