I’ve really learned a lot this year

Hi! Today I’m going to talk/write about my mPOL. If you didn’t know this stands for Mid-Year presentation of learning. In my mPOL i’m going to talk about all my favourite projects this year and what I learned from them. I am also going to answer the driving question “How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?”.

 

Learning habits and systems 

One of the habits/systems I’ve gotten this year is using the app “Things”. Things is an app which you can put an assignments you have and put a due date to help keep you organized. You can also add to do lists and notes to help you remember the important parts of the criteria. Things has helped keep me organized throughout the whole year so I’ve been able to hand everything in on time. Another habit/system I’ve gotten this year is plugging my iPad in every night so I’m prepared for the next day of school.

Core competency 

Communication: For this my goal was to get to profile 3. Profile 3 was “I communicate purposefully, using forms and strategies I have practiced. I feel like I am on my way to achieving this. One project that really helped me achieve this was the poetry project, because in poetry we had to learn how to speak with meaning to preform our poetry live. I feel like i could work on communicating more ideas when i’m doing group projects because I usually have very good ideas but I don’t share them.

Collaborating: My goal for this was profile 2. Profile 2 was “In familiar situations, I cooperate with others for specific purposes”. I feel like I’ve accomplished this because in familiar situations i’m able to collaborate with other people and help my teams succeed. 

Creative thinking: For this I was aiming to get to Profile 3. Profile 3 was “I can get new ideas in areas in which I have an interest and build my skills to make them work”. I feel like i have almost accomplished this. I am able to come up with ideas about certain topics. One way I show this skill is by my mind maps which I’ve done in scimatics before.

Critical and Reflective Thinking: I was aiming for profile 4. Profile 4 is “I can gather and combine new evidence with what I already know to develop reasoned conclusions, judgments, or plans”. I am definitely working towards this goal. I am now able to gather evidence and develop my own conclusions, but I still have a lot of trouble doing this. 

Personal Awareness and Responsibility: The profile I choose to aim for was Profile 3: I can make choices that help me meet my wants and needs and increase my feelings of well-being. I take responsibility for my actions. I feel like I have definitely accomplished this goal. I’ve become really good at making decisions that don’t hurt me and I also almost always take responsibility for my actions.

Positive Personal and Cultural Identity: For this I was aiming to get to Profile 4. Profile 4 is “I have pride in who I am. I understand that I am a part of larger communities.” I feel like I have accomplished this. I have pride in who I am but i also recognize that I am part of larger community and I need to respect other people.

Social Awareness and Responsibility: For this I chose Profile 2: In familiar settings, I can interact with others and my surroundings respectfully. I think that I have accomplished this because I am able to respect the people around me and in familiar settings I am able to help the people around me.

 

What I have learned this year 

Humanities                                                                                                                               

In Humanities my favourite project was definitely Medium is Message, because I want to go to business college and one day open a successful business so I was very fun being able to
work with clients and learn how the world of advertising works. I also really enjoyed designing the ad and I was very proud when my ad got chosen. I feel like I could have worked on my communication skills during this project because I didn’t talk much during the interview and I could have added more ideas to our group ad.

Scimatics 

My favourite project in scimatics was definitely Laser laws whichever we just finished this week. I learned a lot about how light works and how to work with a team to make something very difficult to accomplish easier. I also loved how we got to actually make a laser display instead of just working on textbooks about lasers, this is one of the reason why I enjoy PLP so much. What I could have worked on was communicating with my team more. I did help but I didn’t really come up with any of the main ideas so I could have done better on that.

Maker                                                                                                                                        

My favourite project in maker was constructive creative communication. I learned all about
communicating in different ways, using photography and art. I really enjoyed this project because I love making art. My favourite thing I made in this project was the still life object. For this I drew a cactus and used shading and perspective to make it look more realistic. I also really enjoyed the photography section. I learned about using perspective and filters. Learning how to use editing apps and taking creative photos has really helped me make my blog more creative. I could have improved on doing well in every assignment because I definitely did better on some assignments than others.

 

Just wrote an E-book :D

Hi! This was our last project of maker grade 8 and we wrote an E-book with a bunch of poems we wrote. You can visit my e-book here

In this e-book we wrote 9 different poems about us and our worldview. The 9 poems we wrote were

A simile poem: A simile is a phrase comparing 2 unlike things using like or as. For example as quiet as a mouse is a simile.

