There are 2 projects that I am so proud of this year. My Alberta book and my Avatar video. The reason I’m proud of these projects is because even when I had difficulties I was able to create a product that I was proud of.
Alberta Book
This project I finished very efficiently and didn’t procrastinate so I was able to get a lot of time for editing. This is a habit that I strive to have because I procrastinate a lot. This project made me see how much easier and less stressful it is to complete your work over a long period of time instead of doing all the work right before this due.
Avatar video
This video needed a lot of new skills that I had never used. I had to find someone to interview and I had to make a detailed video which I had never done before. Even though I had many struggles I was able to make a video that I was super proud of and got to show at the exhibition.
What I am least proud of this year?
I would say I’m least proud of my frankenstuffie project because I didn’t execute my story or video very well in my opinion. I struggled a lot because I had to write a story and I struggle with writing. So I had to spend a lot of time trying to make a detailed story and then on top of that make a video. Even though I struggled with the story I think that my trailer actually turned out good.
I also wish that I had done something more exciting for the spring exhibition, I made a infographic even though I had the opportunity to make anything I wanted to. I wish I had made a model or done some form of art.
What is the most interesting thing I learned this year?
I learned how to interview people for information to make documentaries. I find this skill very useful for the future and interesting.
What skills do you feel you most improved on?
I feel that my communication skills have significantly improved since last year and over the last term. I am now able to communicate with groups to plan and achieve projects. I also feel as if I have gotten better at giving my ideas to groups and always find a way to help,
What skills do I want to develop?
I want to learn how to ask for help when I need it. I struggle to communicate with my teachers when I don’t understand something or need help with assignments. I think that this skill is an extremely important skill that I will need for the rest of my life because you will never always understand something on the first try. So knowing when and how to ask for help is a skill that I strive to get. To do this I will start by emailing my teachers when I need help and progress from that till I’m confident enough to ask question by raising my hand in class.
I also want to become better at writing. Over the last couple projects I have really struggled with expressing my ideas in words. Even though I have made significant strides in my ability to write I still really struggle with it and I hope that over the next few years of PLP I am able to learn how to write long and detailed paragraphs with ease. I need to expand my vocabulary and write more advanced paragraphs/posts. To achieve this goal I am going to read for 30 minutes a day and keep a journal where I write about anything. This will help me expand my vocabulary, my spelling and my overall writing skills.
What did I most enjoy about this year?
My favourite part of this year was either sewing the frankenstuffies or winter exhibition.
My frankenstuffie
The winter exhibition
The reason I enjoyed the winter exhibition is because we got a lot of control over what we did. We got to design most of the rooms in the exhibition and we got lots of control. I also liked the theme Avatar because throughout all the rooms if felt very consistent.
Why am I ready for grade 10?
I feel that 8 am ready for grade 10 because my abilities to learn have improved so much in this last year. I have made significant strides in my communication skills with my peers and I have been able to competently understand how to critique my projects.
Ever wonder how your oven works, or how the lights in your house work. It all works using electricity. In this project we learned how electricity powers our appliances and how circuits work.
Electricity is usually generated by transforming kinetic energy into electrical energy. This is done using a generator. Generators are made up of a generator, a turbine and a shaft. The turbine when spun spins a shaft that spins within the generator. The magnets in the generator produce electrons used to power electric devices.
There are many different forms of energy, like nuclear energy and wind power. But in my infographic I focused on Hydro Energy because that’s what we primarily use in British Columbia. I talked about the pros and cons and what I think could be improved. Dams are a good reliable and clean source of energy but they can destroy the river environments around them. But there are ways this can be fixed, we can build fish ladders so the salmon can climb past the dam or we can release certain amounts of water form the dam for the salmon to climb up.
Batteries are composed of 3 main things.
The Electrode- A chemical reaction between 2 different metals
The Electrolyte- A chemical solution that the electrodes exist in. If the battery has a wet cell the Electrolyte is a liquid solution. In a dry cell the electrolyte is a moist paste.
