Category: Humanities

Tpol time…🫣

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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.

Tpol

Welcome to my TPol blog post! I will be working on reflecting on my PLP journey so far. Enjoy!

Teamwork/Everyone Doing Their Best Work

Other people:

At the beginning of the year, I had already met most of the people in the grade 8 PLP program. I think at least 50% of the kids were from Cove Cliff (my elementary school) and the rest of them I had met or seen at least once. But even if they were class mates or acquaintances, I hadn’t really worked with them. Team work and group work is very hard and I didn’t have a good idea yet of what it really is. The difference was, now I was forced to work closely with these people every day, collaborating on things as simple as creating a team name or as complicated as the spring exhibition that we just finished. Near the beginning of the year, group projects were so hard for me. Now I recognize that this was because I didn’t know the people in my group as well as I do now. It helps an amazing amount when you know people better. The Oregon field study trip took this idea even further. Now we all understand one another better and this will definitely show in upcoming projects. Knowing how to work with someone, what to expect from them, how to be able to get more from them so they can do their best work…  From coming up with rules or ideas you know will help them focus, to making sure that you give them opportunities to understand the project and put their own stamp on the project. Maybe more than I was originally comfortable with. 

Me:

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to other people. I have learned how to give myself what I need to do my best work on projects. I know I have to focus, and what I can do for myself so that I am able to do work that i’m proud of. For example, I cannot stress enough how long it took for me to be able to even start writing this paragraph, just because the dogs were barking or the music I was listening to wasn’t the vibe I was going for. I know that I need to create the right learning environment. I need to make an outline or a rough draft so I know where I’m going before I begin. I need to take breaks, and eat food or I wont be able to pay attention. 

Growth Opportunities

Planning But Being Flexible 

I’ve learned to plan but also be flexible. I also know now that that often the end product is not so similar to what I imagined in my head. When I begin to do something, though it may take me a while to start, once an idea gets screwed into my brain, it keeps growing and growing until it is either unrealistic, or too perfect. One example is the spring exhibition. Ella and I had an original idea of creating a 1:2 scale of an entire cheese factory. We planned on dressing up like factory workers that we saw when we visited the Tillamook Creamery. I had no idea that this original concept would grow into our tiny clay cheese display and our rubber glove cow udder. I think I have more work to do on my patience. More time spent on outlines and planning, while knowing I have to be flexible and that the project may change over time.

Going Deeper:

Another thing that is a major struggle for me is taking feedback. I have a hard time revising things I have already worked hard on, I think a part of my brain is lazy and wants to stop working when something is “good enough”.  I still have a hard time taking the extra steps, adding depth to my writing if I am not interested or in the right mindset to continue on working. I usually begin things like blog posts by just retelling, telling people things they already know, and summarizing things the way they look in my head. I need to remember to constantly add more detail and not just review what happened. I need to write not about what happened and more about my unique point of view and how it effects me as a person. Once example of this was my Science Keynote. ‘Swab the School’ was a project we worked on where we swabbed different places around the school and observed the bacteria growing in the pitting dish we transferred the germs into. If I am being perfectly honest, this project didn’t really interest me in the beginning. I didn’t really want to know what is happening on the handles of doors, or the faces of mirrors. I needed to push myself to want to understand the project, and when I did I was able to excel at it, and complete the keynote well. That is a perfect example of when pushing myself the extra step really did make the difference.

Engagement and FAIL:

One other thing that I have been working on is engagement. From the outside, It may seem like I am a very engaged and energized person, because I am, but sometimes, my laziness gets in the way, and I really just want to give up. This has happened many times during my PLP journey, from just thinking about this Tpol, to presenting it now. One of my favourite examples of this happening was my Destination Imagination project. We went to the first challenge with a pile of trash- I am not exaggerating. I can barely think about where we started without cringing. After the first competition, we all wanted to be done and we wanted to give up so that we wouldn’t have to do another Destination Imagination competition. We had already done it, and failed miserably, so why would we ever do it again? I’m not sure if you remember, but our transition was crazy. I am so incredibly proud just thinking about it. We built a whole new working giant pinball machine like we had originally imagined the first time around. This is solid proof of why we need to remember to take second chances and why it is so important to stay engaged all throughout both in school and in life in general. I need to keep in mind that failing is ok and can lead to something better!

