This is an exciting blog because it is my final one of grade 8. To end off the year, all of PLP had our spring exhibition. In the exhibition, we were working with the grade 9s to show the different aspects of what makes a PLP learner. Every aspect had a different room with a group of people in it to show the aspect the best way possible. The aspect that our room was focusing on was outside the classroom work. For outside the classroom, we were focusing on the loon lake field study that we went on, as well as the advertisements the grade 8s did and the grade 9s showed some interviews that they did.
Our room was decorated to look like a forest, representing loon lake. We had the room setup so that when people walked over to it, they would get an introduction at the door. They would then walk through in a bit of a circle, while getting to check out all of the different things that we had setup. Once they walked out the door, they would get to the station that I was at, the rope ferry race.
This is it while we were still setting up
We decided to make a rope ferry race because at loon lake, there was a rope ferry that we would race against the time while setting new records. It was an amazing team building exercise that we had a lot of fun with, so we did our best to recreate it. We used skateboards tied to rope that me and some of the grade 9s were holding. The people would then pull themselves along and race to the finish line.
The other thing that I was doing was showing people QR codes to some of our DI videos. This was a more minor job that I was doing but I do thing that some people enjoyed being able to watch some of the videos of our hard work. I think that the QR codes would have attracted more attention if we had gotten all the grade 8 and 9 DI videos because we only really had a few.
In the end, I think that this spring exhibition was a fun way to wrap up the year. Our group did a good job with showing the PLP work that we do outside the classroom, with it still being fun. Since all the exhibitions are things that happen every year, I am looking forward to the next one.
Hi, and welcome to my final scimatics blog post of the year. This was a pretty fun project where the final result was a comic. The driving question for this project was “How do cells and diseases interact?” There were a few steps that we had to do to get to the point where we could write the comic. We had to do our normal mind map, we had a wanted poster on our disease of choice, we had a storyboard, and of course, we had the final comic.
As we normally do in scimatics, we had a mindmap to start of the project. In it we more or less just start writing about the subject, in this case it was how do cells and diseases interact. We write questions we have, thoughts/things we already know, and some examples.
The disease wanted poster was a chance to pick our disease. In the poster we had to research and draw our own interpretation of the disease that we would later go on to put into our comics. We then put that all onto a poster and did our best to make it feel like an authentic wanted poster, while still displaying the information. I decided to go with ebola because I knew that it’s a well known disease that I could get a lot of information on.
The storyboard was where we really had to start thinking about the comic. We started to plan it out but not in too much detail, while keeping in mind that we were going to add more on. We had to keep this in mind because we were supposed to keep the comic around 20ish panels long. We also had to include about 10 scientific words. I think that mine was not terrible but I did end up redoing a chunk of it.
To finish off this project, we had the comic. This had to be about 20 panels long, with the scientific words from before and it had to be in full colour. I do wish that I had spent a bit more time on the drawings because they ended up being not the best. My story was also a little bit boring but I couldn’t think of ways to make it less. Overall I do think that my comic did a good job showing how cells interact with disease.
So, How do cells and diseases interact? Well, there are a few different ways that they interact, but for the most part it is a bit of a battle. The disease needs to find host cells to reproduce, while the cells have to defend themselves and the body. I think that I did a pretty good job on this project. I could have used my class time better but I do think that I was able to use the vocabulary that we learned to make the comic pretty realistic as to what would happen.
Hi, and welcome to my tPOL. Before I begin, I must make the tPOL declaration. 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.
Halfway through the year, I did my mPOL. The mPOL was a reflection on my work throughout the first half of the year, while the tPOL is me explaining why I am ready to move onto grade 9. Throughout my tPOL, I’m going to be going through my different PLP classes this semester, scimatics and humanities, and pulling some examples from them to show why I should move onto grade 9.
Humanities
Humanities is a subject that isn’t really my strong suit. I tend to especially struggle with history, which wasn’t the best since we had all of our projects that were almost entirely based around history. The projects that we had for humanities this semester were The Renaissance, Argh Matey, and New Beginnings. All of these projects had different thing that went good or bad with them, or even just had things that I FAILed in.
Out of these projects, I think that my FAILs are the most important things that happened. If you didn’t already know, in PLP FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. The reason that my FAILs are important is because mistakes can help you learn. If you do something wrong or poorly, you can take criticism and learn how to improve it. I feel that taking, and using, criticism is something that I do very well. The best example of me FAILing in these projects is the seycove advertisement that we did at the start of the New Beginnings. It was something that we were doing to see what we remembered from past projects about photography, editing, and layout. In my first attempt at it, I forgot about all of the things that I had learned in the past, making it look terrible. I took some feedback from some of my classmates and my teachers then started making changes. The feedback that I was given, allowed me to make my second version much better.
The other humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the argh matey project. This project had good examples of things that I did good in and things that I could have done better. The main thing that I think I really did good with in this project was getting things done efficiently. I feel that all my class time was used very well and, when we were filming at cates park, I was able to finish the project. The thing that I definitely could have improved on was my story for it. I had a bit of trouble with making the story enjoyable and have all the necessary information. I do think that I could have made my story a bit better if I had put a little more time into the actual writing of it and not all my time into the research.
