Reaching Our Peak Potential! (Trying At Least) 🏔️🥾🎥

Ill never complain about Quarry Rock again!!!

Hey everyone! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything because it’s a new year, I am now in grade 9!

So as you may or may not know last year the grade 8’s went on a trip to Oregon and I was not one of them because I was in Bali! Here is my blog post on that: My Class Was Ore-Gone But I Was In Bali!

I promise I’m going somewhere with this- So each year the grade 9’s go on a trip to Alberta at the start of the year! So yes! I have just had my first ever PLP trip!

Our DQ 🍦🏎️:

Although we did go to Dairy Queen this trip (and it was delicious) our actual driving question was, “How can we become the best version of ourselves?” The main part of this project that focused on answering this question was our 10 essentials video that you will see if you continue reading!

Back To The Starting Line…

Ok so that was a bit of information to throw on a person in a span of 15 seconds, to start off and give you a clear view of what I’m trying to say I’ll start from the beginning.

In July we received an email about us being able to go to Alberta and of course I was very excited! When we got back to school in September we immediately started doing assignments and projects and readings that may be related to what we will be doing in Alberta. We would be doing practice interviews on our peers and we would be focusing on how to find a story in a conversation.

My Practice Interview With Cole

Banner In The Sky 📖🚩

This was a reading that we did in humanities about a boy climbing the mountain his father died on. This was a lot about conquering your goals and not listening to what others say and this may just be me but I didn’t really like the book. The ending wasn’t as satisfying as it needed to be and at some point whilst I was reading I got superrrrr bored (Im not saying that Mr.Harris has bad taste in books). I can relate this back to our Alberta trip by thinking how the character in this boom used a strong mindset to get through tough situations just like how we had to whilst powering through the tougher hikes.

My Craft notes on this book: Banner In The Sky Book Notes

Our Videos/ Video Making 🎥

Video making was a very big theme on this project because we were going to be making a Vox Pop video, a silent video/movie and a “TikTok trend” video.

TikTok Trend

The TikTok Trend video is where we take a viral travel trend and we make it our own of Alberta. The goals of this were to include the views of the amazing places we would see and to make it our own! Although this part of the videos was an individual project we could still do it with people as long as we all have different videos in the end.

I did this trend with my amazing friend Maya!

Silent Film

The silent film is something we made in the ghost town at the 3 valley gap. We made these on our first day so even though we were all really tired we still all had amazing videos at the end! The goals for this video was for it to be silent and black and white and be able to tell a story without any words! I learned from this part of the project how important it is when you have no words to be more dramatic with motions and being overly emotional.

My group for this part of the project was: (click the names to see their blog!)

Chloe
Brooklyn
Maya

Vox Pop

A Vox Pop is a kind of video where you ask people on the street or just walk up to them and ask them questions. Vox Pop means “Voice of the people” and whilst we were in Alberta we were tasked with making a video on the 10 essentials of life. We would basically walk up to people and be friendly then we would lead into us asking if we could interview them for a school project. These interviews really helped me become more confident with speaking and with talking to new people and I found it really cool to see the end product of what I could take from all of these interviews to make my final result.

My group for this video that we did during the entire trip was: (click their names!!!)

Brooklyn
Ian
Marcus

Alberta! 🏔️

So now that I have filled your head with a bunch of information of what i have learned and what we did, I wanted to talk about some of my highlights and what was super fun! (Prepare for lots of photos) Also if you want to see even better photos go to PLP’s Instagram (run by Ms. Kadi 💕👍)

The Hikes:

A VERYYY big part of this trip was the amount of hikes that we went on some were shorter than others and some were more tiring but every single one was definitely worth it.

Lake Louise

Sulfur Mountain

Moraine Lake

Johnston Canyon

Lake Louise

Other things that weren’t hikes…:

We did a lot more than just hiking as well! We went to the golden skybridge we went in the Banff hot springs and we stopped at so many more places too! One of my favourites was definitely the golden skybridge and the coaster there because it gave me an adrenaline rush and I love those!

Banff Hot Springs

Ink pods

3 Valley Gap Ghost Town

Tea House on Lake Louise

Glass Skywalk

Everyday…

Everyday was a challenge we would wake up pretty early and go down for breakfast (sometimes earlier if you had breakfast duty). Then after we would all pack up into the bus and the van and head to our destination which was usually a hike or a cool museum. I had so much fun at all of our destinations and then at the end of a long day we would go back and sit in the hotel lobby or whatever and do a reflection work book where we would talk about our feelings and what we hope to do the next day! Here is it:

We have never looked more like iPad kids… the amount of stares I bet we got… 😶

Conclusion:

A big part of this project was all about us and trying to reach our peak potential which means being the best version of ourselves which is like what we were learning about in our 10 essentials and I feel like I really did reach my peak potential of this trip! From keeping a strong mindset through the hikes to being a responsible and respectful classmate even out of the class room. I really loved this project because we traveled for one but we also did a lot of group work! Something I feel like my groups could work on (specifically my 10 essential group) is equal participation. Like our class norm “Equal participation equal dedication” Although we all got it done I feel there were times where we could’ve all worked together more. And I do know that I have been told that sometimes I can seem intimidating and because I’m willing to do more work my other group members let me so in the future I will give more people opportunities to do work. In conclusion this was my favourite part of the year so far and I cant wait for our next trip!

Thank you so much for reading this post and I hope to see you next time! And stay posted for my next post! 👍

My First tPOL 😅

Wow it has been quite a year hasn’t it… We have started at a new school, new friends, new classes and teachers and overall with PLP a completely new way of learning! Welcome to my tPOL which stands for Transitional Presentation Of Learning.

POL Learning Declaration (AKA PLP Cult Speech):

(Introductions) 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.

Let’s Get This Party Started!

I will be including in this presentation things that really transformed my learning completely unlike my mPOL I will be talking about how I have achieved my learning plan goal and my plans for next year.

Here is a link to my mPOL blog post!

Success Behaviours

I am going to be focusing on 3 success behaviours that I think I have done well and things I need to improve on in those areas.

1. In “Its The End Of The World As We Know It” I wanted to focus on Communication and Collaboration because in this project we did a lot of collaboration with our groups and that had to also include a lot of communication.

2. In Small But Mighty project I focused on my own Student Agency and managing myself and handing my own work in on time and getting it done and it being the best I could’ve possibly done!

3. While away in Bali I worked on my adventure book and I wanted to focus on my self regulation and what I mean by that is by balancing my work with my life. I struggle with this a lot so I really want to focus on getting better at this.

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It?!

Blog Post

For this being one of first projects in PLP this had a lot to do with how we learn now and what we do and don’t understand. Along with many of our other projects this project focused on that magical word “WORLDVIEW”.

