How does Hydroelectricity lead to Canada being one of the most loved countries in the world? That’s what my podcast episode was about in he world needs more canada podcast. The whole class all worked together in the World Needs More Canada project where every student made a podcast episode about why the world needs more Canada. My topic Was hydroelectricity and how it leads to Canada having such happy citizens and that’s why other countries could use it. Now lets talk about how I got this done.
Project Path
To start, we learned about the different components of a podcast and got a understanding of what it is, a audio recording holding the contents of a video or book put without any visuals. After learning about what a podcast is, we made our own short script for a 2 minute mini episode about ourselves, this didn’t get published but was still worth good practice. After this we learned the 3 act structure and how its used to make quality, interesting, and engaging story’s. The 3 act structure consists of 3 sections each playing a role in making a interesting story where they lead up to a climax and then a conclusion. Using this we made composition where we wrote down a rough outline of what we were going to talk about using the 3 act structure. Next I did my podcast script, then revised it and recorded a draft of our final podcast episode. Next, we edited, revised again, and made our final podcast episode with introduction music and sound effects. The end result got posted on Spotify and is called “The World Needs More Canada”.
☂️: I achieved this competency by contributing my best work to the class podcast and putting in effort doing so. My podcast episode is juts a small part of the bigger podcast but I still feel confident in the fact that I delivered my part and did well doing so. Overall I think this whole project helped me be more grateful and more appreciative to where I live, which comes down to me being responsible and finishing my work.
🤔: I achieved this competency by asking questions and knowing when I’m stuck, this is still a big growing point for me but there were points in this project where I believe I demonstrated this.
My Answer to the Driving Question
Why does the world need more Canada? The driving question of this project. Throughout all the drafts and writing I have gotten a understanding about Canadas strengths and what the world needs more of. Overall I determined that my whole project on hydroelectricity contributes to Canadas overall quality of life and that’s why people want to stay here so much. Hydroelectricity is just a small part of what makes Canadas quality of life so great, and with that I think that’s what other countries could use. The world needs more Canada because Canada is known for quality of life and many countries in the world could have that or build on it.
Starting the project, I was away in Mexico for a week which made me behind. I didn’t have long to catch up which forced me to put my time management skills to the test. I ended up balancing my work really well at home and I think I did a great job. My final comic ended up being great and I was very proud of all the effort I put into it. Before I knew it the exhibition was here and it went amazing and I think the comic I ended up making was a perfect example of what I was capable of doing. Some skills I put to the test were Time management, Communication, etc.
Panel From my Final Comic
What Would I Have Done Differently
If I were to do this project again I wouldn’t do much differently which I think shows I did good although there are a few things I would change. Next time I would spend less time on my story board and spend more time on my comic which would hopefully let me balance the work a little bit more then I did.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this project was massive in growth and testing skills I’ve been learning. As a end of year project I think it went great and was a perfect was to end of the year.
“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.”
Introduction
Grade 9 has been a massive year in growth and development for me for multiple reasons. The many projects throughout the year have affected me in positive and negative ways. Some projects that I think went poorly and felt negative in the moment, have just had good outcomes and taught me lessons on how to perform in future projects. In this presentation I will be answering these questions: what project do I feel I succeed in the most, what project did I learn from my mistakes the most, how do my expectations compare to my performance, and what evidence do I have to show I’m ready to graduate?
What Project do I Feel I Succeeded in the Most?
Throughout this entire year there have been so many projects and I feel differently about each and every one. One that really stood out to me happened quite recently. Not only was it a project but there was a exhibition as well. The project I am most proud of is our WW1 project. On this project I think I learned a lot of new skills as I usually do with projects but I also think I put some skills to the test. I’m always learning new skills from projects but when am I going to put them to the test? Well this project really pushed what I could do and made me demonstrate what kind of learner I am. Going into this project I had just spent a week in Mexico which meant I was behind when I came back. The skill I think I put to the test was time management. Obviously I was behind, but day after day I worked hard at school and home to get all the past assignments in and also the final presentation, which was the comic. In the end, just around the exhibition, I had everything done and ready just in time. Then the exhibition hit and I would say my table group and I did an amazing job presenting our work. The feeling of presenting Everything after a long project is the best and it felt like such a relief and pay off that I came into the project late and and came out of the project on time. Some key skills I think I built on in this project are teamwork, collaboration, and art. Some skills I think I put to the test are communication, time management etc.
