Month: June 2024

The Wilderness Must Be Explored 🥾

This year has flown by. I enjoyed every second of it because it was just so much fun. Before I registered it, I was in Oregon having the time of my life! There was so much that happened in this project, and in this post I will be telling the story of how the spring exhibition came to life.

HIKING QUARRY????

As you may know, this project was all about advertising. We hiked the rock as a class, and when we got to the top, our assignment was to ask strangers why they came on the hike. Most said either because they saw it on instagram, or they heard about it from friends or family. After we collected that information, we had to take a picture of the peak for our advertisement we were making. This is the picture I took: 

When we finished our hike, we went home and we tasked with making a first draft of an advertisement for Quarry rock. We all had to make an original catchy slogan to go with our ad. My slogan was ‘Life’s Better At The Top.’  

This is my first draft of my Oregon ad. My feedback was that it was ‘missing something.’ I thought for a while, and came up with an ad that looked like this. 

This is my first draft

This is my second draft

I had added pictures of us along the hike, although my teacher and peers then thought it looked too crowded, which I agreed with. I pondered about how I should make it more eye catching when it hit me. I changed the shape! Everyone thought my ad looked so much better  in this format.

This is my final draft

I think this advertisement hit the right spot. It has contrasting colours, a catchy slogan, and some other photos to get a viewers eye. If I were to revise this once more, I think I would make the letters of my slogan a thicker solid font, so it has more of an effect on being bold. Other than that small change, I think that this ad was a good start to my journey of creating ads!!

OREGON

I won’t put too much information in this section, because we did so many fun things and learned about the coolest things. If you want to read more about our field study along the Oregon coast, then you can flip through my adventure book! 

In our adventure books, we added information about the places we went, videos of us trying new foods, zip lining, and having the time of our lives! I found it a bit challenging to keep up with all the places we went because every new place had a new page.

EXHIBITION TIME

As soon as we arrived back home from Oregon all focus turned to the Spring Exhibition. We were all put into groups around 5-6, and were assigned a theme. My group consisted of; Madeline, Ella, Cece, Griffin, Marcus, and me! We were all tasked with making individual ads with a consistent font, theme, and layout. This is mine: 

We also all had a colour pallet that we were sticking too. It was mostly dark forest greens, and deep blues to go along with natures colours. I think our colours really represented Oregon well because I saw a lot of those colours while I was in and along the Oregon coast. After everyone had a 👌 in Showbie, we got the go ahead to start building our stations and our merch. Our merch was created by different people in our group, and all the articles of clothing, or water bottles had ‘Oregon’ somewhere on them. Our group slogan we created was ‘Oregon, discover your potential.’ Here are some examples of our merch my group and I designed together:

GROUPS

Within our group of 6, we decided to focus on 3 main attractions we stopped at. Because our theme is discovery and learning, we chose the Tillamook Creamery, Fort Stevens, and the Yaquina Head Tide Pools. Ella and Cece were responsible for the Tillamook station and they chose to make a milk the cow diagram and a diagram of how the cheese gets made. Griffin and Marcus built a cannon and had information to go along with it, and Madeline and I created a touch pool, where all the sea animals could be touched and felt in the pool (they were all fake). I think our stations were a huge success and everyone really enjoyed them. 

After putting so much of our time into making our ads and our station a success we were done! All that was left to do was clean up. I think that our entire Spring Exhibition presentation was a success, and I loved that my group and I worked so well together in this project. 

SO, HOW DOES LANGUAGE INSPIRE ADVENTURE?

This was our driving question for this project and here’s my answer to it. 

Language can inspire adventure because it can be verbally communicated to excite someone into wanting to do something or it can be something that is written such as an advertisement. As we have been working on creating and designing our very own ads, I have learnt the principals for using colour, font, and other things to make my ad stand out and be unique and original to me.  I think a slogan is a great way to use words and make a person want to be involved with whatever the ad is saying or telling you to go. Adventure can be a fun way of getting out of your comfort zone and becoming a new version of yourself. I think language can be used in a fun and creative way to persuade someone to go on an adventure. Language plays a massive role in inspiring someone to do something or go somewhere.

THANK YOU FOR READING

Thank you so much for reading my post all about our Oregon trip and the Spring Exhibition. This is my final post I will be making in grade 8, so here I come grade 9, and good bye grade 8! ☀️

Time to tPOL!!!

Statement of Learning

“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.”

I have grown and changed so much throughout grade 8, and overall I loved my first year at seycove. PLP was a new program for me. Despite hearing some things from Charlie, I didn’t know too much about how it worked, the learning we were going to be doing, and how I would like it. I am really enjoying my time in High School and PLP, and for now it is a perfect fit for me. 

In my mPOL I set goals for myself and reflected on my learning plan, and in my tPOL post I will be talking about my year in grade 8 as a whole, talking about a few selected success behaviours and setting some goals and things I hope to achieve in grade 9!

