Month: June 2024

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!

Eloise

Elsa

Cole

Sam

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! 👍