Learning My Way Through Life

Take Your Kid To Work Day! 💼

This past Wednesday I had the amazing opportunity to go with my dad to work. I learned about his job and what his schedule looks like almost every day. My dad just like many other people works at a desk all day. That is all I really new about his career until I was able to investigate further on take your kid to work day. It turns out he has a pretty interesting Job, I had just never taken the time to ask him about it. He is an executive director for the CUCC (Credit Union Central of Canada) which means he runs an organization that supports Credit Unions with technology and services. When I found out he was an Executiive director I was quite curious, it got me thinking and I was able to research and create a video on my learning. 

Through this experience I learned a lot about my dad and his career, but also about what I want to do with my life. Although I did find his job interesting, I do not think it would be the right fit for me. His job is focused more on critical thinking, and I tend enjoy the more creative aspects of a job. For this project in Maker we had to create a short film that captures a day in the life of your parents job, and a bit of a description of their work. I honestly struggled a bit with this video because it was quite hard to create an engaging video when I sat at a desk all day. I was able to use different photos and videos that I took to compose it. To check out my video, click below. ⬇️

A Reflection Of My Trip In Western Canada- As Told By Me 🏔️

Did I learn anything?

The short answer is yes. Yes I did learn, a lot actually. I was lucky to have the opportunity to travel around Western Canada with my class and explore British Columbia’s and Albertas natural beauty. I learned about the significance of Western Canadas geography, and about how its had an impact politically, socially, and Economically. We stopped at historically significant sites, different hikes, and many different lakes. I was able to explore and answer the driving question “How has the geography shaped who we are”? I answered it for myself by taking the information I learned and putting it into my own words. Each destination felt like a small piece of my puzzle, the puzzle to answer the driving question. 

A big part of learning about Western Canada was visiting different, historical and significant destinations. We kept track of all the places we went to in our Digital touch book. We took many photos and had to identify the five themes of geography within the stop. I found myself thinking about the themes of geography, and how a lot of the time I am able to identify all 5 within one place. I had to think critically and creatively to show my understanding of geography, and how it’s had a big impact on who we are. In this digital touch book I got to display my learning and show you some information about the places we went. I took time to reflect on each location and I had time to consider why it was historically significant. Check out my Digital Touch book below. ⬇️

As a part of this project we had to create a thesis about Western Canada. This was probably one of the harder parts of the project for me. It took me some time to find what I wanted to base my thesis off of. At some point during the trip I decided that I wasn’t happy with my statement so I I decided to revise it. I ended up making my statement more environmentally based and I changed it to “Tourism in the west has a positive impact on its economy and can have a negative impact on its environment.” I have always loved spending time outdoors and in the forest so it felt much more personal to me.  To prove our thesis we interviewed different people on our travels asking them questions about their opinions. To learn more about this and my investigative video go check out my Maker post. This investigative video helped me answer the driving question. It proves that western Canada’s geography has a very large impact on our economy and our values and beliefs. 

Overall, I had a lot of fun on this trip to Alberta and I learned more about myself and Western Canadas history. I got to experiment with moving image and learn how to tell a story through a video. I can’t wait to experiment more this year with the moving image and my newly developed story telling skills.

My Transitional presentation 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.”

Finally its the end of the year and I feel like a completely different person than when I first started PLP. I have learned so much and was able to grow my skills and experience so many new things. I want to share the highlights and lowlights of my year and how I was able to improve myself as a learner. To start off I want to look at my learning plan from way back at the beginning of the year. One thing I really wanted to work on this year was sharing my thoughts and opinions with my classmates and being able to speak up in class. I struggled with presenting and Sharing my work with others a lot in elementary school. This past year has really pushed me to step outside my comfort zone and many projects and class activity’s have helped me become more comfortable when speaking. 

Science 

Maker, humanities, and science have all been very beneficial for me. I have learned a lot about myself. Like its important that I take breaks when I’m working, keeping a healthy schedule is key, and focus mode can really come in handy when working on my iPad. This year I was able to build a healthy work ethic and make sure I was focused and on track. One project that really stands out to me when I mention focus is my coding Project in science. When I first heard about this project I was super nervous. I don’t know much about tech and coding, and even though we used basic coding software I struggled to stay focused. The project took over a week to complete and I think that I was really able to overcome a mental block. I eventually figured it out and realized that just because something is hard doesn’t mean its impossible and you cant accomplish it. In the end I was really proud of my project and it was a big learning curve for me. 

