The Penguin Hideout – James’ Blog

Why does the World need more Canada?

November 8, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Greeting my friends, we’re back at school; we just finished our first project, and you know what that means. It’s time for a blog post!

In this post, I’ll guide you though how diversity in the Canadian military improves the effectiveness of the army that keeps us here in Canada safe, and how we managed to express what we learnt in this project. So if your interested, keep reading!

This was a very big project, even spanning over two subjects! yes, you heard that right, this was the first joint project between Humanities and Maker and think it actually worked really well, but more on that later. The driving question we were trying to answer first this project was ‘Why does the world need more “Canada”?’

We started by learning about:

Globalization: The process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
How canada works towards peace & protects itself: We learned a bit about Canada’s military and peacekeeping operations, as well as all of the the alliances it’s in.
Diversity in canada: …and how it benefits all Canadians
Canadian Literature: how to analyze it and how it showcases Canadian identity

We were also tasked with watching the national every day, a Canadian news network to keep ourselves informed and then we were tasked with choosing one important thing that just happened or is happening in the world and lead a discussion about it. Here was what I found:

Thinking Thursday.pdf

I think that my discussion went rather well, and It felt good to have a meaningful talk about some of the awful things going on in the world right now.

At the same time, in maker we were learning how to create a good podcast, and how to structure a story. We worked on how to edit audio clips, record clear audio, create music for a podcast and how to create a good podcast cover art.

My intro music:

My cover art (I made two versions):

Then, in humanities we chose a topic to write our final essay on. After a bit of brainstorming I decided to write my essay on diversity in the Canadian military and how it increases effectiveness within the Canadian armed forces.

First I had to create a thesis, and this went though many different iterations, and was probably one of the hardest parts of this entire project. Here were some of my drafts:

Thesis brainstorm.pdf

Then it was time for research. A lot of research. we even did an in class lesson on how to find reliable sources which I did actually find very useful. After I had my sources, It was time to begin writing my essay. I went though many different versions and iterations of my essay, changing grammar, spacing, spelling, formatting, and even entire sections or paragraphs. It was lot of work, and if we did it again I would definitely change how I wrote some of my initial drafts. I think it was a very good experience though, as I learned how to find sources hat supported my thesis which I think will be very important for me going in to higher grades. Currently I don’t have access to some of my earlier versions, but I will update my blog when I do. In the meantime here was one of my first drafts:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military.pdf

my next draft, now with proper formatting:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military .pdf

And with some polishing touches and final edits:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military v5.pdf

And then it was done! It was a lot of work but I was happy with my end product. It did really help me understand what it meant to be Canadian and what Canadian identity is. Then we began adapting our script to fit our podcast, first we put it into the three act structure:

And then we recorded our podcast! there was a lot of challenges to overcome, from microphone issues or speaking clearly to making it engaging, but I felt in control throughout the whole process and was pleased with my final result:

Or if you don’t have Spotify:

I was very with how it turned out, even if did take me an hour to figure out how to move the audio clips from my computer to my iPad.

I do actually feel that I learned a lot of valuable things throughout the course of this project such as how how to find evidence to support my claims, how to write a thesis, and how to edit a podcast as I talked about previously. Though our literature studies I also learned what Canadian identity is, and how a collective identity is created.

So now after all that work, why do I think the world needs more Canada? Well, I think that Canada sets a good example for the world in many things, and that if the rest of the world did things more like Canada, the world would be a better place.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you also learned something or found this interesting, and I hope to see you again! Bye! 👋

Atomic Habits

November 7, 2024 / James / 1 Comment

Why did I do 12 hours of 3-d modelling for a careers class? It’s a mystery.

…unless you read this spectuaroulous blog post!

        [spec-tac-ur-arol-us] = spectacular + marvellous

Hello! it’s once again me! this time, we going to be taking a look at the first PGP project of this year: Atomic habits! Our driving question for this project was “How can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond?”

Centred around the self-improvement book ‘Atomic habits’ written by the author James Clear, we explored his strategies for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. We used many methods from his book to do this, but everything was centered around four main rules.