The terminals- There is a positive and negative terminal within a cell that the electrodes connect to.
To represent what we learned about circuits we made operation games mine was based of off Lightning McQueen. The goal was to take gears and nails out of Lighting McQueen without touching the metal.
To make our operation game we used tinfoil and copper tape to make a simple circuit connected to a light. It was difficult to get the circuit to work but with lots of fiddling I was able to create this.
I really enjoyed this project because I got to do a hands assignment were I got to create a game that I am proud of. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and have a great day.
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.”
This year I have continued to grow my skills so much especially my communication skills. I still have many goals for the rest of the year that hopefully I can accomplish. I want to be able to finish projects to my fullest on time and not get distracted in class at home. I also want to write down my ideas and be able to edit my work to a point were I can be proud of what I hand in.
I need to work on my time management skills because I struggle with getting work done on time. I wait till the last minute to get stuff done and I always end up rushing to get my project done. To work on this I want to make a schedule of what I should work on each day to finish my projects on time. This will mean I have a smaller work load each day instead of giving myself one day to finish all my work. Hopefully this will help me make better quality work and have less stress about future assignments.
Here’s and example of what a schedule would look like for a blog post.
I have always struggled with writing, spelling and grammar. Over time I have slowly become better and PLP has definitely helped me progress even farther. If you read over my old blog posts you can definitely see the progress in my writing skills. If you compare this Mpol to my last Mpol, my writing has significantly improved. I now have better grammar skills and have become less repetitive in my blog and essay writing. I have gotten better at writing paragraphs that flow and are easier to read. I mainly need to expand my vocabulary and write more advanced paragraphs/posts. I’ll practice this by writing in a journal everyday to practice my writing skills, by writing everyday it’ll become easier and more natural to write for school. I will also get my parents to edit over my writing to find any grammar or spelling mistakes that I make. This will ensure that I can express my knowledge through my writing because almost every job requires writing.
We have done many fun projects this year but some of my favourites were the First Film in Maker, The Power Of Geography in Humanities and Life as we Know It in Science. These are projects that I feel like I have done exceptional at and I enjoyed showing my results to my teachers and peers.
First Film (interview)- I felt I did very well in this project because I had lots of difficulties that I was able to overcome and even when I didn’t fully know what I was doing I was able to get work done and create a video I was proud of. I wish I had left more time for the editing and B-roll because I needed to make the interview/video more entertaining to watch. This all goes down to my time management skills that I need to work on.
Power of geography- I felt that I created a solid book and I was able to clearly understand how geography has effected our daily lives. I also was very proud of how I did on the graphic design of my book, it was very neat and could easily be read. I also didn’t leave the book to the last minute as I do with lots of my projects. I did a lot of work over a couple days and then I spent lots of the extra time that I had to perfect my writing and design.
Life as we know it- I really enjoyed this project because I got to do lots of design and art instead of writing, plus we didn’t have to do a blog post on it. For the first keystone we had to create a comic that represented different kinds of asexual reproduction. The comics I drew were very neat and understandable. I was very proud of the comics because I am definitel not the best at drawing but I feel like I was able to create some nice art which is a skill I would like to get better at. I also feel like I was able to comprehend the information that was given to me in an extending way.
There are a set if skills in school that we are always trying to improve at. I wrote about all the skills that I feel I have improved on since last year.
Communication and Collaboration – This year I feel that I have done much better at communication. I am now able to share ideas and help my group in group projects using my voice. Im not exactly sure why I got so much better at speaking but I definitely still need to work on it so hopefully this year Ill be able to grow on my progress. This also fits in with the collaboration competency. To collaborate you also have to be able to communicate with the people around you. So as I grow with my communication I grow with my collaboration.
Critical Thinking and reflecting- I feel that I have improved on my reflecting skills. I am now able to go back on a project and think about what I learned and how I could grow from it. Instead of accepting failure and moving on my goal is to think about how I could of done better and apply that to my next projects.