Panel From my Final Comic
What Project Did I Learn From my Mistakes the Most?
Despite most projects having a good outcome for the most part, there have definitely been some that I was not as proud of or didn’t value as much in the big picture. I like to view my “failed” projects as mistakes to learn from, I’ve noticed a pattern in my projects that always after a poor project is one I value which shows that I’m only learning from each one. In this case, the one I am least proud of has got to be my frankenstuffie project. That project just didn’t go well for me. I talked a little bit about this one in my mPOL actually, but even now its still what I’m least proud of. Given the amount of time we had to do work and make the final video I really don’t think I succeeded well. We had to read a novel in which I kept postponing And didn’t even finish it. Then all of a sudden I had to make a video and I was extremely underprerppeared. I also waited a bit to long to start the video as well, which also had a greater effect. My final video was weak and didn’t demonstrate who I am as a learner in my opinion. Looking back it might even be the project I’m least proud of even compared to some grade 8 projects. At the time of the project I was trying to get better at time management but I didn’t really know what I was doing and didn’t have much discipline towards the project. Some skills that I already knew that I didn’t follow were: Communication, Prioritization, and Time management. Looking more on the bigger outcome of this project is me being a better learner and I think that all the downs of this project have only helped my future ones. I think without this my WW1 project would have been worse since that one relayed on time management for me to catch up. Another example is Nationalism project. Without having a somewhat bad video for my frankenstuffie project I don’t think my nationalism project would have been nearly as good. Now that I’m done talking about where I did good and bad I want to talk a bit about how my expectations compare to all this.
My Frankenstuffie
How do my Expectations Compare to my Performance?
As usual, at the beginning of the year everyone made a learning plan, including myself. I remember aiming for a proficient in all subjects which I somewhat achieved. Some skills I wanted to work on were focus, teamwork, presenting, and time management. Being 100% honest I don’t think my focus has improved much at all, I stated that I wanted to make better seating choices but I never really saw that take off and that is 100% my fault. I should have been more aware that I should follow the goals I set and stick to what my expectations for myself are. Under the category of goals and self assessment in the PLP learning behaviours I would say that focusing is a goal I set and didn’t achieve in a sense because, again of my seating choices which seems to be my biggest struggle. Also in the PLP success behaviours form I stated I made growth in reflection, I would say reflecting on work is something that comes in close ties with advancing and time management, leaving enough room for improvement is always good. Lastly I think I have grown tremendously on outside of school working and being able to manage my time, this is by far the biggest thing I’ve worked on this year and it’s gonna stay with me forever.
What Evidence Do I Have to Show I’m Ready to Graduate? (Conclusion)
With everything I learned this year, I think It has been my biggest year in growth since I was born, it may not have been the year with the most success, or wins, but for me, I learned that learning and growing on skills is what makes me the learner I am now. As for evidence that I can show to support this, I think that’s all in my blog posts and most past projects. In the PLP success form, evidence I can use to support the points I made earlier is where I am now, who I am now, andthe type of learner I have become since September. All of this is the outcome of me following PLPs expectations to be a successful learner. I think that without PLP I would not be anywhere close to where I am now, the amount of opportunities to improve as a learner this program gives is why I’m where I am now. And that is why I believe I am ready to graduate to Grade 10
“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.”
Introduction
This is my 3rd presentation of leaning since I stated high school. As I look back there is so much to reflect on, this goes from everything I learnt, the challenged I’ve overcome, and the skills I’ve further developed. Enjoy!