Make it obvious
Make it attractive
Make it easy
Make it satisfying

These were the rules we learned for creating good habits, but I also tried to implement throughout the rest of this project as I will touch on later. While reading the book we also had some tests just on the content of the book. Yes, you read that right, paper! every PLP kids worst fear.

We also did a little bit of work on who we want to be and our learning intentions for this year. Then we created our artifact, which was something we came up with and created that showcased what we learnt in the book and how we were going to implement it into our lives.

I decided to create a slightly odd marble run/habit tracker hybrid that used marbles to track your progress on your to-do’s. Here is the final 3-d model:

My artifact represents a couple things from the book. It was created using design principles that were the same as those for forming a habit in the book: easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying. It also uses the paperclip method (A visual method to see completed work) of a very visible indication of what has been done and what needs doing. It can/will help me manage my time and have a clear visual indicator of my work as talked about in the book as well as a few other things:

Reducing friction
Immediate reward for good actions
Designing my environment for success

It was also very fun to design and went though many different iteration of each part. Revision as always.

Concept design:

And the finished product!

I also have a time-lapse of me designing a single part. (half an hour real time for reference):

I think that this project was very helpful for me, as it did help me develop some methods for forming good habits, but it also taught me about my own mindset and how I work much better when working on something I find fun or care about. I do genuinely feel more competent and in control after this project, so thanks to the teachers for that.

As for answering out driving question for this project: Small changes in my habits can enable me to live a better, more controlled life where I am organized and in control this year and beyond.

Thank you very much for reading as always. Goodbye. *BWweDeloOop

TPOL 2024

June 20, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Hello, and once again welcome to (I need a better intro, suggestions welcome) my final post of Grade 9! It’s crazy that a year can go by this fast, and yet this slow. Here were some of my thoughts on this year.

This year I learned a lot, both about academics and about myself and my needs, and that is what I want to show with this post, where I will highlight what I did well this year, areas for growth, and how I think I did and what needs to be improved on some success behaviours from this year.

I had a few really big achievements this year and a lot of things and techniques that I’ve learned as well, here is what I thought I did well this year.

Because of our overall theme; storytelling throughout the moving image, that is what I’m going to focus on for this section. I think the project that I learnt the most from this year was our field school in Alberta which taught me a lot about about the real world and problem solving. In terms of filmmaking, the most meaningful projects were running a remake which helped me improve my revision skills by remaking our video, and then this idea of revision was improved upon with our thriller in Thrill Us, where we expanded upon our filmmaking and storytelling skills while also having fun with friends.

My thriller video made with my friends

I think that my best project for storytelling was Frankenstuffies, where the entire project was based off of our world building and storytelling skills. Also in the story creation department was WWI-Con, which I think was one of my best projects this year, and one that accurately represents my growth and improvement, with meaningful research and planning, good end result, and interesting presentation.

My comic book:

These are some other things I felt that I did well this year:

Destination Imagination: This really tested my teamwork skills, where I was trying to manage our entire group and create our final product. It was also great for my presentation and public speaking skills, and I was incredibly happy with our first place finish
Let’s get Riel: this one was really fun i felt like it was executed really well, both on the teacher’s side, and also on mine. I enjoyed the writing and was well organized and all that made the project very manageable for me.

Me and my group *very* happy after winning our category

And I think that these are some areas for my growth as a learner next year at school and in life:

Using correct tools: Using the best tool for the job, unlike using superimpose for my advertisement in grade 8, and not using comic life in grade 9 / using the tools provided to me.
Better organization: Having a spot for notes & work so nothing is lost, and no time is wasted trying to just find my work, which I feel like will help me in general with all the work we I will be doing in grade 10.
Focus in and out of class: Staying on task, but also taking breaks to maintain productivity. I struggle with this a lot sometimes, and finding out how I focus best would be super useful to me, and something I will be working on.
Teamwork: Although most of my group projects this year worked out well enough in terms of a final product, most things other than that didn’t really work for me this year, such as D.I. and Metaphor Machines, part of this was who was in the group, but I will also try not to take lead or control of a group as much and make sure everyone plays to their strengths.

