SLC L.P.P

Today you will be reading about the work I have done so far this year in PLP. Here’s the link to my post on Scimatics, and hope you enjoy reading.
Scimatics Blog post

Humanities

From the beginning. Over the year we have worked on quite a bit of stuff. “Stuff” like; Advertising, Religion, Coding, Shakespeare (I don’t know if that was supposed to be history or not) and Destination Imagination.

Advertising

One of the first units we did was advertising. We were asked to make 3 ad’s. One for a business, one for a private place that classmates would like to go to. A tourist ad. And the one to advertise a natural disaster (advocacy ad). I made my ad’s for, my dads business (IWS), a place in Australia called “Goughs Bay”, and a poster like ad to show kids what to do in the emergency of an earthquake.

(not final drafts of my ads⬇️)

Advertising L.P.P

Religion

With our studies of religion, we started by learning about different religions. We learnt about how all different religions are different from eachother (other then the fact they aren’t the same Religion). What certain religions believe, what celebrations they celebrate and what activities they do to show their devotion to their god(s). We learnt what kinds of places people go to worship their god(s) and what they believe that the god(s) do for them. So in a nutshell; why they worship them, how they show the god(s) they worship them, what celebrations, festivals ext. they go to or have for their religion, where they worship or express their gratitude to their god(s).

When we were first introduced to the Religion unit, I was quite curious. I’d learnt about Religion in school in Australia before, but it wasn’t ALL religions. Just one. When we did do the unit I was interested and took notes and learnt quite a lot about all the different religions and how they work. Even though we had to cut the unit short for Oregon, it was still fun to learn what we did.

Coding

Our coding unit was really fun. Learning how to control a character on “swift playgrounds” was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in school for ages. Even through it was challenging sometimes, it was just so fun to learn how to code. All the activities we did for the unit, including;

-Swift Playgrounds,

-Coding games,

-The Hustle (#dothehustle).

Along with learning how coding worked, this unit was just something that many people these days like to learn. After all we are are around this kind of stuff every day. When we check our phones, play video games and receive a text with the balloon effect). It’s fun to know how to create code for our own things, starting from the basics from Swift Playgrounds. We escalated to trying to write out how to do The Hustle (my hand hurt from writing all that even with the shortcuts).
Looking at coding, we got to see how all our favourite games worked. To see how so much code, short cuts and commands have to be put into the work of these things. Computers, iPads, phones, every app on the App Store, all code hidden into making it work.

Coding L.P.P.

Shakespeare

If you haven’t heard of the great writer Shakespeare, you live under a rock in a deep deep cave. He’s the known greatest writer in history (but that was before J.K. Rowling).

Some of Shakespeare’s worked include; Romeo and Juliette, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth. For our Shakespeare unit, we were reading Julius Caesar.

I’ve been into the subject ancient history of Greece and Rome and mythology, legends and storys for a while now, so when we started reading Julius Caesar I was probably more interested then most people in our class. I (for some reason) found getting to look up things about the history of Rome and writing about it’s most famous dead guy for a L.P.P., the most fun post we got to do.

We read the play Julius Caesar as a class and did assignments and Learning Portfolio Posts (L.P.P.’s or Blog posts) on what we learnt from it and on the characters (assignments and posts were individually done). The questions we had to answer for our assignments were things like; What was the most interesting part of the character? Who was the real hero in the story? Why is the story called Julius Caesar when he’s only in a few scenes and he dies? All those things we got to share our opinions on and write about. Reading, writing and ancient history. The three things I like doing in my spare time the most. That was defiantly one of my favourite units we did this year.

It also touched back on the subject of religion a bit too. The way the roman religion was back then. Also how hard Ancient Rome had it. They had a good system and things like that until one guy got killed and even as a dead guy, started a heap of wars that ended up creating the Roman Empire out of the Roman Senate. I could go on and on about this, so I guess… if you want to read more about Julius Caesar himself, the link is below.

Shakespear L.P.P.

Destination Imagination

Recently, Destination Imagination was introduced to our class. And by recently, I mean we just did the Regional’s last week (if your reeding this way after its posted, I’m talking about the weekend of the 25th of February 2017).

