Unboxing Me! 📦

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Unboxing Me Video!

All my life there has been this big daunting question looming over me….. What am I going to be when I grow up??? That is still something that I think about all the time. But lately, I have been putting more and more thought into it. Your are probably wondering what I am talking about, and how this is relevant. In this post I am going to unboxing parts of the project!

What do you really want?

 

This is the book that we read in sections. It is all about goal setting, and how to create steps and a good mindset to accomplish those goals. For each section of the book, there were different WDYRM activities to do. I did the activities in my goal tracker.

What is a goal tracker?

In the book, it teaches you how to create a goal tracker, and what to put in it. You can really make one any way you want, but here’s some pages out of mine (with WDYRW activities on them.)

I actually really enjoyed making this goal tracker. I feel like breaking down goals on paper is so helpful. It seems more real, and I get more motivated to conquer my goals! In the picture above, I made a goal ladder. This is a cool way to break down a goal step by step. You can see every step as realistic goals to work your way up to the big one!

 

Managing me

Managing yourself is a big part of setting goals. For me, it is hard to keep track of all my assignments, sports, events, and due dates. When I joined PLP I started using the app Things every day. I write all my assignments and due dates in there. I even keep track of chores I have to do! It is very accomplishing to check things off as you go.

I have recently started to time block my calendar.

I put my classes, sports, and appointments in there. This helps me to know what I have to do each day of the week, and stay on top of all my activities.

I have started to realize how important it is to stay organized. It helps me with stress and dealing with my workloads. It also helps me break down big things and make them more manageable.

 

Managing Me Video

The video at the very start of the post is what the whole project lead up to. I talked a lot about what I want my future to look like in the video, but they are just ideas. Going to UBC is what I have wanted to do my whole life, but who knows, it might change! I could choose to o a completely different thing with life, and I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I learned so much about using keynote to make an animation. I learned how to use magic move to create smooth transitions. I also used my previous knowledge with iMovie to edit the video nicely.

 

How might I tell a story about who I am and where I’m going?

There are lots of ways to tell stories, but for this project I learned about effective storytelling through a video and animation. It needs a beginning, middle, and end. It also needs to have interesting aspects. In my video, I tried to tell a story about something that sparked my interest. For example, I talked about renovating my house and how I got to have a say in the design choices. That helped me put my ideas into life, and see it all come together. I found that very inspiring, and really cool to be able to have a say in it. I think that storytelling is more interesting when you have personal experience to include!

Something that I want to do more of is look back at my goal tracker. It can be easy to just put it away in a drawer and not look at it again, but all the goals I wrote down are things that I strive to accomplish, and I know that I can loose determination. But staying aware of the goals is a good thing to do! I am going to keep working on that.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

DI part 1 🎸

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Destination Imagination Regionals are over!

After a couple of stressful months of planning, the DI tournament rolled around! 

This post is about the DI Regionals, and my experience so far. There is going to be a part two of my post after Provincials. There were so many steps towards our final performance, so I will break it down in this post!

How our story was created 📖 🎶

“Less is more”

That is the name of the fine arts challenge this year. As you can probably guess, this had to be a minimalist set. We had to show how one small thing can have a big impact. There also had to be one big emotional moment that the main character has.

My team started brainstorming how we could meet all the criteria, and make our story engaging. We asked each other what each of our strengths are, and we built off of that. For example, Evelyn told us she was good at guitar and singing, so we decided we should make her the main character. We only really needed one main character, so we chose to build our story around her and her music. Speaking of our story, here is a brief summary of it:

Evelyn lives on the streets of New York. She hopelessly plays guitar day after day, and nobody ever notices her. Her sick mother’s hospital bills need to be payed but she can’t afford it! One day she is writing a song, and begins to get really frustrated. She chucks the paper on the sidewalk as she gives up on her song. A man walks by and trips on the ball of paper. He asks what she is doing down there and she tells him how she plays guitar. He asks her to play a song for her because he is a producer. She plays for him and he is blown away! He tells her to come by his studio to play for some other producers. The other producers love her singing and offer her an opener at Madison Square Garden!  A couple weeks later, Evelyn steps into the spotlight and nervously introduces herself. She sings her song and everyone loves it! Evelyn continues on to be famous, with her music on Spotify.

