This is probably most likely the last humanities blog post of the year, I’ve learned so much throughout this year and this has been one of the most interesting units yet!

We started off this unit with reading a very well known book ‘The Lord Of Flies’, I didn’t know what the book was exactly about but the name sounded familiar. Going into the book I thought it was going to be just the average teen novel. However this book is far more than just a easy teen book, The Lord Of Flies deals with heavy topics such as death, and the idea of civilzation. There is a group of kids stranded on a island, throughout the story each kid slowly goes more insane. This book reminded me of one of my favourite movies, “Apocalypse Now”. Each story involves the idea of insanity and that breaking point that every human has inside of them, also that each story includes two groups of people. 

Our first task of this unit was to make groups, yes the whole class decided on the groups. It was quite a struggle at first though, basically what happened is that our teacher Ms. Maxwell left the room and lead us all in charge. We had to organise ourselves in six equal groups, each groups team members had to vary in strenghts and weaknesses. It was very hard to do this as everyone in the class just wanted to be with their close friends so it was quite hectic. The group I was put in consisted of Robbie, Calum, Sofia, Willa and I. I’m pretty happy with my group as it has a wide variety of skills, Each one of us are very strong with several different skills. At the end of this class we had to write a reflection of what had just happened, in my reflection I explained the overall story of how we organised ourselves and the idea of the groups. We organised ourselves based on picking group leaders, those group leaders would then pick members to join their team and then we would adjust if needed. Overall I think all the groups were actually pretty fair based on what we had coming up.

We also had been told that there would be a points reward system for this unit. Teams could earn points by handing in their homework, on time and staying focused in class, etc. And loose points if you swore in class, or handed in homework late. I wasn’t sure what this points system would lead up to but I actually enjoyed it, it added a more competitive element to class time and also lead to some funny situations. 

This unit had three main parts to it, we had to read Lord Of The Flies, learn about politics and Canadian government, and have a unit ending debate. During the process of ready we would have a test every week, we would end up having a week to read about four to five chapters and then would have a group test on the book. If your group got 100% on your test you would win a large amount of points. When I read it usually goes in to my brain and then straight back out, it’s very hard for me to remember what goes on in books so these book tests helped me with this problem. To help me remember important sections of the book I would highlight key phrases or paragraphs and then write them down. This would help me out when answering the tests, the tests were never too hard but there were a handful of questions that needed a lot of knowledge of the book. Overall I’m very proud of how my team did with these tests, we never got 100% but we still did great.

During this unit we also had to learn a lot about human nature and several concepts about humanity, we would end up having to write two concept journals based on certain topics. These concepts can all be seen in the Lord Of The Flies, below you can read my two concept journals. Reading Lord Of The Flies was a great experience, this book is like no other book I’ve had to read in school. It focuses in on children but at the same time it focuses on big concepts about human nature, these concepts would also flow perfectly into debate topics.

To begin learning about governments we had to research about these six different form of government. Theocracy, Oligarchy, Anarchy, Democracy and Monarchy. We then started looking into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we looked into some of the rules that Canada enforces to their residents. Such had the mobility right where all citizens of Canada are allowed to move through the country freely. This wasn’t my favourite part of this unit but it was still interesting to read about. 

Next up was the debate portion of this unit, we were to be given a topic and then be given a side to this topic. My group was given the main statement as “Let it be resolved that in order to survive you must be savage”. We were to argue against this statement, we were very happy with our side as we could agree with this side of the statement. We created a google doc and filled it with information, below are the points we where to mention in our debate. The tricky part about this debate is that we had no idea what the opposing team was going to say, it was quite exciting as during the debate we were all huddled around each other thinking of what we could say. As I’m generally a quiet person I didn’t speak much in the debate, I really regret this as I could’ve added so much to the conversation and it would’ve been great public speaking practice. I’ve been trying to up my public speaking skills this year as I believe it’s very important at to be able to get up and speak to a group of people. What I had to say in the debate was great I just wish I had taken the time to speak more.

This project was very different to what I am used to, I much prefer projects where we create a video or something else instead of getting up in front of the class and debating over a topic. It’s the first time I’ve done something like this but I can see doing a lot more of this in grade 11. I learned so much in this unit and reflecting back it was probably one of the most different units I’ve ever done in highschool. It really took me out of my comfort zone and I’m very glad with how my team did. Please take a listen to our debate below as it’s very interesting what both teams had to say.

It’s that time of the year again…TPOL time!

Grade 10 is coming to a close as there’s only one whole week left, I can’t even believe it. It feels like just yesterday I joined PLP and was learning how to use an iPad to its full potential. TPOL’s are basically a Presentation of learning, we are meant to showcase our learning over the year and how we’ve grown as a learner. In this post I will be showing some examples of my learning through the year, I’ll be showing you some work I’m proud of, some work that I’m not so proud of.

