Introduction

Hello on todays blog post I’m going to share all about the new project we did comic cells. This project gave a us a better understanding on the way biology works. From plants to animals. This project also taught us a bit about comics and I cant wait to share that with you.

What is this project

Basically this project is all about teaching us how biology works. The way we showed our understanding was by first researching then making a comic. The comic had to be detailed and explain a lot about biology. 

Launch

Mind map 

As we normally would we made a mind map to start of this project. Basically we had to think of different questions that we had about this project and some things we already know. This really helped me wonder about how the project would unfold and what we would be learning about. 

Picture…

Building knowledge

Wanted poster

Here we took our first look into what a disease actually was. We had to choose a disease that we thought would be good with a wanted poster. We had to explain what the disease does to your body who found it where it was from and what time it was from.

Here’s mine…

Kan academy

On the Kan academy quiz’s we learned a lot about what cells are made and how different cells work. We also learned a bit about photosynthesis and other cool things cells do. This really helped me understand how a cell works and how I could use that in my upcoming comic strip.

Develop and critique

Milestone 4: Milestone 4 was basically a rough draft of our actual comic there wasn’t much except Ted just that you chose the settings characters and storyline. This really helped get me a firm idea and understanding for what my project would be about. 

Present and reflect

Milestone 5: Milestone 5 was the final and most important milestone here we had to make sure that we all the core competencies down packed. The art had to be good and there needed to be 18 panels in your comic. This was a big step up from milestone 4 but I still got it done and I am so proud of my work.

Core competencies 

Questioning and predicting: This is basically the competencies that says did I use all my time sufficiently and not get distracted I definitely improved on this form last time. I still had some off days where I wasn’t staying focused but i was mostly good. I got most of the work done in class.

Scientific communication: this is basically did i get all of the science vocabulary down pact. I think I did and milestone 3 really helped with that. I was also able to incorporate it into my comic through they many different diagrams.

Evaluating: basically did my comic show how cells interact. In my opinion I definitely showed that in my comic through a number of different things first being the fact I added how the immune system responds the second reason being the way I showed how the viruses got in the cell.

Conclusion: 

Overall this was a really fun project and I learned so much about how biology works. I would love to do this again  thank you so much for teaching me this year mr gross.

Introduction

Hi, welcome to my blog. Today I am going to go over all of the things that we recently did in Scimatics. In this project we had to design something with a partner on a 3D design app called ‘tinker-cad’. I had so much fun on this project and cannot wait to tell you all about it.

Launch

Milestone 1

Milestone 1 was the first part of the project that we had to do. This is where we started to plan out our design for the project. Ou task was basically to get an idea of something that we could make in ‘tinker cad’.

Experiment

Also, to help get an introduction on the experiment we had to measure the area of one of the walls in the room. This really helped get a better understanding on the Math we would be doing for the rest of the time.

Building knowledge

Surface area and volume notes

After the launch, we had to start getting a better understanding on the math that was involved with this project. So, Mr Gross had us create a document to write notes down on lessons he would teach throughout the class.

Milestone 2

After we had enough understanding of the math, we started to go ahead and make our project. David and I had planned to make a rocket ship. So, I went straight to ‘tinker cad’ and started to make my design.  I finished making the launch system of the rocket, while David made the front.

picture of the space ship

Milestone 3

After that we needed to find out the surface area and volume for each shape of the rocket ship. We had to calculate many shapes including cylinders and something called a parallelepiped. 

Example of the calculations…

Develop and critique

Milestone 4

After all the calculations were done we had to give he model to Mr Hughes so that he could print it out on a 3D printer.

Present and reflect

Presentation

After that we had to make a presentation explaining our project to class and what we did. We had to put all the calculations and information about our spaceship in the presentation. Me and David split up the work and both designed half of the slide show. The slide show was really good just needed some time to look over.

Core competencies

Applying and innovating:

Basically did I use my class time wisely. I think I did most of the time but sometimes (especially on the math part) I got really distracted. I definitely could improve on this in the future and have definitely improved from last time. 