That was a summary of our story. After establishing the plot, we had to bring it to life! Unlike my challenge last year, we didn’t have to do a lot of set building. (Since it was minimalist). All we had to do was paint a leftover wooden backdrop that my group member already had from last year.

We painted it as a black and white brick wall. We chose black and white to be the colour palette. My costume as a producer was all black (along with the other two). The dancers wore all white, and Evelyn the main character wore really colourful clothes.

 

Tournament time!

After all the preparation, the DI regionals were here. Compared to last year, I was not nervous at all. I felt way less stressed about failing our challenge. Our group had done some dress rehearsals in front of teachers and by ourselves, but I don’t think we did enough. We realized that we weren’t prepared. We had to sort out who was flipping the backdrop, doing the sound effects, and lights. That was something we only decided about an hour before our time. We had some stressful practice runs right before we had to go in.

It was time to go in….

I think that overall, it went pretty well. Nobody forgot lines or messed up their parts. The one thing we had problems with was the sound. The singing wasn’t out enough to be heard over the recording on the speaker.

We got feedback from the appraisers and then rushed off to our instant challenge. I can’t talk about that part of the day, but overall the performance went well.

 

Team reflection

The following Monday, our group met up and talked through how it all went. The main feedback we got is that the story needs to be more engaging. We are going to add some characters and scenes into the story for provincials. I think our group worked well together for the most part.

Self reflection

I understood so much more about DI this year, and that there is no need to be super nervous for it. I think that I did a good job communicating with my team and putting my part of the work in. I was good at using Basecamp to organize the forms and paperwork for the group. I am excited to see how our story changes for provincials, and if we can improve in general!

 

Thank you, and stay tuned for DI part 2!

Mpol 2025!

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Welcome to my 2025 mpol!

In this post I am going to be reflecting on my Vision, Mission, and Values that I created at the start of the school year. I will also talk about some successes and difficulties I have experienced this school year so far.

But before I start, the POL declaration:

“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.”

 

Vision, Mission, and Values

First off, let’s look back at my VMV from September.

My Vision was:

When I think of graduating and taking on University, I want to be excited to learn new things, and have an open mindset ready to take on challenges that come my way. I want to have a good balance, and enjoy what I do in life. 

This is still my vision for the end of high school. I am on a good track towards this vision so far, and I am going to keep working towards that goal.

 

My Mission statement was:

My mission for this school year is to be open minded to new projects and groups that I am in. I will work more on stress management and being diligent with work. I will also find a healthy balance between social life, sports, and school work. I will make that happen by doing my homework right away so then I have time for my other activities. I will find positive things within projects that may be challenging (With group members or the task). I would like to be excited to come to school, and that is a mindset I will work on. I will work on that by finding the things I don’t enjoy about school and trying to recognize the helpful impact it will have on my future!

To shorten that, I wanted to find a healthy balance between my sports, social life, and school. I also want to have a positive attitude to new projects and school in general.

Looking back on this, I think that there is still work to be done. For example, in this past month, we have had a couple big projects like the Frankenstuffies project, Unboxing Me video, Destination Imagination, and a couple of blog posts. I still have to work on stress management. I have gotten better at it from the start of the year, but the past month I have been quite stressed with the workload. I have been using the app Things to keep track of all my assignments and tasks, and that has been a good strategy.

 

What is a success I’ve had this year?

One of the projects that I am most proud of was the Rise of the Frankenstuffies  project. It was also one of the more difficult projects for me, but I think that overcoming the difficulties made all more rewarding in the end!

There were many steps to this project, from sewing to storyboarding, to editing! I learned so much about how to use keynote and iMovie to edit my video and character.

Since there were so many aspects to this project, it was easy to fall behind. I feel like even if I missed some classes, I would ask what I missed and stayed on top of the work. I used the critique I got to revise my video into something better than before! I experimented with new techniques that I haven’t learned before, and turns out I still have a lot of editing skills to learn.

In my VMV, I chose to focus on self-regulation. “I will set healthy boundaries between academic work and personal life, and seek balance in extracurricular activities, school, and social life.”  During this project, I got a little carried away and I would stay up late working on it. Sometimes my stress about getting it done made me feel like I had to miss my sports, and I don’t like when that happens! I realized near the end of this project, that it’s ok if I don’t hand in the perfect draft because I can always revise.

What is a difficulty I have experienced this year with my learning?