Making these changes to my routine and work will help me be able to produce quality work not just throughout next year, but also the years to come after.

And here are the three success behaviours that I want to focus on:

Agency -> Goals and self-assessing: I think that this is something that is important to work on, because setting meaningful, realistic goals will be really useful to me all though life, and being able to look at and critique my own work in the name of improving it, is in general a really important skill. Over the summer, I will set three goals for myself that will be realistic and related to my hobbies, and check in on my own progress over the break.
Outside school: I do have a lot of extracurricular activities like piano, soccer, band, and my hobbies, and it can be hard to keep track of everything and maintain balance, but I think I did okay on this, but with room for improvement.
Balance: This plays into the previous section, and in terms of balance, usually it’s not too big of an issue for me, but it can become an issue when band concerts and exhibitions are close to each other, and I think that I way that I can improve this balance in general, is when I have a lot of downtime, starting or preparing something that will make the school element easier in the future. This could be starting a blog post, or organizing something in advance.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good year, and I’ve learned a lot, and had good times with with my friends. Thanks to everyone who helped me get though this year!

See ya’ next (school) year! Till then; bye! 👋

The War to End All Comics! Wait… That’s not right

How did one Canadian military engineer kill three men, and capture twelve more in WWI, and how did I turn it into a graphic novel? Well, you’ll just have to read the post! Easy as that.

Hello once again to another exciting, riveting, super-fantabulous blog post coming soon to a city near you! This time we were learning about the bad, the ugly, and the uglier of WWI and its impacts on the world. So, without further ado, let’s jump into WWI.

Our driving question for this project was: How can I create a graphic novel that accurately depicts an event from WWI?

This project’s title was: “WWI Con – The Great War Graphically told”, and it was about telling the story of the Great War though a graphic novel. This plays into our everlasting theme of storytelling, also teaching us about the importance and impact of the Great War, our processing skills; understanding of narrative structures, analysis of a historical event, and visual art production. We knew from the start that we were going to be making a comic book for this project, which seemed daunting but also kind of fun.

We began this project with research, as we often do, looking into primary sources, big ideas, and fun facts alike to gain an understanding of the events that transpired in the Great War with a focus on Canada and its contributions. This research included a novel study of the graphic novel World War One by Alain Cowsill and Lalit Kumar Sharma where we learned about the causes and realities of WWI, and also gained inspiration for our own comics. We also completed a study of the amazing film, 1917; a brilliant (in my opinion) story told in a unique, nonstop format that taught us about the realities of WWI and offered an interesting perspective on the art of storytelling.

World War One: The Great War graphically told

1917 (movie)

We then moved on to thinking about our final product, which for this project was going to be in the form of a 20 panel minimum short graphic novel. First, we learned about a lot of different comic making techniques, which are shown below, spanning from how to space and format our panels, to what should actually be inside them and how to make them feel alive and be engaging. My chosen method for creating this comic was tracing primary source images / photos from the time; this is what most people in my class did, but I have major respect for those that managed to freehand the entire thing.

However, creating our comic didn’t just consist of drawing the actual panels, but included a lot of research, topic selection and storyboarding before we could even begin to draw our story. Originally, I wanted my story to be about the air force somehow, or one of the Canadian Flying aces, but it turned out that a lot of people wanted to work on this topic, so I made a shift to ‘Sappers’ as my topic. Sappers are military engineers, soldiers who bolster their country’s or “side’s” movement and impede the enemy’s; building or repairing bridges, planting or removing mines and digging trenches were all included in their duties along with other things. I decided to focus on a real person, Coulson Mitchell. He really was an amazing man, being the only Canadian sapper to earn the Victoria Cross in WWI. If you want to see what he earned it for, you’ll have to wait until the comic later in the post. After pouring through countless sites trying to piece together as much as I could of his life, and the events I knew I was going to showcase in my comic, it was time to get to storyboarding! Below is my initial storyboard:

Then I began to create the actual comic; laying out every panel, finding primary source imagery to fit the scene, applying the research I did, tracing and colouring, and then adding extra effects like narrator’s blocks and speech bubbles to form my story. Here is a video of part of the creation.