Reasoning and annualizing:

Basically did I follow all the requirements for this project. I actually think I did well on this one and my 3D object was actually very good and I had 12 3D shapes out of the 10 required my design was optimized for maximum volume and it definitely achieved that. 

Communicating representing:

Basically did I Get all the math done and make a presentation. I struggled paying attention in class for the math part and definitely need to show more interest on that but on the presentation part I think I did pretty good except for one mistake that was caused by miss organization.

Conclusion

I loved this project and found it super interesting. I hope that we get to do something like this in grade nine as this was probably my favourite project this year.

Thank you for reading my blog 

Introduction

Hi this is my new blog on a new project chemistry coding. I will be sharing all about how I made a video game based on atoms. I know that sounds weird but I want to tell you about my journey through this project.

 Launch 

Project start mind-map

The first thing we did was make a project to start Mind Map. This helped me get a good idea about what this project was going to be about.

Mind Map picture before…

Mind map picture after…

Building knowledge

Gemstone identification challenge

After we got introduced to the atomic theory we tried to identify what a gemstone bye measuring its density through multiplying its volume and mass.

Workbook pages

Here is where we read most about the atomic theory and the kinetic molecule theory. We also learned about the difference between a physical and chemical change that really helped us to get a good understanding for what our games would look like.

Atomic theory test

This was a test that went over all the things we had learned in the workbook pages prior. The reason fo this test was to give us a better understanding of how much we new about the atomic theory. I think this was a great learning experience.

Develop and critique 

making our atoms

after we had finishing researching we decided to make atoms that would fit into our game. You could do multiple types of atoms if you wanted I chose a lot of different atoms an molecules.

Example of my atoms…

Milestone 4

Basically we had to create an outline for what our scratch project would look like and say how it would include all the requirements for my game ( it needs to follow the atomic theory and the kinetic molecularly theory). 

Milestone 5

After we finished our plan it was time to implement what we had learned on scratch. We first had to watch a lot of scratch tutorials to make sure that we knew what we where supposed to do. After hat we had to start making our game. It was really hard to learn scratch at first but once you had it down backed then you can create almost any video game.

sketches of my atoms and molecules

image of my scratch coding

Core competencies

Questioning and predicting: basically did I use all my class time wisely. I think I kind of did most of the time and I definitely improved from the last quarter but there’s still so much more that I could improve on. I need to make sure I’m listening t instructions better because I often zone out and don’t know what’s going on.  One thing that really helped me to use my class time more efficiently then last time was the project plan that we did at the beginning of the day this really showed me what we where going to do that day and how I could use my time efficiently to get my work done. 

Scientific communication: basically did I implement the things we learned about into my scratch game. Even thought the work book pages really gave me a really good understanding on what the kinetic molecular and atomic theory was i struggled to implement it into my game I think that I needed a bit more time to finish but my game did not really revolve that much around the kinetic molecular theory. 

Reasoning and analyzing: basically did I make a scratch game that works properly and makes sense. I did this pretty well but i could definitely improve on it. I had nice ascetics and the game worked really smoothly the controls where good. I have to give a big thanks to the tutorials that I watched because they really gave me a great understanding on how to do scratch and make a really good game.

Conclusion

In conclusion this was a really great learning experience and it really helped me get a better understanding on atoms. I cant wait to start the next project in scimatics.

Link to my game: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/527676057/ 

Introduction 

This is the last but not least project in PLP this year. It had been so fun and I am sad we had to end it. I really hope we can continue learning next year. So, sad stuff aside this is my summative blog post on the last quarter. This blog will explain everything you need to know about my journey through European settlement and all the people involved.

Answering the driving question

Driving question: What does European settlement mean for all the people involved.

This is what I think the answer to the driving question is: When the Europeans came to North America, they effected lives of Indigenous people that lived there in many different ways. At first, the Europeans influenced their lives positively, however later they took over and basically destroyed their culture. So, European settlement was a continuity but what changed was how they treated the Indigenous people and that effected their lives negatively.  

Launch

Research on the Cove

Here we researched all about the history of the Cove and how it evolved overtime. It was super interesting to learn about where  Seycove came from as well. We also learned about other places in Vancouver and how they started, like Moody Ville. Even though Vancouver isn’t the most ancient society, it is still super interesting to learn how things evolved and changed over time since the first settlers came here.

