Hello!

Have any of you ever heard of Louis Riel? For our most recent project we learned all about the history Louis Riel, his portrayals over the historical period of his life and how he was an important historical figure to Canada, with the driving question of “How has the Portrayal of Riel Changed Over Time?”.

To learn about Riel and to work up to having a good understanding of him, we did a bunch of research! We looked at how artists portrayed him through statues, such as “Joyal’s Louis Riel at the Manitoba Legislature”. This is a statue made in 1996 that can be seen in front of the Legislative buildings in Manitoba. Another source we used for research and understanding was the “Louis Riel Heritage Minute”. We watched this video, and then wrote a mini paragraph about how we thought it portrays Louis Riel.
The heritage minute video:

 https://youtu.be/0fLnJp-Rjow?si=luLoZhHOKzbmQf9N

We also improved our writing skills in order to write a multi paragraph response to the driving question. The first few lessons we touched up on things we already knew like synonyms and antonyms. Then we just deepened our understanding on more complex words and more professional ways to say things.

There were multiple drafts and trials to try and create a final multi paragraph response. We had help from our peers and teachers to make some edits. Along with gaining feedback and giving peer critique, we also learned how to properly improve our editing skills. With these skills we made it so that the final result of our work, and our peers work could reach its full potential.

Here are some of the most recent edits I have received:

Our class learned about the portrayals of Riel, in order to understand the important events in Canadian history. Louis Riel was part of the history of Canada, he helped found Manitoba! Being able to write is also a very valuable skill, and touching up on your writing skills is important to do from time to time. In the future if I ever have to look back on my Canadian history knowledge, then I can confidently say that Riel was a big part of Canadian history. Louis was Riel historical! 

Click here to see my multi paragraph response:

Thank you so much for reading!

 -Ailie 💜

Ireland is famous for its potatoes, it’s less famous for its revolution but….

This winter exhibition was my third exhibition ever! This time our project was called metaphor machines, with a driving question of: how do ideas drive change? For this project we were put into groups based on which revolution we wanted to study. I was put in group Ireland (aka Easter Rising) with Finn, Matteo, Jannik, Meghan, Hunter, and Ryan.

I learned so much about the Irish revolution, like how it technically started in the 1100’s but there were 800 years of buildup, violence, and little rebellions until the actual impactful actions in 1916. Our first project was an individual project of making info graphics about our revolutions, so we could learn a little bit about our revolution. Then we met as a group and it was really interesting to see all of the different research done by everyone! From there we combined all of our research to make a logical chain of events. 

Our group was particularly excited for building our metaphor machine. As well as a machine we had to make a documentary which mostly Matteo, Ryan and Finn made. Check it out here in Matteo‘s blog! We took the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine, which is a series of events and reactions that are pieced together to trigger a continues flow of energy from beginning to end. We started planing our machine. With each stage of the revolution we connected a connection. In total we had 8 connections. It was quite the process building our machine. We learned so many things, like unfortunately hot glue isn’t water proof. 

The actual exhibition was chaotic as always! The positive was that’s our group was really good at our speaking parts. Something that we could grow on was not loosing our marbles, literally and metaphorically! Our negative was a track from our machine fell off our machine, and landed in our bucket of water and red die mid presentation!

This revolution ended in 15 people getting executed, which we represented with 15 marbles falling to our bucket of red die. Thank goodness that the exhibition didn’t end that violently! 

I don’t know that much about what project next for just us PLP 9s, but as for most of PLP, the 8s, 9s, and 10s, there’s gonna be a whole lot of chaos and duck tape!

Thanks for reading!

-Ailie 💜

Hello everybody!!

“Her phone ringtone echoed through the house for the third time in the past three minutes. She knew she shouldn’t, but she picked up the phone and answered the call.” 

Do you like thrillers? If you do, you’ll love the ones we just made! Our most recent project was making a short 2 minute thriller!

 First, we watched some thriller clips for some inspiration and learned more about how films were made. The most important thing we learned was the 3 C’s and how they are the most important parts of a thriller. The 3 C’s are the clock, the contract and the crucible. The clock is the addition of time pressure, the contract is a promise to be delivered by the end of the film and the crucible is a box that contains your character. 

Once we had learned these things, we started to create our own thriller! We was our group of 4 members, Maddie, Evelyn, Me and Melissa. Our story was: one day the main character Cecile starts to get anonymous phone calls. She keeps picking up, there’s only noise like static or heavy breathing on the other end, so she hangs up and goes back to reading her book. Now she’s concerned. When she here’s a crash upstairs she goes to investigate. She doesn’t know what to do. Who is upstairs, and who is on the other end of the phone??