Personal awareness and responsibility- I feel that I am very aware of my own responsibilities and I’m able to complete them. I do need to work on being aware of my strengths and weakness because I struggle with projects like these where I have to be aware of what I’m good at and what I need to work on. But the more I write and talk about my strengths and weaknesses the better I become at identify them.
Creative thinking- I’m very good at coming up with creative ideas when I’m doing graphic designing and artsy stuff. But I need to work on my skill of coming up with creative ideas for projects, specifically group projects and being able to complete those ideas in the timeline given for the project.
As I work more on these skills I develop habits. These habits sometimes are good and sometimes bad. My goal is to break my bad habits (like having a fixed mindset in my writing ability) and to create good habits (like not getting down when I fail and trying to improve).
A habit I want to learn is when I come home from school I complete all the work I have to do before I play games of watch Tv. To help me spread out my task load I want to make a to do list for each bigger assignment to help me complete my work to the best of my ability but also not have a huge work load in one day. I also want to use the To Do app more so I don’t forget to do important assignments. Some good habits that I have already formed are being able to focus and get a lot of work done when I’m in a quiet environment. I’m able get lots of quality work done when I’m motivated and I’m able to block out distractions when I’m working, but for this habit to actually be useful I need to get better at giving myself time to work.
My main goal for this year is staying focused on my work and giving myself lots of time and a quiet environment to work on my projects. My plan to accomplish this is to create a playlist of calm/studying music that I can listen to when I work and to set up my desk so I can do homework there instead of sitting on my couch. Hopefully this will give me the right environment to complete my best work.
For this project in Science we learned about ecosystems, how they work and how humans effect them in positive and negative ways.
Scratch Project
The first thing we learned about was the interconnectedness of the animals and environment around them. This was the topic of our first keystone. For the keystone we had to create a scratch program that represented an ecosystem. This program had to have at least 10 animals. The different animals/living things I had in my forest ecosystem were ..
Some ways that humans effect this environment is through logging. When we take away these animals environments it has a lot of consequences. Some animals have adapted to living in city environments fairly well like crows, raccoons and squirrels, but animals like deer, frogs and bobcats fully rely on the forest as their shelter and source of food.
The GIF
We had to create a gift explaining Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification. I drew my GIF in procreate and I feel like I did a good job for my first time animating something.
Here’s my GIF…
Bioaccumulation- Bioaccumulation is the slow accumulation of substances, such as pesticides, micro plastics and chemicals, in an animal or organism.
Biomagnification- Biomagnification is when substances such as pesticides, micro plastics and chemicals travel up the food chain when one animal is consumed by another.
News Report
The next thing we learned about was different types of animal conservation techniques. I was in a group of 4 people and we made a news report on the conservation of the kelp forests off the coast of California.
There is a ongoing problem with the destruction of kelp forests off of the coast of California. Overpopulation of purple sea urchins is leading to the destruction of kelp forests as they are eating the kelp faster than the kelp can grow back. There are a variety of reasons why the urchin population has been expanding at such an increasing rate, such as the decline of natural predators and warming waters. Some restaurants have been introducing purple urchin to their menus to try and minimize their population, and the University of Washington is growing sea stars to release onto the coast of California as they are a natural predator of the sea urchins.
Instagram Posts
The last thing we did was make 5 instagram posts about 5 different environmental topics.
We used a website called generatestatus.com to generate these example posts.
The cycles
The Carbon cycle is crucial for keeping our environment stable. Carbon gives us the energy we need to sustain an economy on earth and it sustains the plants and animals we need to eat. Carbon moves around the planet in many ways. When we burn fossil fuels we emit carbon into the atmosphere, that carbon is then used by the plants in the form of photosynthesis. Animals will then eat the plants and when they die and start to decompose the carbon from their body will go into the ground creating the fossils fuels we burn, a full cycle. Humans have a huge impact on this cycle. We emit a huge amount of carbon into the air from car exhaust to multi million dollar company productions burning coal and other fossil fuels. This Carbon is one of the main sources of climate change. As the world heats up the icebergs melt and the oceanlevels rise. Also ecosystems are getting destroyed because of additional natural disasters happening each year.