Worldview:

As I have said before worldview is a way a group of people see the world. For example I may think (with a westernized worldview) that French fries are a really basic food. But someone on the other side of the world may think it was a specialty. So basically worldview is how an individual or group of people see the world whether it’s through clothes, tradition, foods and lifestyle!

Back To The End Of The World… 🤯

At the beginning of this project I still wasn’t sure I really knew what worldview was I started to try to think of it as literally as the name puts it World – view. I think the turning point for me when I really understood was we were given the lyrics to remake!

Lyrics 🎶

After we finished the book the outsiders we got the assignment to craft song lyrics for a song on our worldview. But we couldn’t just write any old song you had to write the song with the same tune and lyrics to the song “It’s The End Of The End World As We Know It” you may have heard it before, your parents may have heard it before but all you need to know is that I kinda despise the song now. Whenever it comes on it just brings back nightmares or filming and creating. Once we had all finished our lyrics we were put in to groups, now these groups would have to perform the same music video so we cant all have different lyrics… SO WE HAD TO MAKE NEW ONES BY COLLABORATING WITH OUR GROUP!!! This part of the project really helped me work on my communication and collaboration with my peers. I was able to see the lyrics from there point of view and then make it into one song! The reason these lyrics helped me so much with understanding worldview is the fact that we had to make it OUR OWN we were encouraged to adjust it to the way we see the world and after seeing so many different music videos I could see how everyone’s worldview was so different!

Tiny But Mighty!

Blog Post

In this project we were learning about the different cells and bacteria’s! I feel like I showed a lot of my own student agency with this project because instead of working in groups we worked on our own. This meant we had to be in charge of completing our evidence ourselves and our ownership and responsibility over ourselves because we didn’t have a group to rely on! Continuing on with this project we also learned a lot about vaccines and anti-vaxxers! This was one of my favourite projects I have done so far because I loved how my teacher Ms. Kadi incorporated so many different ways to display our learning! There was stuff on our iPad stuff in person and it was all so interesting to see how it all fit into the same project!

We explored using Petri dishes and making a keynote field journal to drawing with our Apple Pencil to making eye catching media campaigns!

Petri Dishes

One Of My Drawing Characters

One Of My Advertisements

My Bali Field Study!

Blog Post

This was a project that my class did while they were away in Oregon! Even though I was away for the Oregon field study that didn’t keep me from still keeping up with the work they were doing and that work was… A ADVENTURE JOURNAL! I love creating journals, scrapbooks and anything else where I can make a collage! In this book I really tried to focus on the reflection part by reflecting back on my design principles and my adventure pledge.
Even though I absolutely loved this project I feel I needed to self regulate more and be able to balance my work with my vacation time. Some days I would be sitting on the side of the pool doing work instead of enjoying my vacation! Next year in grade 9 I will for sure focus on more balance between work and my life.

With this book I feel like I have shown that I understand design principles and how to follow them I feel like I have also showed that I am able to do work outside of the classroom and away from my peers which is a very big thing that I want to prove because not all learning and projects are going to be for school.

Spring Exhibition 🌷

Blog Post

During spring exhibition which just happened I was assigned into a random group to make an advertisement campaign! Although I had worked with some of the people in my group before I think we still found new ways to share our information and display it for our whole school to see! Something I found difficult in this project was collaboration and communication skills. We had to collaborate a lot in this project by agreeing on a style of advertisement we would all do and would be the overall theme for our campaign to just decoration and our props and costumes. Collaborating with my team started out difficult but as the project went on it became easier and we figured out that we all had the same goal (to get a good mark 😅).

Things I Have Shown A Great Understanding In 👍

I have shown a great understanding in science and maker (humanities can always have more understanding) How I feel I show I have a great understanding in these subjects are by the fact that in each individual project I have demonstrated my learning by doing the expected amount and sometimes even more! Even though I have been away a lot this year I think that I have done a good job of not falling behind and staying up to date.

What I Struggled With 🔄

Let’s ignore Ms. Willemse’s spelling mistake but, I really struggle with letting other peoples voices be heard when we are working in a group I always think that I am doing it the right way and I want it to be done the way I have it in my head. Now this doesn’t happen all the time it just usually happens when I don’t have someone to level me out. An unfortunate time this did happen is the Its The End Of The World project where my teamwork skills weren’t really on point, this is something I am working hard to get better and I can see it has been improving!

In my mPOL blog I talked about somethings I can do to help me improve here are some things I can countinue doing and some new things I started to do (especially because I was away)

Things I Can Continue Doing To Help Me Improve: ⚙️

– Going to tutorial when I have questions about something unclear to me

– Messaging my teacher personally (I did this a lot while I was away in Bali)

– Asking my friends to recap for me everything we did when I miss school

– Continue using the app Things because it keeps me organized and not stressed

– Challenging myself and going past the expected amount

My Learning Plan Goal 🥅

A learning plan is actually called “Statement Of Learning Intent” So this was my statement of learning intent also my goal that I wanted to achieve by the end of the year:

My goal still remains the same with that being, being able to receive feedback and input that feedback into my future projects with PLP or in life! How I feel I have completed this goal is by fully understanding the feedback given and actually knowing what they want me to do better before going back to my work and revising it. I have been doing this recently and I feel that the feedback given has been integrated into the end result.

What Will Grade 9 Look Like?

I am going to continue learning from my learning plan and reflecting on my mPOL and this tPOL. I will see my problems that I need to develop a strategy to fix and I reflect on what I already know such as I know that I have found a way to integrate feedback given to me by my peers and teachers and I can totally use that information next year!

Next year I will also have a new learning plan goal! I wonder what it will be? 🤔

How Have I Shown That I Have Grown From The Learner I Was At The Start Of The Year?

From the beginning I was a really clueless learner if I had seen myself now I wouldn’t believe it! I definitely have grown from that point. I also feel I have proven I want to learn more about the topic we are learning and I dont want to just do the bare minimum. I also think that when I was away in England and in Bali I missed some pretty big things my winter exhibition and my first PLP field study. I think when I was away for the first time I wasn’t really bothered about what was happening at school and I was just chilling 8 hours ahead. Now I have just come back from Bali and the entire time I was messaging Ms. McWilliam and my friends to tell me what was happening! The way I feel this shows me growing as a learner is me actually wanting to know more about what my class was learning about and before (England) I wasn’t really bothered.

Other than me growing as a learner I have definitely grown as a person. I am now (compared to me in September) more tech savvy, by this I mean I can actually use my IPad!!! I am able to use the apps and tools provided and I have even learned some fun tricks that make my learning easier! (Split View, slide over, etc) I also feel I have discovered more about the way I like to learn! I now know that PLP is my learning style! I love how you can be remote and learn and how we are provided with the internet (like how you would be in real life!) to research. This is so much different than the other way I used to learn which was paper and pencil and long lectures (there are still some of those) but PLP really has helped me discover more about me and how I love to learn!

