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! 👍
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!:
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!
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! 👍
Scratch is a coding app where we did Science… WAIT! Why were we doing science in a coding app? Well there is a simple explanation for that…
🚀 DQ (Driving Question)
How can we communicate our knowledge for atoms in a fun and creative way?
How we ended up doing this was by creating a video game in scratch and having the assignment to create a science game of our choosing as long as it displayed our knowledge of the atom.
Scratch
Scratch is a coding software where you can code and create your own video game! In my opinion it is very glitchy and deletes your code and sometimes your entire game… 😬
Scratch does have its plus side as well though! It has tutorials which can give you tips and tricks to make your game better and it also has other games that were developed in scratch that you can try out!
My Game!
I have made a trivia game that tests your knowledge of the atom by asking you questions about the atom and different parts of the atom as well. I have recently learned about the Atom being “uncuttable” and we learned about protons, electrons, neutrons and the nucleus because we had just recently learned I wanted to include those facts into my game.
Coding
Im going to come clean here and say that coding is not my biggest strength 😅! I know quite a few people who have been doing this since they were like 9 and I definitely don’t have that much experience… I did have a few issues with coding and scratch overall most of my issues were the fact that my code would keep deleting.
In case you didn’t understand the game or the controls (even though they are really simple) I’ll tell you again! You just need to click the icon above the correct answer then you will get moved onto the next question. I hope you win!
Conclusion
In conclusion I feel like scratch was a really good learning opportunity to see what I could grow on and what I could learn more about! I may use it again I may not I don’t know but I know for sure that this game helped me show my knowledge in a new way that I don’t think I ever have before and it was really fun and interesting.
Hope you enjoyed this post! And stay posted for my next one! 👍
