This project helped me explore who I am and where I’m headed by setting goals and thinking about what I want for my future! We learned how to manage ourselves and discover what we really want. So, let’s start from the beginning!
What Do You Really Want?
We read the book “What Do You Really Want?” This book helped me discover questions I should be asking about myself to inspire who I want to be! Here’s an example of a task in the book:
In this task, I took one of my goals—making Team BC—and broke it down into a process. This goal ladder made it so I wasn’t just reaching for one big, scary goal, but I was taking simple, calculated steps that made the goal less frightening and achievable.
What Do I really want?
At the beginning of this book, I wanted to become a surgeon, drawn by the profession’s respect and financial reward. However, as I read the book, I realized that choosing a career solely for status and income was misguided. The book encouraged me to pursue my strengths and what I actually have genuine interest in! This led me to recognize my passion for leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. These qualities made me discover I wanted to become a CEO. So, thanks to the book “What Do You Really Want?” I discovered my ambition: to become a CEO!
Managing Myself Video!
Being organized is super important for my future, especially since I want to become a CEO. When I plan out my tasks and balance my schedule, I can focus better and get things done on time! This helps me with school and sports, being able to set goals and dates for when I want to complete a task. Staying organized reduces stress because I know what I need to do and when. All these habits help me stay organized and be a strong leader! So, in class, we made a video about how I manage myself and keep my schedule organized! Here’s the video!
Unboxing Me Video!
We made a final video telling a story about an experience that makes us who we are. Here’s the criteria for this video:
To bring my envisioned video to life, I made an animated storyboard to give myself and the teachers a visual concept of my plan. I found it really cool to have fun animating the storyboard, and it was a good skill to learn. Here’s my storyboard:
Finally, after reflecting and making sure I had included all the criteria, I made my final video telling a story about field hockey and what I see in my future!
Reflection!
Reflecting on this project, I’ve gained valuable skills in goal-setting, self-management, and clarifying my future aspirations. These are tools I intend to carry throughout my life.
Thank you for reading my “Unboxing Me” post! Make sure to check out some of my other posts!
“Thank you for coming to my Presentation of Learning. I am the expert of my own learning. This means that I am responsible, and therefore should also be held accountable, for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress to the best of my ability. We will discuss both my strengths and opportunities for growth, and so I thank you in advance for listening and offering feedback that I can use to improve not just as a student, but as a learner.”
How have I shown growth as a learner this year?
I have demonstrated growth as a learner through my projects and the successful behaviors I have applied along the way.
How My Projects Helped Me Grow This Year.
Maker – Unboxing Me
This project is not yet complete, as we are just approaching its final stages. I wanted to highlight it because I believe it has helped me clarify my future goals and the direction I want to take in life.
In this project, we were assigned to read the book:
What Do You Really Want?
This book helped me set meaningful goals and develop long-term objectives by breaking them down into a clear, step-by-step process.
In this task, I took one of my goals—making Team BC—and broke it down into a process. This goal ladder made it so I wasn’t just reaching for one big, scary goal, but I was taking simple, calculated steps that made the goal less frightening and achievable.
I also learned valuable skills in task and time management, which played a crucial role in staying organized and on track. We used Things and Calendar to plan our schedules, set deadlines, and prioritize tasks effectively.
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This project also helped me develop one of my key success behaviors: goal-setting and self-assessment. Through this process, I learned not only how to set effective goals but also how to evaluate my progress, manage my time, and track deadlines to stay on course toward achieving them.
Humanities – Winter Exhibition: ‘Viva La Revolution’
For Humanities, I want to highlight the Winter Exhibition, which was the project Viva La Revolution. In this project, we were assigned to make the French Revolution into a Rube Goldberg Machine.
This really tested two of my success behaviors:
• Walk in, lock in – Our work ethic as a group was very impressive. Whenever we had class time, we used it effectively.
• Showing leadership – I worked with my peers and made sure everyone felt involved and motivated.
Everyone in this group was doing their part. We ended up having a very impressive machine, and I believe this was because whenever we were in class, we were focused and productive.
I showed leadership in this project by working with my peers and making sure everyone felt involved and motivated. I communicated in a way that got everyone excited to contribute, which helped us work better as a team. By keeping things positive and making sure everyone had a role, we were able to come together and create something awesome.
Science – Operation Game Project
In science, we created our own version of the game Operation.
How It Worked:
To make it work, we attached one end of a cord to a lightbulb and tinfoil, and the other end to a pair of tweezers. We then poked holes in a box, and whenever the tweezers touched the tinfoil inside, the circuit would complete, causing the lightbulb to light up!