Agency

Ownership and Responsibility:

Agency is a challenge for me but it is also one of my favourite parts of PLP. I love having responsibility, it is so rewarding to take control of something and succeed, it is very fulfilling to complete something you did, that you are proud of. One part of this that I know I have really grown in is the ‘Asking for help’ portion. I know that in the seventh grade, and even just earlier this year, I would sooner run for the hills than ask someone that I didn’t know too well for help. Now that I know my teachers and peers better, I feel so much more comfortable and confident asking for help.

Asking for Help/ Helping Others:

One example of this was when I missed a few days of school visiting my cousins in California, and I needed to catch up on what I missed. I ended up asking multiple classmates about what I missed, and was able to reach the same point as my peers quickly.  I also have found that I really enjoy being helpful to others. When we’re working on a project that I have a strong grasp on, I’m always one of the first to volunteer to help others, even if I’m not finished myself. It feels Also, when our PLP 8 class went to Oregon on a field study, and Tyler and a few of my other classmates didn’t come with us, I called Tyler often, to update her on our day and keep her in the loop.

Driving Question

How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?

I believe that all of the things that I have mentioned throughout this post are evidence that showcase how PLP has prepared me for next year. I am aware there will be many differences between grade 8 and 9, but I am prepared to use the skills I have learned to help me through the new year. Problem solving, Teamwork, Agency, and more are skill I have began to learn this year, and that I will continue to polish throughout my years, not only n high school, but in life.

Outro

I am definitely ready for grade 9. I feel like I’m in a great place after I have overcome so many challenges, but I still have a lot of work to do. I have been working in so many things this year, from taking feedback, to keeping up a steady attitude, and even how to deal with failure. I am excited to continue my PLP journey, as well as my High School journey during the next 4 years. Thank you for listening/reading my presentation of learning!

Spring Exhibition!

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Intro

On Thursday June 13th, 2024, I completed my very first spring exhibition. I worked in a group with Julia, Madeline, Ella, Griffin, and Marcus, and our focus was “Discovery and Learning”. We worked together to create an immersive experience, meant to take you through some our favourite stops of our Oregon field study. We separated into three groups within our group, each focusing on a different location. We chose to talk about Fort Stevens, the Yaquina Head Tidepools, and the Tillamook Creamery.

Oregon

Our driving question for the PLP 8 segment of the exhibition was “how does language fuel adventure?” and we modelled our work around advertisements for Oregon. We adventured all over the Oregon Coast for our May field study and we kept track of our travels and experiences within the book below. Feel free to explore my Oregon journey by reading through my field study book!

Tilamook Creamery

Ella and I worked together to create a presentation about the Tillamook Creamery and how the cheese is made. Near the end of our Oregon trip, we visited the Tilamook Cheese Factory and Creamery and it was a highlight for me. To share what we learned, Ella and I made three dimensional models out of clay describing the process of making cheese.  We showed all the stages which are: milk, curds, salting, forming, packaging and then shipping.  My favourite piece that we made was a miniature package of Tillamook cheese made with plastic wrap and a tiny Tillamook cheese label. We also wanted give people the experience of what it would be like to milk a cow. We made a fake cow udder using a black rubber glove with multiple small holes poked in all the fingers and it hung from a wooden stand. This activity attracted people to our table because it was fun. We took people through our station, first showing them our cheese diagram, and then our udder. We would offer them a cupcake or a piece of cheese on their way out. Ella and I dressed up in hairnets, and aprons, similar to the clothes we saw the workers wear at the cheese factory. We also dressed up a wooden model in a similar outfit and sat her on top of our makeshift cow. I believe this project was a success, and I was so happy with the way our hard work turned out. The PLP teachers also called us out during cleanup, saying that our Tillamook Cheese project was one of the exhibition projects to see!

Tide Pools

Madeline and Julia worked together to create the second part of our project. They created an interactive tide pool, similar to the ones we saw when we went to Yaquina Bay. Madeline and Julia crafted a presentation around the animals inside of the tide pool, and told people about what it was like to go to the Bay, and what they learned. They made starfish and sea anenomies and painted them to look very realistic. They dressed up in waders and sunglasses, acting as the tourists and tour guides we met when we went to Yaquina Bay. They dressed their little wooden model the same way, and positioned him holding a little tiny starfish. This was such a fun activity, both in the real Yaquina Bay, but also the makeshift version of it that we made for this exhibition.

