It is once again the time of year that I must do my mpol.

“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.”

If you are new here that stands for mid year year presentation of learning, in short I have to do a presentation to one of my teachers and my parents where I look back at what work I have done so far this semester. There is no driving question to be answered this blog so let’s get started.

SCIENCE

First subject I’ll review is science as I feel it has been my best class.

I have really liked science this year and it’s because our teacher miss kadi try’s her hardest to make us enjoy lessons and gives us fun tasks to do, some examples of this that I’m proud of are my bio accumulation gif

And my sexual reproduction puppet show.

Those are some things I’m proud of now for something I’m not proud of.

I don’t think my acting was very good in the mock news report my group made (this isn’t at all my group members fault I just didn’t learn my lines and kept looking at my script. If I could go back I would try to learn my lines and make it look more real. Here it is

HUMANITIES

Next class I’ll discuss is humanities. I feel this has been my worst class and it’s probably because I don’t really like English as a subject or really writing in general, I don’t think I had and outstanding work this year but I’m proud of my revolution on trial video. I didn’t have much of an acting job in this but I think I edited it all together quite well and I directed it as a good leader. The video shows a court case to decide if the French Revolution was effective or ineffective our side was ineffective here’s the video.

Now for the thing I’m not proud of this is a no-brainer for me, my book creator on the geography of the west. I didn’t enjoy this project probably because I didn’t go on the big trip to Alberta at the start of the year, people say this is what made the trip worth it and I think I agree because I didn’t understand most of the project. I was sick for one week and came back understanding nothing. The people who stayed home didn’t really get the help we needed and we just got put in the back of a science classroom. I don’t think I did well because I handed it in about a month late and didn’t do well in answering all the question. If you want to see it here it is.

MAKER

Next subject is maker. I mostly had fun in this class because we made lots of videos and films and all my favourite teachers were in this class. This semester it was almost all related to films which I love making. I’m proud of my “what inspires me video”, it’s shows who I am and you can basically get an understanding of what I’m like as a person from this video. I spent a lot of time on it and I think it turned out great. Here’s the video

I’m not really proud the goals section of the first maker project. I’m not much of a goal setting guy so I don’t really see the point. I would make a goal then forget about it. There’s nothing I can show to help you understand this part because we didn’t really make much but I doubt it would be interesting anyway. I just didn’t really understand this part and therefore didn’t enjoy it much.

Now all of the subjects are complete I would like to discuss my core competencies. For those of you who don’t know what these are in plp we have certain categories that you need to master to be the ultimate competency master. Just kidding these are things you need to be to be a successful person. They are communicating, collaborating, creative thinking, critical and reflective thinking, personal awareness and responsibility, positive personal and cultural identity and finally social awareness and responsibility. We have numbers for all of these to rank you understanding of them. I’ll go through them on by one.

COMMUNICATING

Personally I’m quite a quiet person when on my own, if I don’t know the people around me I won’t really speak up and spread my points and ideas unless I’m asked or need to take charge. If I’m with people I’m comfortable around I can speak up well but in unfamiliar setting in the shy kid. I don’t want to seem like “that guy” so I keep to myself and just go with what I’m told to do. I could definitely improve on this.

COLLABORATING 

This is kinda like communication. I’m good when I know the people but terrible with people I don’t know. This makes me a good listener though and I’ll try to help out as much as I can. I try to not be a nuisance and just keep quiet but I know I shouldn’t do that. In the future I will try to be a better group member and participate more.

CREATIVE THINKING

I’m a thinker. I have the wildest and craziest ideas and thought and questions but I don’t have the confidence to share them. I come up with things I don’t even know where I got from but it’s part of what makes me me. I do a lot in my head and think about so much and I think it’s because of my ADHD. I’m quite a good creative thinker and I value that property.

CRITICAL AND REFLECTIVE THINKING

I’m pretty good at reflecting and criticizing my work, I’m able to look at things and give helpful ways to improve it to others and myself. Reflecting on work is a bit harder for me as I don’t quite understand it, I can re-think about what I’ve done but I don’t think that changes much. It just feels like looking at my work again. It’s probably just to see what can make things better and if that’s so I think I’m pretty good at that.

PERSONAL AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY 

I’m not very aware of myself in the sense that I don’t really plan ahead or think about the consequences if something goes wrong, for example I rely on my mum to wake me up and get me to school, if this doesn’t happen I would wake up late and not be able to get to school as I don’t know my way there. That also shows I don’t take much responsibility for myself and rely on others to help me do things. I can definitely Improve on this as a person which would make me a lot more well-rounded and independent. I don’t think very far ahead and I hope I can get better at this in the future.