This project really tested my success behavior of being persistent and staying focused when facing challenges. At first, the circuit wouldn’t light up, and I had to carefully examine the setup to figure out what needed to be adjusted. I spent an entire class working through it, and honestly, it was tough to stay motivated at times. But I kept pushing, making small changes and troubleshooting, and in the end, my determination paid off. When the lightbulb finally lit up, I was so excited and proud of sticking with it!
Visions, Missions, and Values – What I’m Still Working On
Action plan
• Creativity and Grammar: Moving forward, I will focus on thinking more creatively when I hear about a project’s tasks, challenging myself to find ways to make it unique and put my own spin on it. For grammar, I will read my text out loud, go through what makes sense, and ask a peer to help correct me.
• Going to Tutorial: I will set alarms in the morning to force myself to get up. The night before, I will lay out my clothes and prepare everything I need for school to make mornings easier.
• Being Proud of My Work: Sometimes, I find myself rushing blog posts or projects last minute. I will work on this by using Things to set aside dedicated time for reflection and improvement on my projects.
• Balancing School and Sports: I find it challenging to balance school and sports because I haven’t yet found the right routine. My action plan is to test different strategies to create a better balance between the two. One approach I’m trying is using travel time effectively—for example, working on school assignments in the car on the way to practice. This helps me make the most of my time and stay on top of both my academic and athletic commitments.
• Letting Myself Rest to Give My All in Class: Between sports, homework, and friends, I often feel like I don’t get much downtime. Right now, I don’t have a solid action plan for this, and I would like to discuss it after the presentation.
Visions, Missions, and Values – What I Did Well
Conclusion
With half a year left, I still have time to work through my action plan and improve in areas where I struggle. I’ve already made progress in goal-setting, time management, and leadership, and I will continue testing new strategies to find the right balance between school, sports, and personal growth. By staying committed to my plan, I know I can finish the year strong and continue building the skills that will help me in the future.
In Destination Imagination (DI), I learned how to employ strategies to solve my challenge in fine arts. I used teamwork, skills, and troubleshooting. I’m proud of our project, but let’s start from the beginning.
Group!
Everyone was nervous before we got our groups for DI. We were sorted, and I ended up in the fine arts challenge “Less is More.”My group consisted of Lila, Melissa, Nikan, Alex, and Lianne. I was very happy with my group because we had a great dynamic. Some people were good at engineering, art, acting, and writing.
Challenge
My group participated in the Fine Arts challenge. We had two components in our challenge:
Central Story: We developed a narrative inspired by “Inside Out,” where something small makes a big impact in the protagonist’s mind.
Minimalist Set: We enhanced the use of shapes and simple colours to align with the “Less is More” theme.
We also had to choose two Team Choice Elements. Our first was engineering, where we created a triangular mechanism that made the set shake. The second was a focus on anxiety and how it affects people in their everyday lives.
Plan of Action!
We only had six classes to complete our challenge, which meant we had to find time outside of our classes to complete it. My group figured that the best time was to meet up at lunch once a week on Wednesdays. During this time, we were productive and accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. The last week before regionals, we met up three times at lunch and finished just on time!
Our Solution
The overview of our solution was based on “Inside Out,” where something small makes a big impact in her mind. For our minimalist set, we enhanced the use of shapes and simple colors. Here’s a video of my groups performance!:
The Day Of Destination Imagination!
We had our Instant Challenge at 1:20 PM. An Instant Challenge is a component of the DI competition where teams are given a task to solve on the spot, typically within 5 to 10 minutes. This portion is worth a total possible score of 100 points and assesses the team’s ability to work together, think creatively, and manage time effectively.
We ended up failing our Instant Challenge, scoring a 40/100. It was a simple mistake that could have been avoided. For our actual solution, it went really well. We presented our story effectively and ended up scoring high in our solution. The judges loved our minimalist set and said our story was very moving! Judges notes!:
Here’s some picture of today and our set:
At the end of the day, we got second place.
What I Learned.
Participating in Destination Imagination taught me how to work closely with others to solve problems quickly and manage our time well. I also learned to think on my feet and use different materials in creative ways.
Provincials
Unfortunately, my group wasn’t able to attend Provincials due to the Band trip and other sports commitments. I was really disappointed because I truly believe we had an amazing solution. Even though we didn’t get the chance to compete, we learned a lot through the process. I’m confident that if we had a second shot, we’d blow the competition away, especially with our instant challenge!
Big shoutout to Liann, one of our incredible team members, for showing up to Provincials and presenting our solution to the judges! She absolutely crushed it and even received a DI Spirit Award, which is such an honour. I’m so proud of her!
That was my Destination Imagination post! Check out more of my blog!
In this project, as writers, we learned how to weave historical details into our creative storytelling, conveying a clear and impactful message to the audience. For this project, we made Frankenstuffies and put them into our own story. So let’s start from square one!