Building knowledge 

Survival challenge

This is where I met my project partner for the first time and I am pretty sure this was meant to be a a partner building exercise. What we had to do here was to choose a survival tip and make a one minute long video that explains how to use that tip. I was super exited to meet my new partner Max and this was probably my favourite part of this project.

3 groups research

After we finished researching about the Cove, we went back in time and started to research about the three groups who made Canada. The first group we researched about were the French. They were the first Europeans to land in Canada. The next group we researched about were the First Nations, the people who where here first. They were a big help in European settlement. After, we research about the possibly biggest group, the British. The British started the Hudson’s Bay company and eventually created Canada. All of this research really helped me understand the history of Canada and I really loved learning about it.

Life in a colony

This part was another Iron chef where we all had to research about one type of people who had been living in Canada at the time of colonization. There were different types of people and it was important to learn the impact they had on European settlement. I learned about the coureurs de boiswho basically a un licensed traders. I loved this part and thought it was a really fun way of learning who was in the fur trade.

Milestone 2 

For the Milestone 2, we had to make a graph and we were given an example of continuity and change. We then had to use that example and compare it to life in the time of the fur trade and today. We also had to rate its importance out of 5. This was super helpful in getting me to learn about continuity and change. I think this was very important, because it was one of the main things in our project going forward.

Milestone 3

This is when we started our main project. The main project was basically an infographic with some facts, graphics, and a thesis explaining what happened in the time of European settlement. We had to find out what our thesis was and add all three of the facts that where needed.

Develop and critique 

Using evidence

Here I learned how to find and use good evidence. This was really important for me since I will have to use evidence more and more, and finding good evidence is important. This was important when we had to find evidence for our facts in the actual infographic.

How to make an Infographic 

We learned how to make an infographic by listening to an outburst video. This YouTube video helped me learn nine key concepts in making an infographic. The most important ones are: it needs to be simple, the pictures need to explain the writing, and it needs to be pleasing to the eye. This helped me and Max create a better infographic since we understood more on how to make a meaningful infographic. 

Infographic Milestone 4

This is where we finally got to put all our knowledge together and complete our infographic. After a couple of revisions that helped us make our infographic as good as possible, we finally finished and ended up with an amazing infographic.

Info graphic below….

Present and reflect 

script and video

After we finished the infographic we were tasked to make a video with a script that explained the infographic. After we filmed that, we had to post it on YouTube. I learned a lot about making a YouTube video pleasing and how to make a good description. 

YouTube videos…

Core competencies

Identifying continuity and change: I learned in this project how to identify continuity and change in almost every subject. I think this was a super important aspect in my learning since it opened my eyes to different changes and continuities in the world.

Using evidence: Learning about how to find good evidence is very important for any future projects, because I need to know how to find good evidence in order to make the project as well constructed and true as possible. I learned to look for multiple different sites to see which source of evidence is the most stated over all the different sites. Now I know to make sure that the sources people are writing are good and trustworthy sources.

Conclusion

I think that this project taught me a lot about many things in life and I will definitely see the world differently from now on. I cannot wait to for Social Studies 9 where we will learn more about important events in history and how they have made continuities and changes in our life today.

Introduction

DI was one of my favourite projects that we have done so far. Even though it was really hard and at times very challenging for me, we pulled through and created an awesome project. I cannot wait to share with you in this blog post all about the project, about my DI group called ‘The MMM’, known as ‘The Mechanized Mechanical Mechanics’, and how we created one of the coolest videos ever.

Learning the rules

First off, I want to give you a bit of an idea on what Destination Imagination really is. Every single year students are supposed to choose between four different categories: technical, scientific, engineering, and fine arts. Every year they need to come up with new task for each of the categories and have to make something out of it. There is a twist though, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows! There a lot of rules to follow and choices  to make in order not to get disqualified. Our group was the engineering group. In order to make sure we new exactly what our task was and what the rules for that task were, we decided to split off in groups. Each group was responsible to read one section and find out all the things that the section said to do and also all the things that it said not to do.