Link to the video game! ➡️ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/842254333/fullscreen/

Maker

Maker this year was a really interesting class, I had a lot of fun experimenting with my iPad. I got to know photography better and explore with new types of media. I learned more about the style of work that I tend to stick too, I am a very creative person and like to express that through my work. One project I want to highlight was my Avatar project for the winter exhibition. I struggled with this project my initial idea was to create a projector and show photos of local forests. That project did not work out so I only had a couple of days to come up with a new project. In the end I had the tree of souls displayed and i showed its connections with other trees underneath. I wouldn’t say that I was very proud of this project, but I did learn a valuable lesson. I learned that failing is ok, just because you don’t succeed doesn’t mean you wont and cant. You have to be able to look back on your work, find what went wrong and revise and improve.

Humanities 

The project I want to talk about for humanities is “The Medium is the message.” When I first heard we were creating advertisements I was really excited and looking forward to the creative process of the project. I forgot more about the critical thinking and the interviewing part of the project. After we collected all of our information and had interviewed our business it was time to start planning out our layout and theme. After I created my first draft I went around asking friends, family and teachers for feedback and critique. This was the longest part of this process because it took multiple drafts and multiple weeks to make my final copy. From this project I learned many different kinds of advertising appeals and techniques and how to use them effectively. I also learned more about my business and how important it is to help our ecosystem and the wildlife. My takeaway is that the longer the process the more quality work you will have.

Overall, this year has been incredible and I cant wait for next year. My answer the driving question “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?” I know that I am ready to advance to the next grade level because this year I have not just learned more about myself as learner but myself as a person. I have developed healthy work work habits to carry on next year. And most importantly I have FAILED. I have learned that not getting something first try is ok it’s just my first attempt in learning. I hope to continue to grow my skills and improve my self as a PLP learner.

Thank you for listening to My transitional presentation of learning! See you next year! 

2023 spring exhibition post! 😅

I am so close to finishing off grade 8, and to finish off this year we had our spring exhibition.  I’d say that this spring exhibition was a success. The process of learning and preparation was quite long and took a lot of focus. Our project for the spring exhibition was to create an ad for a business that was on our Oregon trip. The business I was assigned was Wolf Haven. Wolf Haven is a wolf sanctuary in Tenino Washington. It’s a hands off sanctuary that takes in wolves from roadside attractions and pet trade.  It was super fun getting to visit there and seeing all the different wolves and hearing about their story’s. To create our ad we learned all about different advertising techniques and appeals that could help us construct our own final product. I had many first drafts, I was able to slowly improve by getting critique from family, friends, and teachers. Here are some of my interesting first drafts. 🤭

As you can see I progressively got better and started to think about my layout and design as I got farther along the project. Honestly, the longest part of this project was probably learning about how to create an appealing ad. At first I really struggled but with the help of my judgy friends and family I was able to compose a well thought out ad. I chose to use the advertising type Pathos. I did this because I wanted to evoke emotion by showing a sad wolf and saying donate today. I think this technique worked pretty well, and I was pretty happy with my final ad.

The exhibition was really fun I got to share my learning with the community and of course do some face painting. I got to get to know new people better and learn more about the students in PLP. One thing that I definitely learned this exhibition is that I CANNOT face paint 😋. I think that it was good for me to get more comfortable when talking to people and sharing my work. Overall, I had a lot of fun this exhibition and I was able to get used to spending lots of time with my classmates and working for longer periods of time. 

My Oregon trip 2023 🚍

Hello, and welcome back to another one of my blogposts!

Recently PLP and I just got back from a long and fascinating trip to Oregon. We left for one week, and the whole trip went by so fast! I got to visit many new restaurants and historically significant destinations. I had a lot of fun during this trip because I got to talk to some new people and learn more about my ✨special✨ classmates. The bus ride was super fun, but yet super long. I spent 90% of my time listening to music.