On a normal project, this would be where we would be done, but this was no ordinary project, as we now had to present our final product in our PLP Spring Exhibition 2024. Now this exhibition felt different from others in the past because we didn’t have very much physical stuff to show unlike other exhibitions, and so somehow I felt less stressed leading up to it because we didn’t really have much to show. Or maybe it’s just getting less stressful, I don’t really know. But either way, setup was as chaotic as ever with misprinted comics (this happened twice!), a failing trench , and few decorations. We resorted to bringing in ivy, rocks, and wood from the forest to make everything look nicer, along with some paper from the art room used as a tablecloth. Big thanks to anyone who stopped by to see my comic, “Coulson Mitchell”, and an even bigger thanks to those who asked me some good questions about him and the creation of the comic. I won’t keep you waiting any longer; here is the finished comic:

So now you know what I did, but what did I learn?

I felt that within this project I deepened my understanding for many topics, such as:

– Planning: all the work that went into my storyboard.
– Research: using good sources for accurate information.
– Drawing/Storytelling: managing to tell a story throughout my comic book, and the actual creation of my panels and their contents within the book.
– Presenting: all of the work that went into showcasing my comic book.

All of this along with many other assorted skills were improved upon within my time working on this project. If I did it again, what would I change? I think a few things that could have been improved are:

– Preparation: being a bit more ready for the exhibition would have saved me a lot of stress on the day
– App selection: there is a better app I could have drawn my comic in which might have saved me some time, and if I had used Comic Life 3 (an app for comic creation), my text blocks and bubbles might have looked a lot better and made the story easier to read
– Writing: I meant to re-visit my script for the comic book at some point after the comic book, so I felt like the dialogue within the book was lacking, not to mention some grammar/spelling errors.

And so, to answer the driving question: We can create a graphic novel that accurately depicts an event from WWI by creating an engaging story though meticulous research, well formatted and written dialogue, quality visuals, and reciting and interesting storytelling.

Overall, I actually had a lot of fun with this project, and I would put in my top three projects for this year. I learnt a lot, but I’m still glad that I won’t have to write another one to these for around three months. See you after summer! 🏖️

For The Nation! -alism

May 6, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Creating a YouTube video for school sounds kinda boring right? You need to do editing, shooting, and scripting, but I’m here to tell you how it actually be kind of fun!

Hello and welcome once again, to the greatest blog post in the entirety of the galaxy! Maybe. This project, “In the name of Nationalism”, was actually kind of fun to work on, and I learned a lot of important information about Canadian history, and how nations are formed. Without further delay, let’s get into nationalism!

Our driving question for this roject was: How has nationalism influenced shaped global structure.

We had to do a lot of research in order to be able to create an accurate, well sourced, and informative video. We practiced source work for a while, and we were taught how to make a good search and find reliable information. Afterwards we created our video from our information.

We had to create a script, determine the cause and consequence of certain events, and shoot a video! Because I was going to feature in my video, I needed a set, so unscrewed the second section of my desk, and duct-taped it onto the other side of the desk, so I could be in between it and the wall for the video. It ended up looking good though. Then the editing was a nightmare, but after a few long nights, it was complete:

I was actually really happy with the end result. I think is one of my best final products in a project to date.

I With every project that goes by, I find myself surprised at how easy it is to use things, tools, strategies, that I have used before and practiced. If I need an animation, I know exactly where to go, and how to do it, and it looks much better than anything I ever made in grade 8.

I have gained a lot of skills thought out this project, and I feel more competent then ever. I have better methods, and work habits than I used to, and I think that shows in my work, even though I’m putting a similar amount of effort into each one. I think I know how I could have done better on this video, and I can use those ideas in the next project.

To answer the driving question: Nationalism has shaped global structure by fostering a sense of common national unity within countries and nation-states, and bring people together to fight for a common goal, but can also cause harmful division and conflict.