An Extended metaphor poem: A metaphor is comparing 2 unlike things but not using like or as. For example my heart is a rose that grows for you, it compares a heart and a rose.

A haiku poem: A haiku poem is a poem that has 3 lines. The first line has 5 syllables the second line has 7 syllables and the last lines has 5 syllables.

Found Poem: A poem made with pieces of text from another paragraph.

Imagery poem: A poem describing a scene to the 5 senses.

Sound poem: A sound poem uses onomatopoeias like Bang! Or Smash!

Experience poem: A poem describing and experience you lived. This poem uses denotation/ connotation, mood and a specific theme.

Personification poem: A poem that gives an un-human object human characteristics.

Self-Portrait poem: A poem describing yourself. Like what you look like and what you enjoy.

Thanks for reading my e-book and blog. Have a great day!

Laser project! :D

Hi! For scimatics we just finished our laser laws project. This was a very interesting project where we learned about the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem. The driving question of this project was “How can we test the Pythagorean theorem and law of reflection?” and we broke this project down into 5 milestones.

Milestone 1

Milestone 1 was “What do I already know about light and what do I need to know to do this project well?”. To answer this we made a mind map. In the mind map we wrote what we already knew about light & lasers and any question we had. Here is my mind-map.

Mind Map 2

Milestone 2

For this milestone the question we answered was “How does light behave in predictable ways?” For this we did a lab report on an experiment we did. In the experiment we had a small laser/light and we pointed it at a mirror and wrote about how it reflected. Some terms we learned in this section were 

Normal: A line perpendicular to the plain that the light is reflecting off of.

Line of incident: The line of light that hits the plain first. 

Line of reflection: The line of light that reflects off the plain.

Angle of incident: The angle between the line of incident and the normal.

Angle of reflection: The angle between the normal and the line of reflection (this angle is the same as the angle of incident)

Here is the lab report I wrote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milestone 3

In milestone 3 we answered the question “How are the sides of right triangles related?”. For this section we did a lot of textbooks about the Pythagorean theorem. The Pythagorean theorem is A squared + B squared = C squared. You can use the Pythagorean theorem to find the missing side of a right triangle. Another thing we learned about in Milestone 3 was Pythagorean triples. The most famous Pythagorean triple is 3 squared, 4 squared and 5 squared because if you square 3 and square 4 it equals 9+16 which equals 25 and 25 is 5 squared. There are lots of other Pythagorean triples. You can use these to see if a triangle is a right triangle.

Milestone 4 

In milestone 4 we answered  “How can we design a laser display that tests the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection?”. For this we used an app were we could make a simulation of a laser display. Then we made a lab report to try to prove the Law of Reflection and Pythagorean theorem. Here is my lab report

 

 

Milestone 5 

The last milestone we answered was “How can we build a laser display that tests the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection?”. This was our final product for the whole project. We had to make a real life laser display using mirrors and a small non powerful laser. We presented this by putting smoke so you could see the laser display. The display that we tried to make was a right angle triangle to show what we learned about the Pythagorean theorem. Here are some pictures we took of our display.

 

Curricular competency

This section is about the rubric of the project (what we were meant to do). The first curricular competency is Questioning and predicting: Demonastre a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. I think I did ok for this because I was able to ask a lot of questions and I was very into this project. I also handed all my work in on time.

The second curricular competency is Communicating and Representing: Represents mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and symbolic forms. I think I did really good on this curricular competency because I understood all the math and made sure to show the process of my work.

The last curricular competency is Applying and innovating: Co-operatively design projects. For this curricular competency I feel like I did ok, but I could improve on helping my team mates more and contributing more ideas.

Thanks for reading. Have a good day!

 

Sewing Q&A (:

Hi! For this post I decided to do a Q&A about very common question asked about sewing. Hope you enjoy!

Is it difficult to start sewing?

No, not really. If you really want to become good at sewing, then it’s a pretty easy to learn. It’s a bit more difficult to learn things like making your own patterns but overall it’s very easy.

Where can you find good fabrics? 

