Up until now, I have only blogged about Humanities, Socials, and Maker classes (with a mention of math in my winter exhibition post), but now with student led conferences approaching, I am going to start blogging about Scimathics class as well.

My Adventures in Skimatics (yes, you can spell it that way)

The Scimathics course at seycove for grade 8’s is taught by Mrs. Klausen (who loves Babybel cheese and tea). When I first started this year, I was pretty nervous about math and would get really anxious about getting questions wrong. Now that I have done a lot assignments and learned how to fail, I feel a lot more confident. So far, we have done a variety of projects ranging from Minecraft to door expanding (which has more to do with math and science then you may think). We have also done normal math stuff like fractions and algebra, but we are never assigned homework, so it’s actually pretty fun. The hardest part of math this year for me has been understanding how to solve new kinds of equations, but I’ve put a lot of effort into learning how to answer them, and I’m definitely getting better. Right now, we are working on a business project where we are supposed to make surveys and sell popular food items to the population of seycove (and all profits must go to charity. Two more units that we are going to be working on this year include diseases and light.

The Minecraft temple I built in Scimathics 

The Door is (not) a Bore

This was our first big project. After seeing that one of Mrs. Klausen’s classroom doors was very drab and boring (unlike the other, highly decorated door), we decided to do a project to make the door less of a bore (hence the name). We were tasked to add shapes to the door that would increase it’s surface area by 7x and make it look fabulous. The shapes our group chose we’re squares and triangles, because they would be the easiest to cut out. We then got our measurements and got to work. Measuring and cutting was the easy part, the hard part was making sure everything was made correctly. There were at least three times when we realized our shapes were to big or too small and we had to start all over. None the less, we got it done, and now look at our wonderful door!

Our spectacular door

Minecraft: Best project ever!

So, have you ever heard a teacher tell you to stop reading a book and go play Minecraft? I definitely hadn’t until this year’s Minecraft project. Our job was to build structures in Minecraft in an earthquake prone region of the globe. The structures had to be earthquake resistant, and have an architectural style similar to buildings found in that region. Me and my partner decided to make a classic Japanese pagoda. Here is a video I made explaining the lore and earthquake proof functions of my temple:

Click here!

Thanks for reading, new posts coming soon!