Monthly Archives: June 2022

Drawings in Scimatics

Hi!!!! We recently just finished out last scimatics project of grade 8. In this project we learned all about cells, viruses and how they interact with each other. The end goal of this project was to create a comic about cells and viruses that was accurate but also fun to read.

Milestone 1: Project start mind map 

Just like almost every project in scimatics we started with a mind map. In my mind map I wrote what I already knew, my questions where and examples of diseases. Here is my mind map…

After the project ended I updated my mind map and added the things that I learned.

Milestone 2: Wanted poster

At the beginning of the project we had to choose a disease that we wanted to research (this would later be the villain of our comic) and make a wanted poster on it. The disease I chose was Malaria. Here is my wanted poster…

Milestone 3: Research 

For our comic we had to do lots of research so alongside it being fun to read it also had accurate information. Here is some stuff I learned…

Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic cells 

A prokaryotic cell is a very simplistic cell. These cells don’t have a nucleus and don’t rely on much support from the body (minimal nutrients and water) so if there was an exciton of animals and plants these would be the cells to survive because they don’t need many nutrients and rely a lot less on have a living structure to be in. A eukaryotic cell is not as simple as a prokaryotic cell. Firstly a eukaryotic cell has a nucleus and also has a very complicated structure. These cells are usually 10x the size of prokaryotic cells and rely a lot more on a living structure for nutrients and water.  

Malaria 

Malaria is a life threatening disease caused by parasites that are transited to people by the bites of infected mosquitoes. Malaria is neither a virus or bacteria, it’s a parasite called a Merozite. We first discovered Malaria in the 1800’s and it was a huge problem in African countries and Asian countries like The democratic republic of Congo, Uganda and India. 

Milestone 4: Comic story board

Before making our comic we had to plan it out on a story board. My story board only had 12 slides and my final comic had 18 so I definitely had to add more detail to my project. Here are some pictures of my story board.



Milestone 5: Final Comic 

I was very proud of my final comic. I was able to get 17 scientific words into my comic (10 was the requirement) and I feel that I was able to make really good drawings that fit with the style of the comic. You can read my comic here Comic cells.

Thanks for reading my last post of grade 8 :D. Hope you have an amazing summer☀️!!!!

 

🎉Grade 8 exhibition🥳

Hiii!!!!! We just finished our grade 8 summer exhibition. In this exhibition we didn’t focus on a specific project to show we tried to show our progress of learning. There were 3 different rooms for grade 8. The first room showed the process of learning, going from launch to critique and reflection. The second room showed learning out of the classroom like Loon Lake. And the last room (which was my room) was the technology room where we talked about the importance of apps and technology for our learning.

My presentation 

Me and Jessie worked together on our section of the exhibition. In our room we had about 20 people and each person or pair had to show some part of there learning. Me and Jessie talked about our project called construing creative communication. In this project we learned how to construct pictures and photos to show emotion, perspective and worldview. We made out presentation interesting and interactive by adding buttons about different things we learned so the audience could choose what they wanted to hear about.

How we use technology to advance our learning 

The main reason that I think technology helps our learning is because we have access to lots of useful tools like google, pages, keynote and lots of other useful apps. Also something that the Ipad has that really helps me is autocorrect because I usually have a lot of trouble with spelling and autocorrect helps a lot.

Collaboration and Communication 

These are 2 of the main competencies that I wanted to work on this year and this project really helped me with both. We had to communicate with our groups to figure ideas and plans to set up our room and make it a fun interactive experience for our audience, we also had to collaborate with our groups a lot get our whole room set up especially because we had the biggest room to decorate.

What I learned from this experience

The exhibition was very fun and it was a great experience. I got to collaborate with a group to complete a big goal which I usually am bad at so it was good practice and I got to share some of my learning with my parents. I also learned how to be interactive with an audience because I made my keynote interactive to keep an audiences attention.

 

You can visit Jessie’s blog here to see her perspective on the exhibition.

Tpol

It’s finally the end of my first year in grade 8 and I have learned so much over this year. I have definitely improved and enjoy this year so much and I’m excited to tell you about what I have learned

“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.”