My favourite thing we got to do on the trip was the different experiments we got to do at the Hatfield Marine centre. We spent time creating ROV’s ( remotely operated vehicles). We got to experiment with different designs and then we got to test our ROV’s out!  Here are some videos from the experiment. ⬇️

Not only was this trip super fun, but it was super educational! I learned about different historical sights and why they were important to Oregon. I also learned some pretty important life skills. Like how to live without wifi, how to sleep on a bus packed with kids, and how to be around people for long periods of time. I think that these trips are very important so that we can learn to be flexible and easygoing. After all, you might as well Go WiTh ThE fLoW. I think that I was really able to improve on these skills and being able to work with what I’ve got.

Overall, I had so much fun on this trip and I can’t wait to travel to Alberta next year. To learn more abut my Trip to Oregon check out my booklet down below. ⬇️

European colonization 🌎🫢

Hi! Welcome back to another blog post. Our driving question for this project was “what did European settlement mean for all involved.”  To answer this question we had to learn more about New France and how colonization started. We completed three keystones to learn more about the different causes and a consequences of colonization.

keystone #1

For keystone one we had to create an art chart showing the inferences and the evidence. The image I was given was drawn by C.W Jeffrey’s and was called Indian trading furs 1785. I had to analyze the drawing and write down my thoughts. Here is my image and my art chart. ⬇️

Keystone #2

Keystone two was much different than keystone one. Our task was to re interpret our image and re draw it from the indigenous peoples perspective. I used my skills in sketches and traced my image in black and white and making small changes. For this I chose to make the European figure bigger and leaning over the counter to represent intimidation, while making the indigenous figure smaller so i could show how they might be uncomfortable. Here is my re interpreted image. ⬇️

keystone #3

In keystone three we had to Create an AR video script . We first created a script answering different questions about colonization. We had to explain our learning while answering the driving question, and talking about the long term effects of colonization. We then had to use the app AR Maker to put our video together. This was our last part of our project “the finish line”. Here is my AR video I hope you enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FjUuqgcGn-ggvKA0wzOcqT1EiKKnl5xP/view?usp=drivesdk

My science Video Game!

This project has been one of my favourite projects so far, we learned about the 4 states of matter, and the different particles that make up an atom. This process of learning was very interesting, their were many experiments along the way. We learned about diffusion, volume and mass. To take our learning to the next level our task was to create a video game that could display our learning. When I first heard about creating a video game I was nervous and stressed out. I have never really coded before, so this was a hole new experience for me. We used the coding software scratch. Though this software was fairly easy to use it was quite confusing and difficult to learn how to work. There are many different components to scratch and I had a lot of fun exploring and trying out different tools. My idea was to create a bucket that I could move along the bottom of the screen to catch protons. The object of the game was to avoid catching electrons and try and catch as many protons as you could. The more protons you catch the higher your score gets. With the help of you tube videos and Ms Kadi, I was able to create an awesome game. It took me just a couple of days to finish up my final product and adding extra detail, but I was really happy with the end product. This project taught me that just because something seems confusing or hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible to accomplish. Overall I really enjoyed this project and I hope we get to do more things like this. 

Check out my video game here!

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/842254333/fullscreen/

Small but mighty Reflection🧬

I had a lot of fun throuout the process of this science project. This project really pushed me to look at the Covid-19 pandemic differently, and take a deeper dive into the immune system and its purpose. The learning we did was quite fun because we were able to create our own immune system characters, while using the information we gathered. The second part of this project was to create an informational poster about myths about the vaccine. My partner and I created a poster about tracking devices injected into the vaccine. This was trial and error because we were both new to the app Canva. The final part of this project was to create a poster for elementary schools in our district. This was my favourite part of this project. I got more comfortable with the app Canva, and was able to experiment with different tools, and drawings. Overall, I found this project very interesting and engaging.

My Travelogue Reflection!

While making my travelogue I found it interesting to learn more about explorers and their stories. I chose Christopher Columbus because I was curious about who had actually discovered America. This process of putting our travelogue together was fairly quick, but the learning behind took more time. We learned about different explorers their accomplishments, and how they have had an impact on colonization. I had fun creating my story and then putting it into a book creator. My favourite part of this project was the art. I drew Christopher columbus’s ship, a compass, celestial navigation, and a collage. I got to display his journey through images, and explore different apps through this process. To improve my project I did peer critique with my classmates and got helpful feedback. Overall I found this project very interesting and intriguing.

Click here to see my book!