Urbanization Game!
To launch our project, we were tasked with creating a white page with a graph on it, and the graph would represent land. We started by adding 40 trees, two bridges, and a river. Then, we had 11 rounds of adding buildings, more trees, roads, cars, factories, and a bunch of bars. This is what it looked like at the start versus the end of the 11 rounds:
Start
End
The overcrowded content on the second slide illustrates the Industrial Revolution’s impact on villages and land.
Doodle Notes!
In this project, we watched a documentary about the Industrial Revolution (link to the documentary). Here’s the link in case you want to watch it, but it’s not needed! While watching this documentary, we were tasked with taking doodle notes. Doodle notes are where you draw what you hear or see to represent the Industrial Revolution. Here are my doodle notes:
I thoroughly enjoyed creating the doodle notes because integrating images and drawings required deep thought, enhancing my understanding of the material!
Frankenstuffies 🧌
In this project, we created “Frankenstuffies” by bringing plush toys from home, disassembling them, and creatively reassembling their parts to form unique stuffed animals. Here’s a quick video of the making of our Frankenstuffies:
Here’s a photo of the finishes stuffy:
I thought this was a fun and creative part of the project!
The Hero’s Journey
Now that we had our Frankenstuffy, we had to create a story around the character while incorporating an element of the Industrial Revolution. Here’s my Hero’s Journey:
Hero’s Journey
The Ordinary World
Jerry lived in a forrest in England as a happy hedgehog he lived with his mom, Jen and and his father, Joe. It was 1750 and the Industrial Revolution was just taking off! Then in 1752 a factory was created right outside their forrest. The factory didn't affect them at first. The only thing that annoyed them was the loud sounds at night and the air becoming thick and gloomy. Even though the factory bothered them they were still a happy family together!!! Little did they know their life was about to change.
Call to Adventure
Then the factory outside their forest was testing with dangerous chemicals and it caused a big explosion!!!!! Many people in the factory were killed or harmed harshly. Sadly, Joe and Jen gave their lives shielding Jerry from the fire. Instead of getting injured like the humans did, Jerry turned into a unique hedgehog. He had a unicorn horn and wings, grew bigger feet, and now had a tail. That wasn't the only thing that changed though, Jerry now was extremely smart and artistic. He had a talent for designing and creating elegant pieces that to anyone’s eyes were flawless.
The Refusal to Call
He became deeply emotional and angry that he couldn’t protect his family or do anything about it. Due to his sadness and depression every day, his day consisted of waking up late and just sitting on the forest ground. He would cry himself to sleep most nights out of anger with a mix of sadness and his only coping method was to creating beautiful piece of pottery out of wood or anything he found in the forest. He had no passion, the only thing he loved was dead. The world was dead to him.
Meeting the Mentor
One day in 1753 August 2nd a witty young 23 year old was walking on a path near Jerry. His name was Josiah Wedgewood. He always dreamed of starting his own business but sadly didn’t have the talent to start one.
As he was walking along the path he hit his foot against a random wooden objected. He looked down in pain to see a beautiful tea cup that had a bunch of unique and graceful features. He looked around wondering who was responsible for this master piece of a tea cup.
He looked up and then down only to see Jerry, a weird looking hedgehog who was currently crafting a beautiful teapot out of wood. Josiah was astonished and could only speak the words “h-hoo-ww did you do that” he said in a astonished voice. He blinked again making sure what he was seeing was real. Jerry then turned around to the man staring shocked and startled.
“What do you mean” he said trying to say confidently but inside he was nervous.
“Making those wonderful pieces out wood” Josiah was replied. Jerry looked up confused but answer “as soon as my parents pasted I started making cups and whatever I could think of out of wood”.
Josiah’s eyes lit up with a brilliant idea! Josiah spoke with excitement “I have an amazing idea. We could start a business: you the mastermind behind the rings, and me front and centre selling all your products. We could become rich and be world renowned potters!!! What do you say you in?”
Jerry looked up, sucking all the information in, and he thought about it a second before responding “I mean, maybe… but… I don't think it’s right, a factory killed my parents, so why should I start one?”
Josiah thought for a second before responding. “Well, I understand that you didn't have control over the death of your parents, but, with the money we will be making, you could control everything around you. Money is power and control. Without it you won’t find happiness. You will be a hopeless fool wasting your life and dyin’ as a coward just like your parents.” His words struct a nerve in Jerry. He had a grin on his face imagining having control over everything that happens. He took a deep breath before responding “Deal” he said. He gathered all his things heading to the centre of London with Josiah Wedgewood!