RESILIENCE

In the category Agency, I chose Resilience. An example of resilience would be working through DI (destination Imagination). DI was an interesting experience.  I’ve done DI before, where we got first place, but this was nothing like doing it before. When I got my group, I was thinking ok, we can do this, but oh boy was I ever wrong. We did our plans, and got our story sorted out, but we still had a script to write, costumes to make and find, and props to build. We dedicated 2 pro D days to making our props which turned out really well! The only problem was the DI competition was a week away, and we needed to practice and figure out the other small details. We ended up spending long days at school, and the weekend memorizing lines. I think the competition went relatively well, although if we had more time I think our story could’ve evolved and been a little better. Over the course of finishing our performance I got frustrated a couple times. Yes, sometimes I like things to be done my way, but that isn’t always the answer. I think that when I get frustrated I tell myself things that need to get done, rather than making and doing unnecessary things that aren’t very helpful to my group. I need to focus on bouncing back and spreading out the work so that everyone can be successful in my group. For me, showing resilience is being flexible with my peers, listening to their ideas and communicating my thoughts openly. In the end, DI went ok. If my group used our time better and bounced ideas off each other earlier I believe we could have done better. You can read about my first DI experience here.

ENGAGEMENT 

The next success behaviour I am going to talk about is engagement. Compared to the beginning of the year, I have gotten so much better at class discussions and participating. At the beginning of the year, I felt like I knew what to say and that it was at least somewhat right, but I didn’t want to mess up or say the wrong thing, so I didn’t say anything at all. This was a huge mistake because as I spoke up more, and became more confident with my ideas and thoughts, I got more things correct, or it was a good idea. Now when a question is asked, most of the time, I can shoot my hand up and present my idea, and be confident in myself. Of course, my thoughts aren’t always right, and I have gotten better at accepting that. Sometimes I’m thinking along the right lines, but it just doesn’t quite fit, or sometimes I am 100% on the wrong track, and need to rethink everything. Being wrong and correcting your answer to make it right shows learning because you can show what you learned by explaining why your answer is wrong. I can show my engagement through my blog posts and even in my mPOLS and tPOLS! Here are some examples of my blog posts:

Consequences of Colonization

All About AR Maker

All About Atoms

COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 

For my third and final success behaviour I chose communication and collaboration. 

With teachers: I have become so much better at communicating with my teachers openly. As I learned about my teachers, and got to know them, I became aware that I am not wrong to ask questions. Asking questions shows you are engaged and aware of what’s happening around you. I ask my teachers questions in person and on iMessage, whenever I need help because its not wrong to need help.

With peers: In group projects, I feel as if I am a trusted and responsible group member. I will do my part in the project, and accept and give feedback. I think I demonstrated this best at the End Of The World project, where my group was sometimes off task, and needed some reminders to hop back on and stay as engaged as possible. 

With Technology: I believe I am responsible with my iPad in class, and I am always doing what is expected of me. I stay on task, and do my best to get my work done in class. I had some trouble in the earlier stages of the year, when messages would become distracting, but now I can block those out, put on DND (do not disturb) and focus on the task at hand.

SCIENCE

I learned so much in Science this year that was all new. Last year we didn’t get to do fun experiments where we could involve our hands and be creative in new ways. Where as this year we get to balance doing fun experiments with learning cool information to then using that information and making our projects with it. The project we just finished doing was called Small But Mighty, and in this project we were taught all about cells in our bodies which we demonstrated through our immune system character cards. I was really proud of how I took the feedback I got on my field journal and made it better. I struggled the most with making my observations precise and accurate. 

Another project we completed in science was our scratch video game. This game was another example of how I showed resilience. I found it very frustrating that scratch kept glitching and game deleted several times, but I kept at it and eventually I got it. Coding is something I can continue to work on, and the more I do it the better I will get at it.

HUMANITIES

Humanities has been an up and down subject for me all year. Some projects I thoroughly enjoyed, and some I disliked. In life, you can’t choose it all, so I dealt with it! We have done so many projects this year from writing songs to presenting to grade 11s! The most recent project we did, the Spring Exhibition, was the one I chose, because I think it shows my success behaviours I chose the most. The project on the spring exhibition all started with our field study along the Oregon Coast. As we went, little by little we added to our ‘adventure book’ which was a document of the activities and things we did. Other than the book, our project was all about advertising. We were split up into groups for the Spring Exhibition and my group got the theme Discovery and Learning. We were to represent the theme of our group in our advertisements about the Oregon Coast. I love that everyone in my group collaborated and contributed to our dazzling final result. I think our presentation at the exhibition turned out great and it is definitely something to be proud of.

 

 

Over the course of the year, worldview is always something we put into consideration. ‘How does this affect your worldview?’ ‘How does this project influence your worldview?’ These were questions we were peppered with and they will always and forever stick with me. It helps me put myself into other people’s shoes. The Oregon trip influenced my worldview because all the little stops and stores and jobs people do can change a persons mind.