So to start us off on a good note I’ll show you some pieces of work I’m proud of. Ok so one of our last projects of the year was our year end exhibition. I’m going to use the exhibition as one of my projects I’m proud of because I feel that this was the exhibition where I truely shined.

Through out the whole creation progress of my groups project I was fully involved. I’ll link my blue sky blog post here to give a better description of what actually happened and how the exhibition went. I edited all of my groups podcasts towards the project and I also did a lot of the planning, as we were one bug group of guys who are all friends I also did a lot of the time managing and basically told everyone to stay on task as sometimes we would all talk together and get off task. At the exhibition I wasn’t nervous at all, I feel like through this year I’ve slowly been breaking out of my ‘shell’ and I was actually excited to be showing off the project I’m proud of. I also feel that my groups project was a lot different then all the other projects as ours showed off every single skill we’ve been working on this year. Our main project was a podcast playlist to help guide tourists around deep cove, we worked with our podcasting skills, scriptwriting and story telling skills, our recording skills, and showing empathy. I’m very proud of how I performed in class and at the exhibition with this project and I think it’s the best public speaking related experience I’ve ever done. One of my goals for this year was to break out of that shell and become more comfortable with public speaking, I haven’t completely broken out of that mood yet but I’m happy with how I’m improving.

Another piece of work that I’m happy with is my whole experience and performance at Destination imagination, again I’ll leave a link here to my blogpost I did on it. In my post I talked about how during the early stages of DI I got very sick and actually ended up missing two months of school. This was a massive set back for me as I missed so much of school. I just tried my best when I was sick to stay on top of my work to make sure it didn’t all pile up like at the begging of the year. When I got back to school I got straight to learning my new character in our DI play. From what the judges had to say and from what I heard from the audience I was the star of the show. I had learned all my lines but as soon as I had gotten on stage I realized that even with all my lines there were still long quiet breaks in the skit, so to fix this I improvised on spot and added lines. I believe this is what made the play so good as it added another level of humour to the script. I really do wish I wasn’t sick because I feel really bad that I was t there for my team but I’m very proud with how well I did when I was back.

Now I’ll talk about a few projects I’m not exactly proud of, my first one would probably be my Science astronomy project. The reason why I’m not proud of this project is because it was due just around the same time as blue sky was so I didn’t put much effort into it as I could of. I was so focused on blue sky and all my other projects that I kind of just pushed this one off to the side. I also was t that interested into this project as it was basically just researching that topic and then explains to the class what it is, I felt like it could’ve been just a small assignment in class and not a whole project. I didn’t really understand the project either as the instructions weren’t clear. Looking back I wish I just put more time into this project.

How are stars created ?-yyoy1l

Another project I’m a little disappointed in myself with would probably be the debate. It’s not that I did a bad job I just wish I did more. One of the rules was that each member in your team has to speak at least once, in my whole group we all did talk but I only talked once and at the very end. I’m disappointed in myself as I really wish I would’ve done more as I could’ve added so much to the debate. I’m happy with what I did say but  I could’ve been so much better if I had just spoken more. In my group we were each assigned one section to speak in but I should’ve also done one of the rebuttals as I believe that I just didn’t speak enough. It also would’ve been another great opportunity to increase my public speaking skills. I’m very happy with how my team turned out as we won I just wish I would’ve added more to the conversation.

This year for me has actually been quite challenging, from being sick for a lot of the year and at the beginning of the year I wasn’t really taking school seriously. I was handing in almost all of my work late and the work I was handing in was very poor quality. Now that were near the end of the year I do believe that my work has improved a lot and I actually hand rstuff in on time now and I’ll actually revise it but I still have room for improvement. I also made the goal of speaking more in class and I have improved that a little but but there’s still room for improvement. I’m just generally a quiet guy but over the years I do know that I’m going to get more comfortable with it. Being in PLP is a big privilege and most of this year I believe Ive I wasn’t taking it seriously, in grade 11 I’m looking to over all improve myself all around so that from the get go I am handing in all of my work on time and most importantly that it’s the best work I can possibly do. 

Overall as I learner this year I’ve grown tremendously, I can look back and see my mistakes and there’s no doubt I’m learning from ALL my mistakes. I’ve learned so many skills this year from all the new projects we’ve done with podcasting and public speaking. Most of the projects pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to adapt quickly, I’m so great full for this as I think that it’s impormantbto try new things. PLP has been such a great experience for me and I can’t wait to see what grade 11 has in store for me.

Another week another math project, we’ve recently just finished up our new math project and it was actually very fun. We got to choose our partners and then choose a topic. The overall main idea was to compare three cell phone companies and look at the data plans, then choose three similar plans within the companies. Michael and I chose not to do this as it didn’t really interest us and we knew that basically the whole class would be doing this topic, both of us are really interested in shoes and clothing so we combined our interests into this project. The idea for our project was to take four different models of shoes, see how much they are selling for and then estimate which shoe would be the Best Buy. Each of the shoes we chose have resell value, this means that they are above the retail price and have value. We used a website called StockX to look at the prices of the shoes over the past year. I use StockX a lot so personally I trust this website, I’ve even ordered shoes off of it. StockX is basically a market for shoes where you can buy and sell shoes, it also acts as a stock market for shoes and clothing.