Fort Stevens

Griffin and Marcus worked together to create a model of one of the rifles we learned about when we visited Fort Stevens. They recreated a 200 pound parrot rifle, which looks like a cannon, but is labeled as a rifle because of the notches inside of the barrel. Fort Stevens had 8 of these rifles which they placed strategically, so that it could aim 180 degrees. They made a small version of the rifle that could also spin around 180 degrees, and also dressed a model of a person that they named Vincent. Poor Vincent lost a few limbs over the course of the project, but was still going strong by the end.

Ads

We also created ads that are meant to promote different locations Oregon. We made them using the programs Canva and Sketches Pro, and chose the font BLOC from Canva. We used natural green colours, and did our best to make them all feel cohesive and aesthetic. We chose those colours because we wanted to create a feeling of tranquility and nature to those observing our ads and presentation. We worked on them when we got back from the field study, and we showed the ads to people after they learned about cheese making. We used the same font and colour scheme in our presentations and outfits to connect all of our work.

Teamwork/Interactive

If I had to choose the most important elements in our exhibition project, both teamwork and interaction with our audience helped our success. During this exhibition, I learned about how the more interactive and interesting your project is, the more people will enjoy coming to see it. Believe it or not, adding the cow udder was a pretty last minute decision. This added element took our exhibit from good to great, and it made me so much happier and confident with the end result. Because it was silly and fun, it broke the ice with the audience and made our exhibition more successful because the audience could participate in our project. Teamwork was obviously a huge part of this project, but I also can recognize that having teamwork skills is not just being able to work with people, but being able to recognize how to help people work better with you. In my group, there were self-starters who would try their hardest no matter what, but also people who would only apply themselves if they were interested in the topic. I pitched the idea to add a topic that I knew they would enjoy, so they would become more engaged in the work. I really believe that this was a big reason that we were able to all work so well together and create a great end result.

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Outro

I learned a lot in this exhibition, but my favourite learning piece was how much interacting with our exhibit changes a project for those looking at it. Interaction can take a boring lecture and turn it into something engaging and exciting. Involving the audience always makes things more interesting, but it also transports them into a different mindset and helps them learn and connect better with the project. Asking people to milk a fake cow udder is awkward, and funny and strange. Things like this push people out of their comfort zone and start conversations. These small interactions and details open people up to learning, and forces them to pay more attention to what we are talking about. It helps them actually want to understand. This was the trick we used to attract more people to our exhibition, and what I will continue to use ideas like this throughout my school journey.

Colonization Consequences, A Deep Dive

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Intro

Do you know all the facts about the Colonization ‘on our home on native land’? I doubt it. We researched the impact of colonization on Indigenous communities and the lasting consequences it has had on their cultures and societies. We explored the loss of land, language, and traditions.

Re-cap

Within this project, we were tasked with making an 11-15 slide keynote that answered our question ‘What were the consequences of colonization’ in a group of three to four. We presented it twice to the grade 11 BCFP class, and they filled out a feedback form after telling us how we did. They then designed a project for us, a mini keynote that had to answer the driving question in 2 slides and 6 words in total.

Driving Question

What were the Consequences of Colonization?

Favourites

Some of my favourite moments of this project was when we were presenting to the 11’s. We have a few slides in our keynote about the exploitation of the indigenous people both in the past, and the present, many of which, Carmyn was supposed to say. In both our first and second presentation, Carmyn would say ‘exfoliation’ instead of ‘exploitation’! It was both the most hilarious and mortifying part of the projects.

Keynotes

Group

I was put into a group with Carmyn, and Gemma to research and put together the slideshow. We separated and researched diffrent parts of consequences of colonization. I took ‘Pre-Colonial Health’, Gemma took ‘What diseases did the Europeans bring’ and Carmyn tackled ‘How did the disease affect the Indigenous Peoples’. We also researched the exploitation of the Indigenous peoples, and some of the history of colonization.

We presented our finished Keynote to the grade 11 BCFP class a few days ago. During our first presentation, we had a bit of trouble getting organized, and had a hard time with our cue cards. But I can see so much progress from our first to second presentation, which is shown in the cards the 11’s filled out after watching our presentation. The first group gave us feedback telling us that we could have been more prepared, with ‘less looking down at your notes’, but the second group had no negative feedback to give. ‘I thought it was good, no real criticism.’ It felt really good to get the feedback from the 11’s, and I hope we can do more projects with the other grades. It added a lot to the project, compared to if we were just presenting to our class. It felt like we should put in a bit more effort, and that we should care a little bit more what they thought because they had so much more experience in this thing than we had.