A difficulty that I had this year with my learning was the winter exhibition. It was hard at times to work with my group because it was full of hard workers. That doesn’t usually happen in my group projects, but this year it did. It was a very good group, but I found it challenging to get my ideas across or try and take the lead. Sometimes I wouldn’t really know how to help, and I would feel a little bit useless.

Although it was sometimes challenging, I learned that sometimes you have to let others take the lead and just step back. Overall, it was a good learning experience for me.

 

Moving forward

For the rest of this school year, I am going to keep looking back at my Vision, Mission, Values,  and strive to work on them. So far this school year, I think that I am on a good path to success. There are still so many things to work on, but I am going to try by best to meet my mission statement!

Thank you for coming!

Lost In London 🗺️

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 🏎️ How can we, as writers, weave historical details into our creative storytelling to convey a clear and impactful message?

This driving question is a bit of a giveaway, this project was all about creative storytelling to convey a message. I learned all about the Industrial Revolution, green screening, editing, storytelling, and even sewing! You are probably wondering how these topics all tie together. Throughout this blog post I will talk about how each step lead to creating my final video!

But first, let’s start at the very beginning!

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution took place from 1760-1840. It was a period that completely transformed the world. Manufacturing companies took off, and factories began operating all over Europe and North America. The invention of the steam engine played a major part in the Industrial Revolution because it powered factories, canals, and waterworks. This was a good time, but also bad. Child labour in factories started, and people were living in very harsh conditions. Crime rates started to shoot up because of more opportunity. There were banks and factories to steal from now. Rising crime also meant there would be more jails built. It was an ongoing cycle. This time in history completely changed the world.

Doodle notes! 🎨 ✍️ 

In order to learn about and understand the Industrial Revolution, we needed to watch videos, read things, and take nots. As a class we watched a BBC documentary about the Industrial Revolution. As we watched, we took doodle notes. Doodle notes means you draw as well as write. It was easier for me to hold in the information if I drew. I that I took so much away from watching that video and drawing things out. Here are my doodle notes.

Jigsaw 🧩 

After learning the basics, the class split up into groups to research different parts of the Industrial Revolution. I was put into a group to research later developments. Later developments meaning what came after the main part of the revolution. Things like the telephone, lightbulb, sewing machine, and typewriter were invented to make life easier and more efficient. All these new inventions during the Industrial Revolution inspired new items and discovery’s to help change the world, and help people. For example, the telegraph was super helpful in connecting countries around the world. 

After our small groups researched, we went into big groups with people who learned about different topics in the Industrial Revolution. There was a chart with each topic in it, where we had to take notes on everyone else’s information. I thought that this was a good way to hear the other parts, but it got pretty chaotic. We all had a lot to say, and not a lot of time so it got a little crazy. Here is what I took away from those notes:

The Urbanization Game

The Urbanization Game is a simulation to show how much a town would have changed during Industrial Revolution. I learned that the town gets super cramped, there are barely an trees left, and there are so many factories. It also showed how things changed so fast. It was also very clear how much it impacted the environment. As more people arrived, there had to be more food, factories, houses, banks, and even prisons.

Frankenstuffies 🪡

To have a story to tell, there needs to be  a main character! you are probably wondering what a “Frankenstuffie” is. Basically, I found old stuffies around my house, and cut parts of them up. I then took those parts and sewed them together to create an… interesting creature. I named it Draco. Here is a picture of my creation!

 

Hero’s Journey

This project revolved around storytelling. To construct a good, engaging story, we had to break it down! We had to fill in a bunch of sections. For example, ordinary world, call to adventure, the refusal to call, meeting the mentor, etc. Each of those aspects are important to a good story.

My story is about how Draco and his best friend are thieves in their countryside town. They hear about the Industrial Revolution and want to outshine the new thieves. They decide to steal the Crown Jewels! 

Film pitch and constructing visual storytelling

The next step after the Hero’s journey was to make a film pitch. I drew out the basic scenes of my video. After I did that,  I wrote how I incorporated the Industrial Revolution into my story, and more details on the sections of the story I was going to film.

Storyboard

I used my film pitch as a guide line to draw out my storyboard. This was a way more detailed layout of all the scenes in my video. This helped me to know what positions to film my Frankenstuffie in, and what backgrounds I will need for my film.