We presented our project as a keynote, we used four shoes in our project and had multiple graphs showing our research and the prices of each shoes over the past year. In the end we found that the ‘Jordan 1 Royal’ is the best shoe to buy, right now the shoe is sitting at around $260-$300 but in the future that price could jump into the thousands. Michael and I worked great together, this project was a little more challenging than the data one as we had to take all four shoes and average them out so that we could predict how much they would be in the future, we also had to find the average monthly price for each shoe. This project was really great as we got to find a way to include our personal interests into a fun and interesting topic. I’m really glad that I chose a different as the data one didn’t sound to interesting to me. I learned a lot about graphing and linear graphs. This has been my favourite math project of the year.

The main assignment for the PLP 10 Planning unit was to do a job shadow assignment, we had to find a job that we could have an interest in and the reach out in the community and find a person working in this job that would be willing to set aside a day to let us do a job shadow. I have no idea what I want to do in the future, at first I had no idea to who I could shadow but I did know that my mom has lots of contacts. I reached out to a couple people that my mum knew through her job, she’s a mortgage specialist for RBC and has made several friends from her clients. One of the people I had contacted was Danny Clark, Danny is a plumber and the owner of DRC Mechanical. He’s a Plumber, Electrician, and he works on several construction sights. I arranged a job shadow with him scheduled or Monday, June fourth. I met him in the morning at around 8 AM, I introduced myself and told him a little bit About PLP and the project that had been given. 

First we went to one of his clients homes, he needed to plan out where the pipes for the toilet and shower would go in a upstairs washroom of a house that was being built. It was really interesting because I actually now understand just how much work it takes to make a house. It involves so many people and so much time. As we were driving to the clients house I asked him several questions such as why and how he came into the trades business and what he finds most enjoyable about his job. He said he loves his job because he doesn’t have to sit in an office all day, he gets to meet new people everyday. His job involves a lot of problem solving and pressure, weirdly enough the said he enjoys being pressured as it forces him to evolve his ideas. After finishing up at his clients house we got back in his car and headed to the district library on Lonsdale. The main water pipes were corroding so he hade to change the valve. It was really interesting as I had got two different sides to his job, I got the standard housing fixtures, but also where he goes out into public buildings. I really liked the aspect of meeting new people through this job, I also loved that every day is different so it never gets repetitive. I wasn’t quite interested in the planning out where the fixtures would go as it was very time consuming and could get very frustrating. I asked Danny a lot of questions about his job as I was actually generally interested in what he had to say, below is a list of the questions I asked and his responses.

I was quite suprised that plumbers earn so much a year, I’d never of known that a plumber could even earn that much in just one year. I agree with Danny that cleaning toilets does not seem fun at all. I’m kinda a germaphobe so I dont think I’d ever want to clean someone else’s toilet but hey, you get paid a lot. This was a great experience, I learned so much about something I never knew could be so interesting. I’m still not sure that I’d want to be a plumber or electrician but it’s definitely a idea. Danny’s a really cool guy and I couldn’t be more thankful for this learning opportunity. There was also another final part to this assignment, we had to write a thank you letter to our person who had taken us alongside them for the day. I spent quite a lot of time on my thank you letter as I was genuinely thankful for what Danny had shown and taught me. My thank you letter is down below and again Danny I cannot thank you enough.

So another science blog post…

In science class we have been learning about the different types of energy especially renewable energy. Obviously we would be given a project for this overall idea, the project was to build a device that could capture energy from nature and use that energy for and everyday use. We would be grouped off into equal groups of four so my group consisted of Sofia, Ethan, Sydney and I. We decided that for the device we would create a water wheel, we would make this water wheel using every day materials like plastic, wood, etc…

This water wheel would be connected to a electrical hand crank that would also be connected to a set of LED lights. We first started off with a draft that would act more like a pulley system, the pulley would turn the hand crank and set off the lights but it never ended up working so that when we went with the water wheel idea.

We first thought of making a bigger water wheel that would fit into a river but instead we focused on making it hand held as it would just be a lot better. We constructed the water wheel out of four solo cups, a container, pvc pipe, and a hand crank. It was generally a pretty easy build, it was just the designing portion that took a while. 

The last part of this project was to make a video advertisement parody, we were to create an advertisement for our product and make it feel like an actual advertisement you’d see on TV. I edited the whole video, it was very easy to edit as advertisements are simple short videos. I just put all the clips together added effects and our graphs and added some background music. This project was very fun as it was so open and I love projects that involve a video aspect to them, I had a lot of fun and I’m proud of what my group came up with.