Oy…

Throughout this project my team and I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to distribute work in a fair way while still giving people realistic amounts of work to do. Some people are just able to get more work done in a shorter amount of time, and some people can’t. This does not have to have anything to do with how hard you are working, I have come to realize that some people’s brain just work differently. I don’t think we found the ‘sweet spot’ of work distribution during this project, but I do think it is possible to make a group work while all of the members within the group contribute equally no matter who the group members are.

Mini

After presenting our Keynote, the 11’s designed our next assignment. We were asked to make a 2 slides keynote with only 3 words per pages that answered our Driving Question. I Decided to focus on three main topics, Sickness and spread of Disease, Loss of Culture, and Death. I presented it to our class, and I am very happy with how it came out. The feedback I got from Ms Mc. was to ‘really YELL next time, project out to the audience, rather than to present to one side of the room. Began to speak very quickly…’ I agree with her feedback, and I will remember to speak up and slow down next time I am presenting. It always is nice to receive feedback, both good or bad, especially from a teacher. We don’t usually get such raw feedback during the year if we don’t specifically ask, so when a list of notes and critiques showed up on my showbie, I was more than excited to see what they had to say.

RPReplay_Final1715205078

So, what happened?

Colonization led to the mass genocide of the Indigenous People in all parts of the globe. In Canada, 80-95% of Indigenous People died from things connected to colonization. All of their deaths are definitely a consequence of colonization, the consequence to me. There is no way to imagine what it would be like if no lives were lost. Colonization has affected all of us. Without it in our history, we wouldn’t be here, on this land, learning about this, in this classroom. Who knows what our world would be like if colonizers hadn’t resorted to destruction before thinking about how it may impact our lives forever.  

Sickness and spread of disease

Some of these diseases were, smallpox, influenza, measles, whooping cough, deadly to many, exposed Indigenous People to things they weren’t used to.

Loss of culture

Culture, ancestry, history, and language, wer a huge part of peoples identity and life, but the residential schools took it away. They forced indigenous people to use only a western worldview, and we are still trying to remember and reclaim the lost culture.

Death

The mass amounts of death by sickness and murder that continues to impact us now. Up to 95% of Indigenous People in Canada were lost to Colonization, only 5% of the indigenous people in canada that used to thrive made it through the period of colonization that lasted from the 15th to mid 20th century.

Craft

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/4db0ccea-7be6-addf-cf59-5de2b7aea6e0/57490729-9226-464B-B7A5-AA1C5CAE16E3?s=KZ7L3i3wSVKKBVMfUcaQeYbK1C5XQTxgyfVcbHMX7FAX

Destination Imagination- Again!

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INTRO

The first time we competed in the Destination Imagination tournaments, we did not do great. We have made so much progress this year since we began working on Destination Imagination, and I know we will continue to do so.

CHALLENGE

This year we were challenged to ‘Design and build a pinball system through which a pinball moves and interacts with 3 machine modules. During the Presentation, we needed to move the pinball through the pinball system for as long as possible.’ We also had to ‘Create and present an action/adventure story about a hero who goes on an extraordinary mission. We  also had to create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.’ We decided to go with an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme, but changed the plot to a version where Alice was the antagonist, and the Madd Hatter was the protagonist, trying to free Wonderland from Alice’s evil grasp.

BEFORE

We went into our first Destination Imagination tournament with pretty much just a pile of recycling. We had a ramp with a (not working) slingshot, a table with a (not working) spiral ramp to roll down into our sound element, a shell chime. Theoretically, the ball would roll out of the chimes onto our (not working) flippers which would (not) roll it back up the ramp to do it again. Obviously, this didn’t work. Our pinball machine was also very ugly, we attempted to spray paint it with some ‘Alice in Wonderland’ themed colours, but without a base coat, it was just more ugly than before.

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CHANGES

Over the course of the three days we were all around during spring break, me and my team completely re-designed our pinball machine. My group and I spent many hours in Ella’s garage building a new and improved pinball machine. We built a strong wooden table with many  parts. It has flippers, ramps, bumpers, and even a slingshot launcher. We spray painted it white and decorated it in the theme of Alice in Wonderland.

RPReplay_Final1712964978

FAIL

One thing that I think is important to mention is how the F.A.I.L. acronym affected my mindset during my whole D.I. experience. Fail stands for ‘first attempt in learning’. Our original version of our pinball machine was definitely a fail- or so I thought! When I began to think about Destination Imagination as a F.A.I.L., I was able to take the next step in making our pinball machine better than ever.