Made by me sewing sells really good fabrics and they also do lessons. Spool of thread sells lots of nice and creative designs and they sell patterns for lots of types of clothing. You can also buy fabrics at Costco and Michales.

What are some easy things to sew?

You can either create something like a pillow case or a stuffed animal. Or you can start off with a simple shirt which can be fairly easy. Here’s one of the first things I made…

 

What supplies do you need to start sewing?

1. A sewing machine –  There are lots of companies that sell these. 

2. Fabric scissors  – To cut out fabric for your patterns 

3. Unpicker – To unpick seams when you accidentally sew in the wrong place.

4. Chalk pencils – To draw where you need to cut during hemming and cutting out patterns

5. Pins and pin cushion – To pin where you need to sew so your fabric doesn’t move while sewing. 

6. Thread – For actually sewing  

Thanks for reading! I hope I answered a question you might have had.

Designing my own fabric

For this post we had to create an original photo using multiple apps. The photo also had to be about a topic you really enjoyed, for me this was sewing. 

Here’s my original photo …

I decided to take a photo of some fabric I had and use the procreate pocket app to draw over the picture designing my own fabrics. I kept the overall pattern of the fabric but I changed the colours and added some additional design elements to each. Here are the steps on what I did to change each design.

1. I took a photo of fabric that I had.

2. I put the photo in procreate and traced over the lines.

3. Inside the lines I added colour and made the background black to add a neon affect.

4. Lastly I took the photo and put it in a photo editing app called Snapseed. In this app I played with the saturation and colour levels.

This is my final product/ fabric design.

Thanks for reading about how I edited original photos into designed fabric patterns. Have a good day!

7 things you didn’t know about sewing

7 interesting facts about sewing 

1.There are over 4000 types of sewing machines in the world: Brother is one of the most popular sewing brands. You can visit their website here.

2. The sewing machine was invented in 1790 by a man called Thomas Saint, but in 1874 it was patented by William Newton.

3. The first needles that went in sewing machines were made out of bone and ivory instead of metal.

Early sewing machine

4. The weaving of natural cloth started in the Middle East around 4000 BC. Back then they used fur and hides instead of fabric. 

5. The first electric sewing machine was invented in 1889, it had a bulky motor and the lightbulb was only invented 10 years before this. 

6. Cotton lasts a century (100 years) before decomposing.

7. The print Calico comes from the word Calcutta which is a city in West Bengal also known as Kolkata.

Some types of Calico fabrics

  Hope you learned something you didn’t know. Have a good day!

“Sewing” Why I love It

Intro 

Hello! Today I’m going to write about sewing. I’ve been sewing for about six months now and I’ve made a couple of pieces of clothing. I got into sewing after my friend introduced me to it. I now go to a class once a week at a place called Made by Me sewing, I also like to sew at home with my own sewing machine. My first project was a blue long sleeved turtleneck shirt. Here are some pictures.

 

 

This wasn’t very a complicated project because all you had to do was put the 2 main shirt pieces together, sew the sleeves on and add the turtleneck. Even though it was very easy it was definitely one of my favourite projects and I love the outcome so I wear the shirt a lot.

Why I like sewing 

I enjoy sewing a lot because most of the time you can just shut your brain off and just sew. I also enjoy being able to make clothing that I can wear instead of just going to a store and buying what you like. You can also design your own clothes and make them without a pattern so it’s completely original.

Thanks for reading about my interest. Have a good day!

The Outsiders

Hi! We just completed our second project in humanities. We read a book called The Outsiders by S.E Hinton and did an exhibition on it about the novel. We presented a tableau of one of the important scenes in the book to our parents, siblings and friends. A tableau is a still image of a scene, it’s as if we were acting out the scene and then we just froze. 