How Far I’ve Come
Grade 9 has been a massive year in growth for me, making mistakes has helped me grow in many different ways to become the proud learner I am now. When I look back at how scared I was to finally be going into grade 9 I would have never thought I would be where I am now. I am so grateful that I am in PLP because without it, my grade 9 year so far, would be completely different. Looking back to the grade 8/9 summer, I remember being really anxious about grade 9 and thinking it was this massive obstacle that would be difficult to overcome. To me, it didn’t seem right that I was already in grade 9. So, now that I look back, I am starting to realize that the fear and anxiety I had to be in grade 9 is actually what gave me the motivation and drive to be the best I could this year. In my head I thought it was going to be very difficult and scary so I irked hard to surround myself with the right people and role models to make sure I was going to succeed. Now that you know how I felt at the beginning of the year, compared to now, I am going to talk more about the in between and the projects that I failed in and succeeded in.
What Project Was I Least Proud of And Why?
This year has been filled with countless projects, and I feel I did differently on each one but there is one project that stands out to me as the one I am least proud of, but has helped me the most, and that is the Frankenstuffie Project. This project took place recently, from the end of winter break to the beginning of spring break. This project started with us taking apart 3 stuffies to make afrankenstuffie, I think I did good with that but where things really started to fall apart for me was when we had to read a book called leviathan, I was constantly falling behind, and unable to really keep up and understand how it even related to our project. I didn’t even end up finishing the book and did just alright on the mini tests we had every 10 chapters. I think that this really served as a wake up call to me, telling me I have to pay more attention to what we are doing and spend less time goofing around. The biggest lesson I think I learned in relation to falling behind in the book was that it had a greater impact over time. For example, If I’m only reading 5 chapters a week and we are supposed to be reading 10, It may seem alright at first but over the span of a few weeks all of a sudden I am really behind and this can apply to basically everything else in life, If you stay on track, you wont fall behind.
Later on in the project we had to make a backstory for our stuffy and eventually make a video, I think I did really well with the backstory but didn’t really think about how easy it would be to put into a video, in the end I think the video was a learning experience in its self, but I think I could have done better, I made a blog post reflection on this project that I will link below. Now that I have talked about where I think I “Failed”, I will now talk about where I think I did my best.
What Project am I Most Proud of?
The project I am most proud of has got to be the Metaphor Machines project. The project was so rich in information and history which was perfect for me cause that is my favourite thing to learn about. Not only was what we were learning about right up until my alley, but we also got to present it in the most interesting way at the Winter Exhibition. The project started with us learning about some basic history and some basic metaphors. After getting a handle on what we were learning about, we all had to pick a revolution to study and use for our final presentation which I will talk more about later. I choose the Irish Revolution, also known as Easter Rising since it took place on Easter. I was put in a group with 7 other classmates, We all spent time studying the history of the revolution individually and then working together and sharing what we all learned. The final presentation at the exhibition was going to be a giant Rube Goldberg Machine, the size of a wall. We were all so exited and got straight to work. I remember there being the perfect balance between fun and work. I also think teamwork was something we all built on since we needed 7 people working hard together to build the machine. We had maybe a month to work on the machine before the exhibition and that was my favourite month of the entire school year just because of how much it fit my learning styling and how well my team and I worked together. We were a little bit behind my the time the exhibition was near but we all worked together to get it done just in time.
The exhibition itself went amazing, our machine surprisingly worked quite well and everyone did their part to make sure we had a nice stand for the parents to come and visit. We served food and each had a part to talk about when the machine was working. But, how does the machine connect to the Irish Revolution, Every person, had a section in the machine which was a metaphor for that section of the revolution timeline and for more information on that you can read my blog post on that project. So what did I take away from this project. I think the biggest skill I built on here, was teamwork, but there are many others such as, communication, leadership, consistency, construction, and so much more. Now that I’ve talked about my best and worst project, lets see how they compare to the expectations I set myself at the beginning of the year on my learning plan.