AWARDS

Using the F.A.I.L. mindset, we were able to nab the third place technical challenge trophy, and the first place instant challenge trophy. It felt great to win something, especially after we compared how we did this time to how we did in the last tournament. In the last tournament, we also got third in our technical challenge, but against a lot less people, and we got a high score in the technical challenge as well.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, our Destination Imagination journey has been rocky to say the least, but we have improved. I am thrilled about how much progress we have made, and I know my next journey in the DI program will be even better.

What Time Is It? MPol Time!

cecem

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.

Welcome to my MPol blog post! I will be working on retelling my PLP journey so far. Enjoy!

 

Favourite Projects!🤩

Some of the projects that we worked on this year interested me more than others, like the poem Ebook, the Scratch science game, and the Genghis Khan skit. I can see that I work better on a project when I enjoy it! I feel that I created high quality work on these three projects because they were fun to spend time on and I was excited to work hard.

Poems, Genghis, and Video games📜🕹️🥷

⬜️For our poem e-book, we answered the question, ‘How Might I Write Poems I Enjoy And Show Who I Am’. I found that I enjoyed writing these poems so much more when I chose a topic related to something happening in my life or something that is important to me. I ended up writing 10 poems including 7 different types of poems, and three haikus, about all kinds of things including cows, pigeons, barbies, and miso soup. I loved using Sketches Pro to draw the photos for the ebook, and I enjoyed writing the short and sweet Haikus. I also appreciated the freedom of writing the free verse poems.   Since I enjoyed the process and had fun with it,  I created high quality work that I was proud of.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ⬜️In science, we were asked to code a game on scratch that creatively demonstrated our knowledge of atoms. I created a game show and a host character named A-tom. He is my favourite part of this game with his silly (and sometimes offensive) replies to your answers to the trivia questions. I am very familiar with Scratch because I used it a lot when I was younger and I also used it to animate my PLP entrance video last year. I was able to use my scratch skills to help my class mates with building their games and I really enjoyed being a helper and a leader.                                                                                                                                                                                                             ⬜️For Humanities,  Tyler, Madeline and I wrote a musical skit about Chinggis Khan, and his role as a leader. It was so much fun to write and film our little skit, and I think our final project was both hilarious and educational. We worked well together as a group and felt great about our work.

https://www.blog44.ca/cecem/2023/11/30/the-story-of-how-i-got-my-face-stuck-in-a-paintinga-work-in-progress/

https://bpb-ca-c1.wpmucdn.com/blog44.ca/dist/f/986/files/2023/11/RPReplay_Final1700254581.mov

My Life In Poems

Welcome to the A-Tom Trivia Show!

Growth🌱

A few of my projects or assignments didn’t meet my standards and weren’t my best work. I can see from my early projects that I have grown a lot since the start of the year, especially in my ability to do group work and collaborate well with my peers. I felt this was a challenge during our winter exhibition and during our It’s (not) the End of the World Project. I could also work on going deeper into my learning with all my writing including blog posts and novel studies.

Group Work👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

During the Winter Exhibition, I struggled with the teamwork aspects, especially when it came to the distribution of work. I was still getting used to collaborating with a team, and relying on other people to do important work made me nervous. In the end it all worked out, and I think my teamwork skills and my leadership skills grew from working on this project.                                                                                                                                                          The ‘It’s The End of The World as we Know It’ song wasn’t my favourite project for many reasons. The group work was problematic, and the singing was painful, but it was a great way to get to know my classmates. This was because everyone wrote lyrics about their worldview and used specifics that represented themselves as both a student and a person. We all worked together as a group better once we got to know and understand each other better.

I found the first few PLP projects very big and difficult. Now that I’m getting better at the technology and have a few assignments under my belt, it’s getting easier. The projects are still challenging but they don’t feel as impossible anymore.

e-iceberg-and-what-time-is-it/

 

 

Going Deeper and Accepting Feedback 🕳️

It was- and still is – hard for me to do the deep thinking that takes my work from good to amazing. I know I can do it.  It is always easy for me to answer the question in a basic way but it can be harder for me to get into the right mindset to go the extra step for unique, deep thinking. My work improves so much every time I do go that extra step, and I try to make an effort to take it, but it is a challenge.