Scimatics
For this semester, with scimatics being a lot more focused on the science aspect of it all, I had to push myself a bit more then normal. The reason that I say this is because I tend to understand math a bit more then I do science, but I do think that I was able to still do a pretty good job understanding the science this time around. The projects that I had for scimatics this semester were Chemistry Coding, Ultimate Design Challenge, and Comic Cells.
Out of these three projects, the Ultimate Design Challenge was the only one that was mainly math, it was also the one that I think I did the best in. A big part of the final result of this project, the presentation that we gave to the class about our design, was the calculations. For most of the shapes, we were given the formulas for surface area and volume, or we could just look them up, but I changed myself by doing shapes that didn’t really have a set formula, meaning that I had to figure them out. It was a fairly hard and tedious process, with a few FAIL moments, but I was able to do it in the end. I think that the whole process of that showed that I am a very persistent, and stubborn, person that will always do my best to follow through with things that I’ve committed to, in school and personally.
The Chemistry Coding project is the last scimatics project that I’m going to talk about because I feel that it really showed who I am as a learner. The first reason that I say this is because, like I was saying with the Ultimate Design Challenge project, I was really trying to challenge myself and see it through. We had to code a game in this project, and I was trying to do something a bit more complex, so I was using tutorials and videos and even other students to help me with making it work. It also definitely showed my ability to take and use feedback. I was continuously making changes and getting feedback/ideas from others.
In the end, I have really learned a lot about myself as a learner this past year. I think that, in this semester especially, I’ve really started shaping into the learner that I want to be. I do still think that there are things that I need to change if I really want to become that learner. The biggest change I’d need to make being my ability to use time more efficiently because, I know I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I always struggle with procrastinating and staying on topic, making my work not always as good as I want it to be. With that said, I do think that I did better with that every once in a while and that, with time, I can become a lot better with it.
Welcome to another blog! This project was an important one because it is my last humanities project of the year. In this project we focused on New France and photography. There were a few main things that we had to do in this project, like photography practice/editing practice, an advertisement for seycove, research, a trade simulation, and of course the final project. This was all to answer the driving question, “What did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved”.
The first thing that we had to do in this project was make an ad for seycove. This was to see what we remembered about photography, editing, and layout. I worked with Luca and Francis to make a first draft that didn’t turnout at all how we hoped. We then all went away and came back with our own versions of the ad. I think that our individual ads turned out a lot better, mainly because we had more time then what we had with the group ad.
The next step for this project was to practice our photography skills. For this we went on a nature walk and we would stop every once in a while to take some pictures. This definitely helped with reminding me on past things that we learned about photography, such as perspective, rule of thirds, and leading lines.
This was one project that required a bit more research then some of the other ones. For the main part of the research, I was focusing on the thing that I was going to be doing the final project on, the Coureurs des Bois. I had three different sources, each with a few different notes from that source. In addition to that, I also took some other notes on why first peoples traded with newcomers.
The next thing in this project was the most fun, it was a trade simulation. In this, the class was divided into different groups that were present in the time of the fur trade. I was part of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Every group was given different things that they would have traded, we were given things like guns, gunpowder, shoes, and string, and we were told to trade. For every round of trading, we would trade with a different group and there would be a different scenario that we would have to be aware of.
To finish this project off, we had our final project. Originally, the final project was going to be some kind of ad for New France, but it was later changed to be two New France visuals on a certain part of New France. The thing that I decided to focus on for this was the Coureurs des Bois. As you can see in my New France visuals at the start, there is a lot off different thing happening, but there is a reason for everything. In the first image, the words are new trade. The reason that I put this in is because the promise of new trade and riches was the reason for a lot of the Coureurs des Bois. Another thing that I put in this image was a beaver. The beaver was the thing that the Coureurs des Bois would mainly trade because of the value of the beaver fur back then. Beaver fur was in very high demand back then. The hut in the background is a trading post/indigenous home. The Coureurs des Bois would travel to different trading posts to trade with the indigenous people. I also put in a person running with a log on his back. This is to represent the Coureurs des Bois because Coureurs des Bois translates to wood runner. In the second image it says outlawed. This because it became a crime to be a Coureurs des Bois. It got outlawed because the people in charge didn’t want too many people leaving the settlements, especially if they weren’t licensed traders. The images of the person in handcuffs and the jail that replaced the trading post also show the Coureurs des Bois becoming outlawed. People would get arrested if they were caught. It also kind of represents how how some of the Coureurs des Bois had to do this to pay off debt, mainly to merchants. The other thing in this image is the crossed out beaver. This is because the Coureurs des Bois helped with the beaver shortages. All European traders/Coureurs des Bois contributed to this because they were just trying to meet the high demand back home.
So, what did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved? Well, the establishment of New France had various effects. One of the bigger effects it had was the disease that the Europeans brought with them. If they hadn’t given the disease to the indigenous peoples, killing off almost all of them, I feel that indigenous culture would be a bigger part of our lives. Another thing that happened with the establishment of New France is the new trade that was established. The trade allowed things that were not from certain places to get there, with some places going on to have that food as a staple in their everyday lives. The thing that was traded the most, and had the most impact was the beaver. Beaver fur became must have in Europe for things like fashion. Because of the rise in demand, the beaver was hunted almost to extinction in “The New World”. In the end, there were many things that the establishment of New France meant for the people involved, both good and bad.