My Learning Plan
At the beginning of the school year everybody made a learning plan basically explaining your expectations for yourself for the rest of the school year. In my Learning Plan I talked a lot about my struggles and where I could grow on depending on the subject. There were categories including preparation, self-regulation, engagement, and more. I wanted to mainly improve on already existing skills but also create and start to master some new ones. I wanted to try and get proficient in all my classes which I think I achieved well. I am also think about my grade on what I think I should have got in my head not just on paper.
Conclusion
Over this year I have had plenty of ups and downs in my growth and learning level but in the end everything I have gone through this year has made me the learner I am today. And with that, thank you for reading my MPOL for grade 9.
Have you ever turned a stuffy into a mutated stuffy? I have, and for this project we did so much more. The project started by me bringing in 3 stuffies to school to take apart and sew together in a mutated way. I didn’t end up getting that far in school so I did the majority of sewing at home. The final frankenstuffie had the body of a bear and the head of a bird with a massive hat from a yeti on his head. After the stuffie was done I started working on a graphic organizer for my new stuffie. The graphic organizer helped me make a story for my stuffie in 7 parts. After that, I picked my favourite part from the graphic organizer and made a story board, describing that part in further detail. The story board acted out how my final film would go for my stuffie which I started working on shortly after. My film ended up being about 3 minutes long. After I was done my video all I had to do is put it in my blog post which you are reading right now, then link it to a QR code for people to scan.
What Did I Learn?
Throughout the project I didn’t find that much stuff difficult until I had to make the video. We went over a few techniques in class but for the most part I had no idea how to start or even what to do. After some experimenting with different apps I finally made a scene in flipa clip and practiced with the app a bit to try and figure it out. Figuring out what to do and making one scene already took up a lot of time and I knew I had to find a better way to make my video. Eventually I started to use stock images on keynote and then add my green screened characters to make smoother, more colourful scenes. I ended up using this for most of the film but also tried a few other techniques including puppet-pals and procreate to add some drawings. I even made a animated, cartoon version of my frankenstuffie to make it more interesting. One thing I find very cool is that as the video goes on, you can see my skills improve. When I finished my video, just before spring break I was so relived and I was also very proud of it. I was pretty nervous when I first heard we had to make a videoour frankenstuffie a few weeks earlier but then just like that, it was over and way easier then I thought. Not only was it easier, but I gained a tremendous amount of skills from the whole project, not just the video.
Where Was I The Strongest?
I’ve talked a lot about what I found difficult and how I grew from it as a learner but I haven’t talked about what I think I did well in personally. Despite the video being difficult for me, I found making the graphic organizer and storyboard to be quite a good fit for how I learn and I didn’t struggle much. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the video, I just mean it took a bit more effort to understand the process. With the graphic organizer and storyboard, I found it really interesting to create a story based completely of something I created, or more fundamentally, my imagination. It was like a creative outlet for me to just create a in depth, engaging, story.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I enjoyed this project a lot, It allowed me to be super creative in different ways and also problem solve. Some skills I learnt and grew on are animating, problem solving, drawing, telling a good story, and writing.
DI is a very challenging, problem solving, diverse project with multiple presentations and multiple schools participating. DI started back just before winter break and is still happening right now. This post will focus on what we did with a basic timeline but most importantly, what I learned and the skills I gained or built on.
The Process
The start of DI was just before winter break and not much happened, we only had a few classes of it and we were mostly focused on other projects. After winter break is when it really started to pick up, we had DI Classes everyday and we started to gain a understanding of what we had to do. We were all put into groups of 6 or 7 and those would be our groups for the rest of DI. At the beginning of January we watched some videos of DI groups that made it to nationals and Mr. Harris, our divisions teacher, started to explain some stuff about what we were doing. My group and a few others were all in the art category. We learned that we had to do a skit/play on a story we can make up but it has to include a reimagined art, visual element, kinetic art, and some more guidelines to follow. My group and I decided to make our play about a art museum robbery with a painting that is a reimagined artwork, a weapon that is kinetic and also some team choice elements that we all decided on together. Over the next few months we made a script and worked as much as we could in class but if I’m going to be honest, we didn’t get much done at all and before we knew it, the semester was over. With a change in classes, we had no in school time to work on it, which forced us to meet up outside of school. In our heads that sounded like a good idea but it was almost impossible to get everyone to show up and only had a few successful meetings. We ended up making the set on our last few days and we definitely waited to long. Before we knew it the 2 months were up and DI was just around the corner.