Final Video! 🎬

This is the final product of hours of editing, filming, and planning! I hope you enjoy watching my video.

Reflection

So, now to answer the driving question. How can we, as writers, weave historical details into our creative storytelling to convey a clear and impactful message?

I think that telling a story is a really good way to share an important message. It stays in your brain way better if you can tie it to a story or plot. (For me anywhays).  I tried to not make it too informative, but still make it informative enough so that it is still engaging.

If it happened all the way back in the 1700’s, why does it still matter? The past can seem like it isn’t relevant, but in reality it is what shaped our world today. Climate change and global warming are a reflection of the Industrial Revolution because of all the factories and manufacturing companies that were built.

I enjoyed this project because I really had no clue about the impacts and how large the Industrial Revolution really was. I had some struggles in this project with making sure my story was engaging and informative at the same time, and I worked hard to meet that mark. Overall, I feel like my video turned out pretty well, and I liked this project quite a bit!

THANK YOU FOR READING

Watt the heck?! 💡

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How does electricity shape our society and how can we generate it more sustainably?

That was the driving question for this project. Before I get to answering it, I’m going to go over the projects we did during this electricity unit.

Energy Infographic

We were assigned to make an infographic in Canva that teaches people about different ways to generate electricity. I chose to do hydropower. I wrote about four topics. Advantages of hydropower, disadvantages of hydropower, where it is commonly used, and how sustainable it is. I learned a lot about hydropower that I didn’t know before. The next step was to go onto Canva and create an infographic using that information. Here is my finished infographic:

I never knew so much about hydropower before, and I am glad I chose to do that way of energy generating!

The Game

Our class started to play around with wires and making circuits! I thought that this was really cool, especially when the lightbulb turned on. There was a LOT of trial and error, but I learned from all the mistakes I made. Making circuits can be very finicky, but it got easier for me once I understood the concept.

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I learned about conductors, insulators, open and closed circuits, and much more. Here are some drawings I did of some circuits.

Have you ever played operation? That was the game that we got to make! The first step was to draw a character (I chose Winnie the Pooh). After that, I put tinfoil under it and placed the tinfoil and drawing on a shoebox lid.  I poked holes through where I wanted the tweezers and light to go, then sealed it all. Next came the tricky part…. making the circuit so the lightbulb could go off! It took lots of trial and error like I said, but when I got it to light up the bulb I was super happy!

Here is what it looked like in the end. I think I could have spent more time and effort on the drawing, but it worked.

So, how does electricity shape our society and how can we generate it more sustainably?

We use electricity every single day. We don’t realize how much electricity we are actually using. I think it’s important for people to realize that because electricity plants use a lot of greenhouse gasses. There are some better ways to generate electricity, like hydropower (As I learned). I also know that solar power is cleaner, and so is using windmills. People all over the world rely on energy every single day, so I think we should all be mindful of turning off lights, and not wasting electricity.

Thank you for reading my blog post!

Winter Exhibition 2024- Metaphor Machines!

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New year, new blog post! Welcome back to my blog. Keep reading to see how we represented revolutions through machines!

So, what is a Metaphor Machine?

A metaphor machine is another way to say a Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine has complicated actions that create chain reactions. In the end it sets off one simple task (for example, turning on a light) . So a metaphor machine is the same thing, but each action has to represent a part of a revolution.

Animal Farm 🐖

To start off this unit, our class read “Animal farm”. It is a pretty well known book and it is based off of the Russian revolution. It taught us about the four stages of a revolution: Incubation, Moderate, Crisis, and Recovery. I was a little bit confused about the animals speaking and writing and stuff, but I understood in the end. The book actually helped a lot with my understanding about revolutions and how they start and end. After reading the book, we created an infographic about the revolution that happened in the book. Here is mine:

Revolutions

The next step was to get assigned a revolution. I was put in the Haitian revolution group with Julia, Ella, Maya, Milaina, and Chloe. I don’t think many people put this as their first choice, but I did because I didn’t know anything about the revolution. I researched about how the revolution was sparked, and eventually abolished slavery in Haiti. It seemed different from the rest and I wanted to learn more about it. The next step was to do a bunch of reading and note taking on the Haitian Revolution. Here are some of my notes:

This was all individual because the next step was to make a….

Haitian Revolution Infographic!