Overall, I learned a lot of important skills I can use to become a better learner, and created a great end product that I’m proud of.

Thank you for taking some time to read this, and I hope you’ll continue reading future posts. Have a good day!

The World of Speedcubing – Richmond Rumble 2024

April 18, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

At the surface layer, speedcubing is solving a Rubik’s cube very fast. Many people think to do this, you need to be extremely smart, skilled, and dextrous. This is not the case; it’s actually a mix of pattern recognition, memory, and practice. Mainly practice. In this post I’ll tell you about how speedcubing works, a little bit of its history, and my latest competition.

The Rubik’s cube was invented by Erno Rubik born July 13, 1944 in Hungary. During his time as a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest, Hungary, he developed a prototype cube as an aid to teach group theory, as the cube did, and still does have over 43 quintillion possible states. “In late 1977 Konsumex, Hungary’s state trading company, began marketing it. By 1980 Rubik’s Cube was marketed throughout the world, and over 100 million authorized units, with an estimated 50 million unauthorized imitations, were sold” (source).

Erno Rubik (source)

Now that this seemingly simple, but actually very complex toy was available worldwide, many people had one, but few could solve it. It even took Erno Rubik a month to solve for the first time! But over time, methods were developed, and guides published, and eventually the first cubing competitions were held on March 1981 and on June 5, 1982 by Guinness World Records, and the first world championship was held in Budapest, Hungary where American Minh Thai won with a single solve time of 22.95 seconds and this record is generally considered as the First World Record of the Rubik’s Cube (Source).

Unfortunately, the next competition was not held until 2003. When it happened, it was in Canada, after the founding of the WCA (world cubing association). The world record solve continued was broken over and over again into present day, with Max Park’s 3.13 solve at Pride at Long Beach 2023. But the Rubik’s Cube, known as the 3×3 in the cubing community, while being very reliable, was not very fast, this has lead to many other speed cubes being created, as well as many other events such as the 4×4 – 7×7, Skewb, Clock, 3×3 One-Handed, Megaminx, and Square-1.

I have competed in four competitions, but this is about my most recent: Richmond Rumble 2024. It went rather well, with the first event being 3×3; My best time was a 21.87, with an average of 24.90, which were both personal records (best time in competition). I also did well in 2×2, with a 6.78 single, and and 7.77 average.

I did not make cutoff for 4×4, as it was very hard to make. My best time was a 1:49.86. I had a 43.17 single, and 56.72 adverage for 3×3 One-Handed. For the next cubing blog about my competition next month, I will go into more detail about how the competition works, and the methods used to solve the various cubes!

I hope you enjoyed!

It’s time for mPOLs!

April 9, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again, time for mPOLs! There has is a lot of things to reflect on so far this year, and many opportunities for growth so guess what? I’m going to tell you about them, because that’s kinda the point of mPOL’s. Welcome to another post:

During this school year, I have faced many challenges, broken many barriers, and learnt. A lot. I’m here to tell you what exactly that I have learned, and what I can and will improve upon through the rest of this school year.

I’m going to start by talking about some of my strengths and success so far this year. I think that one of my best projects was my thriller that was created in our Thrill Us project!

It was definitely an improvement in quality from my Run! Remakes:

I think these projects really drilled the concept of revision into me, and I learnt a lot about videography and storytelling. We also had to create a storyboard:

It was a very fun project, and probably my favourite so far this year:

We will, we will, thrill you, bum-bum, thrill you, bum-bum. We will…

Another project that I think I grew a lot from was Metaphor Machines. It was a hard project that required a lot of group work and design skills. In the end, we had a relatively good end product for exhibition, but it wasn’t great. However many of the skills that I learnt and practiced in this project also transferred into Destination Imagination later on.

In D.I. I had to many things to play my part, and try to produce the best solution out of my team. Because of expanding my skills in earlier projects, I was able to create a solution in time for the first tournament, and then using the revision skills that PLP has taught me to upgrade our solution, and place first in the next tournament. I was really proud of our group solution, and how we preformed, and we were rewarded with wins in both the team challenge and the the instant challenge, and I think this is a great example of my growth as a learner so far this year.