The Outsiders 

Characters 

This book is set in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It’s based on a group of “Greasers” (this is equivalent to people in poverty) who are getting bullied by “Soc’s” ( This is equivalent to rich people who live a easy life). The main character is a 14 year old boy called Ponyboy. He has 2 brothers :Sodapop, who’s 16 and Darry, who’s 21. Darry has to take care of Ponyboy and Soda after their parents were killed in a car crash.  The rest of the gang of greasers are Jonnhy, Two-Bit and Dally. Johnny plays a key character in the novel. He is a young boy about the same age as Ponyboy who has alcoholic and abusive parents. In the book they describe him as a puppy that’s been kicked too many times. In the second chapter of the book we learn that Johnny was almost killed by the Soc’s when they jumped him, this affected Johnny a lot and as a consequence he always carries a switchblade on him. The next greaser is Two-Bit. Two-bit is described as a funny, annoying person who always smarts off the cops. He doesn’t play a big role in the book. The last greaser in the gang is Dally. Dally is a beat up guy who appears  to have no emotion. He was arrested when he was only 10 years old and he lived alone on the streets of New York. In this book Dally also plays a big role. Everyone looks up to Dally for help, but having no faith in humanity can make life pretty difficult.  There are some others charters in this book who come from the Soc’s. The main Soc’s are Sherry, Bob and Randy. Sherry also called cherry because of her red hair is one of the socs who actually gets to know the greasers before judging them. Cherry like Ponyboy likes to watch sunsets and read books. The other two greasers Bob and Randy are really good friends Bob dies early on in the book and Randy isn’t really mentioned much so there’s not much written about them except that he believes that socs live terrible lives too, he shows Ponyboy a different perspective on life. 

Plot

The plot of this book is fairly basic but it has a lot of meaning behind it. The first big event that happens is when Poynboy and Johnny run away. The reason they ran away was because Poynboy and Darry have a really bad relationship and Ponyboy gets tired of Darry telling him what to do. Him and Johnny run away to this park were there going to stay for the night but the Soc’s find them. There’s a fountain in the park and the Soc’s try to drown Ponyboy, but Johnny (who as said in the first paragraph had a switchblade on him at all times) saved Ponyboy by stabbing Bob which sadly killed him. Johnny and Ponyboy then have to flee from the police because by morning the police will be out searching for them, so they  flee to an old abandon church in Windrixville. After a couple days of surviving in the church Dally comes to take them for a lunch so they can re-energize before going back to the church. When they arrive back at the church they see that it has lit on fire and because it was a old building it went up in flames quickly. The worst part is that some kids had decided to explore inside the church and now were stuck inside. Heroically Johnny and Ponyboy run into the church to save the kids. They mange to save all the kids but Johnny is put in the hospital with 3 degree burns and a broken back. Later in the book Jonnhy dies which causes Darry to rob a store and get the police to shoot him on a suicidal mission.

Worldview

The main point of this project was to learn about how your beliefs, values, economy, geography, time, society and knowledge effect your worldview. Worldview is basically how you see the world. 

Geography: The outsiders are hugely affected by geography they live in Oklahoma, USA. In the book Johnny and Dally carry weapons around. In America this is more socially acceptable than it would be in other places in the world. 

Beliefs: Ponyboy believes in the better of people and the world. This affects him a lot in the book, for example he believes in cherry who is a Soc and other people who didn’t believe in the goodness of the world might not, like Dally.

Vaules: Ponyboy, Sodapop and the rest of the gang value each others company and help. This means that in the book they are really close as if they were brothers. 

Economy: In the book the greasers are poor and the soc’s are rich. This is the main reason why the 2 groups are separated.

Time: The book is set in in the 1960’s. If the book was set now it would be very different. For example Dally probably wouldn’t have been shot by the police. Nowadays they would probably tase him and arrest him instead of just shooting him on site.

Tableau+ Winter Exhibition 

We were assigned a scene in the outsiders with the assignment to make a tableau about it. The scene our group was assigned was the judge scene. This was the very last important scene in the book. It was when Ponyboy was acquitted by the judge and allowed to stay with Dally/not go to a kids care home. For the tableau we froze the moment when Ponyboy was let free and everyone was celebrating. In total we had to do 2 tableau’s the second one was the same scene but changed as if it was in modern  times. For this we kept most of the things the same except that we made it on a zoom call, we also made the judge a social worker. To present our tableau’s we had a winter exhibition where we made a set and acted out our tableau’s in front of all our parents. This project taught me all about worldview and how it affects our everyday lives, I also learned about acting and how to show emotion through your actions. Hope you enjoyed reading!

 

Learning the art of Photography

It’s only a week before winter break and we finished our constructive communication project. The section I’ve been working on for the past week is photography. We learned all about using angles, contrast and filters to add mood, perspective and movement to our photos. 