I love writing, and for my blog posts, or my poems, I wrote about things that have happened to me or around me. I need to push myself to go deeper and be more specific about how it makes me feel, or what I learned, or even how I could do better! I am not sure if I do this consistently with my blog posts, but with my poems, I do think that I took this extra step. I believe that you can see this in my poems because they all turned out so well.

For the rest of the year, I will strive to accept feedback more easily and always revise my work. If I do this, my work will be consistently better, and I will have began a new habit that will benefit me in the long run.

 

Learning Plan🖇️

As I look back at my Learning plan, I can see that I have accomplished many of the growths and skills I wrote about. I have definitely improved on my organization, helping my peers, and learning to use my technology. I will continue to grow in these areas throughout the year, getting better at them and doing them more. I am so happy to see how much I have progressed within these goals, and I know I will continue to do so forever.                                                                                                                                                                        I also mentioned that I needed help with things like organization, encouragement, respect, catching up on work, and I have gotten all of them. I also mentioned I was strong at taking feedback, taking responsibility, participation, ethics, empathy, time management, and teamwork. All of these strengths have been tested this whole year in things like the Exhibition, DI, and more, and my strengths have grown and flourished because of this.

F.A.I.L.🚨*

*irst ttempt n earning

This year, even though I have done a lot of things I am proud of, there are many things I could have done a lot better. On March 2nd, 2024, we had our very first Destination Imagination tournament, and not everything went according to plan. Our pinball machine absolutely failed, our script was way too short and mostly improv, and our pinball machine was basically four pieces of cardboard balancing on some wood. Now? It’s a completely different thing. Honestly it feels like we could write a ‘rags to riches’ story about our pinball machine. My group and I spent many hours in Ella’s garage building a new and improved pinball machine. We created a strong wooden table with many  parts. It has flippers, ramps, bumpers, and even a slingshot launcher. We spray painted it white and decorated it in the theme of Alice in Wonderland.  This machine started as an actual fail and became a perfect example of an F.A.I.L.  I am supremely proud of the amount our group improved from the first to second DI tournament.

The F.A.I.L. acronym changed my mindset from a fixed to a growth mindset and helped me look at our first  DI as a way to learn. I will do my best to continue to use this idea throughout the rest of this school year.

https://www.blog44.ca/cecem/2024/03/15/destination-imagination-what/

 

Overall, my PLP journey has been interesting and challenging. I have already grown so much, and I am excited to see where I will get by the end of the year.

My Life In Poems

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In this project, we were told to write a collection of poems that represent our worldview. We learned all about different poetry terms, and types,  and answered the question, ‘How Might I Write Poems I Enjoy And Show Who I Am’. I found That I could enjoy writing all of these poems so much more if I wrote them about something that was ensuing or important to me. We ended up writing 10 poems, 7 different kinds of poems, and three haikus, all about things like Cows, Pigeons, Barbies, and Miso Soup.

My favourite poem to write was also the hardest one for me to write, the About Me Poem. We had a less specific criteria, and we had more freedom to write it however we wanted, and it was also supposed to be much longer than any of the other poems ever had to be.

We were also told to add in some sort of media along with our poems, and I really enjoyed drawing things in the app Sketches Pro as my choice of media. I am most proud of either the line drawing of myself I made for the About Me Poem, or the pigeon drawings for my Animal Kingdom Poem. Overall, I really enjoyed this project, even if poems have never been my favourite.

The Iceberg- and What Time is it?

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A few months ago, myself and the rest of the PLP community here at Seycove began preparing for the winter exhibition. In my grade 8 class, we were tasked with building our part of the exhibition around three different periods of time: the renaissance, medieval times and our current time period. 

Iceberg Metaphor

While the end result of this project was of course our first exhibition, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without all building blocks that led up to it. This reminds me of the iceberg metaphor that PLP students are always learning about. This metaphor talks about how most people will only ever see and appreciate the little bit of the iceberg that stays above the water, in this case the exhibition, but so much more of the iceberg lives underwater, and most people never see that part. In our case some of the work that happened underwater was the power play post. 

Power Play

In many ways, this project is just a deeper dive into the power play project. For example, in the power play project, we made a medieval portrait of ourselves, including aspects of worldview from medieval and modern times. We then made another portrait, this time with Renaissance and modern worldview. I also posted a version of the paragraph I made to explain the Renaissance art. Finally, we made another piece of art, this time including 4-5 of our group members, and props we created for the live action version.