Thank you so much for listening I really appreciated your time!

And that was my tPOL I hope you enjoyed reading! Stay posted for my next post! 👍

My Class Was Ore-Gone, But I Was In Bali!

This is my Bali adventure book! I will explain more about this below, but feel free to read!

Hi everyone! I know this post might look different from some of the others about Oregon but that’s simply because I didn’t go to Oregon (I know I missed my first PLP field study 🥲) Instead I was somewhere much much farther away… BALI!!! 💕

🏎️ Driving Question: How Does Language Inspire Adventure?

Even though I was away that didn’t stop me from wanting to figure out the answer to our driving question “How does language inspire adventure?”. For me I interpret this question quite literally such as an actual language inspiring us to go on an adventure!
Interpreting this question literally can be like how does actual speaking language inspire adventure? My answer to this is that the idea of discovering or learning new languages is such a fun and captivating idea that lots of people travel so that they can maybe try out a new language they have learned or even try to learn a new language while away. Have you ever hosted an international student? Well I have hosted 6 and the reasons they all decided to travel to Canada was to learn more English! (And also the western lifestyle but language was number 1!). I find this amazing how a language can convince you to leave your family and friends in another country and travel somewhere new completely! Thats an adventure alright!

Adventure:

A question we were asked at the very beginning of this project was what does adventure mean to ourselves? I found this a really hard question to interpret but as the project has gone on I have found it easier to come up with an answer!

The meaning of adventure to me is going somewhere, doing something that maybe you haven’t done before or is outside your comfort zone. Adventure isn’t always a physical thing as well it can also be an adventure in your head such as a captivating book or a dream.

What does adventure mean to you? (You can tell me in the comments)! 😋

Advertisements

What makes an advertisement and advertisement? What about an advertisement appeals to you? This is what we learned prior to leaving for Oregon. We learned and explored design protocols, made some ads of our own and found what actually drew our attention from advertisement so that we can imply them ourselves into our own!

Quarry Rock! (Launch 🚀)

I love hiking! Like if your friends with me you would have to put up with me and you going on hikes and walks together all the time. So when I heard that our launch activity would be hiking Quarry Rock and creating a advertisement for that place I was very excited!

During the hike we were tasked with taking pictures of our surroundings, people, the view! Anything you would be able to use for your advertisement! With whatever you photo or photos you may have chosen you need a catchphrase or slogan that goes with your advertisement mine was “BE A QUARRY ROCKSTAR!” You’ll see why in a bit…

There it is! This is my final version of my Quarry Rock ad. As you can see the play on words of being a rockstar… The amazing models in ad are Brooklyn and Elsa here are their blog links so you can see their learning portfolio!

Brooklyn 😍

Elsa 😍

Week Before:

The week before my class went to Oregon I was already away in Bali! Instead of packing my rubber boots and my flashlights I instead had to pack a lot of Indian dresses…

Yep! I was in Bali for a wedding but not any normal wedding an Indian wedding (Which is so much better)! That week before I had just come off a 35 hour journey of 2 flights and a 15 hour layover in Manila.

Lol I don’t know why I’m holding the water bottle up (its not that interesting) 😅

Wedding 🥳

This wedding is where I learnt so much about my own culture and how much there is I didn’t even know about! Such as traditions, foods and dances! Indian weddings usually last a few days because there is so much to do! I can’t even imagine a wedding with only one day now… The reason there are so many days is because there are many blessings and parties that actually take a while.

The wedding I attended lasted 3 days and there was a total of 5 celebrations. The first night was a welcoming party! There was dancing, food, speeches and more dancing! The morning after was a Puja (Pooh-jua) a Puja is a blessing ceremony where we put yellow turmeric paste all over the bride and groom! Then later in the evening there is one more blessing ceremony which was veryyy long (I may have gotten bored…). The next day the actual wedding was held and during that is when the bride walks down the aisle and meets the groom on the other side. During this is another tradition where the kids on the brides side (Including me!) have to try to steal the grooms shoes after he takes them off as he enters the chapel, the grooms side is supposed to protect the shoes from us by either hiding them running away with them and anything else except locking them up in a safe or a room. Spoiler! We succeeded and I had to chase one of the groomsmen through the hotel but it was fun 😂! The last celebration was a party! And a really big one! It started at 7:00pm and ended at 3:00am!!! It was a big dance with speeches and a lot of loud music! It was definitely my favourite, very chaotic but very fun!

Touring Bali!

We spent a whole week touring Bali!!! I am not going to re-cap the whole thing because I kinda made a whole book to do that for me 😅

I can give you a small summary which will probably turn out to be a paragraph in the end but who cares!
So we toured around 17 places!!! How did we do that in one week? You may be thinking… well we had to get used to a pretty strange schedule, Wake up at 7:00 or 8:00am then go down for breakfast and leave straight after! We would usually be in the car for around 1 hour to 1 and a half hours just driving to all the different places (it was a good way for us to catch up on sleep) we would then go out for dinner and then get back at the hotel at around 10:00pm. We did this for 5 days 🥲… Overall I had an amazing time and if you want have a flip around my book! I think its interesting (well I hope it is…)

Scroll To The Top! Thats My Book! ⬆️

My Revisions 🔄

Feedback = After I got my feedback I realized that there was so much I missed and that going forward I need to check my work so much more and get multiple people to review it before I submit. I used this feedback given to me by fully reading the notes and corrections she wanted me to fix. I then noticed that my link to my blog was not working at all! I figured out how to fix it and I also got a few people to read over my book to make sure my grammar and spelling was all good!

Reflection:

Wow! This has been my favourite trip I have ever done! I loved how we were able to experience and learn so much more about Balinese culture and even my own Indian culture. I feel like I have a better understanding now of Balinese people and culture and I definitely learned a lot while visiting. I hope I will get to experience more trips like this in the future and be able to record everything like how I did with this trio and my adventure book!

Thanks you so much for reading! Stay posted for my next post! 👍

2024 Spring Exhibition 🌷

The end is so close! The fact that we are already at our spring exhibition is crazy! I can’t believe how fast time flies, but instead of reminiscing on the good (and not-so good) times let’s recap the spring exhibition where we created an advertisement campaign!

I sadly was away during Winter Exhibition so I was super excited for my first exhibition!

What Is An Advertisement Campaign?

Ad campaigns are a set of advertisements that focus on a single message. They are intended to meet a specific business goal as well as lead to conversions.