Biomagnification
Biomagnification is a huge problem for our environment. Many micro plastics are released into the ocean from laundry machines. A piece of clothing can shed up to 700,000 micro plastics with every wash, these micro plastics go straight to the ocean where fish and other animals will eat them. The huge problem with having this many micro plastics is Biomagnificaton. For example if every fish ate one micro plastic and then a seal ate 100 fishes, that seal would have 100 micro plastics in it. Then if a polar bear ate 100 seals it would have 10,000 micro plastics in it. Having this many micro plastics inside of you can lead to poisoning and sometimes death.
Wildlife management
There is a huge problem with the destruction of kelp off the coast of California. There is an overpopulation of sea urchins which are eating the kelp at a faster rate then the can kelp grow back. There are a variety of reasons why the urchin population has been expanding at such a huge rate, such as a decline of natural predators and warming waters. There are now millions of purple urchins coating to sea floor. Some restaurants have been introducing urchin to there menus to try an minimize their population, and the university of Washington is growing sea stars to release onto the coast of California to eat the sea urchins .
The earths spheres
There are many different spheres that create the earth around us. There are 5 main spheres biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, cryosphere.
Biosphere-The biosphere makes up all the living things around us. Humans impact this sphere a lot by unbalancing the ecosystem by hunting, deforestation and exploiting our food resources.
Hydrosphere- The hydrosphere is all the water on earth, including lakes, ponds, seas and oceans. Humans impact the hydrosphere by polluting our waters. Everyday about 8 million pounds of plastic end up in our ocean. These plastics are toxic to the animals and plants that need the ocean to survive.
Atmosphere- The atmosphere is the mixture of gases that surround our earth. Humans are polluting the air by emitting Co2 into our atmosphere which is causing our earth to heat up. The Co2 acts like a blanket around the planet keeping heat in but not letting it out. Sadly every year we are emitting more and more Co2, in 2020 alone we emitted almost 35 million metric tons of Co2.
Geosphere- The geosphere is all the rocks and minerals on earth. Humans are drilling into the earths crusts and extracting all of these minerals and rocks faster than they can replenish. We mine stuff like coal, gold, copper and various types of metal. We are also extracting a huge amount of oil to burn for energy.
Cryosphere-The cryosphere is all of earths frozen water. This includes things like glaciers, ice fields and icebergs. As the earth heats up more due to human co2 emissions the ice is melting at a rapid rate which is causing rising sea levels. In 30 years these cites are predicted to be underwater Amsterdam (Netherlands), Basra (Iraq), New Orleans (USA), Venice (Italy) and many others.
Food webs
The whole ecosystem relies on stable food webs. A food web is a natural interconnection of food chains. There are many different food webs for different biomes and ecosystems. For my project I did the forest ecosystem. One main thing humans do that effects this ecosystem is logging. Most animals I showed in my food web rely on the forest environment for shelter and food, but humans are cutting down millions of trees a year destroying these animals habitats. This can affect certain species in the ecosystem like bobcats, bears and coyotes which rely on the forest more than animals like raccoons and ravens. If there are less top predators the ecosystem becomes unbalanced and that’s when overpopulation or extinction happen. In my food web every other animal relies on each other to stay fed or to keep the population from going out of control. Like how the hawks and bobcats kill the squirrels but if we hunt all the hawks and bobcats then there will be nothing left to kill the squirrels resulting in overpopulation which can affect the forest environment.
How to help protect the environment
Here are some easy things you can do in you can do in your everyday life to help the environment.
-Instead of throwing away your old toys or clothes you can donate them to a nearby donation company or thrift store.
– Use cold water when washing clothes and buy a filter to reduce the amount of micro plastics that come off of clothing and go into the ocean.
– Instead of throwing out plastic water bottles and containers, you can recycle them or buy reusable ones.