POSITIVE PERSONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

I quite like myself and although that can be a bad thing I don’t think that much of myself. I’m happy with who I am as a person and I’m proud of where I’m from. As one of the few English people I know in Canada I feel very unique and special. I’m aware of my background and where I come from but I’m still able to improve my knowledge around this subject.

SOCIAL AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY 

When it comes to other people relying on me it doesn’t happen often but I mostly manage to do what I’ve been asked. I’m socially aware and can understand what’s right and wrong or acceptable or unacceptable but not much further than that. I’m able to be around other people and interact with them respectfully without fail and I can assist others in most environments which I think makes me a socially acceptable and semi-responsible person.

Thanks you for reading my MPOL blog post (if you made it this far) and for doing so here is a cookie. 

                 🍪 

It’s only a cookie emoji but I hope it finds you well.

Bubye!👋

Hello and welcome to Jurassic park

I wish

Today I’ll be talking about my science project called handle with care. This project was about everything that goes into and ecosystem, like biotic and abiotic factors the earths different spheres food webs and so much more.

I hope you liked it.

It’s fabulous isn’t it. I drew all of those.

I know my acting isn’t the best but we got it done.

Ok so its the time of the year for another

pole!!!

However there are no M’s only T’s

welcome to my

TPOL!!!

(that was supposed to be all dramatic) anywho let’s get started

The big question is.

“Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”

To be honest I really don’t think I am ready to advance to grade 9 but I’m willing to embrace any challenge that comes my way, although homework could be a difficult one because I’m struggling with it right now. But I’m hopeful that with the support of LAC again and my teachers I will be able to achieve a better mind set and more independence.

Ok so in the idea of moving forward, I first want to reflect on what I think I have done Well this year.

After a year of using my iPad for all my learning I have learnt the ropes of showbie, Basecamp and a great deal of other apps. The apps I enjoy the most are sketches pro and super impose x

From my mpol I identified several projects that I feel I worked well on. I will review these again and then add in areas that I feel I have improved in since then.

I was proud of my Laser light show in scimatics

(you can read more about this here https://www.blog44.ca/cadeno/2022/01/30/lllllaaaaaaaassssseeeeerrrrrssss/..) 

I was proud of the fact that I fixed my groups project when it wasn’t working properly. I redid the calculations while my group looked at other projects and fixed it. I was proud that I kept preserving to get a good result and make it work. Here is a picture of the fixed laser show. 

In addition since February in Scimatics I am proud of the scratch game I made. Although it wasn’t a very fun game I am still proud of the skills I learned while developing it. These include, learning how to make a clicker game with coding and importing graphics that I had drawn into the game. 

Here is my scratch game and you can try it if you want.

I also feel I have written a good story for my comic book on viruses. It reflects the true story of when I had meningitis when I was 8. Having researched this topic I feel that I have gained a new understanding of the disease. Once I read up on it I started to think that I may have some of the long term side effects of this illness including difficulty concentrating, anxiety and sleep issues. 

We haven’t done maker since February but I really enjoyed this class. I was proud of this a picture I produced during the constructive creative communication project. It captured the mood I was given and showed good editing skills as well as colour, texture and use of light. I got a rainbow for it.

This was how it turned out.

I like the dark edges that are blurred in contrast with the bright colours and the comedy of the emoji. Also my teacher said I did an exemplary blog post on this project. You can read it here. 

https://www.blog44.ca/cadeno/2021/12/02/make-not-take/

I miss the maker photography work 

Humanities

In the first part of the year I really enjoyed studying the book “the Outsiders”. I think it was an intriguing story with great characters and many plots twists and turned. The element of this project that I am most proud of was the tableau performances that my group produced for the winter exhibition.

Since my mpol the humanities project I think I have done best in is new beginnings. Although I haven’t handed my work in on time I feel I have gained a better understanding of settlement in Canada and the impact it had on the indigenous population. I do however feel I did better in the first half of the year in humanities than in the second because I feel I have lost focus.

I will now talk about where I could have improved my learning this year

Areas of my learning I could have improved in schematics since the mpol is the ultimate design challenge. Although I enjoyed using Tinkercad to design my lunchbox and I think I did a good presentation ( you can watch it on my blog here https://www.blog44.ca/cadeno/2022/05/26/trangles-and-squares-and-cylinders-and-cubes-and-cuboids-and-prisms-and-tinkercad-and-oh-my-god-i-am-kinda-just-rambling-because-i-cant-really-think-of-a-good-name-so-here-we-are-and-i-should/) and understood all the math, I had already learnt it in England. I did not a make a good blog. I found that part uninteresting. I didn’t feel I learnt a great deal in this project as all the math involved I already knew from grades 5,6 and 7 in England. I didn’t really understand why we had to find a large surface area, it’s seemed pointless, therefore I didn’t engage in reflecting on this work.