Planning the building and writing the script

Our task was to create a building that resembles how opposites help each other. Also, we had an option to choose from different building and architectural styles and we were supposed to select one of each. Since the building was supposed to show how opposites attract, we decided to make the architectural style and building style opposites. The most opposite styles we could think off was Renaissance vs Postmodernism. We chose the Renaissance as the architectural style and the Postmodernism as the building style. We all decided to research on one of the two styles to make sure we fully understood how those styles looked. Originally, we were going to make a dome that was half fire-half ice, but at the end we could not build the dome because of time restraints. So, instead, we made a huge rectangular box with one big spike on the top that posed as a movie theatre.  As part of the project, we also had to make a script. I was not really involved in the making of the script, but the story was mainly about old and young people settling their differences to make a wonderful work of art.

Creating the video

Another task was to creat a video. When we created the video, we had to give everyone an equal part in the play. Since the play was based around old and young people fighting, we decided to have acting roles such as one old person, two young people, and one millennial in the video. There was also one narrator and two builders. I was given the role of the first young person. The story started with two people deciding to build a community recreation center for an entire town to enjoy. They didn’t really know how to make everyone happy, so they decided to try mixing two opposite art styles, postmodern and renaissance, for their design of the building. Even though the design was really nice, the mix of the art styles was not enough for the old and the two young people. They decided to add a new part of the building, a theatre. This was a big mistake! They wanted old and young people to engage with each other, so they chose to make a giant basketball court that everyone can go to play games on. After the video had been recorded, one of my team members edited it and added sound effects. The video turned out to be awesome! I had so much fun acting this out and would love to do it again.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I hope we have a project like this again and that in the next DI project I will be able to create something extremely cool. This project was very challenging and really helped me realize how competitive DI is. 

Link to video…

IMG_2359

Hi my name is Samuel and in this blog post I am going to show you I will be going over one of the most recent projects that PLP has taken up the growth mindset challenge. Before I get in to to what I disliked, liked and learned from this project I wanna go over what we learned. We had to take part in lessons that miss Willemse taught us these lessons helped us better understand how to grow our growth mindset. Some of These included learning about learning from failure and always having growth mindset not a fixed mindset. The growth and fixed mindset was probably the main part of what we learning so I want to explain what they are. A growth mindset is basically constantly trying to get better at things a not just giving up because your not good enough. It can also go the other way many people start thinking there’s no more space for them to improve in there mindset and stop improving because of that. A fixed mind set is basically when you stop having a growth mind set you give up and decide there is nothing more for you to learn your not good enough and will never be good enough. If you have a fixed mindset you will never succeed in your life due to your inability to get stronger and better at different subjects.

Now I want to go over what I liked, disliked and learned about this project. First off what I liked, I really liked how real and life changing this project is. By helping me grow a better growth mindset I am now able to get better at not only school but other things in my life like friends, sports and other sort of things. We did many projects where we tried to connect our lives to a growth mindset and even set goals inside of school to get make our worth ethic and grades skyrocket. Now on to what I disliked, there wasn’t really anything that I dislike because this project was generally fun and I learned a lot about a growth mindset. I wouldn’t change anything about this project and would love to learn more about it. Now on to what I learned, I learned a lot from this project including what a growth mindset is, how to learn from failure, how to grow your brain and other such sort of things. Like I said before all of these things connected to the main lesson of this project how can we grow our growth mindset. This project was super fun and I learned so much in my personal life and my school life.

We also made a growth mindset journal. This is basically a summary of everything we did

A new book

and here’s the growth mindset selfie

Launch

Captain Phillips

On the first day of this project we watched a movie called captain Phillips which taught us about modern day piracy and how one captain survived it. After watching the very long and intense movie we had to answer some interesting questions.

AR maker/milestone 1

As soon as we started this project we looked at AR maker. First we did some rediscovering whith keynote and then learned how to use this new tool called AR maker. Basically With AR maker you can draw or place images into an app which will place those images on to a flat surface. We were tasked to brainstorm a story using a story spine and then use AR maker to make it in real life.