My group and challenge:
For my group, I was put in the Engineering Challenge. Lucky for me I was put in charge of the story and script and got to do something I enjoy. Unfortunately, some of my other group members were not as “enthusiastic” about the whole thing.

For our challenge we had to come up with a story where representatives from two countries (we decided Nepal and China) had to come together and meet to talk about a global issue (we decided an earthquake that had destroyed the connection between the two countries and was affecting the way that product were getting around the world) and they had to fix the problem. There also had to be two balsa wood structures included in the story. With team choice elements included also.

My group had two representatives come to talk about designs for a new bridge, but when they arrived they had two different models and had an argument about which was better.

Unfortunately about an hour before we were going out to present for the regionals, we found out the two balsa wood structures were two big. We tried to fix them but it didn’t work out and we ended up going out to present without our structures. That lost us a lot of points in the competition.

What is DI?:
Destination Imagination (DI) is competition where groups of people get to choose a challenge to do. They work on their challenge and presentation for a quite a while and then go to regionals. After regionals, if you get far enough with enough points for your performance, you get to compete agin in provincials. During the gap time you can change things like; lite bits of touch up to the story (you cant change it though) and the team choice elements.

DI L.P.P.

Work I am most proud of this year

Classroom:

As you can see we have done quite a bit in the classroom this year. Lots of work to be proud of and lots I wish I could go back and fix.

The thing from the classroom am most proud of this year is my Mini Exhibition presentation (yeah, I have a blog post for that as well. The links at the end of this section). It may have not been the BEST thing I’ve worked in this year but it was defiantly the one that got me working hardest on. After all it was our first big project. When I was thinking about the Mini Exhibition project I kept thinking “I have to make an entertaining way to present. How can I do that? What can I do to make this interesting? What do I need to do?” And throughout the project “how can I make this better? How can I fix this problem?”. Soon I was getting ideas. And out came a product of hard work- A puppet show. When I started I had a different idea of what I would to with the puppets. But by the time the night came, I knew my original plan wasn’t going to work. So I came up with a different way to do it. I don’t think the performance itself was the thing I am most proud of with this. I think it’s the way I worked so hard to make it, and have something working in a short amount of time it make.

Winter Exhebition L.P.P.

Field:
This one is easy. The workbook we worked on in Oregon. Truthfully I wasn’t proud of the first copy. It was not that good. All the work was rushed so that I could just be in the moment while we were there. But the second copy of the book that I did after we got back was pretty good. This one I’m proud of because as well as it being hard work I put into making the book, but also the way I fixed it. When I did it the first time I didn’t do it very well. But when I re-did it, I found my work way better. It had changed entirely. If anyone is looking to see the book, its in the link below.
Oregon Book

Destination Imagination:
My script. I am most proud of my script for DI. It was the thing I worked the hardest on, it was my one main job and I did what I think was a pretty good job on it, even if it wasn’t fully followed for the actual Regional’s presentation. While I was working on the script I kept asking myself through the righting process “how can I make it more interesting? Should it have more humour? How can I make this better? Do I have everything I need here?” And in the end I did. I got the whole script done and am quite proud of what I did. There couldn’t be a proper presentation without the script and story and, I felt proud when I finally got to see the final outcome of my work and how it ended out.

My learning and changes throughout the last few months

Classroom:

My blog posts no question. They show the most progress in my writing and explanation skills from the start of the year to now. When you look at my first L.P.P./Blog post (which was on photography angles) compared to my Oregon L.P.P. Post, you can see the difference. In size, quality of writing, and even (funny since the first one was on photography angles) better photo quality.
My first blog post has about two paragraphs of mostly repeated things and a few descriptions. My Oregon one though, doesn’t repeat nearly as much and doesn’t just briefly touch on one thing and jump to the next (and I am aware that this post does a bit of that too). The Oregon one describes in more detail, talks about the topic and has more then one photo!