In humanities I feel I have worked relatively well in class but have not handed my work in on time very well, usually it was late and somethings I did not complete it. I feel currently I have issues with concentration. I can’t seem to focus on what I’m supposed to be working on and I don’t really know why. 

At the end of the last mpol I stated -Going forward I think I need to get better at making my ideas heard, focusing my time more, doing my homework on time.

Having written this blog I feel I have not completed my homework on time as much as I should. The focusing my time has not really changed however, I do feel I am now more able to get my ideas across and heard within a group and class.

I am hoping that maybe in grade 9 I improve my learning capabilities 

Thanks for being here

Sighing off is caden bubye 

NOT!

So basically we studied the renaissance but I wasn’t there for most of it as I went on holiday to England to visit my Dad. Whoop Whoop. In case you didn’t know my mum and I live in Canada and my dad lives in England. So I thought I’d write a blog combining the renaissance and my trip! So you can see all my great holiday snaps!

This is a picture I took of Shakespeare which was graffitied on a wall near the New Globe theatre on the South Bank in London. Shakespeare was swag during the renaissance and wrote a ton of plays which Queen Elizabeth the 1st liked. He also invented the word ‘Swag’.

Did you know he built the Old Globe Theatre which was actually not in the same place as the New Globe – the New Globe is a replica of the one Shakespeare built in Shoreditch (which is like 10 minutes away in the car).

This is Tower Bridge, it was built after the battle of Hastings in 1066 – it was built before the renaissance. There are a few buildings in London that were built in the renaissance that are still standing one in Greenwich, one in Westminster and St Paul’s church in Covent Garden.

This is Stonehenge it was built waaaaaayyyyyy before the renaissance.

This is me and my best friend Raph in the arcade – arcades didn’t exist in the renaissance – they had fun by going to plays, betting on bear and dog fights and reading things printed with the newly invented printing press and painting ceilings in chapels. I think arcades are way less cruel and safer.

This is my Grandma – she assures me she was not around during the renaissance – I have my doubts!

This is me riding the pirate ship at Chessington World of Adventure – pirate ships did exist in the renaissance – the Spanish Armada came in ships like this to attack the coast of the UK but failed.

This is me at the theatre watching Les Miserables – its set in the French Revolution which happened not long after the renaissance in the 1700s in France. It was sad and poggers. Most people cried but I bled ( giant nose bleed 5 minutes before the end!)

This is me having tea with the Queen – She is Elizabeth II, her name sake Elizabeth I was queen during the renaissance. This is me with Raph’s Grandad – he wants to cut my hair – he was definitely alive during the renaissance!! (Joke I love Raph’s grandad). If you ever figure out how to get onto the internet then HI!!

This is me and my friend Raph – we are stupid – a bit like the fools who entertained the royal court in the renaissance but way cooler.

Anyway thats the highlights of my holiday….

So I did do a bit of work too –

I learned that the renaissance was full of change but also cruelty. Religious figures were very powerful but often corrupt. I learnt there were some cool inventions like parachutes and the printing press and that’s when Shakespeare did his thing in London and Stratford upon Avon. I also learnt about medical progress and wrote this paragraph and made the tryptic.

Renaissance Medicine

In this paragraph I will discus how research into medicine during the renaissance shaped modern medicine as we know it. During the renaissance, several people made a significant impact with their work on medical studies and anatomy research but few brought about change in their own lifetimes. Between 1400-1600AD medical research was untaken in a way that had not been seen before. Through the recording of dissections of cadavers, people like Leonardo DaVinci, Vesalius, William Harvey and Ambrose Pare made many discoveries that would have significant impacts beyond their lifetimes.  

Without the research undertaken by these, scholars and physicians much of modern medicine would not have been possible, they paved the way to a greater understanding of human anatomy and offered insightful ideas that were later developed by other doctors to build the phenomenal medical knowledge we see today.