I was also proud of my work in the “Rise of the Frankenstuffies” project, and the video created as our final product. I had a good work ethic, and produced a better result than I have on some other projects. I enjoyed working on the stop motion aspect, as this is something I enjoy, and have past experience with.

These skills were also aided and used in science this year for projects such as “Seeing Double” and “chemHistory”

Science makes things go boom

Moving forward in this school year, I will try to improve on a few things:

I want to improve my organisation, and work ethic. I touched on this in my learning plan for this year, when I said that I wanted to “Work on distraction management more”. I also wants to speak up in class more, and work on building a growth mindset.

I will make revisions to my learning plan, so I have a plan to achieve the goals above, and I will also take steps going forward to make these changes such as:

Organizing my notes and work in craft
Managing my time by using to-dos and time blocking
Sharing my ideas with the class more by working on confidence
Using methods such as the pommodoro timer to stay on task when doing homework

I hope that you enjoyed reading about my plan for growth as a learner for the rest of this school year.

D.I. Part 1

March 15, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Why did I end up putting a staple into my hand for school (It wasn’t intentional)? Welcome to a new project! Destination imagination 2023-2024.

We had to complete the technical challenge: To create a pinball machine with 3 modules, and complete a pinball round, which also presenting a story about a hero’s journey. It took a long time and we struggled a lot with some parts of the team dynamic, but after a lot of brainstorming and work, we managed to get our machine ready for the first competition. However I did end up accidentally stalling my hand with a mechanical staple gun shooting industrial staples. Yay. 4 hours in the ER.

I can’t share details of our machines, because there will be another competition soon. It ended up going okay and some stuff broke, but it mostly worked and we placed 3rd in our category. I will provide more of a complete reflection after the next competition. Thanks to the team members who helped when then were needed.

Rise of the one and only Bildat!

March 14, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Now that may seem like an absurd title, and I am here to tell you now, it is! Good guess. So if you would like to figure out stuffed animals relate to World War I, read on!

This project was called Rise of the Frankenstuffies, focused on media creation with an element of World War I. Some of the competencies we focused on were communication and thinking. The driving question was “How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience?” We began by creating our Frankenstuffie, which was kind of fun.

A video showcasing the creation of my frankenstuffie: Bildat.

We also learned a load about sentence structure and lots of other ways to improve our writing. This included the hero’s journey; a way to structure adventure stories, that is present in many popular movies and books

We also conducted a novel study on the book “Leviathan”, a story about an alternate version of World War I with giant mechs and genetically engineered creatures which improved our writing and story-telling skills, and gave us inspiration for our frankenstuffie.

We then did a lot of initial character development, plot outlining, and we also devoloped the theme statements of our story.

I won’t give you the theme now, because of something later in the post. You’ll see.

For our next section of the project, we created our story frame, deciding on what part of our story we would focus on.

After this we wrote our story, which was hard, but I learnt a load about writing and editing a story that I can implement going forwards. Here was my story:

click here for my story:

A flash of light. A crash of thunder; it’s this dream again. The one where it all began. It starts the same every time, that night all those years ago, when they took me. They picked me up right off the side street and took me back to them; so many of them. I don’t know how long I was there, maybe a day, maybe a year. I was sedated most of the time; they didn’t want me awake. I didn’t want them to keep me awake with what they were doing to my body. Every time I woke up, I had a new limb, body, or ear, losing my identity. And it wasn’t just me; there were others too, undergoing the same modifications as me. The pain I felt was excruciating. The dream ends, fading to black.