So basically it is multiple pieces of advertisement that relate to the same thing. So if I showed you a t-shirt with a slogan on it, it could also tie back and relate to a regular paper advertisement. Some example of ad campaigns are here is you would like to see them: ⬇️

https://www.peppercontent.io/blog/best-advertisements-ad-campaigns/

Back To Oregon (Even Though I Never Went)

This exhibition was an advertisement campaign! Advertising what? OREGON!!! Even though I technically never went to Oregon I still had so much fun working with my group and creating our advertisement campaign!

You may be thinking “Oh okay cool they are prob just saying go to Oregon or wtv” NOPE! It was a lot more that all started with theses 5 different groups…

Excitement and Escape (Mine 😁)

Discovery and Learning

Challenge and Growth

Connection with Nature

Bonding With Community

Excitement and Escape!?

While my class was in Oregon (and I was in a different time zone) they visited multiple places that touched on every one of these groups main focuses. My group was Excitement and Escape! While in Oregon I’m sure they did a lot of exciting things like Bullwinkles Family Fun Centre and Whale Sight Seeing but the one that we decided to focus on the most was… ZIPLINING!!!!!!

Ziplining seems pretty exciting and fun doesn’t it? Well we thought so, so our entire advertisement campaign is all about the zip line course that my classmates went on in Oregon.

Here are my group members blogs! You should definitely check them out!

I really loved collaborating and creating with my group and although I have worked with a few of them many times before I still think new found new ways to communicate and share our ideas.

Slogan

Our groups slogan was something that they came up with while I was still away but honestly its awesome and I wouldn’t have any other one:

Escape the Ordinary
Embrace the Excitement

I feel like this showcased what we were advertising really well and I also feel like we tied our slogan in well with the rest of our campaign.

Individual Ads 🔄

This is my personal Oregon ad and the reason I added the revision sign to the title is because everyone received at least one while creating these ads. These advertisements had to still tie in with your group and match the advertisement campaign this was really difficult to match everyone’s font and have the same idea but showcase it in different ways. Only once you had received and 👌 emoji were you able to continue (we nay have started before) and In the end we had a lot of successful ads that all looked amazing!

Moving On… And Creating!

Area Layout

These are the areas we would be performing in and we had to prepare everything to fit in that space. We made our props after we had received an 👌 emoji and that meant we could start creating our props and anything else for our presentation. We decided to make a zip line out of some scrap wire a big branch and a curtain rack. I know we sound crazy but it worked! What we did was measure the length of the staircase that we wanted the zip line to go down. We attached one side of the wire to the curtain rack and the other to the branch. You can see the pictures below!

OG Plan

This was our original plan our plan now looks really similar to this one but with the one we ended up with we added a lot more! We deliver water balloons down the zip line like shown in this sketch (drawn by Eloise) then once it reaches the bottom our guests were able to answer a few questions and then if answered correctly they are able to throw a water balloon at any of us. That is our interactive element every group needs one and the reason we chose to let them throw water balloons is because while they were ziplining in Oregon they were dipped in water and we wanted to tie that into our presentation.

Apple Juice and Cookies 🧃🍪

We were giving out apple juice and cookies to our guests that visited our stand because while ziplining they were served those exact things! It was interesting telling people why we were serving those things because I wasn’t there but it was still an overall fun experience!

Exhibition Day!

It’s finally here!!! The day of the spring exhibition!!! I don’t know for sure of everyone was as nervous as me but I was very nervous! Starting at 1:50 we were setting up and getting ready for our guests. My group was near the staircase so that it would be easier to set up a zip line there. When the doors finally opened we had quite a few people ready to pelt water balloons at us. We would tell them about our campaign and also tell them about our pamphlets and show them where we had visited on our Oregon map, we would then explain to them about our zip line we had made and would also explain why we were delivering water balloons down it. After that we would ask them a question and then they would have permission to throw a water balloon at us. Even though we did end up completely soaked it was a lot of fun!

Conclusion

Although we only had a week and a bit to make our exhibition advertisement campaign I think it turned out really well! We did have a few bumps in the road with our decorations and during our presentation running out of water and everyone accidentally getting into a water fight, but it was fine! It was so fun! I hope that for our next exhibition (winter) we will have more time to prepare and it can be even better!

Thank you so much for reading! Stay posted for my next post! 👍

Tiny And Mighty! 🦠

We have just finished another science project that was based on learning about cells, bacteria and the hidden heroes in our bodies!

Driving Question 🏎️

How does our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health?

This was our driving question for this project and I feel this is my answer to it:
Our knowledge of cells, bacteria and vaccines can help us contribute to public health by just knowing it works and that it’s real! There are many people out there who believe they don’t work (Anti-Vaxxers) But they don’t know the toll that not taking vaccines can take on your health and others around you! I also feel that if you are doctor and understand cell biology that it can help develop vaccines for deadly diseases (small-pox, Covid-10, Polio).

There are many different answers to this question as well so you should go and read some of my other classmates blog as well!

Launch 🚀

To start off our project we really started to try to think about gross things that might gather lots of bacteria on them such as…

Toilets
Sinks
Tables
Phones
Pencils?

The reason we were doing this and thinking about all the bacteria was because we were going to start swabbing and growing bacteria ourselves!

To do this we needed to come up with our own question that swabbing the bacteria would solve. My question was “Which bathroom is cleaner? Boys or girls?” Now I didn’t go in the boys bathroom I am not stepping foot in there (even though I did try to convince my friends to dress up as guys and go in for me 😅) in the end I got Oliver to do it for me.

Petri Dishes

Here are my Petri dishes and I decided to swab the sink the door knob and the mirror in both the girls and boys bathroom. These are my Petri dishes at the end of the experiment as you can see, THEY ARE DISGUSTING! We took photos and a log of what they look like each day in what is called a field journal. You can see mine below! ⬇️

Every person had a different question and that means different results Fr everyone! It was really cool and gross seeing all the other dishes! After a while the tub of dishes started to stink… Like A LOT! 🤢

Field Journal 🔎

Field Journal

This journal was very fun to make and I actually really enjoyed this part of the project, but we are not done yet!

Cells

We learned so much about the cells! To start we learned by watching lots of presentations on little stories our amazing teacher Ms. Kadi had made! We even made one ourselves at the very beginning here is mine and Elsa’s!

Mitochondria and vacuoles

Some cells we learned about are:

T-cells

B-cells

Macrophage

Antibodies

White Blood Cell

We learned about these specific ones because they are all essential for our immune systems to function! Learning about the cells was really fun and I hope I can use this knowledge as I grow as a learner!

Vaccines

There are 4 kinds of vaccines that doctors and medical specialists have developed to help us fight diseases! Not all diseases have the same kind of vaccine because the way the vaccine has been developed is to protect you from the germs and bacteria causing the disease.