I used my “Animal Farm” infographic as a guide because I felt like it came together well. There was more criteria for this one, like it needed a timeline, but lucky for me I had already put a timeline in my “Animal Farm” one.

This was also a little harder because we had to identify some key figures of the revolution (people that made big changes, or took charge). Another challenge was formatting. Many times I had to revise and re-format my writing and graphics, but in the end I got it.

Speaking of infographics, the next step was to review all of our infographics as a group. We chose some factors from each that we liked, and we put them all together to create a group one.

Building the Metaphor Machine 🔨

This is the part of the project where my our group had to become more creative. There were a lot of good ideas between all of us, but we needed to find actions that were consistently working and represented an aspect in the Haitian Revolution. We revised so many times and there was a LOT of trial and error.

We used materials that we found around our houses. Some scrap wood, toy cars, cardboard, felt, fake vines, and other things we would otherwise recycle. I loved the creativity that went into this part of the project.

The Exhibition!

Finally, after lots of hard work and building, it was exhibition day. I baked brownies with Ella. They were espresso flavoured, because in the plantations they grew coffee beans 🫘. We had about 70% of successful runs, but mostly near the end. We had about speech that we each said when people came over. Sometimes I forgot parts of my lines because we had just learned them that day. We tried to be very casual so it was more of a conversation than a presentation. I introduced our group and what our machine was representing. Here is a successful run:

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It was a pretty long night, but it felt more successful and organized compared to last year.

What Factors Precipitate ‘Revolution’ and How Have They Shaped the Modern World?

There are a few main causes for a revolution to start. Some are government injustices, weak rules, and economic crisis. For example, in the Haitian revolution there were enslaved people labouring away. Their children were sold away, and they got no income. They worked in super harsh conditions and the government didn’t do anything, in fact they supported it. The enslaved people recognized the government injustice and started rising up and fighting for their freedom. In the end, they abolished slavery. As a country, Haiti still feels the impact of the revolution. They are still in dept to France, and they struggle with poverty and violence.

Without revolutions, there would be so many things that stayed the same. So many actions from different revolutions have shaped the world today.

Reflection

I learned so much in this project. I barely knew anything about revolutions, especially the Haitian Revolution. I feel like it is valuable to know about revolutions in history, and what change they made in the world. My group was full of people who had really good work ethics and ideas. I feel like working with people who were super enthusiastic was hard at times because we all wanted to help out but sometimes there were too many ideas and mixed opinions on things. Sometimes it was better for me to step back and work on different parts. I felt like I maybe could have been more productive at the beginning, but when we got to building I was more engaged.

This has been one of my favourite projects so far in PLP! The exhibition itself went way smoother this year, so it felt more successful. I felt really accomplished when we had perfect runs on the machine. I think the whole group put in a lot of effort into it, so it felt great to see it work!

THANK YOU FOR READING! 😁

 

Running a Remake!🏃‍♀️

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RUN

Our task was to recreate RUN short horror film. Here is the original:

My group was me, Evelyn, and Marcus. Recreating a video from scratch can be very hard as I learned… But here is the process and how it went! Our teacher told us one day to wear warm clothes because we were going outside. None of us had any idea what we were doing. When we got to class, the video up above was on the screen. We watched it over and over again until it was embedded into our memories! Every single shot and detail. That very same class, Evelyn, Marcus and I went out and filmed a remake of the video. Here it is!

https://youtu.be/ub4hLgaflAY

After showing this to the class, we got some helpful critique and the news that (like usual) we would make another one but this time it was the final draft. On the filming day, we had to be prepared. In order to be prepared, we created story boards and screen plays.

Here is my screenplay ⬆️

Here is my story board ⬆️

Final Video

We wanted to match the original video and the final video almost exactly, so it had to be the same time, sounds, clips, shots, and costumes. I tried to replicate the man’s costume as best I could.

When the film day rolled around, one of my group members was sick so she couldn’t be our film person! That was a little bit difficult, but we perservered and got most of the shots as best we could. I was feeling a little discouraged, but we tried our best and made do with what we had. When we showed the class our video I realized how it was not very good at all because we were missing some clips and forgot to add the ending… Our group editor did her best to make revisions and it turned out a bit better! Here is the final video.

 

Reflection 🤔

I think that since the second take was very rushed and disorganized, the first draft was better. I did learn a lot about switching plans last minute though. In the future I will be more prepared for any circumstance that comes in the way of set plans. Now for the driving question!