Field:
I have to say that some of the field work on using the camera better is one thing I’ve escalated skill on. Play on the word “field” the funny thing is, the first class we did on camera angles, we actually went out out to a field and worked on our angles by taking photos.
Photos from the start of the year show me with blurry photos, badly lit photos and non edited photos. Soon I learnt how to fix them. How to adjust the lighting, edit photos, use angles and filters to make my photos better. If you look at some of my photos from recently you might see some pictures of the same photo with different lighting that makes it look really cool. Filters make an old look come upon something new. Lighting makes a bright room seem slightly dimly-lit. A angle makes it look cooler then the photo actually is.

Destination Imagination:
Writing skills. Thats what I’ve learnt from DI the most. How to write in a new way; script and story. I can now right a script as well as a novel writing style, essay style, paragraph, or point-form notes. When I started DI, I had never written a proper script that was important before. And now its one of the things I’m most proud of this year. When I got to spent all my time writing and learning all new techniques. I also learnt lots from reading the Julius Caesar play, because it showed me how to write in a script/story style. If you were to look a piece of my writing from before a month ago, and my writing now, you would see a difference. I get new writing techniques shown to me all the time. So my writing always looks slightly different and changed.

My Growth Mindset

Classroom:

We did a whole unit on Growth mindset. I have a whole L.P.P. On it. To check that out click this link —> Growth Mindset L.P.P.

The biggest thing I use a growth mindset for is Math . When it comes to math for me I need a growth mindset or I would be in huge trouble. Since the start of the year I’ve had to use a growth mindset in math. When I don’t understand something, I just tell myself “but I CAN learn it” and then, when we did our our first project The Lemme Llama, I had to use a growth mindset a lot. I didn’t understand it, so I looked at everything I needed to know and said to myself “I can learn that” and “I will understand as long as I try to”. So that way when it was time for me to start working properly on the Lemme Llama (official name since the begging), I was ready to work hard, to get things wrong and try again and think about how I would be able to do what I need to over time.

Field:
When we were in Oregon, it was difficult to work hard and concentrate when your exploring with your friends. At least thats how I felt. As if, even when I needed to get work done, I couldn’t because there was always something going on. I had to keep telling myself “you can get this done. You can do this. You can do a good job on this. Just work hard. You can do that, and then you can go join in the fun”. And I did. Mostly, as much as I could with constant activity around me. But I had to keep a growth mindset about understanding everything, that I could learn, that I could get everything done.

DI:
Truthfully, My group was what I needed a growth mindset for when it came to DI.
Like I said before, not everyone was overly interrested in doing the work they needed to do, and instead wanted to do recreational activities (like gaming and watching YouTube). I needed to step up and be more of a leader during this project. I had to keep telling myself that it would be ok. That I could get everyone working. That everything would be ok, because everyone would learn from their mistakes of non-prepared-ness on the day. I was right. Because on the day everyone in my group was pretty much just memorizing their lines other then Owen and I. But throughout everything, I told myself that I would learn from this experience, I could be a leader for my group and in the end I did an Ok-ish job. And I plan to continue becoming more of a leader throughout our time getting ready for Provincials.

My Goals

I’ve set three goals for the rest of the year.

Number 1.) To grow my understanding of the school work that I feel behind on or don’t feel like I understand.

Number 2.) to be more organized when it comes to homework and school work.

Number 3.) become more of a leader.

How am I going to achieve these goals?

1.) To achieve my first goal I am going to spend more time working on the things I need to work on so I get to a level where I feel more caught up on everything. That way I can work harder on the current work, without feeling like I’m not understanding something that needs to be understood for future and current units. An example of this is mainly in math because I find it harder to understand then most things and I wish I did understand it, so I’m going to spend more time catching up and understanding it for the future,

2.) I am planning to achieve this goal by, understanding what I need to do before leaving the school building and then going to do the work I need to do before I do any recreational activities. I need to make sure everything I hand in is as good as I can make it and everything that I’ve done my best. And the way to do that is to make sure I know what i’m doing and do it before anything else.

3.) When it comes to this goal I have to say, so far I’ve done badly. I always kind of let the people I know are good leaders and let them be the leaders, and instead, I want to become one of the people that lead the groups. I plan on taking more leadership parts when it comes to projects from now until the end of the year and practising speaking for a group and showing leadership when it comes to things around me that I think I could be a good leader towards. I am going to be more heard and show that I can be a leader in the time running up to the end of the year.