Building knowledge

Research

First we researched about Christopher Columbus, prince Henry and Vasco da Gama. These people where some of the biggest innovators and explorers to help start the Columbus exchange and possibly the biggest discovery in history the Americas. We then moved on to learn about how innovations in boats that where made to help travel across sea to long far of places like India or the Americas. After that we looked at one of the most important parts of the age of exploration the columbian exchange. Basically the exchange between the americas and Europe. We also learned about pirates and all the mischief they got into.

Iron chef

Are teachers made us play this game called iron chef where we get judged for our research on a certain explorer. Luckily we also got to judge other people. We all got to choose one judge out of a choice of judges, all with different personalities. This was super fun and would love to do it again.

Web of cause and consequences 

Here we had to make a web of causes of consequences that showed how the age of exploration started and how it affects our lives all the way up to today. This was pretty interesting and i really like the way a web of cause and consequences works.

Develop and critique

Soon after the web of cause and consequences we had to make an AR video explaing the web of cause and consequences. I had to draw like 40 pictures but when I finally finished I think that my AR video was awesome.

Conclusion 

I loved this project so much and really loved learning about pirates and the age of exploration. I hope that we get to lean about other historical events like the age of exploration or the Middle Ages again.

link to my video….

Ancient Mesopotamia was one of the first civilizations and would soon create the first empire.

Ancient Mesopotamia was situated between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers. It started many of the everyday things we use today such as the wheel, the written language, and sadly, taxes. Ancient Mesopotamia was called Sumer and was made up of many city states some of which are Ur, Uruk, and Akkad. These city states all helped each other and had the same religion.

After different enemy states had a couple of wars, one of the states rose up, the city of Kish ruled by Sargon the Great. The city of Kish defeated its northern neighbour city state Akkad and named it as it’s capital since it was exactly in the spot where the Tigress and Euphrates rivers where the closest. He eventually took over all of Sumeria and ruled for more than a half of century. He established a dynasty that was after his death ruled by his grandson Naran-Sin. After he came to power, Naram-Sin took over the kingdom of Eelam, which is modern-day Iran. He then went up and conquered the civilization of Marrie, modern-day Syria. Sadly, after he died, his dynasty died with him.  

Akkad was unknown and least studied from the Sumerian city states. Many people believe the reason for that was constant rebellion raids and extreme drought. Even though Akkadians are now not alive, their civilization had an impact on building a first world empire, and therefore huge impact on the way history played out.

Every christmas my family and I( grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins) get together to have a Christmas party. This party consists of two dinners, one on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas Day. The first one on Christmas Eve is at my house. This is because we are really good at making appies and main courses that are part of a four course meal. Most of these courses are from Swiss or Slovakian traditional meals. At my cousins’ house we have the typical turkey dinner and a giant dessert.

Now, I am going to to explain how we feast at my house. The first thing we must do is prepares the food. My dad gets ready a soup called sauerkraut soup, which might sound too sour or gross in other words, but it is not. It is not sour at all because the way you make it you take all the sour stuff out of the soup and put spicy Italian sausages in it. The next big thing on our list is fish. We have lots of cool fish. Sometimes we have salmon which is my favourite. We also love snitchels. Every person in my family has been eating snitchels since they were children. At the end, our family always have some fondue or rocclete.

When the people come to my house they normally start to sit down and my dad or mom offers everyone some coffee  or tee. After they all sit down and talk. Me and my cousins go inside and play video games and watch Marvel or Star Wars movies. When we eat, we always start with the soup since it is always first. Then we eat the cake which is made by all of the family. Our family’s favourite type of cake is called tiramisu. After this we put the fondue in the middle of the table and eat it and after that we open half of our Christmas  presents.

   Now, I am going to explain how we do it in my cousins’ house. We normally have the turkey or ham dinner. Our aunt makes the gravy according to what meat we are having but I enjoy the turkey dinner the most. Our aunt always makes very yummy brussel sprouts with bacon bits and cheese. We also get to have some really nice tater tots. After that we have dessert which is a pie with ice cream and lots of toppings like gummies and sprinkles.

Christmas is one of my favourite holidays and I am looking forward to all of it again this year!

By Samuel Klose