How might we learn video skills by recreating a short film?

To answer this driving question I think that I learned so many more valuable videography techniques from this one short film. Although I did not film most of the clips, I learned how difficult it can be to make an exact copy of another film. It was also hard not to smile, and that is something that I can work on with acting skills. Overall, assignment was more difficult than I expected it to be, but I worked with my group members to accomplish what we got!

Thank you!

Take Your Kid To Work Day!

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Driving Question 🚙: How does experiencing a workday shape our view of career choices?

At the start of November, all of the grade 9’s had Take Your Kid To Work Day. I was invited to go to Xenon Pharmaceuticals with my friend Julia. Her dad is the CEO of the company!  I am really glad that I got this opportunity, and got to experience so many cool new things.

Xenon Pharmaceuticals 🧪

Here are some things that I learned about Xenon! I learned that they develop drugs for epilepsy, depression, and anxiety. Mostly epilepsy. Epilepsy is a brain disease where your nerve cells in your brain don’t always signal properly, which can cause seizures. Seizures can be very dangerous if you are swimming, driving, or in any situation that could be a hazard if a seizure did occur. I did not know about any of this, so it was cool to learn about.

How the day went….

We started by getting an introduction presentation. Julia’s dad Ian and some of his coworkers introduced themselves to all the kids there. I think there were about 10 kids there. After the intro, we got into pairs and did a scavenger hunt to get to know the facility.  Throughout the day we got lots of different presentations from different position. We heard from scientists, the technology department, and so much more. We got to watch experiments, and go into the lab. We got fed a really good lunch and there was a snack bar open at all times!

Our Task

Our task was to capture a bunch of footage and photos throughout the day. Julia and I interviewed 3 different people about their jobs and how they got into them. We asked about what university courses and jobs they had before joining xenon. We asked them about what was challenging and what they loved about their jobs. I put all these clips together to create a iMovie. We used some new techniques like using Ken Burns, and freeze frames. Sadly, due to privacy I can’t share the final video to the public, but I can show some pictures.

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Sending thanks!

To send thank you letters to our mentor for the day, we constructed an email. It is very important to thank people who took time out of their day to teach us about their jobs! Here is a screen shot of my email:

 

Answering the driving question

How does experiencing a workday shape our view of career choices? I think learning about this field of work and brain science showed me all the possibilities in life. It is a very hard job, but I learned how much it helps people. Getting to experience the workplace gave me a good idea on how different jobs have so many good things about them. I got to experience being in an office, which was super cool because so many companies has office spaces. I think I will always remember what this day taught me, and how many possibilities there are in life!

 

Reaching my Peak Potential 🏔️🥾

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Welcome back!

I have not written in my blog for a while because it has been summer, but I am back at it! To start off this blog post, I will talk about the many steps we took to working towards answering the driving question this project. Part of this project was interviewing people, and we interviewed people from the tops of mountains, to tea houses in the middle of the wilderness! Keep reading to find out how and why…

Driving Question

The driving question for this project was “How do we become the best versions of ourselves?” Throughout this whole project, we pieced together an answer for this question. Read on to find out!

Banner in the Sky

To prepare our class for our Alberta trip and the hikes, we read Banner in the Sky. After reading the book, we were assigned a character to make a character sketch from. Here is mine for Emil Saxo.

Reading this book was helpful to prepare mentally for the hikes and mountaineering we did! Personally, I didn’t really enjoy this book that much. It was a little hard to read at times because it felt a little repetitive, But I am glad I stuck with it.

Interviewing Skills

To practice our interviewing and video making skills, we started out by making an interview video with a classmate. I interviewed Tyler! I will put in this video to show the progress I made in editing and interviewing people from before the trip to Alberta to after the trip to Alberta. 

Alberta 🏔️

As you may know, one of the main parts of PLP is field studies. You can go and check out my Oregon post from last year. Our class hopped on a bus, and drove all the way to Alberta! I never realized how the climate and landscape could change so much over a short-ish distance. I was so lucky to see the beauty of British Columbia, and how breathtaking the sight were so amazing. I am a hiking pro now after some of the long and crazy hikes we summited! Here are some photos from the trip.

We had to ask ourselves many times, “How can I reach my peak potential today?” Whether it was getting super early for a hike (despite going to bed super late), to summiting a mountain, to trying a new food!