Crossing the Threshold
Josiah Wedgewood led him into the centre of London. Jerry had always wanted to see the place, but sadly, Wedgewood hid him under his jacket as people would wonder why he had a weird looking hedgehog with him. As Josiah opened the door to a little cottage, he put Jerry down to let him explore the new place. Meanwhile, Jerry felt a bunch of emotions not knowing how to feel. He was nervous and overwhelmed, but also excited and hungry for the power he deserved.
“Hey, I’m going to give you a day to relax into the new envirmont, but after, we are going to start working hard. We’ll have power and control over another industry!” He said with a grin so evil, you would think he came straight out of a horror movie. The next few days they got to work, getting ready for the unveiling of the tea pots and mugs. They had a few setbacks but on January second, 1754 they revealed their first piece and it was instantly a success!
Tests, Allies, and Enemies
Two months after the unveiling they got a letter from Thomas Whieldon: a renowned potter! He sent the letter stating he wanted to form a partnership with Josiah Wedgewood. Both Jerry and Josiah talked through it, looking at the ups and downs to having this partnership. In the end, they decided to accept this partnership due to the factories he already owned.He would help them supply demand for their products.
The Approach to the Inmost Cave
From then on, their business began sky rocketing with Jerry coming up with the ideas. He came up with the idea of creating high quality creamware. He came up with making earthenware for the queen to grow popularity in 1765. He came up with Etruria Works that reflects his admiration for classical art in 1769. He perfected Jasperware, which became essential to the Wedgewood brand. He came up with creating a showroom for all to see his beautiful designs in 1782. He came up with all of this but felt empty inside and didn't know what to feel. He still missed his parents with a burning passion. Each night he would think of how everyone should be equal and each life should be cared about. He thought this cause he was the only one who cared about there death. So he came up with an idea…
The Ordeal
He wanted to make something his parents would be proud of. So, he worked day after day producing his best creation yet. And in 1787 he finished making his Medallion that in scripted “Am a Man and a Brother”. He wanted to demonstrate how each every life matters and should all be treated equally. Jerry was so proud of this design and Wedgewood loved this idea! He grinned at the idea knowing foolish people would buy it. They showed it off in the showcase and it became a global success!!!!
The Reward
The medallion was bring it loads of money. Then one day Jerry overheard a conversation Wedgewood was having with Thomas. The overview of the conversation was how Jerry was foolish and he was only using him for his foolish ideas. After this Jerry felt shocked and hurt and he felt a rise of anger in his chest. So he came up with a plan to get revenge for all these years of getting used. So on January 1st 1795 he put a poison in Wedgewood’s drink. Then 2 days later he died. Jerry watched him at his funeral grinning ear to ear. He watched him get buried. After everyone had left Jerry walked up to wear he laced and whisper under his breath “who’s the foolish on now.” He said in a stern voice. After that he just left never to think of that name again. His reward was a new freedom.
The Roadblock
Time skip (1820). Jerry was on his death bed with a smile on his face. He felt like he make an impact in his life, he fell in love with a beautiful hedgehog named Jane had two kids and just lived his life in freedom out of Wedgewood’s control. He new it was his time to go and couldn’t wait to see his parents up on heaven knowing he made them proud. The End
Website used: https://www.worldhistory.org/Josiah_Wedgwood/#:~:text=Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795),creative sales and marketing techniques.
I really liked my story because all of the historical timelines actually happened—only the story behind the scenes changed. I thought that made my story creative and unique! I was really passionate about my story while writing it!
Creating a Short Film!
Now that we had our story, we were instructed to make a short film, selecting sections from the Hero’s Journey. The sections I picked were: Meeting the Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests, Allies, and Enemies, The Approach to the Inmost Cave, The Ordeal, and The Reward. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to jump straight into filming—we had to have a game plan!
Storyboard!
To make our game plan, we created a storyboard representing each shot we were adding. Here’s mine:
Reflecting on my storyboard project, I’m really happy with how it turned out. I stayed focused during class and managed to finish it in just two sessions, even being the first one done. This experience showed me the benefits of staying on task and managing my time well.
Film Drafts!
When I made my film, I used Keynote and a green screen. The green screen was really hard to use, and I had trouble getting the audio right because there was always background noise. With all the sports I do, I didn’t have time to fix it at home. I told Mr. Harris about these problems, so that’s why my first draft didn’t have audio. But here’s Mr. Harris’s feedback:
So I took my teacher’s feedback, ensuring my video’s audio aligned with the visuals and removing any empty spaces in my opening scene. Additionally, I replaced any placeholders with finalized content.
Final Draft!
I applied the feedback to my film, and Mr. Harris kindly found a quiet place for me to record audio. Finally, I had my final draft—I call it The Truth:
What I Learned!
In this project, I learned how to integrate historical details into storytelling, delivering a clear and impactful message to the audience. I also reflected on how to apply feedback to each project. One area I needed to improve was time management, ensuring I made time in my schedule for audio recording and anticipating potential challenges. Overall, I was super happy with how this project went!