1. Inactivated vaccines:

An inactivated vaccine is created by taking a virus or bacteria and killing it (with poison) so that it cannot harm the body anymore. The immune system can still detect the foreign invaders after it has entered the body so when the real active thing enters the body we will already have antibodies to fight against it.

2. Live, Attenuated Vaccines

These vaccines are made with weakened bacteria and viruses. They are made weak enough so that they cannot harm the body but are not killed. The immune system can still detect the foreign invaders after it has entered the body so when the real active thing enters the body we will already have antibodies to fight against it.

3. Subunit Vaccines

These kind of vaccines are made by taking a small or cut up piece of a virus or bacteria so cut up that they are dead and cannot cause harm to the body. The way the body can still tell what kind of disease it may be is because they all have certain characteristics that make them look like themselves!

4. mRNA Vaccines

To me the mRNA vaccine is more complex than the others. Ribosomes are really good at taking recipes and working with our nucleus to make copies of the bacteria and viruses. The mRNA is like a copy of the diseases DNA. The immune system can still detect the foreign invaders after it has entered the body so when the real active thing enters the body we will already have antibodies to fight against it.

Characters

Those 5 cells I mentioned earlier were going to stay with us a little while longer because we were tasked with drawing characters that represented them in some way! I decided to do Winnie The Pooh characters I did this because WTP was my childhood and also I just love it! I also decided to do it in the form of a job resume like they are applying for a job in the immune system and telling you their greatest qualities. (And no I didn’t draw them from scratch I traced them… I’m not that talented 😅)

Media Campaign

The media campaign was to see how we can incorporate our knowledge of advertisements and get the message through to younger audiences. The reason this was a media campaign is because spreading a message through the media is faster than going door to door or talking to people one by one. We addressed some problems and false beliefs about vaccines and decided to use the idea of false accusations against vaccines as our main focus. Some accusations were/are:

Vaccines give you autism

Vaccines contain harmful chemicals

Vaccines turn you into cows (back into the 1700s)

Here are my media campaigns that I created against the accusations:

These are the campaigns that I feel display the the wrongness in the accusations I mentioned earlier. I used the autism one more because I felt that was the stupidest reason to not get a vaccine (not as stupid as thinking you would turn into a cow).

Reflection

This project has been really interesting because even though science is a PLP class and PLP is based on group projects we didn’t do that! I feel it was really interesting working in this environment but not in a group like our past projects.

I really loved this project because it had so many different things that we did to show our learning! For example we used Petri dishes which is not something digital (even though we have a iPad available). We also did use the iPad with the field journal and we were tested with or organization of information and other aspects that would make it better or worse. With the drawings we used our Apple Pencil a lot. Doing this was interesting because I don’t remember drawing this much since the Bon-Voyage project!
Lastly with our advertisement campaigns we had to use our again, organizational skills and we had to find a way to get our message across a younger demographic. In conclusion this project has tested our skills and has let us experiment with different tools on our iPad and different parts of our brain. The cell is complex and I’m very proud of what this project has taught me!

Thanks so much for reading! (Im surprised you got all the way to the end) Stay posted for my next post! 👍

🇨🇦 Consequences Of Colonization 🇪🇺

Let’s celebrate Columbus Day by not thinking about him at all! Let’s think about the people who actually discovered Canada (AKA not him).

We have just learned about the consequences of colonization and we even made a whole keynote presentation on it! But let me start from the beginning…

Driving Question 🏎️

What were the consequences of Colonization?

To figure out our driving question our end product would be a keynote presentation that we present to the grade 11’s who are learning similar things. We would be split into groups and then choose a group of indigenous peoples and an aspect of what colonization changed (such as trade, government, etc).

Getting Started

With this project we started by coming back to the building block of all our projects… WORLDVIEW!!! We already know so much about this aspect but it wouldn’t hurt to know some more aspects that would relate to what we are learning right?

One of the first things we did was get to know craft, craft was going to be our best friend for this project because we were going to be taking A LOT of notes about:

New France

Indigenous Peoples

Territories

Colonization

Colonial Wars

And more!

Craft

Craft is a really good note taking app where you can write down your notes in an organized way. You can add colours, pictures, you can also add blocks and dividers to divide the different aspects and you can share your notes with other people! I know that this sounds like I’m doing an add for craft right now but honestly it is an awesome app.

Indigenous Peoples

The term Indigenous peoples refers to:

– First Nations

– Métis

– Inuit

These were all the original inhabitants of what is now Canada.

These people had lived since time immemorial (so long there is no specific date) and before colonization they already had a government, ways of life, community, cultural system, language and much more.

Residential Schools

Residential schools are one of the more serious things that colonization did to the indigenous peoples and that was strip them of their identity. The Europeans thought that the Indigenous were different and that the Indigenous were below themselves, by thinking this they wanted to “change” them to be “normal”. The Europeans took away their language, Clothing, Culture anything of value to them or what makes them Indigenous.

Europeans deciding to do this was horrible and I dont know what was going through their mind… oh wait actually I do it was probably “Wow people who are different from us! Lets try to make them like us and take away everything of value to them and give them life trauma” like no, just no. But here is what the original goal of residential schools was supposed to be:

The main reason I am talking so much about this is because it connects back to our final keynote presentation which I will explain soon.

Starting The Keynote:

Our final keynote had to include all these aspects and to start we would be getting our groups. My group was:

Tyler

Julia

You can click their name to see their own blogs as well!

I feel that me and my group worked well together and I hope to do more projects with each of them. We were able to evenly do work and no one did too much or too little and when we were presenting to the grade 11’s I feel it went smoothly.

Our Focus

Our focus is something we need to choose that colonization changed for the Indigenous peoples over time. For example me and my group chose lifeways (ways of life and how you live) We talked about how before colonization they relied on hunting, gathering, fishing but after colonization a lot of new resources were introduced and it was harder for them to adjust back to their original lifeways. Residential schools affected Indigenous lifeways a lot by erasing their identity and the Europeans wanting the Indigenous to forget who they were.

Algonquin Peoples

We also needed to talk about a specific group of Indigenous peoples that were affected, we chose the Algonquin Peoples. I have learned a little about them earlier in an assignment but it was interesting getting to know more about them.

The Algonquin People originally resided in the northern parts of Quebec and Ontario. With colonization and residential schools Algonquin people were moved out of their home and put somewhere completely new.

The Algonquin lived in Wigwams

They lived in large territories such as the woodlands and sub-arctic regions

The Algonquin language is called Omàmiwininìmowin

Wigwam

Algonquin Territory

Keynote Presentation

Here is my groups final Keynote Presentation on the Consequences of Colonization, hope you enjoy!