Viral Video

One of the tasks on our trip was to create a TikTok video with a travel theme. It could be a transition video, a photo dump a dance, or any other trends. The one criteria was that it had to show the scenery of Alberta. I chose to do a photo and video dump format, where I pieced together lots of videos of my trip.  Here it is!

 

Silent Film

This was the video I enjoyed creating the most. For a silent film, you have to really emphasize movement and emotions. We went to the Three Valley Gap Ghost Town to film this. If you have ever been to the ghost town, you know that it is a bit creepy… Especially near Halloween with the ghost trains and decorations 👻! It was a very cool setting to film our silent film. We were allowed to think of any plot for our video, as long as it had a beginning, middle, and end. Here is the story spine we created before the trip. I was in a group with Elsa, Julia, and Lian.

Here is the final video!

Something that our group could have revised on was adding music all the way through. That was the main feedback. And to our surprise, our teacher said that the rizz party scene could be taken out 😂. In the end though, we got a mountain climber meaning we were almost there but it was time to move on. 

 

10 Essentials Video

All the practice interviews led up to this moment! The task was to create a large blended video with interviews that we made with strangers we came across. We asked them questions about the “10 essentials of life”.  We asked questions like “Who is somebody who lifts you up in a hard time?”. The questions were meant to teach us life lessons in order to live a happy successful life. My group members were Elsa, and Maya. Here is my 10 essentials of life video.

How Can We Be The Best Versions of Ourselves?

To reflect on this ⬆️ driving question, I think that every little assignment we did for this project contributed to the answer. I don’t think you can ever be the “best” version of yourself, and I think that every day you should wake up and try your best.

Listening to other people’s stories and personal experiences helped give me perspective that everyone goes through hard times and struggles, but there is always a way out. Even just going to Alberta with my class was super challenging and exhausting at times, but I tried to reach my “Peak potential” every day.

This whole project taught me so much about Interviewing skills, editing, hiking, history, life lessons, and so much more!

Thank you for reading!

It’s tPOL Time 🏁!

by

Welcome!

This is my first ever tPOL, and I will be reflecting upon my first year in PLP, and I will talk about how I am transitioning into grade 9. I will also talk about Humanities, Maker, and Science. But first thing, the POL declaration.

The POL Declaration

“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.”

The driving question for this tPOL is “How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?” I have chosen 3 success behaviours to showcase my areas of growth, and how I have grown.

Accepting Feedback 🧗

I chose 1 agency success behaviour, and 2 others. The agency success behaviour I chose to reflect on is Accepting Feedback. I think that I consistently accept feedback now. I chose this one, because I feel like I have really grown in accepting feedback from teachers and others.

Here is a bit of feedback I got from my most recent project “The wilderness must be explored”. If I had gotten this feedback at the start of the year, I would’ve though of it as a fail, but I now see it as an opportunity to improve my work and try to create the best version of it. In this certain project, I was creating advertisements. I learned that there is never a perfect draft, and sometimes you need to hand in many, many drafts of one thing in order to get it right. I only made 3 final ads, but they all took a lot of revision 🔄.

Self Regulation

For my second Success Behaviour to highlight, I chose the self-care part of self regulation. This is something that I need to work on still. I recognize that I get stressed out, but I sometimes don’t seek help with my stress. A lot of the time I just want all my work to turn out perfectly! I have began to realize that all the stress about something as simple as a blog post is not necessary. I think the Spring Exhibition was one of the biggest projects, along with the Winter Exhibition and DI. But surprisingly, I didn’t get very stressed. It could have been that I was in a very strong group, or that I am working on managing my stress levels. I only realized I wasn’t too stressed about it until after the fact. It shows how much better I work, and how more free I feel without being stressed out! Seeking help and recognizing my stress levels is something that I can continue to work on for grade 9, and in the future.

Communication and Collaboration

For my 3rd Success Behaviour, I chose to focus on Communication and Collaboration.

With peers: Whenever I am in a group project, I feel like I am a trusted group member, and I will always do my part. I always try to be supportive, and offer helpful feedback. The project I feel best demonstrated this was the Winter Exhibition. I was in a group where some members had trouble doing their part, and communicating. I was always patient, and I feel like my leadership shone through in this project.