I was on a vacation in Mexico for the filming, but I got to do the editing! It was a really fun project, and process to make the thriller. So, without further ado our thriller: Not Alone!

Thanks for reading and watching! Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!

-Ailie 💜

That day I woke up at noon, I needed to leave soon. A lake named after a loon. A spork is a fork and a spoon. I’m running out of oon words. Anyway, Hi! Recently we went on a surprise PLP trip to a place called loon lake! It’s a wonderful facility with a huge lake in the middle and amazing food. Our sleeping quarters were in the student centre with the boys and girls on either sides of the gym. 

As always we had a driving question and learning objectives. The driving question was: How do the choices we make set our future path? During the time we were at loon lake we did multiple different activities. Some physical, like the high and low ropes corses, rock climbing, archery etc. As well as some metal, like our workshops with pinnacle pursuits, a company who helped organize our trip, and its representative Johno. During all of those activities we focused on processing, analyzing and decision-making. Like how on high ropes we had to work with our partners, if we were going on the high wobbly bridge, to get across together!

I learned so much about my classmates, while having so much fun!! One of the activities we did was trust falls. We worked our way up from doing trust falls with a group in a circle, to doing trust falls with a partner getting farther and farther away, and finally doing trust falls into a group of 8 people from standing on a chair on a table! Everyone always caught each other, and if we didn’t already, we learned to trust each other. Another activity was the talent show, where you got to show the class a talent of your choice. The final activity was the funky dance party! It was so fun singing and dancing with flashy multicoloured lights and light up glasses!

My goal/take away from that trip was, we all bonded together as a group! As that bond is now strong, my goal is to uphold and strengthen it as we grow together through high school. Bye for now! Up next, flags will be flying, cannons will be shot, and PLP will be absolute mayhem!

-Ailie 💜

Hello hello!!

Speech language pathologist! Say that 5 times fast! That’s my aunt’s job, a speech language pathologist. So, for take your kid to work day I went to one of the schools my Auntie Ruth works at. I feel like I learned that I would like to be some sort of a teacher for work, and speech pathology is pretty fun, but I would probably like to be just a regular teacher. Now, that’s not my aunt’s fault, and I have nothing against, and wasn’t turned against speech pathology.

Let me explain the process of how the day went. There was a kid in kindergarten on the autism spectrum who we made instructional videos for, for things like washing your hands, to make things easier for him to understand. Then we had a speech therapy session with a girl who was learning how to pronounce her sh, s and z. The things my aunt does to help her pronounce the sounds are really cool! She helped show the girl what shapes she had to make with her mouth to say the sounds. After lunch we worked with one more girl who my aunt just met. She needed help with pronouncing her r’s.

I learned that with the children, if they get help with their pronunciations then they learn pretty quickly how to speak them properly. Speech language pathologists are pretty important, because their job can help little kids speak freely, and properly and be better understood. Now I know that in the future, when I hopefully become a teacher, I can apply some of the lessons and learning from my aunt’s speech pathology strategies to help make learning fun for my students! My aunt is also very resilient and patient, so I hope to learn to be like that.

The really cool thing is that I was using Canva to make my video. Our video was an assignment that all of us in PLP 9 were assigned to make to showcase our experience, and interview someone. When we were editing the instruction videos for the kindergarten student, I realized that I could utilize Canva to edit the videos more efficiently and add things to make them easier to understand. So I did just that! My aunt and the kindergarten teacher were very happy with the videos. Technically, I did work at work!!

Here’s my video:

So now I know about speech pathology! Hopefully now you do too!!

-Ailie 💜

P.S. I also want to be an Uber driver!

Hi everyone!!

Have you ever been running through a forest, with the feeling that you’re being followed??? Well I was followed through the forest by a creepy person dressed in black…. In a short film! Don’t worry!!

In Maker for the past few weeks we had to recreate a video called “Run”. It was quite the process but we did it! This project was a group project! My group members were Syd, Caelum, Kai, and Sebastian. We went into this project with some knowledge about camera angles. That knowledge we took, and literally ran with!! Throughout the whole process of making the video we made different plans, tried new filming techniques and just plainly had a lot of fun!

We made our first draft like it was going to be our final draft, but then our class watched all of the videos and submitted critique, so that we could improve them. Here is my group’s first draft:

A few things were done to improve our video and make a final draft. The first thing we did was film most of the shots again, then Caelum did most of the editing and it was perfect!