RPReplay_Final1715621171

Presenting To The 11’s

For the presentation to the 11’s my group made a follow along sheet to make sure they pay attention and to see that they are taking away information from our presentation. Here it is:

We presented two times, and I feel that it went pretty good! We were confident and I feel that we used our cucards and didn’t stutter. We sounded like we knew what we were talking about (and we did) and I think that the grade 11’s could see that! They wrote us back some feedback sheets as well here they are:

Overall we had consistently the same feedback, TALK SLOWER!!! I can definitely use this feedback in the future for any other time that we may do a presentation or are talking in front of the class. I do agree with this feedback as well because sometimes when you feel like you know all the information you just talk so quickly about it forgetting that the people you are talking to may not know the same stuff.

Individual Keynote

YAY! We finished the project we are finally done! Haha… NOPE!!! The grade 11’s and Ms. McWilliam decided to see if each one of us were able to describe the consequences of colonization which is our driving question.

We were given 3 days to do this and then we would be presenting on Monday to our entire class. This presentation had some limits:

•

2 Slides in Keynote

•

3 Words per Slide (design is up to you!)

•

2 Minute Maximum (practice and time yourself)

•

Individual Presentations for the class on Monday, May 6

•

You may use only “presenter notes” to guide your presentation

Of course this all came as a bit of a shock to all of us and we were all struggling to figure out what our teacher was up to.

I decided to talk about the loss of indigenous peoples culture and cultural genocide and why I feel this was one of the biggest consequences of colonization. Here is my presentation below:

The individual presentation came as a surprise to all of us but overall I think everyone did really well! This was my feedback I got:

Again I got the feedback of having to TALK SLOWER! I think this is really something I have to work on when I present. I even had 20 seconds left and I feel if I was watching the timer more I would’ve seen that I had a chance to talk slower and people could understand me more when I speak. I just had to much to say in too little time.

Conclusion

I think this project actually wasn’t too bad! I really enjoyed learning about craft and taking notes, Working on our group keynote and wrapping it up with our Individual keynote. There are a lot of lessons from this that I can use in my life as well such as group work and collaboration. I feel that another thing I learnt was that we may get surprise assignment (individual keynote).

Thanks for reading and stay posted for my next post! 👍

Our Destination Imagination Journey!

The nightmare has become reality yet again! Yes, we just finished our DI provincials competition and wow it was a lot…
If you read my other post on our regionals competition you would know how stressful, scary and did I mention stressful? DI really is. You can find that post by clicking here.

In case you didn’t read it or are just too lazy too, (which I know a lot of you are) I will do a quick recap for you…
DI or Destination Imagination is an organization that creates challenges for children of a wide range of ages to compete in. These challenges would include skills that you would be able to apply to the real world! I could continue to explain but why don’t I show you a video instead…

My Team

My team was called the Bean Baggers and we can actually work really well together if we try 😂. Here are their blog links so you can see their post about this tournament as well and some other cool things they may have posted!:

Eloise
Sven
Isaac
Sawyer
Cole

Our Challenge

My group had to create a bean bag launcher that didn’t include any electronics and was accurate enough that we could estimate where it landed. Allow me too explain… I am in the engineering challenge with my group as they are listed above…

Anyway too continue for our exact challenge quoted by the book “You must have a ordinary character who does not posses any supernatural abilities and they are having a normal day when a catalyst occurs then your modular device will save the day” So they basically wrote our storyline and we just needed to make it our own.

Story 📖

I did explain the story in my first post for regionals but there is no harm in doing it again for the lazy people!

Our story is based on a normal citizen on a walk around town when OH NO! She sees a mechanical arm throwing garbage into the ocean! Thinking she cant do anything about this she just continues her walk and goes to sleep back at home… She then wakes up in a dream where climate change has taken over the world it is hot, sweaty and people are barely surviving. She realizes what a horror this world is and she knows what she has to do to help stop it! She wakes up and reconfigures the device into a recycling launcher that launches bottles and recyclable objects into the recycling bin. She then passes out into a dream where the world is bright and sunny and climate change is but a un-worrisome subject. We explain how this has occurred and we then finish with a “SCENE!”.

Our story is based on climate change and its problems and we are informing the appraisers and the audience of what may happen if we continue down the path we are on.

Modular Device

Our device was a wooden mechanical launcher that was able to launch a bean bag over 100 cm away but how? Im not going to go into the logistics of how it works and what-not but basically is has stored up potential energy in the rubber bands and when they are released the beanbag goes flying.
Here is a video showing us launching a beanbag with our device for the first time:

copy_4B267ED0-48AC-4F37-8955-02BB3A857062

The Week Prior

So we are sitting in the sun, sleeping in and enjoying spring break when suddenly… BAM! School starts again… back to classes, waking up early and the one we were all not looking forward to the most DI. With my team winning regionals (WHOOP WHOOP!) we didn’t really do much over spring break because we didn’t think there was much to do. That was a big mistake because as soon as the day before school, it hit us… DI PROVINCIALS ARE IN 4 DAYS!!! All I know is that me and Eloise are stressing out A LOT. I had created an entire schedule for our week and it looked like this:

I know its not the best but it was rushed and I was stressing out by just looking at everything we had to do still.

Instant Challenge 🤐

It’s crazy how we have to write a post about this when we can barely say anything about it 😂. I will be very vague because I am under oath not to tell you until the end of June. In an instant challenge you may get a task based challenge or and performance challenge or you may sometimes get both! I feel my team did really well and we worked together smoothly and didn’t get in each other’s way (which I can tell you is a very good thing). My team even got max points in one of the aspects we were being judged on! In an instant challenge we are purely judged on our teamwork skills and our solution to the problem that was presented to us. I feel my group handled the stress and pressure of the instant challenge well and the end product was successful.

Awards 🏆

At the end during the awards ceremony our name was called for second place for our main challenge and first place for the instant challenge because unlike last time they did not put the scores together but instead did it separately. Of course we were confused and annoyed that we didn’t get first but the team that did must have deserved it. I hope that next year we can try to win the provincial tournament just like Regionals.

RPReplay_Final1712529868BeanBaggersAwards

THE END!!! 🥲

Apart from what I said about it being a nightmare I might miss DI, like us showing up to tutorial, meeting with my group and performing together! I just want to say that even though I may have complained I actually had a great experience.
CANT WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!! 🥳

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you stay posted for my next posts! 👍

My First mPOL 😬

As a grade 8 I had never done an MPOL before. I didn’t really know what it was to be completely honest, I just learned about it and I’ll tell you all I know…

MPOL

What does it stand for? Well it stands for Midterm Presentation Of Learning.
We don’t show absolutely everything we have learned just the things that really impacted our learning such as…

POL Declaration

The Outsiders

This was one of our first projects in PLP and it was almost like a building block that added to all of our others that semester as well! The outsiders was a reading that we did that showed us a lot about worldview and our own worldview compared to others. I made an entire blog post on it so I wont be saying too much about it but click here to read it.
As I was saying The Outsiders taught us about worldview. You may be thinking, “But what is worldview?” Worldview is how an individual or a group sees the world almost like their perspective on things and its how they act, speak, live all of that. What I have is a western worldview and I’m pretty sure most of you have it as well! According to many articles that I have read that means that we have more fact based decisions and need more proof before making decisions on anything.