 

With teachers: I have become much better at communicating with my teachers. As I have gotten to know my teachers better, I have realized that there is no harm in asking for help and asking questions. If I have questions, I will reach out to my teachers on iMessage and ask.

With technology: I have become very responsible with my iPad in class, and I go on do not disturb to block out messages that may be distracting. At the beginning of the year, I would be easily distracted by messages, and I would go to respond but now I refrain.

 

Humanities 👩🏼‍💻

Humanities is the subject that I have probably learned the most about resilience from. It can be a very difficult subject at times, but throughout the year I learned so many things in that class, from how to be a good group member, to renaissance and medieval times. We have done so many projects throughout the year, and they ranged from songs to books, but a project that I feel demonstrates the 3 success behaviours I chose was the most recent, the Spring Exhibition. This project was sort of short notice, but I feel like our group was very strong, so we put in a lot of work in the short time. In the end, I was really proud of the whole group for putting in their part.

I actually enjoyed this project, and I had the most fun in this project than any other so far. Probably because we got to go to Oregon 😁! We also got to create our own advertisements and make a whole exhibition out of it!

I got a lot of feedback from my classmates, and teachers. Like I said, I had to revise my ads quite a few times. I used the feedback as an advantage to make them better, and more effective. Yes, there was stress involved. But somehow, I wasn’t that stressed. I trusted my group, and I put in my hardest work. In the end , it all payed off! I communicated and collaborated to my group members through sending checklists, giving helpful feedback, and supporting the group.

During the year, we always reflected back to how things change our worldview. I think that almost every project we did in humanities connected back to our knowledge of worldview. I have grown a much greater understanding about what worldview is. This trip to Oregon definitely changed my worldview in a few ways. One of them being that there is so much to learn about every small place to go to, and that helps we gain understanding in the world. Another was being away from my family for a long time. I have been gone for a week without my family before, but I think it feels different being “At school” for a whole week 24/7.

Maker 🎨

Although we haven’t had maker since first semester, I have carried my skills through until now! I learned a lot about apps, and how to use them. We only really had 2 main projects, because we used Maker to work on Humanities sometimes. One of the projects was where we learned to draw on our iPads. Here is the blog post for that project!

Looking back at that blog post, I had trouble looking at the drawings… I know so much more about using the drawing apps now, so I really think I could improve these drawings now.

With the design skills I have now, I could definitely improve the emoji and make it way neater.

 

 

 

 

 

These shapes could have been way neater too!

 

 

 

 

 

Science 🧪

I really enjoy science. I think I have really learned a lot about multiple different things in science class. Last year, we never really got to do hands on experiments, but in this class we got to do lots of fun activities and experiments. The project where I demonstrated my learning best was “Small but Mighty”. I got to demonstrate my drawing skills, my scientist observational skills, and I got to communicate it all in a fun way. While creating my field journal, I worked on accepting feedback from peer critiques, and my teacher telling me how to revise. The part that I originally struggled with was being very specific with observations.

This project also helped me work on design skills, as we created a campaign about vaccines.

Another project was the Scratch Video Game. 

I am proud of this project, but looking back, I think that I could have asked for more help. I was still working on communicating with teachers back then, but I did ask my classmates for lots of help. Coding is not one of my strong suits, and it is a skill that I will continue to work on throughout my years I am sure.

 

Some strategies I have used to help me throughout the year!

Attending tutorial time: Something that I have learned to take advantage of is tutorial time. It has been extremely helpful during big projects to get the group together!

Using Things: Using the app things has been a really good way for me to keep track of my assignments, and even personal things. I wish I took advantage of it earlier.

Texting the teachers: As I mentioned, Texting the teachers on iMessage had been really helpful. I don’t hesitate anymore to ask questions!

 

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Looking back, I just started grade 8 with little knowledge about how PLP works, and new teachers and classmates. I slowly started to learn the ways, and through the year I improved on the subjects that were quite difficult at the start, like humanities! I have learned that not getting a ✅ on my first try is ok, and there is always room for improvement.

A goal that I am going to work on for next year is managing my stress levels. I am going to try to identify the source of my stress, and think if it is worth getting worked up about.

Now, looking forward! I feel like I am a confident learner, and I am excited for next year and all that it entails. I have become much more confident speaking in front of my class, and teachers. I am looking forward to doing PLP next year!

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY tPOL! 🏁