WHAT HAS HELPED ME GROW AS A LEARNER?

2 small things have helped me become a better learner in and out of school.

  1. Attending Tutorial 
  2. Using The Things App

PREPARING FOR GRADE 9

Looking back on my grade 8 year, I have learned so much about how PLP works, how my teachers teach, and how my peers work. Although grade 8 is a difficult year, I love that I now know that getting revisions is ok, and learning from your mistakes is great, because you are a better learner from it. 

A goal I am setting myself for next year is being more efficient with my time. I feel as though I spend more time on my work than I really need to. To make it become good to great takes time, but not so much that I am only adding little things at a time. 

I feel as though I am ready for next year, and I hope that it is just as fun or even more so than this year! I have become more confident in myself as a learner and a leader in the classroom, so I hope this shows through next year, and the following years as well.

Thank you so much for listening to my tPOL!! Have a great summer!!! ☀️⛱️

Small But Mighty 🧪

How Does Our Knowledge Of Cell Biology Contribute To Public Health?

The driving question for this blog post is ‘How does our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health?’ I have learned so much from this project including how to make a Hypothesis and Prediction, testing and checking our experiment, asking a question and then experimenting, and reflecting upon the process! We have also explored the wonders of cells and different varieties of vaccines. Despite all the thoughts about vaccines, vaccines are good for you, and they prove to have worked against multiple diseases. These are all valuable lessons that I can keep in my brain for later!

Asking a Question

When you start an experiment, the first thing you do is create a thoughtful question that will get an answer when you finish the experiment. You also think of a prediction and a hypothesis which you then follow up at the end of the experiment. Despite what most people think, a hypothesis and a prediction are 2 different things. A hypothesis is an educated guess, where as a prediction is a more detailed and informative guess.

Cells

Before we started our immune system character cards, we needed to learn about the cells we were going to write about. We used window notes, and a book that Ms. Kadi read to learn about the T-Cells (which have different types of cells called the memory T-Cells, killer T-Cells, and the helper T-Cells.) In addition to these cells we learned about B-Cells

Petri Dish Experiments 🧫 

Previous to this experiment we had learnt all about bacteria so we were all ready. We were told to swab one or 2 surfaces and compare the bacteria. I chose to do the desk in my science classroom. One swab I used hand sanitizer and one I used soap. The idea was to see which product helped kill more germs. My results were surprising because the hand sanitizer pulled ahead and looked like it had less growth on the Petri dish than the soap did.

Field Journal  

This is the field journal I created to keep track of my results, hypothesis, prediction, updates and how much growth was on the Petri dish. I am proud of my layout in this keynote because the theme is consistent and I worked hard to make sure it looked good but also wasn’t too distracting from the information.

Immune System Cell Cards

The next thing we focused on in this project was learning all about the adaptive immune system. I explained some of the cells earlier, but these cards we could make our own! We drew characters and then labeled them as a cell and explained their function in the body. The cell cards were a fun way of showing our knowledge about the cells. I liked how making these cards not only taught me about the cells but also made it fun so I enjoyed doing it!

Vaccine Media Campaign

Why don’t people get vaccinated? This is a well asked question and there are multiple answers our whole class came up with. A few are: The vaccine was released too quickly, can cause side effects, caused autism, religious reasons and micro chips are in them tracking you. Some of these reasons don’t seem real or like they would happen but some people are actually worried and scared about these. Everyone should pay attention to the important articles released by the government or doctors that give real information to make sure people don’t get worked up over nothing. This is why we are learning about this in Science class because its right to be educated! 

In this assignment we were to create 3 media campaigns that showed our research and knowledge about what we had learned. My partner was Ella, and we chose to research the micro chips one. People thought micro chips were being put into us to track and keep an eye on us. Here are our 3 designs:

 

 

 

How Does Our Knowledge Of Cell Biology Contribute To Public Health?

Before learning all about the immune system, and cells I didn’t know anything about these things! That’s the great thing about learning something new, its never boring because you don’t know what’s coming next. With all this new information I know how my body deals with diseases, vaccines and bacterias. When you show symptoms to viruses, it is actually your immune system trying to fight off the virus. Although I am now educated on these things, not everyone is and that results in anti-vaccers. Knowledge can affect people’s views on many things and this is one of them. It is completely your choice if you don’t get vaccinated against Covid-19, but the vaccine certainly helps protect you from the virus. The more you learn and know about vaccines the healthier and more knowledgeable you will be. 

Reflection

I have learned so many things in this unit that I will not forget my whole life. I love that we get to evolve ourselves in learning about topics like this because it helps us stay healthy and share our learning and knowledge with other people to educate themselves. As well as learning in my head, I acquired some life skills in this project such as communicating with my partner and being open to her ideas and not just mine. 

Thanks for reading my post, and keep your eyes peeled for more! 

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