In one of our lessons we learned how to manufacture mood. To learn how to add mood we went to the beach and took meaningful landscape photos. Then we used apps like Snapseed and Pixelmator to add mood to our photo. This is the photo that I took and edited.

 

To take this photo I had to use what I learned about angles. I used a worm view angel. I also used a filter to make the shells look more yellow and I added a vignette to make it more dramatic. 

To show how we learned to use mood we were assigned a mood and we had to make a photo showing this emotion. My emotion was bored. This is the photo I took  

I used a simple background and just one object for the foreground to keep it simple and boring. I also added a black and white filter but I didn’t use one that would make it to dramatic.

The next thing we learned how to do was show textures and stories. For learning how to add a story to our pictures we had to take a picture of a random object and personify it using mark up in photos. My object was a fine liner and I made this 

 

Another thing I made for this project was a collage showing different textures.

For this I used an amazing collage making app called cc express also called adobe spark.

The last thing we learned was how to add movement to our photos. You can use burst photos to capture just the right angle to show movement. You can also use Live Photo and put in it a loop to make a gif. To show how we had learned to make gifs we had to make our own rection gif. You can see mine here.

What I learned about creative communication 

I learned about how to show  perspective and opinions in our photos. You can use a photo to show a story you want to tell and to explain different moods. You can make your photographs look awesome using lots of different angles and filters. You can also edit amazing photos to really show your perspective/story. Also this ties in with drawings you can drawing on your photographs to give them more meaning and to make them more detailed. Thanks for reading my blog. Bye!

Learning how to draw✏️:D

We started a new project for maker learning how we can communicate in different ways. For the couple past weeks I’ve been learning how to draw in 5 different lessons. We learned how to use colours,lines and perspective to make are drawings realistic.

The very first thing we learned was about Emily Carr she was a famous Canadian artist who made beautiful paintings of landscapes. If you look at some of her art she had a real distinct style. She used a lot of curves in her drawing and she also used a lot of natural colours. You can learn more about her here.

In our of our first lessons we learned about doodling. Here’s a video that we watched about how doodling is useful in schools and how it helps you be able to remember information you learn.

 

We were given the task of making our own doddle. I made a doddle about a book I was reading called the outsiders. I added sections of writing about the different important events that happened and I used lines and arrows to show the direction of my thoughts. Doodling helped me learn how to express my ideas on paper, and I know that I will use this skill in the future.

The next thing we learned about was using perspective to make our drawing more realistic and to show our point of view through drawing. To learn how to use perspective we watched a YouTube video, you can watch by clicking the video down below ⬇️.

Are assignment to show what we learned was to create a landscape with perspective. I create a road with a sunset and added a horizon line and vanishing point.

As you can see the road disappears at a certain point which is the vanishing point, this is how you makes things look more realistic and like actual landscapes.

 

Another thing we learned was how to use colour to convey emotion. Each colour has a different emotion.

Red🟥- Love, power and strength

Orange🟧- Excitement and confidence

Yellow🟨- Hope and happiness

Green🟩- Harmony and guilt

Blue🟦- Peace, loyalty and trust

Purple🟪- Ambition and fantasy

Colour is used in paintings, drawings and photos to show different types of moods for the scene. If there is a lot of dark colours It probably means the drawing/picture is more somber and if there are lots of bright colours like yellow than the drawing/picture is probably more exciting/warm.

The last thing we did in this class was about designing. We got to talk to this professional designer called Chloe Devine, you can visit her website here. She lives in NYC and she draws for her job designing prints, logos and lots of other things for lots of different clients. It was really fun to learn about her and she taught me lots about designing.

To show what we learned we had to create a business of our own and make a logo for it. My business was called GoTo Food and I sold Mexican styled doughnuts and sandwiches.

For my logo I added lots of contrasting colours to make it more appealing to the eye and I also made a checkered background with the Mexican flag colours to show that this is a Mexican restaurant.

 

This just some of the stuff I learned about drawing, in these couple past weeks I’ve definitely become way better at drawing and now I will use some of these techniques in my drawings. I had fun learning about this for the past couple days and I hope you enjoyed reading about it.