Here’s the final product:

And of course no video comes without its mishaps and dance breaks! Here are the bloopers!:

Thanks so much for reading my blog post! And remember, if you think someone’s following you, just run!! Bye!!

-Ailie 💜 

Have you ever lived in a society based off of the Middle Ages?? No?! Really? Well I did for four days in class!

Our class was called Nation X and we were put into 4 different groups.

Group A the peasants, whose task was to write a 100 word letter every day for 1 dollar.

Group B the merchants, that was my group! I ran the shop for all of the groups with Mika. Our daily task other than running the shop was writing a 50 word letter about our day! Since it was a monarchy and the king read the letters, we had to make them king positive.

Group C the knights/nobility had a lot of freedom. They ran the jail, and they didn’t have to have a lot of reason to arrest someone.

Group D the clergy/monarchy were the most important class. They were a small group, and had one king who was in charge of everything.

We got to read the news every day to let us know what was happening. The king paid us our daily wage. Since I ran the shop with Mika we got paid a dollar more wage a day.

In the end the king was overthrown. Diseases were spread, resulting in health care being made. We created a council of one person from each group. A military was created in threat of war from other nations. Weapons were made by groups A and B. Our nation was ready for war. It was a fair democracy. We were all doing pretty great, except for the fact that I’m still dying of disease. I never got a cure, so am I going to die??

Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog!

“The world reveals it’s self to those who travel on foot.”- Werner Herzog. If you read my maker post you’ll know that we had a grade 9 PLP field study already, and that we did a lot of walking! If you haven’t already read my maker post here’s a link to it. https://www.blog44.ca/ailieh/2023/10/12/173/. In that post I talked about the maker aspect of our Alberta Field study, and how we made videos to tell a story. 

In humanities, our question was, how is the geography of the west shaped who we are today? How did we answer this? Another one of our field study books! If you haven’t read another one of my posts: We were Ore-gone for a while but now we’re back, then here it is. https://www.blog44.ca/ailieh/2023/06/09/112/. It explains what we did last year on our grade 8 field study in Oregon, and it also has the book that we did last year embedded in it!

The most important thing we learned about on this trip, was the five themes of geography. Location, Place, Geography Human environmental interaction and Movement. Our job in Alberta, was to find examples of each of these elements. We made comic life’s depicting these elements! Mine is included in my book.

This time our book was made up of, after choosing photos from each place, answering the same three questions for each place. What is geography through one or more of the Five Themes of Geography? What is the historical significance of this photo? Your own connection to the photo?

I enjoyed all of the places, but if I had to pick my favourite it would have to be the Sulfure Mountain hike, and the view from the top! Here’s what we saw when we were up there.

I really enjoyed the format of this book and had a lot of fun gathering this information by the experiences I had! My book took quite a lot of editing, but the end product I’m very happy with! I had a cartoon character that I used in my Oregon book and I made an older version of it for this book.

So here it is:

 Thanks for reading, hope you like my book!

-Ailie 💜

Hi

Welcome back to my blog people! 

Filming, filming filming and more filming. The camera, always on. Icloud storage, disappeared. The filming was endless.

Our PLP 9 class went on our annual field study! This time we went to Alberta. The focus was 4 different videos. Our projects driving question for maker was how do we use the image to tell a story? After going on this awesome trip, and making the videos, I now have an answer to this question. The moving image, aka video provokes emotions. What we do or say in the video, our acting or our actions can tell a story.

So here we go! The first video that we did, and probably my favourite video is the silent video. We had to come up with a storyline, and choose what buildings, or where we wanted to film it within three valley gap.

 Our group went with a murder mystery. Our storyline started once upon a time there was a murderer who terrorized a small town. Then it builds from there and gets more dramatic and to be honest just more fun. I had a really great group made up of, Finn, Nate, Maddie, and myself. We quite enjoyed filming and really getting into our characters. I’ll include the video for you guys to watch. And of course every film always has its mishaps, so I’ll also include our absolutely hilarious, blooper reel. For this video, I learned that I love working in a group more than ever, iMovie is very easy to work with and configure, and never to trust your wife, because she might be the murderer!

My silent film:

My silent film bloopers:

The next video is our TikTok inspired video. We could do this in groups or by ourselves. This one was just for fun. I did mine with Neko, and we decided to do the clap trend throughout the places we went in the Rockies. It’s also sort of a fit check from each day. I’ll include it below! From this video, I learned that there are so many places with absolutely stunning views in the Rockies, how to make a YouTube short, and that Neko always has really good outfits, but I already knew that!