What do you mean by “Building block”?

During this year we have done so many projects that are based around the idea of worldview and our first project was the starting building block to help us understand all the other projects as well.
As said by our PLP teachers then idea of worldview and learning about it and applying it to our learning and assignments will be carried on with us till almost grade 10 that 2 more years! I do think that worldview is a great concept to know about deeply and it is also a great concept that you can learn more about.

Tryptic

This is my groups digital triptych! Our tryptic was one thing that really impacted my learning and the reason for that is it made us think about other times and their worldviews. A tryptic is a 3 panel art piece so in one panel we had the medieval times in another we had the renaissance times and in the middle we had the contemporary times (now). I have another blog post on that so you can click here to view it.
The triptych was a group project and it helped me build teamwork skills and helped me understand how much different it is to work in a group than by yourself.

Poems Book

Click the photo to view my poems book!!!

This was the hardest project for me to do because it required me to express myself in a new and different way that I never had before. I know a lot of people are saying it was one of the easier projects to do because they just had to write some meaningless poems. I wasn’t able to write some poems that were meaningless because for one I wanted a good grade and also I was intrigued in this project to learn and to discover more about the different ways I could display my learning.
Just like all the others I also have a blog post for this humanities project so you can click here to read that as well.

Destination Imagination

So yeah of course I am going to talk about DI a reason I am going to do that is because it helped improve my teamwork skills and my building skills. What it also helped me improve was my actual life skills which is what DI is “supposed” to do. I feel DI has improved me the most and has actually been the most fun and stressful at the same time if you know what I mean.
Me and my group have been able to work together and actually win together! I feel that my group has many strengths that were demonstrated in our challenge. We do have many strengths but we do have a very big weakness having the same level of commitment, we find it hard to make it to meetings such as tutorial and lunch practices. Here is my are both my blog posts for regionals and provincials.

What Have I Showed A Great Understanding in? 👍

I feel that I mostly understood the Bon Voyage project where we had to make an AR maker video on the European settlers when they came to Canada. Another thing I felt I really understood and did well was my blog posts. I put a lot of effort and tried really hard to make them intriguing, long-ish and enjoyable! If you read any of my recent posts I try to include images and videos so that it is more intriguing. Another thing I am proud of is DI I feel I did well making props, writing the script and working with my group. I also feel that me and my DI group have come along way from the beginning where we used to argue and not agree on the same ideas.

My AR Maker Video:

Blog Post On This Project Link

What I Need To Work On? 🔄

I need to work on listening and using other peoples ideas when I work in a group of people. I usually like to use my ideas because i think they are the best and only include others sometimes. Another thing I need to work on is staying focused and doing the work I need to instead of talking to my friends or playing games. Another big thing I need to do is ask for help when I need it. I feel like I struggle with this because I like to think I can do it myself (when I cant).

Things I Can Do To Help Me Improve: 🛠️

– Going to tutorial when I have questions

– Challenging myself and going past the expected amount

– Using the app Things to help me hand in my assignment on time

– Asking for help when I don’t understand something or if something is unclear to me

– Reading instructions more carefully before I do an assignment

Learning Plan Goal 🥅

When I say learning plan goal it is technically called “Statement Of Learning Intent” So this was my statement of learning intent also my goal that I am going to try to achieve by the end of the year. Here it is:

This year I want to know and want to be able to receive feedback on how to do things in a deeper and better way. For example I may want to learn how to ride a bike but instead to learn things more I want to learn tricks and skills to become a star trick biker. For me I want to not just have people tell me that I’m doing things wrong and for me to accept that I want people to tell me what I can build on and be better at and I want to be able to use that feedback to make it better. Basically in conclusion I want to become a more Open learner who excepts feedback and can grow on it.

How Will I Make Sure I Achieve My Goals By The End Of The Year? 💭

To make sure I can complete my goal I will look over my goals often and will make sure that I am motivated to complete them all. I will also try to go beyond the expected amount more often (as one of my goals say) and why I am doing this is too get a better mark and prove that I am willing to do more. I have many examples where I have done the work and gotten a proficient mark ✅ but to show that I can do more and am capable of it I will work harder to get extending 💯 in the future.

How Have I Shown That I Have Grown From The Learner I Used To Be?

To show that I have grown as a learner I have proven to ask more creative questions about the topic we are learning. I have also shown that I am capable of doing what’s expected and sometimes even more. Some evidence I have that shows I have grown are my blog posts. At the beginning sure they had words and pictures but they weren’t really as intriguing I got this advice from most of my teachers saying how I need to “Improve” so I took that feedback and have tried to apply it to all my more recent posts. As I look back at the projects I have done I see that at the beginning I wouldn’t have been able to do them at all. For me that shows that I have grown as a learner.

Other than me growing as a learner I feel that I have grown as a person. By that I mean I have been exploring different learning techniques and just learning new things (un- school related). With us doing that I have discovered different ways I like to learn and what I like to learn about! I have found out many things about myself such as what I have improved on from the beginning of year to now! Something I have learned about myself is that I am able to talk in front of people and speak publicly!!! At the beginning of the year I could never have done a presentation in front of people where I would have to talk… for a really long time… I have noticed over time I have been getting more used to talking to groups and talking in a presentation (like how I would be doing while presenting my mPOL) I have been growing in this area and I hope to keep getting better!

Thanks for reading! And stay posted for my next post! 😁👍

A Whole New World 🌍

We have just come out of a new project called “Bon Voyage 🌊” in this project we have been learning about the age of exploration, the Vikings and the European explorers.

🏎️ DQ (Driving Question)

How can we use storytelling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact?

How we end up doing this is by writing a story on pages and having to draw a bunch of drawings that we would end up putting on our AR Maker app to make a digital story.

Getting Started With AR Maker:

At the beginning of this whole project we were experimenting with an app called AR Maker.
A reason we were experimenting with this in the first place was because our entire project was going to end with us writing and making a digital story.

I found this difficult to make but in the end it was actually really fun! We had to make a one minute story and draw out all the aspects that would go into it here is mine:

Technology:

We learned a lot about the kind of technology that was used to travel and that was traded during the Columbia exchange and the European exchange. Some of these were Compasses, Sextants, Caravel ship and more!