DI Day
For the actual day of DI we were all given a room to rehearse and keep our props and set. we had a few hours to rehearse and sort everything out but not only would we have to present our play we also would have to do a instant challenge at some point throughout the day. When our instant challenge came around we basically were just given a task but we are not actually allowed to talk about it until the project is over so I cant write about it in this post. After our instant challenge, we had about 1 hour more of rehearsals and then it was here, the big performance. We did our absolute best and ended up actually winning a award for the art category, we got 3rd place which I am proud about.
Back to the final performance, I am really proud and impressed by how fast we all worked together and made a entertaining final performance, maybe we didn’t get #1 but we still as much as we could in the few hours of rehearsal. For upcoming performances I am definitely gonna focus more on better planning and still getting work done, even if the whole group isn’t there, a effort can still be made by who does show up.
Conclusion
In conclusion, DI seemed really hard at first but ended up being quite easy in the end. With a team of 6 I would say we did very good on that final day because we had to work fast and come up with ideas while still making sure they give our play good quality. I learnt a lot of new skills during this project including time management, teamwork, communication, and leadership. Thank you for reading my Blog Post!
Louis Riel has been portrayed as a hero and a villain throughout time, what did we learn about Louis Riel over the past few weeks? After winter break we started learning about the history of Louis Riel and how people viewed him over time. In the first week we watched a lot of videos about him, including, History Minutes and War Stories. After learning about his death and how he helped the Metis we started to write a topic sentence for our paragraph. Shortly after writing the topic sentence I began to write my multi-paragraph composition. I finished myassignment shorty after. The multi-paragraph composition consisted of me talking about how people have viewed Louis Riel differently over time and a short history about how he is remembered today. Down below are all my drafts, feel free to read them.
Every year, PLP has a massive exhibition with food, parents, projects, and crazy ideas. This post will cover our most recent exhibition and reflect on how my group and I got there.
What did we learn?
This Project started all the way back in October, shortly after we went to Alberta. For our grade, this exhibition was mainly based around revolutions and crane Britons theory. Crane Briton’s theory states that there are 4 stages to a revolution. The first stage is the incubation stage, in this stage there can be protests and a central problem. The next stage is the moderate stage, in this stage the protests increase and groups may start to form while tensions between the leader rise. The third stage is the incubation stage, in this stage it is total chaos and war, this is the peak of the rebellion. The final stage is the recovery stage, in this stage the government will either take back control or the leaders of the rebellion will continue to fight until they gain power and eventually everything will settle. Below are my notes and timeline.
https://adults-poke-wxz.craft.me/spkTTsar4CLZ2q
Set up
After learning about that, we read animal farm which is a book about the French Revolution but instead of people there is animals. After the book reading we got to pick a revolution and get in groups for it. I chose Easter rising or in other words the Irish revolution. I ended up getting in a group with Jannik, Ryan, Finn, Matteo, Meghan, and Ailie. After having a week or so to study the revolution we all came together and started planning. We all had to make a Rube Goldberg machine which is basically a series of connects made up of dominos, marbles, blocks, etc. The machine had to metaphorically represent different sections of out revolution. We had about 2 weeks to build. Throughout the first week and a half we weren’t getting much done if I’m honest and I think we were just trying to follow a easier route. This worked well until we realized the exhibition was in a few days so we fully locked in and started building. I was very impressed with how fast our group worked and we had everything basically done when exhibition day came.