Writing 

I have learned a lot about how to improve my writing, at the beginning of the year I had so much trouble writing and spelling but over this year I have definitely improved. I always had very good ideas but I never could figure out how to put them down on paper. A project that really helped me improve my writing was the renaissance project. For this project we had to make a triptych about the renaissance but we also had to write a paragraph. The paragraph we wrote had to be about what we thought was the most significant invention or piece of art. I choose to write about the printing press. The reason I say this project helped me with my writing is because we learned about how to construct complex sentences and paragraphs.

Core competencies 

Communication: Communication was something that I I have struggled with a lot this year. I’ve never really been good at communicating but there were definitely some projects that really helped me get to know my classmates better with in the end helped me communicate. One of these things was Loon Lake. At Loon Lake we got to do lots of activities to help get to knwo our classmates better which was fun.

Collaborating: Over the year we have done lots of projects were we had to work with groups to meet an end goal. DI was definitely won of the biggest collaboration projects we did. We had to communicate with our team constantly to come up with its creative solutions and figure out how we were going to present our solution. 

Creative thinking: I have definitely improved on my creative thinking over the course of grade 8. I am now able to come up with creative ideas to improve my projects unlike I was at the start of the year.

Critical and reflective thinking: I am definitely improving on being able to reflect on my learning and use feedback to make my work better. This is one of the main things PLP helps me learn.

Favourite projects

I had 3 favourite projects this year. The first one was definitely medium is the message. the reason I choose this as my favourite project is because one day I want to start my own business, and I also want to go into the field or design/advertisement. So being able to pratice interviewing a client and creating and advertisement was fun and useful. My second favourite project was the ultimate design challenge in scimatics, I really enjoyed this project because it involved designing and as I said before I want to work in the design/advertisement field so this was definitely a project of my interest.

Why I think I’m ready for grade 9

I think Im ready for Grade 9 because Ive made so much progress with my learning this year and Im excited to learn even more next year.

Goals for Grade 9

My main goal for grade 9 is to get better at my communication and collaboration, Ive definitely made progress on communication this year is I hope I can make as much progress in grade 9. Another goal that I have for grade 9 is to get better at my writing/spelling, over time I’ll definitely get better but I just hope that next year I can practice by writing lots of paragraphs.

 

Thanks for reading about my reflection and I hope you have a great day!

New beginnings (The History of Canada🇨🇦🦫)

Hi!!! We recently just finished our last humanities project of Grade 8. In this project we got to learn about New France and The history of Canada.

What Is New France?
New France was basically when the French and British found Canada. The french allied with  the Indigenous group called Ouendat and the British allied with the Indigenous group called Haudenosaunee.
What would they trade?
These groups would trade beavers and other animal furs/pelts for supplies like string, kettles, foods and tobacco. The reason that the French and British traded with these Indigenous groups a lot was because beaver fur was really popular back in Europe and you could make a lot of money selling it. Almost everyone had a beaver hat or a beaver coat.
What were the affects of trading pelts?
As beaver pelts got more and more popular back in Europe more and more beavers were being killed which lead to rapid decline in the population of beavers, which had a negative affect on the ecosystem of Canada. Also because of the low numbers of beavers
The Project
In this project we created 2 images representing the good and bad sides of a topic we got to choose. The topic I chose was fur trade because it was an essential/important part of New France.
The first image depicts…
Kettle and Food – I choose to draw a kettle and food because indigenous groups would trade fur/pelts for goods like kettles,tins,foods,string and tobacco. Wolf pelt- I drew a wolf pelt because mainly they traded beaver fur but sometimes they would trade furs like minks,rabbits,wolves and otters. For my image I chose to take a picture of a wolf hence the wolf pelt. Flags- The flags I drew were the Ouendat flag, the Haudenosaunee flag also know as the Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, the old French Flag and the old English Flag. This represented the alliances that fur trade created between Europeans and Indigenous groups.
The second image depicts…
Dead wolf- The dead wolf represents the decrease in different animal populations (mainly beavers but other animals to). Because of the huge popularity of furs back in Europe there was excessive hunting which led to decreased populations of lots of animals. Revolver/gun-I drew a gun because once the Europeans introduced guns to Indigenous groups it became an essential item to have and so it became very valuable and worth a lot of pelts. 2 people fighting- Fur trade caused a lots of disagreements between people because of prices and quality. There were lots of negations, fights and even wars caused because of the Fur Trade industry.

Here is a picture of my image…

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!!!!