My TikTok video:

The next video is the at home video. This was a video that we did before we went to Alberta. The question for that video was what inspires me? Well you’ll see if you watch it! My friends and family are really impactful in what inspires me! I learned that I love using slow motion, that my cat doesn’t love me and I love throwing my work out the window!

Here is my at home video:

What inspires me!

The final video that we did was our investigative video. For this video we had to make a thesis statement, we had to do interviews, and put it all together into one video, cohesively, and sort of make it like a story. This one was probably the toughest video for me, but it was also quite fun, walking up to strangers, and interviewing them it gave me insight on what people thought about my thesis. 

The questions I asked for my interview were, where are you from? What part of Canada do you consider the west? What do you think makes the west of Canada different from the rest of Canada? and how do you think the west has shaped your identity? My thesis was, Canada is a big country made up of different provinces. British Columbia and Alberta, also known as the west, are unique from the rest of Canada, due to their mountainous geography. The Canadian Pacific Railway was built despite the challenging terrain, reflecting the identity of those who still live here.

Here is my investigative video:

Do you know the song “Ain’t no mountain high enough.” By Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell? I do! And I also know that the mountains in Alberta were definitely high enough, or at least the ones we hiked up! Though sore muscles, broken buses and crashing into trees on a ropes course, Alberta was so fun!!

Thank you so much for reading my blog post!

– Ailie 💜

Hi again people!!!

So we’re doing our tPOLs, which are the same as our mPOLs, they are just for the transition into grade 9! So here’s mine:

My tPOL

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

To start, (teacher doing tPOL) these are my parents Paul and Jen Hetherington. 

First off, PLP was a whole new experience for me. I was a little apprehensive about learning with the iPads, because I wasn’t that techy. The only school tech experience I had before the iPads was google classroom on a chrome book. I didn’t know if I was going to love or hate the style of learning. But it turns out that I love it. Now I have more experience on the iPad, more experience public speaking, and more experience with learning in different ways.

My favourite PLP class this year had to be maker, because I love anything to do with art and photography. I also loved humanities, because I learned about topics I hadn’t before. I also love science because all of the activities are very fun, and intriguing. I learned how to make a natural disaster! I’ve been learning so many new things this year in all of my classes.

So we created our learning plans what seems like forever ago, but here’s mine:

I definitely feel like I have made some of my growths into, well at least I can now probably can do them better then I used to. Especially with technology. So I feel like I have improved with the help of my teachers and fellow class mates.

As my blog is currently titled, I learned that its ok to F.A.I.L. Because its a first attempt in learning.

The exhibitions are obviously a big part of PLP. Our most recent one, the spring exhibition was all about our business and why we went to Oregon, but I’ll talk about that later. Here is my work advertising for our assigned business, Kam Meng. We also made soooo many drafts! We interviewed our business and put all our info in our journal. You can see all of my work in my journal! 

Here it is: LAUNCH Portfolio

This was the finished product of our stall for Kam Meng!:

My favourite part, and probably the most educational par, by far of PLP was the oregon field study. I absolutely love hands-on learning, and Oregon was all about that. We went to Oregon to do a humanities project about different businesses in Oregon and interviewed them to make advertisements. As I said I was assigned Kam Meng, which was an American Chinese food restaurant. My group and I, consisting of me, Mika, Esther, Izzy, Aiden, Mateo, and Sebastian, interviewed our business on our two separate trips.

Oregon was an experience in its self, but some points I really enjoyed. In terms of fun things, I loved zip lining, were we flew through the air, were attached to people having Asthma attacks, and even bumped into a Sasquatch. Another fun thing was bullwinkles, witch was a surprise stop! We did know we were going to a theme park. There were so many fun things to do, we climbed a ropes course, played laser tag, and even go carted.

In terms of the educational side, because yes, we did learn, I love many places where you could see marine life. My favourite was Yaquina head, where we met many sea urchins, even though there spiny they still give good hugs. We also watched seals give birth witch was interesting. Probably the most educational place we went was Hatfield marine science center. We did three different experiments, we counted and measured shrimp, raced crabs, and built R.O.Vs.

The whole Oregon trip was just amazing! Here’s my Oregon journal so you can see my trip as a whole:

Going Coastal 2023

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

read.bookcreator.com

I’m so excited for grade 9! Bring on the ups and downs, the hard work and the fun days, the field study’s and the exhibitions. 

The driving question was: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level? I hope I am! I want to be! So, do you think I’m ready to go to grade 9?

Thanks so much for reading! tPOLs, like mPOLs are an important part of PLP!

-Ailie 💜