Hope you enjoyed my blog—make sure to check out some of my other posts!
The driving question for this project was: “How does electricity shape our society, and how can we generate it more sustainably?” To answer this, we conducted research on different ways electricity is generated and learned how to connect circuits to create an electrical flow.
Sustainable Ways to Generate Electricity!
In this part of the project, we explored various ways to generate electricity. After learning about each method, we got to choose the one that interested us the most! The options included:
Electrical energy from fossil fuels
Electrical energy from nuclear reactions
Electrical energy from sunlight
Electrical energy from wind
Electrical energy from geothermal sources
Electrical energy from waves and tides
Hydroelectric energy from rivers
Our task:
I chose fossil fuels because our world currently relies on them the most, and they have the biggest impact on our society. Here’s a picture of my infographic:
Electricity Circuit!
We learned how to create a circuit using batteries, wires, tinfoil, tweezers, and a tiny light bulb. Before working with real materials, we practiced using a game. Try it out!
Next, we built an actual circuit by connecting a battery, wires, tinfoil, tweezers, and a tiny light bulb. I felt very confident during this process! After mastering the basics, we applied our knowledge by creating a board game: Operation. Here’s a picture of my game:
I felt really comfortable making this circuits! I was the first one done in class, so I helped my peers. I believe that truly understanding a topic means being able to teach it to others, and I was proud to do that. In the end, I felt confident in my ability to create a circuit and absolutely loved this project!
Driving Question
Electricity shapes our society by powering essential systems such as communication, healthcare, and transportation. To generate it more sustainably, we need to transition to cleaner energy sources like solar, wind, and hydropower, while reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
That’s my blog! Hope you enjoyed reading. Make sure to check out some of my other projects!
Hello, welcome to my blog! As you know in PLP every year we take part in a winter exhibition to showcase our work to the public! This year we made metaphor machines that showcases a revolution. It sounds simple but the process was a long a bumpy road, so let’s start from the beginning!
In this project I learned that revolutions have influenced our political, social, economic, and cultural worldview. To help learn this we started by analyzing a book called “Animal Farm”
“Animal Farm”
In this project we analyzed the book “Animal Farm” this book is based on the Russian revolution where animals represent what happened in the revolution. The main reason we read this book was to understand Cranes Briton’s theory on the stages of revolution. Here are my notes on the book and Crane Briton’s theory:
After we used our notes to create an infographic combining our knowledge of “Animal Farm” with Crane Briton’s theory. Here is my infographic with my critiques from my teacher:
You can see it got critiqued a lot on my first draft so I took all this feedback and applied it to my final draft:
French Revolution
Now that we had finished our infographic Mr Harris wanted us to apply Crane Briton’s theory to a real world revolution. So our whole class was divided into 5 groups with different revolutions. I got the French Revolution and so did Elsa, Carmyn, Sam, Lianne, and Evelyn. This would also be our winter exhibition groups. Our first task was to make an infographic combining Crane Briton’s theory and the French Revolution. First we had to do some research on the French Revolution and luckily Mr Harris had a lot of good sources for us to read and take note. So after all the research and critiquing of each others infographics we finally had our final draft:
So once we were done our Infographic we were now beginning the start of the winter exhibition!
Process of the Winter Exhibition
So first we had to combine all our knowledge together creating one legendary Infographic to showcase at the exhibition! Here is a picture of it:
Now that we had finished our groups legendary infographic we were tasked to make a Metaphor machine on the French Revolution.
What is a metaphor machine?
A metaphor machine is a rube goldberg machine where each action of the machine is a metaphor for the French Revolution. Before we started building our machine we had to have a blueprint for the whole machine and have at least 10 actions representing metaphors on the revolution. This is where I believe my group did its best work because we had all 10 metaphors and actions drawn and written in one class. I believe my group did its best work here because everybody was pitching in ideas and really trying to make this machine detailed and knowledgeable. So once we had all our actions down I made a nice copy for Mr Harris. Here is our nice copy (keep in mind we made this in one class!):
This sadly was not enough for us to move onto building since we did not have enough detail in our actual machine so for the next 1 and a half classes we made detailed blueprints of how the engineering would work:
Finally we got approved by Mr Harris to start building and we were all really happy because building it was the most fun part!
Building a metaphor machine!
So now we started building our machine. We all brought in materials and started working away. The biggest challenge my group faced while making the machine was when an idea didn’t work cause we all found it discouraging but we always found a way to fix it. What my group did well was time management. Each class we would all use our time effectively making a big difference each class. One thing personally I was proud of was my creation for the ball to reach the top again beacuase I realized that we needed it done so I decided to create at home and I was really proud of my design. Here’s a video of it working:
So my group had finally finished the machine three days before the exhibition meaning we had time to refine each action and make it look pretty! I also made a video showing our progression through the weeks:
The night of the exhibition!