In the early renaissance several scholars including Linacre, Erasmus, Leonicello and Sylvia’s began scholarly discussions about human anatomy which opened the door to the creation of the London college of Physicians in 1518. However, it wasn’t until the mid renaissance that significant long term works were produced. In 1543 Vesalius used the newly invented printing press to publish a work called a “Human Factory,” which detailed human anatomy on a new level and described surgical procedures undertaken on dead bodies. Ambrose Pare, a French field surgeon, used first hand experiences during the war to introduce the concept of forensic pathology and William Harvey at the later end of the period discovered general circulation and made significant contributions to the understanding of cardiovascular anatomy. Leonardo DaVinci also documented over 200 pages of anatomy.  

As a result of this research many medical advances were possible, surgical techniques were developed, doctors had a greater understanding of elements within the body, the door to further medical research had been opened. Paracelsus discovered chemical and mineral balance within the blood and in the late 1600s bacteria was looked at under a microscope for the first time, leading to vaccination. The revolutionary thinking and discoveries of the renaissance began the snowball of discoveries that are the basis for modern medicine. 

In February me and my besties (class) went on a learning advance to a place called Loon Lake near Maple Ridge in BC. We travelled by bus and spent 4 days learning both in and outside. The trip had its ups and downs but I leant a lot along the way. 

Here is an ebook I made about the trip. One of the hardest things to do in this book was to add pictures because I was having fun on the trip and forgot to take many! So I got some from my friends. 

The 4 day trip was tough for me as I find being away from home difficult but after a wobble on the first night I changed to a quiet room with my friend and managed to stay for the full 4 days which I’m proud of. 

On the trip we did nature walks, worked in a large classroom doing DI with everyone together – this was challenging. We also learnt new skills like archery when we played battle archery – working as a team was important for this activity but also the whole trip. I got to know some more people from Seycove and enjoyed the evening entertainment. Most of the food was also pretty good. 

What was different from school I hear you ask? Well, not much accept we got to have LOTS OF FUUUUNNNNN!!! And we had to stay up until 10pm, pass out, then wake up for 7am. 

I’m guessing you’re wandering What did I learn? NOFINK! Just kidding – I learnt about my class mates, the wondrous outdoors and the renaissance but most importantly I learned about myself. I miss my family while I’m away but I can still have fun.

What did you achieve random kid on the internet, I hear you say? My team won battle archery against the grade nines! I told my team some good strategies for keeping in cover and we shot with good accuracy. 

What would I do differently next time, was that your question? Next time I would have been clearer with the teachers how important being in a quiet room with Judah was to me with all my difficulties being away from home and I would take more pictures so writing my blog will not be so hard!!!!

Ok so there’s this thing called the Mpol at my school and dude I am soooooo nervous. But hopefully I do well. You might be thinking

”why are you tellingme this random child I found on the internet”

and that reason I don’t really know but i’m required to do this by my school soooooo here it is.

At the start of my year at high school I was pretty chill as I’d been to high school back in England ( in England you start school in grade 7) but when i got there it was very different as I am in PLP which is very different to normal school.

There was an upset in the system so I did not get any of the apps required to have at the beginning so this was a problem for the first lesson but only the first lesson.

Now I had these very important apps.

Basecamp. 

This is the home base of all info , what we are learning, why we are learning things, different projects we are doing, and a lot more.

Showbie.

Showbie is where you hand in all of your work and assignments are posted.

So now we know about the start off the year let’s move a bit further.

The first exhibition was a presentation evening where the parents visited school, walked around listening to iPad presentations from their own child and others and then offered feedback on what they did well and what they could improve on. This went quite well even though everyone was expecting to flop. I made a post about it so go check it out at My maker experience also I have a video of the presentation I showed so here it is (warning it’s cringe) it was my first one!

Now onto our first humanities. We did a whole project on advertising which was surprisingly fun.        What we had to do was make an add in our groups for our assigned business. My group got Honey doughnuts. If you don’t know what Honeys is it’s a doughnut shop in Deep Cove in North Vancouver. Here’s a link to there website. https://honeydoughnuts.com/  

Now I feel like I didn’t do great in this project because I didn’t really feel able to express my ideas as it felt like one person in my group was taking over and squashing any ideas that they didn’t have or like but I think our poster turned out pretty good. Here it is …

From this project I took away the need to express myself more and ensure that the whole group works together to complete things – its still a work in progress for some people I’m trying more to have my ideas heard. I had a similar issue with my Scimatics board game where I listened to partner and what they wanted as they were my friend even though it wasn’t what I wanted and so our game ended up being very restricted as they wanted to basically do a version of snakes and ladders and not invent our own game. I would make my own choice next time.

Ok so I’m not going to go on about all the projects we have done this last 6 months I’m now going to share some more specific elements that were highs and lows of my learning.