We made a sketch of each of the important things during the exchange and made this too show our knowledge of what we had learned:

Connecting Cause And Consequence

Connecting the cause and the consequences was a very big thing that we were learning about in our class. A reason this was a giant thing we were learning is because it is a clear thing to know when you are writing a story. When I say connecting cause and consequence I mean that for example: “Timmy was cheating a math test with his phone” Then “Got caught cheating and failed his math test” Then connecting the cause with the consequence “His parents got mad and took away his phone”. We did many assignments on this to show what we had learned here are some examples:

Story Mountain

A story mountain is when we started to write our story that was:

– Historically Accurate
– Detail Oriented
– Has A Beginning,Middle,End

I found this part took a lot of thinking and when I was writing this out I had to think a lot about how I wanted the story to go and how I wanted it to include everything that we had learned. I end up going with a very historically accurate version of history and it actually turns out pretty well. I tried to film the entire story that I had created on AR Maker and then voiceover it on IMovie.

My AR Movie:

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed this project because it allowed us to show our knowledge in a new, fun and creative way! I love how we learned about so many aspects of our project before we made our end project I had many assignments that led up to our end product which is the video above. In conclusion I will take these things that we have learned and will use them in the future and I will also look back at this project and will think about the things that we have learned.

Hope you enjoyed reading and stay posted for my next post! 👍

DI Regionals Reflection

Destination Imagination Update: We made it through regionals!!! We didn’t die! I know that we wouldn’t actually die but the way it was hyped up to seem absolutely horrible and devastating seemed like we were all going to die.

YEP! My team won first! We were all very proud of this outcome but even though we did get first I feel there are still things we can improve on for PROVINCIALS!

Destination Imagination!

Destination Imagination (DI) is a big competition where multiple teams compete in a certain challenge to win. My group was “The Bean Baggers” and we were competing in the bean bag launching challenge.

Story

Our story is based on a normal citizen on a walk around town when OH NO! She sees a mechanical arm throwing garbage into the ocean! Thinking she cant do anything about this she just continues her walk and hoes to sleep back at home… She then wakes up in a dream where climate change has taken over the world it is hot, sweaty and people are barely surviving. She realizes what a horror this world is and she knows what she has to do to help stop it! She wakes up and reconfigures the device into a recycling launcher that launches bottles and recyclable objects into the recycling bin. She then passes out into a dream where the world is bright and sunny and climate change is but a un-worrisome subject. We explain how this has occurred and we then finish with a “SCENE!”.

Here is my teams DI Regionals performance!:

Prep

The time we had to prepare for DI was actually quite a while in my opinion! But some of the private schools and some of the homeschoolers had even longer! In our prep time we read the booklet and made sure all the requirements were met before the competition. While we were in this prep time everyone in our group made an effort to come to our meetings in the morning and after school and as we got closer to regionals, all of our dress rehearsals.
Here are the people in my groups blogs, just click their name to check them out!:

Eloise
Sven
Isaac
Cole
Sawyer

Poem

As my part in the script I was meant to memorize this poem and be able to recite it easily and fluently in our performance. I found this job quite difficult especially because I had other lines to memorize as well but in the end I was able to deliver the best I could!

A reason we included a poem was because it showed off one of our team choice elements (something that your team has in common that you must add to your performance) as I have said in one of my recent blog posts we had just recently learned about poetry and writing poems. If you would like to see that post click here!

We received high marks for the poem and I was very proud of my team for doing that and accomplishing one of our goals.

1 Week Prior!

With one week until regionals we were freaking out we had recently learned that one of our group members was unable to attend because of “ …” we still had so much to do and even though it was easy to rewrite the script filling in that gap of… 1 less person doing set changes, 1 less person on stage and yada yada… The mornings of this week was very productive with everyone being there 90% of the time.

Day Before…

We did our first dress rehearsal! YAY! Bu we did end up doing like 20 more after that 😂. People were struggling remembering lines and with what they are supposed to be doing when not talking (set changes, launches) I am included in this by the way, Im not just coming at my group! We ended up doing 3 dress rehearsals that weren’t the best and told everyone to look over the script a few more times before the next day.

Regionals!

It was the day we had all be waiting for, we were horrified, excited, stressed and I don’t speak for my whole group when I say this but I was freaking out! My entire group arrived at 8:20 so we had about an hour before we had to be at our room where we were doing our challenge. We had some of the cleanest dress rehearsals ever and we were going in confident (sort of). As soon as we were about to start we did our cheer and we were off! IT WAS SO GOOD! It was clean it was smooth everyone remembered their lines and it was just so good! My whole group was celebrating and we were then asked questions by the judges, I think that our presentation went very well and it will only get better before provincials!

IMG_0466

Instant challenge: 🤐

I cannot be talking to you about this in too much detail or any detail really because I am under oath that till the end of May I cannot reveal any information about the instant challenge or my team will be disqualified from the tournament.
But I’m sure I can tell you what an instant challenge is! A instant challenge is a challenge that you have no clue is going to be! You could so a task instant challenge a performance instant challenge or both in the same one! The appraisers/judges will critique you on your team work skills and how much you actually complete the challenge.

Our teams teamwork was very good we were accepting each other’s ideas and not saying no to anything! I feel the instant challenge was a big help that helped us earn first place and I think that if we hadn’t done as well we may have had a different result.

Rose, Bud, Thorn:

A rose, bud, thorn is a way to reflect on something you have done and want to get better at. I am using this style of reflection to reflect on our regionals tournament.

Rose 🌹 = Good Things and things we did great on!

I feel we had many roses in our tournament and from before or tournament. Such as our teamwork in creating the entire performance the device and also from our instant challenge. Another rose was everyone remembering lines and not stuttering or mumbling and everyone saying them loud and clear so that the appraisers and the audience can hear.

Bud 🌱 = Things we can grow on and get better at!

Our team could’ve had some better communication between us on our group chat and in person. With letting our group know about the fact if you would be able to turn up to a meeting or if you were un able to go to the tournament maybe letting the group know sooner. Another bud is our backgrounds and props I feel compared to the rest of the groups they were less on the nice looking side. Im not saying that was a huge part because we did win first after all its just that for provincials we need to maybe upgrade some of our props and backgrounds.

Thorn 🥀 = Things we did not do great at and need to improve on.

Something not really my group needs to do but I need to do is launch the device in the correct spot and not on the Velcro mat. I did not do this 3 times and we scored a 0 for three out of the eight launches. I was very devastated that this happened but I will definitely not do that in the provincials!

Conclusion

So yeah! We made it through regionals! Even though it was stressful and just a lot 😵‍💫 it was very fun and it really helped us build and work on our teamwork skills. In conclusion I am very happy with the outcome of regionals and we will build on our feedback and get ready for the next round!

PROVINCIALS HERE WE COME! 🥳

Thanks for reading! Stay posted for my next post! 👍