So the night of the exhibition arrived my group was dressed in fancy attire to showcase France’s posh lifestyle. I was wearing a red dress with a black blazer. Also in each exhibition we have to serve food to the audience so we decided to serve chocolate croissants and French flag sugar cookies:
At 5:30 we the door swung open and we were all nervous for how our first run of the machine would go. Luckily my groups machine was very successful and had only 4 failures out of I think 30 which is a very good percentage! Here’s a video of my group presenting to a public audience (sorry for the bad audio):
So finally the doors closed at 7:30 and everyone was relieved that we were done! We cleaned up our machine and reflected on what we learnt through this project!
What I learnt!
From this whole project I learned that revolutions have influenced our political, social, economic, and cultural worldview. I also learned how to be very time efficient and learned how to best help my group through this project!
That was my winter exhibition post! Make sure to check out more of my blog!!!!!!!!
In this project, “Running a Remake,” we learned video skills by creating short films.
We built on our skills, such as camera angles, audio, and directing. So, let’s check out Launch!
Crazy Launch
In Launch, we had to recreate a short film called “Run”:
We got to watch this short film five times and then had just one hour to recreate it. This task was really hard because it was rushed, and we had to be very organized and efficient with time.
My group started by quickly assigning roles: I was the runner, and Julia was the monster. We carefully took note of all the scenes we needed to copy and went straight to filming, which we had only 25 minutes to complete (though it felt like just 10 minutes!).
Once we finished filming, we had to edit the video and match it as closely as possible to the original. Personally, I think my group did really well, considering the time limit. Here’s our first video:
From this first remake, I learned a lot. I developed new video skills, learned how to use my group’s ideas and abilities effectively, and practiced working under time pressure.
Now that was a crazy launch! Next, we had to remake the video with a longer timeframe.
Running a Remake: The Proper Version!
For the second attempt, we were given a week and a half to remake the same video, allowing us to focus on details. Unfortunately, our first challenge was that I was away for a week, so Ms. McWilliam (our teacher) had to reorganize the groups.
My new group was just Cece and me, so we planned to work around my absence. We decided to meet up on Tuesday, use class time on Wednesday to film, and spend the next two days working on audio and editing.
Filming!
With more time, we added more detail to our remake, including costumes, improved audio, better acting, and more thoughtful camera angles. It took us two days to film, and Cece and I were happy with the wide range of clips we had to choose from when editing.
The Struggles of Editing!
The project was due on Monday, the 9th, and Cece and I had just finished editing on Sunday. Then, out of nowhere, I encountered a glitch in iMovie that looked like this:
This glitch made me unable to access all of our short films. The only way to fix it was to delete and redownload the app. When I did, I discovered that all of Cece’s and my editing work was gone. Frustrated, we realized there was nothing we could do but redo it. Luckily, our teacher was understanding and gave us extra time to complete the project.
To avoid further issues, we decided to edit on Cece’s iPad instead of mine. However, on Wednesday, Cece’s iMovie encountered the exact same glitch! We had to redo the editing again. At this point, I was convinced iMovie was against us, but we finally finished it, and the result turned out really well!
What I Learned!
From this project, I learned how to persevere through mistakes and keep going even when I felt frustrated. I also learned some fun editing skills and how to use camera angles to make films more engaging and exciting to watch.
The End! Make sure to check out some of my other blogs!
For grade 9 there is a province wide take your kid to work day! Sadly I had field hockey provincials the exact same week so I couldn’t go. So my teacher and I made a new driving question and task for field hockey provincials. My task was to make a documentary about Provincials and the driving question was: “How does field hockey affect your career choices in the future?”. So without further ado lets get into it!
Task!
Criteria for the video:
This is the criteria for my documentary and reading this sparked my ideas. I was really excited about the digitally enhanced criteria because I could use a bunch of cool transitions and videos from playing field hockey. For the interviews got to meet a bunch of people who had an interesting life in field hockey. I got to meet a Canadian national team member who played in the Olympic’s and she got a bronze metal at the field hockey World Cup. I also got to meet a Canadian national team coach who gave us some great advice. Here’s a video of my favourite interview:
My video!
Finally I loved making this video and credit to Eleanor a grade 8 on our team for filming so many moments on the pitch. Make sure to check out my video:
How does field hockey affect your career choices in the future?
Personally over this tournament I have realized that it can affect my life in many ways. All I hope is that I’m happy wherever I end it up and that is how I want field hockey to affect my life! That’s my provincials blog!
“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.”
How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP success behaviours have prepared you to advance the next grade?