Time

This project made me think so much about the concept of time. I enjoyed incorporating different worldviews of time into all the portraits but also I thought about how time affects us now. It’s so crazy to think about how humans invented time and how it’s not really real but also how much it controls our lives. 

Time was a huge part of the day of the exhibition. It affected us when were setting up, and when we were performing in the exhibition itself, it affected us when we were cleaning up, and when we were waiting between rounds. It made us more rushed, or tired, annoyed, excited or nervous or angry. Can you imagine what our lives would look like if time was not something we could rely on? And worry about?

Time was represented in every part of this project. At the very beginning, when we worked on the power play project, I represented time in my Medieval portrait with an analog clock and a clock tower. I chose both of these pieces to represent how the way we perceived time has evolved and changed. Next, in my Renaissance portrait, I used a clock from the Renaissance times to represent time. Back then, people had just began to invent and use the clock. 

A Sundial

Clocks have been evolving for thousands of years, and will probably continue to evolve forever. I cannot even imagine what clocks and time will look like in a thousand years. Maybe we’ll have a clock built into our bodies? Maybe we’ll go back to telling time depending on where the sun is? Maybe we will be time traveling!

The sun dial was invented in the 100’s, and was most likely the first time any kind of clock was invented. In the 520’s, the candle clock was invented, and it was followed by the hour glass in the 1330’s. The weight clock in the 1280’s was the first mechanical clock, and it was invented in Milan Italy. From there, more precise clocks were invented, making time more accessible and reliable everyone.

Everything around us is always changing, from life in high school, to how clocks have changed overtime. We will never know exactly what to expect from the future, but whatever it is, I’m excited.q

 

The Story of How I got My Face Stuck in a Painting…

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Have you ever seen yourself as a Medieval old lady and then surrounded her with symbols of world view? Well I just did. In this project we read ‘The Book of the Lion’, learned about Chinggis Khan, the Haudenosaunee people and their great law of peace, put together an artwork Choice Chart, and then finally stuck my face on the a painting.

THE BOOK OF THE LION

The first thing we did for this project was read ‘The Book of The Lion’, and fill out role sheets about different parts of the book. I am proud of my hard work on the role sheets, I put a lot of thought into all of them, and made sure everything I did was intentional and made sense to me.

Something I’m not proud of is that it’s still a real challenge for me to answer these PLP questions. It takes me a lot of time to get into the right mood where I can understand the assignment and figure out my thoughts. Hopefully it will continue to get easier with each assignment we do.

To fill out the role sheets, we would read around fifteen chapters at a time, and then answer questions and draw images relating to the piece of writing. My favourite image I created was the collage I made that represented the choice Edmund needed to make at the end of the book. It was also the image I had the hardest time with, because of how many things went into the making of the piece. I drew an image of a boat from the crusades, and in the background, I added three images. One is a photo of medieval Europe, one is a photo of medieval Jerusalem, and one is a photo of question marks, to show the decision Edmund needed to make between the two places.

To be honest, I did not really like the book and it’s not something I would to choose to read right now or recommend to a friend. I know that I am not the only person who thinks this, the story wasn’t captivating for me and I didn’t find the characters appealing or relatable. That being said, I understand why this book was chosen for us to read. The book showed the experience of being a knight in the Medieval times and this was all new to me. I found it interesting and surprising to see Edmund change throughout the book. He went from being an innocent teenager to a scarred knight. Similarly to ‘The Outsiders’, this book shows teenagers in situations I will probably never even encounter. 

I can relate this to the driving question because of how it is easier to relate to individuals one on one.  When we categorize people into large groups, it is harder to relate, and its easier to demonize them because we are not seeing their individuality. This concept is as valid today as it was 500 years ago, Even with air travel, internet, etc. 

CHINGGIS KAHN

The next thing we learned about in this project was different historical leaders, and what made them so powerful and memorable. Tyler, Madeline and I wrote a musical skit about Chinggis Khan, and his role as a leader.

I  am proud of the final product of the skit we made, a funny and historical musical short that we created in under entry minutes, I worked well and hard with Tyler and Madeline, and would love to do it again. 

  Something I am less proud of is our time management. We spent half of our time to write half of a script and ended up trashing it and pretty much improvising the whole skit.

 

To make our skit, we learned about Chinggis Khan and how he grew his Mongolian empire, and created peace.

To make this skit, we almost wrote a script, and then filmed ourselves acting out our version of Chinggis Khan‘s story and edited it in both iMovie and Capcut.