As I awake, I take in my surroundings, thinking for one awful second that I’m back in the lab, but soon I come to my senses and realize that I am safe in my home. A rush of pride accompanies that thought as I remember that I alone can feel such a sense of pride in the animal kingdom. Something they did to me in the lab must have enhanced my feelings and thoughts; at least, that is my theory. But looking around what I’ve built makes me forget all that for a second as I take in the sections of dirt I burrowed out for rooms, the bed with its moss, and the window made out of that old tire I found. It’s not much, but it’s mine. But then my ears jump up as I hear a small sound coming from the door. No one has found this place before. With a wave of fear, I realize I don’t know what this is, and I can’t help wondering if the lab has found me.

I push myself against the wall, trying to hide from whatever is coming as I hear the steps coming closer. I can’t take it anymore. I call, “Who goes there?” in the most intimidating voice I can muster. A small voice calls back to me, “It’s me, June.” I feel a sense of relief. June is a kindly old rabbit and is the one animal in these parts who doesn’t run away at the mere sight of me. All animals can talk to each other, of course, except the humans, who made their own languages instead of following those laid out by nature. June calls again: “I just wanted to make sure you’re still okay.” I respond with, “Of course I am; why wouldn’t I be?”. “Maybe the fact that you escaped from a bunch of scientists playing mix and match with your body a few months ago? “I thought we said we didn’t talk about the lab,” I respond. “Either way, I have some news for you.” I am confused; there is no news in these parts. `Everything is almost unchanging, so I ask, “What news?”. “A friend of mine found the lab.”

When I had escaped the lab; finally able to break out of my cage, I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I possibly could, just to get away from there, but this meant that I had no clue where the lab actually was. “It’s south of here, maybe 20 kilometres .” “Why is that important?” I ask, “I don’t want to go back there!”. “But the others are there, those like you.” June replied. She’s right, I can’t just give up on them, but I don’t want to leave my life that I’ve built here. “Do I have to help them? How could I even help?”. “We’ll go together; we have to help them! It’s only a matter of time before others find out, and they will be killed or experimented on!” I realize she’s right, and I have no choice. I need to help them; they are still scared like I was. Like I am. “You’re right,” I admit. “We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow.”

The next day, after packing up my few belongings, we set off to the south. I didn’t want to leave my life here, but I consoled myself with the fact that this wasn’t permanent and that there were people who needed my help. The next week or so was a blur, a mix of hard walking, long stretches with no food or shelter, and heat. We managed to cope though, hiding in garbage bins, burrows, and whatever else we could find. We also managed to find food and water, although sometimes it was difficult, and we had to get dangerously close to humans. It’s fine if someone sees June, but if I’m spotted, it will not end well. After another long day of walking, June looked into the distance and said, “We’re here. I see the lab.”

The lab wasn’t trying to hide; it reached up into the sky, was around 4 stories, had large windows, and was built in a very modern style. The main entrance was down on the right of the building, but there were always humans going through the large double doors. “We can’t go in that way; there are too many humans,” I remark. June responds by saying, “Of course not, that’s why we’re going through there.” She points with her snout towards a small vent on the left side of the building. “Will that get us to the others?” I ask. “Who knows? We don’t even know where they are,” she responds. “It’ll have to do.” We sneak closer to the vent, keeping low and out of sight. We only just managed to avoid being seen once. Eventually after a few nerve racking minutes, we managed to make it to the vent. I used my paws and teeth to break through, and just like that, we were in.

Sneaking through the vents was challenging, and we had to be careful about making too much noise. The vents were solid metal, so easily held our weight, but it was very uncomfortable to move. June had some trouble with the metal surface, as it made it hard for her to hop along. We went slowly, navigating gaps, inclines, and finding routes around dangerous areas like the fans. At every grate we saw we looked through the slates and observed the room inside, moving on when we ruled the room out as where they were holding the others.

After an hour or two of this endless searching, June calls me over and says, “Hey, I think I found it!”. “Really?” I ask. “Yeah, I think so. Come have a look.” I walk over to the vent where June is and look through. I see a dark room with metal cages all along the wall and the sound of animals. “I think you’re right, but how do we get down?” I query. “We’ll have to jump,” is her response. I don’t want to jump all the way down, but I see no other way, so reluctantly, I break the vent and then take a few breaths. With a large leap, I jump down, feeling the air push past my body, and then feel a large impact as I hit the ground. I wait for June to come down and then immediately start breaking the locks on the cages, which is easy from outside. I’m so scared to be back in this place that I forget to even look at the creatures trapped inside. I turn my head now to look, and what I see scares me.