SCIMATICS 

So what I am most proud of is my Laser light show. (you can read more about this here https://www.blog44.ca/cadeno/2022/01/30/lllllaaaaaaaassssseeeeerrrrrssss/..) I’m most proud of the fact that I fixed my groups project when it wasn’t working properly. Our group worked well on the whole but there were a few issues with the calculations that were made and the laser did not line up properly to make a triangle. I redid the calculations while my group looked at other projects and fixed it. I was proud that I kept preserving to get a good result and make it work. Here is a picture of the fixed laser show.

The element I’m least proud of in Scimatics, as I mentioned before, is my board game. I didn’t express my ideas or thoughts so I ended up making a game that I wasn’t engaged or interested in, that was boring and had no way of being creative. We should not have based our game on an exiting game and invented a new one. I had a lot of ideas for a game that could not be used and wish we had done it differently.

Humanities 

I really enjoyed studying the book “the Outsiders”. I think kit was an intriguing story with great characters and many plots twists and turned. The element of this project that I am most proud of was the tableau performances that my group produced for the winter exhibition. I think my group worked really well and we planned and delivered clearly our scene on the evening and I did well playing Marcia.

The element I think I could improve most for this project and (others) is my blog post – I need to not just say what we did but also explain better what I learnt.

Also for humanities I enjoyed our poetry project and think I produced an engaging ebook with some clever poems. Also I think I did very well well on the test. Here is my ebook

Maker 

The thing I’m most proud of is a picture I produced during the constructive creative communication project. It captured the mood I was given and showed good editing skills as well as colour, texture and use of light. I got a rainbow for it. Here it is.

https://www.blog44.ca/cadeno/2021/12/02/make-not-take/

I think what I could have improved the most was the first keynote presentation I did. I didnt really put much effort into making it fancy or imaginative although I think I presented reasonably well.

Going forward I think I need to get better at making my ideas heard, focusing my time more, doing my homework on time.

So this project I got to use frikin lasers.

And I know what you might be thinking random person on the interweb

“wElL tHaT dOeSn’T sEeM sAfE fOr A kId To Be DoInG. yOu CoUlD bLiNd SoMeOnE.”Most of us probably know that so it will not stop us.

Anyways lets jump on right in to the rest of the blog post.

First of all we needed to make a project start mind map to plan out what questions we had and our thoughts on what they (lasers) are. We wrote examples of what we knew and how they are used. This is how mine looked.

Then we edited it at the end of the project which is now when I’m writing this post but I’ll show that to you later.

Next we did a TOOOOOON of workbooks and textbooks but I’m not gonna bore you with all that, so I’ll put some of them here but you don’t have to read them.

From this we learned about different uses for lasers but more importantly we learned about the law of reflection. If you want a super in depth understanding of it then look it up but here is a brief explanation. With pictures of course.

So the law of reflection basically is all light travels in straight lines. The light that travels towards a surface is the incident ray. When the incident ray hits the surface the normal ray is at 90 degrees. What ever angle the incident ray hits the surface in relation to the normal it’s reflective ray bounces off at exactly the same angle in relation to the normal. That is called the reflected ray. See diagram below.

Next we did the law of reflection lab where we tested our understanding of the law and proved it with an experiment. During the experiment we had a laser, paper, pencil and mirror. We placed the mirror on the paper and drew the normal line. Then we shone the laser onto the mirror and recorded the incident ray and the reflected ray. We then measured their angles in relation to the normal line to see if they matched – guess what? They did!

Then we did a TOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNN of math workbooks which taught us Pythagorean theorem. Which basically is that the sum of the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other 2 sides. A squared + B squared = C squared see diagram below. This also meant we knew about how to calculate missing lengths and  angles in triangles.

Next we used a laser simulator, to make a right angled triangle that was a Pythagorean triple and proved the law of reflection and Pythagorean theorem.

We were then able to use all this understanding to create group laser displays. We designed and made a board using mirrors that when they were set at the correct angles the laser light bounced off to create a triangle. We chose a space theme for our background here is our making process.

Finally to review the curricular competencies.

Competency 1 – I think I worked well in class and with my group and completed all tasks.

Competency 2 – I think both my simulator and law of reflection labs, as well as our final project show that I am able to understand all the steps in an experiment and follow them in a scientific way. I can draw conclusions and make precise calculations and measurements and when at first my groups laser did not work I was able to recalibrate the angles and adjust the mirrors accordingly.

Competency 3 – I think i contributed to my group well and even though there were some errors at first we were able to correct them and produce a great laser display.

Ok so lastly back to that mind map I showed you at the start with some added info! Enjoy