We can learn from this part of the past in many ways, one being how we talked about if someone so fearsome and bloodthirsty could create peace, why can’t we?Even though Chinggis Khan achieved peace through force and fear, after he created peace he also valued equality and merit. He created a society based on accomplishment and capabilities instead of family ties, which was a new concept to people in those days. It is also something people think today. 

Chinggis Khan also enforced the idea of not being ordained by birthright, which is something we believe today. It’s a hard task to compete because of biases people have and the system set up in society that values rich over poor. A merit based society helps the society  flourish, witch is something Chinggis Khan proved in his mongolian society.

Another thing that Chinggis Khan did was create a mammoth colonization system, called Yams. I can connect the Yam system to the internet today because all the internet is is a massive communication system. Communication brings people together, the internet and the Yams are one in the same.

Over all, I loved making a musical skit with my friends, it was definitely my favourite part of this project.

RPReplay_Final1700254581 

 HAUDENOSAUNEE PEOPLE, AND THE GREAT LAW OF PEACE

Another thing we learned about within this project was the Haudenosaunee people, and the great law of peace. We were given the choice to show how the great law of peace affected the Haudenosaunee people today however we wanted, and I chose to make a drawing in one of the apps on my iPad. I am especially proud of my work in this section of the project, because of how much I improved my drawing with the teacher’s feedback, taking it from something I was not very happy with, to something I am very proud of. My original drawing, didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was not my best work.

To do this assignment, I chose to do a drawing. I used sketches pro and drew a picture about how the great law of peace effected the Haudenosaunee people today. When we were learning about the Haudenosaunee people, we were taught about how to convince people to pursue piece, they showed how easily one arrow could snap, but when six were tied together, it was much adder to break. I drew arrows to represent the metaphor,  using traditional Haudenosaunee arrows, and colourful lines to represent the string.

One thing I really enjoyed was drawing and using apps like sketches pro. I have loved experimenting with the apps we were given, and I enjoy this aspect of school. 

We can learn about peace from this assignment, how it is not just an idea, but something we can accomplish if we tried. Peace is something we have to put work into, it doesn’t just happen, its not our neutral state. You need to promote and prioritize peace, and not just wait for someone else to pursue it. 

The other thing that this assignment made me think about was the power of symbols. The Haudenosaunee people had one, we made one, but why? Symbols can be solid or metaphorical, and could be used as a positive or a negative. One could be used to convince people to do something, or to believe in something.

An example of a powerful symbol is a a flag, or even a cross.  Both of these symbols symbolize groups of people, and are something people are proud of. People devote their lives to them, people start wars for them. They are symbols and signals, if you fly a Canadien flag, it could just be mean you are proud to be Canadien, but it could also signify the F**ck Trudeau group. People use the power of symbolism to get people on their cause. 

CHOICE CHART

Another thing we worked on was the artwork Choice Chart I think that I could have worked harder to ask Ms. Willemse about the directions or even just read them more carefully, it took me a while to understand what it was supposed to do, and when I did understand it, it still took me a while to do the chart well.

One thing i enjoyed was learning about medieval art, and the stories behind different art pieces.

To fill out the chart, I searched the internet and the app Google Arts and Culture for a photo, pasted them into the chart, and wrote about them.

It relates to the driving question because of how I compared the medieval worldview shown in the art to how it thought about today. 

In the Medieval times, everything was very hierarchical, and there were very clear lines dividing groups of people. Now, living in a society without such clean lines doesn’t erase patriarchy and hierarchy completely. Now, the lines are blurred, and people can move groups, you are not completely defined by your class. It still does create biases that will determine what privileges you may or may not get.

ART

At the end of the project, we worked on putting ourselves in an existing medieval portrait. I think that I could have worked harder to make the different pieces of art fit together better and more aesthetically. A lot of the pieces look like they were just pasted onto the painting, and I could work harder to make them look better together.

One thing that I really enjoyed in the making of the art was learning how to use the Super Impose X, experimenting with it, and then using it for the art piece.

After adding me into the chosen medieval artwork, I took aspects of all of the pieces from my choice chart, and added them into the art. I then added their modern counterpart right next to them.

One thing I thought about when making my art was how our beliefs in knowledge is always changing. People always think, and always will think that they have the most knowledge, because they did at that time. Generally, people are always gaining knowledge, people 500 years ago could probably never imagine that we would have learned so much more, that there was even more to learn.