Along with the machine we also had to make a documentary to play along with our machine. In our documentary we talked a lot about the revolution and also showed our building process.
Exhibition Night
Every school year we only have two 12 hour days and this was one of them. The day started by just going to school normally and having a somewhat usual day except we spent our PLP classes setting up in the Library. When the 3 o clock bell rung everyone else left, but everyone in PLP still had 6 hours left in the school day. Directly after school we focused mainly on setting up our station and cleaning up the room we used to build. Shortly after that we had dinner which was white spot (yum). Directly after dinner we all went to our stations and the parents started coming in. We went through our machine about 10 times and it didn’t work every time but that was the be expected. Going through our machine for the first time felt like such a relief and reward, so much planning and work and it was all coming together a end result and I think we did a really good job. My job was to serve the food and drinks as well as present my connection which was the Irish flag splitting in half while a ball rolled through it. It was supposed to show the separation and hate between the 2 half’s of Ireland which initially sparked the revolution itself. During the night, I also had a job to host where I would just welcome the parents in the school and direct them which I did with Nikan.
Before I knew it the night was coming to an end and we had to clean up. One of the best feeling in school is fishing a multi month project and being proud of it.
Conclusion
In the end I think this project went very well for me and my group. I learnt a lot about time management and construction and was very proud of the final product
What does a look inside americas biggest steel company look like? On November 1st I spent a whole day with my mom in her office to see what her job is like.
The Day
The day started at 7:00am with her first meeting which I sadly couldn’t watch because it was a personal event with her boss but right after that I was in her office for the rest of the day. My mom works for DBM Global and has a home office, though often, she goes to their headquarters in Phoenix Arizona for more work. She is the VP of marketing and branding and has been working with the company for a few years now. Around noon she had another meeting with her good friend casey where they were discussing the launch of a new project. For the rest off the day I watched her, Interviewed her twice, and she showed me some of her companies projects in detail like Apple headquarters, SoFi Stadium etc. She finished her day of work at around 6:00pm so I spent the rest of the time getting B-Roll and editing. The editing carried on into the next few days because I really tried my best at producing this and I am very proud of the results and angles.
Editing
Editing this Video was a big deal for me. Throughout the day, I tried some very unique and interesting angles that I was very exited to put into the video. Going out of my comfort zone (filming wise) was a really good exercise and it made me a lot more comfortable filming and producing quality videos. Out of all the videos I’ve ever put together, this is by far my favourite and the one I am most proud of. To make this video I started by putting in all the interview clips into the edit and cut them up to shorten the video. Next, I added some background video and did a voiceover to talk more about her company. After that, I did some final touches like adding text, an intro, a conclusion, music, transitions, and some special effects. This editing process was a challenge but end the end it payed off. There were multiple points where I would get frustrated and want to quit but I kept going and loved the end result.
Conclusion
In conclusion, being able to spend a day in my moms office showed me how much effort she puts into her job and the teamwork and dedication that is involved. Exploring new camera angles and techniques in this format was really good and made me feel way more comfortable making films.
As I hide behind a log, with monster chasing me, lost, and I am wondering what will happen next.
I was absent for when my group made their first version of run I was still able to watch and understand the project once I got back. The first few days when I got back we were critiquing other groups run videos while they played in sync with the original.
Feedback to my own group:
“I think my group did an amazing job while I was away but I think the only piece of feedback I would give is to move the camera away from Sydney’s face a little bit because in some shots its so close its hard to tell what’s happening”.
After the feedback we had a few days to re-film and edit more. We went back into the forest and filmed some more running scenes because the other ones were somewhat shaky. The next day we also went back to the forest because we wanted to re-film some sounds. The filming conditions were better and the leaves were more crunchy. After that, we did some final editing back in the classroom and finished the video.
In conclusion I learnt a lot of different filming angles and strategies. Even though I was late for the project and wasn’t in any shots I still learnt a lot from watching them and others videos.