I can showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP success behaviours have prepared me to advance into grade 9. The success behaviour I have picked are accepting feedback, contribution, focus, and balance and these success behaviours will show you that I’m ready for grade 9!
Accepting feedback
There are two projects that have let me grow from accepting feedback;“The Wilderness Must Be Explored” and “Working With Words”
Working with Words
In this project I learned how to put my thought in to poems. In this project we made a selection of poems critiquing each one as we went along. Here’s an example of one of my poems and how I accepted feedback:
In this first draft I used some examples that are not obviously true and i got critiqued saying make the statement obvious so more people can connect to it so here’s my second draft:
Now if you liked that poem here’s a book full of them:
Now after practicing the skill of accepting feedback we had more of a challenge with our next project:
The wilderness must be explored
For this project I learned that language inspires adventure. This project was all about advertisement for Oregon and improving it! We got selected into groups for the exhibition. My group was Siena, Sam, Cole, and Elsa and we got the topic ‘excitement and escape!’ So we designed our slogan. Here it is “Escape the Ordinary, Embrace the Excitement”. So check out my first draft of this ad:
This is a rough draft and needs major feedback. Luckily i got that feedback from my peers and Ms McWillaim. My first critique was that I should change the image to something more exciting and change the font. So I changed the image to a beautiful landscape photo and drew a guy zip lining in it becuase I thought that was the most exciting part of Oregon. For the font our group chose the coffee break font:
This is my second draft and i got told it was much better! This ad still needed a lot of work. So my critique was to change my font colour for the small text from black to white.
Finally we could see the small text but not enough so i expanded the text and put it in the bottom left corner. For the slogan i got told to curve it, because it adds more pop. Also to simplify, so I deleted “it’s the place to be” and just changed it to “Oregon”. Here’s my final draft:
These projects really helped me on accepting feedback back and then applying it!
Balance
My next success behaviour is balance. Now balance can mean a lot things but, today it means balancing my time and effort. My two best examples of this are “Power play or how it started” and my “overall blog posts”. So I’m going to start off with blog posts.
My awesome and radical blog posts!
So in PLP we have to blog post just like this one. Why I’m talking about this in balance is since we do not get a lot of class time to work on blog posts. This means we have to set time aside to be able to write these blog posts and over the first few months I was struggling to make time. An example would be my winter exhibition post (link it)! I had a week to start it but, struggled making time for it so i did it in the last two days rushing it and I felt like it wasn’t my best work. After 2 more blog posts i finally realized how much easier it would be just to start it earlier and work on it so i could be done and feel relaxed. The best example of me starting early is my “Mind Over Matter” blog post. I started it a week before the dead line and when I was done I had 3 days left and was very happy with myself! Heres a link to the blog post:
This was a great example of balance but the next one is much better!:
Power Play And How It Started
In this project there was a book called “Book Of The Lion”, this book was long and didn’t really hook me. This book was split into three sections and we had a a different role each week that related to our section of the book. For the first section I was the Investigator! My job was to find information and relate it in a diagram to the book. The problem was I had a great idea but didn’t calculate my time that well and ended up rushing the book a bit because I would leave it to the last minute. That meant I had to rush my connector role. This is what I did but, keep in mind i stayed up late to make it look good! Here’s a diagram relating the book to to my Today project:
Now when I started my third section I was much more prepared. I had finished my book with a lot of time to spare meaning i could start my role much sooner. This time i was the investigator which means i find information related to the book and share it in a fun way. For this fun way i decided to make a fun video and it is very obvious the difference between the first section and the third section!!!:
Contributions
Now we have contributions, this is not only my contributions to a project but, handling my group contribution. So I have two projects to demonstrate my contribution and my groups those projects are “Destination Imagination” and “The Spring Exhibition”! So lets start with DI!!
Destination imagination
Destination imagination is where your group receives a challenge to over come while telling a story. My task was to make a catapult that throws a bean bag in the exact same spot every single time and to build a story around it. I chose this project for contribution because this is a project where everyone needs to lend a hand. I felted I contributed a lot to this project and I worked really hard on it. The hard part was learning how to get my peers interested in the project and contributing the same amount. To do this my group and I all shared what we were interested about in this project and tried putting those interests to good use by including that in our performance. Here’s some pictures of my group in DI!!!
That’s one example of me contributing to my projects but, the next one is even better, “The Spring Exhibition”
Spring Exhibition
For this exhibition I could not be there for the actual event so I felt very bad. I felt my contribution was going to be poor because of that so I decided I would contribute more to the preparation. I helped build the zip line. I brought reusable water balloons, I came up with the idea for the foods which were cookies and apple juice. I was really happy with myself because I didn’t just let myself slack off.