They are all me; every single one of us identical. Same fox face, dog body and paws; tail and ears of who knows what. I thought they had created me as an experiment, but apparently I was the first of a new species. This revelation shakes me to my core. This means that I am not unique. I really don’t know what to think of this, and I just stand there gaping until one of them asks me, “Who are you?” My only response is, “I’m one of you; I’m here to rescue you.” “Really? I didn’t think we would ever get out of here,” was the response from another of the others. Another offers a question, “What are we?” I say, “That doesn’t matter now; we need to get out of here before someone sees us. Does anyone know a way out? We can’t get back up to the vent.” June pipes in, saying, “I think I hear someone,” and right on cue, five scientists dressed in lab coats and googles burst through the front doors of the room.

Initially I was scared, but then I remembered the odds. There were around thirty of us, and five of them. I led the charge towards them as the scientists slowly approached towards us. It was over in a blur, a flurry of claws and jaws scraping over our attackers, leaving them battered and bruised as we raced for the still-open doors. I led the charge, hitting at least two of the scientists, and then waiting for June until I went through the doors. We all ran together, finding our way out of the building and meeting no resistance, until we made our way out of the giant double doors and into the distance. Towards home. A week later, after long stretches of travelling and figuring out who we were with the others, I saw a familiar clearing in the distance and bolted towards my home.

A month later, I found myself in the middle of a town, but this wasn’t a normal human town. This was our town. Everyone has a house now that they built themselves with help from others; their own sense of pride to help them recover like I did. We made wise old June our mayor, leading us in construction and decisions, and as the sun set that day, I felt as happy as I ever have.

After this we had to transpose it into a video! We started by creating a storyboard.

and then we made the video!

The video!

(This took 4 days)

Tell me what you think in this padlet:

https://padlet.com/James_st/frankenstuffies-story-4s2ze3bfsqwp5pok

thanks for reading!

Is this for Riel?

January 31, 2024 / James / 0 Comments

Louis Riel: was he a hero, did he belong in a mental asylum, or both. If you want to find out, just read this handy dandy blog post!

We started our history project by learning about the timeline of events, with our driving question of “How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time”, and then doing some sample writing in the form of a postcard. This was mine:

Afterwards, we began to learn about more of Riel’s life and accomplishments, including where he studied, where he lived, and what he did. I’m not a stalker, I promise. It’s just history. It’s in the curriculum!-

…After taking notes on who he was, we had to take notes on how others viewed him.

We delved into the many portrayals of Louis Riel, including statues, primary sources, a heritage minute made by the Canadian government, and a video where Louis Riel is a duck. I’ve learned that its best not to question it.

Now that we knew who he was, and how he was portrayed, we had to learn how to communicate that to other people.

We began to learn about Frayer models, synonymes, antonyms, topic sentences, elaboration, paragraph structure and much more. We then developed our topic sentence for our multi-paragraph composition (short essay), and that was actually really hard.

First draft:

Louis Riel was a controversial figure in Canadian history who initiated change.

Second draft:

Louis Riel was a determined and ambitious leader for the Métis people, who was a controversial figure in Canadian history because of the of the change he initiated in the Canadian government.

Third draft:

Louis Riel was a determined and ambitious Métis leader who initiated change in the Canadian government, whose portrayal has changed as a result of a shifting collective worldview

After that, we had to actually write something! As a PLP student this was unexpected (kidding), I actually found it quite fun. After we had completed a first draft, it was time to remember why we are in PLP, and get a reminder on revision…. Yay. I got feedback from my mum, my peers, and my teachers. Here it was:

It was actually fun, and I learnt a lot about analyzing sources and formatting my conclusions, as well as revising things and overall writing and it felt like a great baseline for more advanced future projects. I hope you enjoyed reading about my project, thanks for doing that!