Focus
Focus is a big part of grade 8 because in all grade 8 classes you need to be switched on!! An example of a project I needed to stayed switched on was “Small But Mighty”! So let’s get into it.
Small But Mighty
One of the first things we did in this project was a Field Journal for a science project! Each class you had to take a picture of the experiment and make observations. For my experiment I asked a question about what cleans better, hand sanitizer or dish soap? We put bacteria on a Petri dish and put handsanitizer on one and dish soap on another. Once we had done that we needed to take pictures each day while making observations Heres some of my keynote slides of the observations.
So this projects defines focus! Now for my goals!!!!
My goal for grade 9!
My goals for grade 9 are:
1. To set realistic goals for my peers and I in group projects
2. To manage sports with work
3. Give myself enough time so I can be proud of all my work!
Are you ready to see our final humanities project for grade 8? Well if you are lets get straight to it.
How Does Language Inspire Adventure?
Language inspires adventure because you can communicate your adventure to others which sparks others interests! We learned this through the power of advertisement by making ads for places we visit!
Quarry Rock!
Quarry rock is where our first advertisement started. To prepare for Oregon we made an advertisement for Quarry Rock, a place in deep cove. If you ever have time check it out see this link:https://www.vancouvertrails.com/trails/quarry-rock/.
Anyway in my ad I focused on the thought of how one adventure can turn into many more. So check out my first draft of this advertisement.
I know this first draft definitely needs to be fixed . This is the hardest part of the project taking feed back and applying it. So for this ad my feed back was: drop the background, make the image the big picture. So this is my second draft!
Now that I had done my second draft we had another round of feedback! My critique was to remove all borders and delete all the extra text and change it to Quarry Rock. Check out my final draft! What do you think?
Oregon!
Now we need to make an ad about Oregon, but how can we make an ad about Oregon when we haven’t been to Oregon? So that’s just what we did, we went to Oregon! We made a book about Oregon, we recorded most places we went to check it out, my favourite part of Oregon was the zip lining:
Making the ads for our Spring Exhibition!
Now in PLP we have to do an end of the year spring exhibition and we are presenting ads in a group, my group was Siena, Elsa, Sam, and Cole! Now we actually need to make the ads, for the ads, each group was given a theme for there ad. Ours was excitement and escape! So of course we had to relate it to zip lining (sadly I did not do that in my first draft) in Oregon cause that was the most exciting part of Oregon. Check out my ad:
Now I had to critique my ad ten times, so I’m going to save you 10 minutes and tell you what my whole ad needed. My ad needed the picture to be adjusted and changed, the words in the slogan needed to become curved, the white text to become bigger and be moved to the bottom, so I could add zip lining to the picture. Here’s mine and my groups finals drafts:
This is Cole's ad!!!
This is Elsa's ad!!!
This is Sam's ad!!!
This is my ad!!!!!!!
This is Siena's!!!!
Spring exhibition prep!
To get ready for the spring exhibition we needed to make a moving ad, print out our final ads, have an inactive element, something to make our campaign shine, and food (mandatory for every exhibition to have food). So we each took on separate challenges Elsa made the Moving ad check out the video:
Siena and I made an interactive Zip line that delivers a water balloon to someone at the exhibition and they got to throw it at one of our group members. The reason we did a water element is that when we went zip lining we got dunked in water on one of the zip lines. Siena and I also made a balloon Arc to make our campaign shine. Heres a picture of the balloon arc:
Sam made an interactive pamphlet for others to look at and Cole was designed a t-shirt. Last but not least the food we decided to serve cookies was apple juice because half way through the zip lining they gave us that exact meal!
Spring exhibition!
Sadly I couldn’t be there for the actual exhibition but here is a picture of my group at the exhibition!(I did help with set-up).
Answer to the driving question!
Laungaue inspires adventure because what is adventure without telling everyone or suggesting it to one another. If you see an inspiring text about a places in history or a mountain then you will go for the challenge/adventure. I learned this through going to Oregon because the teachers made us really excited about zip lining. So naturally that made it one of the most waited for activities. This is why I think language inspires adventure!
That was my spring exhibition make sure to check out my other blog posts!
solely for status and income was misguided. The book encouraged me to pursue my strengths and what I actually have genuine interest in! This led me to recognize my passion for leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. These qualities made me discover I wanted to become a CEO. So, thanks to the book “What Do You Really Want?” I discovered my ambition: to become a CEO!
Everyone was nervous before we got our groups for DI. We were sorted, and I ended up in the fine arts challenge “Less is More.”My group consisted of Lila, Melissa, Nikan, Alex, and Lianne. I was very happy with my group because we had a great dynamic. Some people were good at engineering, art, acting, and writing.
I felt very confident during this process! After mastering the basics, we applied our knowledge by creating a board game: Operation. Here’s a picture of my game:
