Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be reflecting on my most recent project in Humanities, Save Juno Beach. This project was all about World War II. I learned lots about the causes and consequences of the war, and all about how the events of the war played out. Our finished product end was an academic essay. In this blog post, I am going to take a deep dive into the process it took to get me to the point where I had a finished product I was happy with. Let’s get into it!
For our first keystone, we learned all about many of the events of WWII, and then completed Kahoot quizzes to show our learning. There were 6 different Kahoots about different aspects of the war. In order to receive a proficient grade on the Kahoot quizzes, we needed to get a perfect score and get every question correct. I am happy with my learning on this keystone because I think I picked up on the facts when our teacher taught them in class, and anything that I missed, I picked up while doing the Kahoots. I feel that after this keystone, I had a strong understanding of the events that happened before, during, and after WWII.
After this, we got to work on narrowing down what we might want to include in our essay. At this point, we had still not written our thesis, so we had a wide range of options of what we could write about. In order to be able to narrow things down once we started brainstorming, we needed to strengthen our skills in determining historical significance. For this, we had a worksheet, pictured below, in which we determined the historical significance of WWII. In the worksheet, we looked at significant ways that this event could impact the world, and figured out how much that the statement applied. Here is my historical significance of WWII chart:
After we were confident in our abilities to figure out whether something was significant, we brainstormed topics for our essay. I chose to brainstorm using a useful app called MindNode. With MindNode, I could create a web of ideas branching off of one another. Here is my brainstorming:
After this, it was time to write our thesis. Here is the one I wrote: “It’s important to talk and learn about WWII because it helps people gain a better understanding of the world around them, which in turn helps them become better, educated, and more empathetic people.” I am quite happy with how my thesis turned out!
Next up, we created an rough outline for our final essays. Despite the fact that I thought I had a complete, full plan, my outline ended up being completely different than my final essay. Here is what my outline looked like:
Finally, it was time to write up my essay. I had multiple drafts, but in this blog post, I am only going to show you the final draft. Here is the link to my essay.
Overall, in this project, I think I learned lots about essay writing and researching. I am super happy with how my finished product turned out. I hope I’m able to apply these skills in other projects!
Hey y’all, welcome back to my blog! In this post I will be talking about our most recent humanities 10 project, This is Us. In this project we learned all about Canadian identity and diversity.Â
The first thing we did for this project was answering our launch question to try to dig up future inquiries about Canadian identity. The question was, “Why does it matter to think about who we are as Canadians?”
My answer was:
“I think it’s important to think about who we are as Canadians because it’s important to reflect on we are. We must think about our past, and how that differs to who we want to become. It’s important for Truth and Reconciliation to be able to acknowledge our past mistakes as Canadians. This way, we can work towards reconciliation. Without acknowledging our past, we cannot work on ourselves for the future. Canadians have a long way to go in who we are, and if we reflect on who we are and try to use that as a tool to improve for the future, we can truly thrive as a nation.”
I’m happy with the work I did on this assignment because my first draft was not my best work but I was given some feedback and I am happy with how I applied these revisions and changed my work for the better.
After that, we learned about Canadian women to practise our inquiry skills. First, we had to ask lots of “Need to know” questions. A need to know question is a question that you ask to get an answer that helps you learn more about the subject.
Here were my need to knows about Canadian women:
After we came up with our need to knows, we researched the answers to the questions and used the knowledge we learned from that in an in-class discussion about women and how they struggle as a minority. In this in-class conversation, I’m very happy with how I participated and engaged with the other students. I hope in future classroom conversations I can apply that same energy.Â
Next, we created our personal inquiry driving questions. This question was a main question that we came up with to help drive our research on our topic to encourage deeper learning. We then created some need to knows to narrow down our research to ultimately answer our driving questions. We put all this on a Craft document, including notes from the actual research and writing in our sources.Â
Once we finished that, we had to write up an elevator pitch talking about our research and what we learned. My elevator pitch I decided to have my elevator pitch also in the Craft document. We presented these elevator pitches to small groups in class. We presented to two different groups and each group tried to engage in conversation about the things we had learned and connect between topics. The two different groups we were put in were groups with similar topics to us, and groups with completely different topics. I talked a little more about this in my reflection journal.
Speaking of our human library, that was the last big thing we did in this project! A human library is an event where many “books” talk about their life experiences. For example, a “book” may be an immigrant coming in to talk about their experiences to people who haven’t had those experiences. This allows us to learn more about what it’s like to have different experiences when we haven’t had those experiences ourselves. It helps us be more empathetic and understanding towards other’s experiences and feelings.
For our human library, each of us students were expected to invite one “book.” The book that I invited was my mom. My mom immigrated from Ecuador when she was a child, and grew up facing racial discrimination in Toronto, Ontario. Through the human library, she educated a small group of people on her story. Here are some photos from the human library:
Our human library was the ultimate wrap-up to this project! I’m quite happy with my work from this project. I believe that I tried my best in all my work, and I have a deep understanding of Canadian identity by the end.
Hello everybody, welcome back to my blog! This is my final post of grade 9, which is crazy to think about. It feels like just yesterday I was writing my first blog post of grade 9. Anyways, this post is all about my latest project, Dulce et Decorum Est, and the spring exhibition, where I showcased the work I did in that project.
Dulce et Decorum Est was all about World War I. We also learned about museums and how to create an exhibit. These two ideas were brought together for the exhibition, which I’ll talk about later in this post.
Our first keystone was research on museums. Part of this was a quick field trip to the Museum of North Vancouver to get a tour and talk to the people working in the museum about how the exhibits are structured and how they’re built to appeal to the audience. Here’s a picture of us at the museum:
Another major part of this keystone was looking at online resources including an article about how to make your own exhibit, an actual online exhibit, and so many more. Through all of that, we took notes about how we could use this information to create our own exhibit. Finally, we had to write a paragraph reflecting on what we learned through this research. Here’s mine:
How do museums tell stories? A proper exhibit is a compilation of thoughts and events, organized either by time period or how it’s presented. A curator can guide the audience to look through it in a certain way, and the audience still has the freedom to go through it in their own way, at their own pace. Museums tell stories by organizing thoughts and feelings through works of art or artifacts. They also explain stories behind said works of art or artifacts, allowing the audience to learn all about what the exhibit may be about. This is actively telling a story to the audience. An effective exhibit could also be interactive, where the audience can choose to use different senses other than sight, such as touch or hearing. This is vital to engage the audience so that they can be invested in the story you’re telling. These are just a few ways that museums tell stories.
I’m happy with how my paragraph turned out, even after multiple revisions. I think it accurately represents what I learned.
Our second keystone was a paragraph on the contrasting narratives of war. For this, we researched about World War I, and a lot about propaganda in war. Here’s my paragraph:
When we think of war, specifically the First World War, we think of death and pain. We think of the worst things that happened. We think of the huge numbers of lost soldiers, the horrible diseases spread, and the idea of living for years in muddy trenches. We can’t stop thinking about trench foot, families alone at home, and famine. Rarely do we think of the valuable things that came out of it. We forget how good it was for the economy, and how white women got more rights out of it, thanks to so many amazing female nurses who contributed to the war. We forget about the technological advancements. Part of the reason that we forget these things is that we have to respect the people that went through the hard, treacherous parts of the war. In that, we forget all of the important good things, because the two contrast each other so much. They are so far apart on the spectrum of good and bad it’s almost like we can only choose one to talk about. Women getting the right to vote is so far away from the 8.5 million soldiers lost. It’s hard to believe they even happened on the same planet, let alone at the same time. It definitely demonstrates great contrast.
I’m satisfied with how this paragraph turned out. I don’t think it was my greatest work, but I definitely could’ve done worse and I think it’s still pretty good.
Our third and final keystone was our museum exhibit. This was the exhibit we put up for the exhibition, and I was really happy with how it turned out. I chose to do a painting that represented poetry made from WWI, following our theme of creation and destruction, choosing the creation side. Choosing to do a painting is not something I would naturally do. I’m not super artistic, and painting isn’t a strong suit of mine. But I decided I wanted to try something new, something out of my comfort zone. While my finished product may not look as great as I wanted it to, I’m glad I tried something new. I set up my big painting on the wall, writing out the poem “In Flanders Field” next to it, and recruiting Evangeline to help me draw poppies around it. Here’s what my exhibit looked like:
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.
It’s that tPOL time of year again! I think I’ve changed a lot over the past semester, and I’ve made some discoveries about myself as a learner.
Last semester, for my mPOL, I talked a lot about how I had improved from grade 8 by doing most of my work in class and being able to keep from stressing about it and letting it impact my life outside of school. Now, looking back on the whole year, I can confidently tell you that the second semester did not work out as well as the first.
At the start of this semester, I went to Mexico for a gymnastics competition. I was only gone from school for two days but it impacted two entire projects. I missed the launch of Frankenstuffies, and I was already behind. We were expected to almost be done our stuffy, but I barely knew what the assignment was. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, because I would’ve had lots of extra time to catch up. Instead, I let it get to my head.
This semester, I discovered that I cannot let myself fall behind, because if I do, I let it snowball and suddenly I’m a whole project behind. For Frankenstuffies and Building a Nation, I was constantly a step or two behind.
You might be asking, “what do you mean by letting your work snowball”? Well, what happens is I get all stressed over it even though I’m barely behind, and because I’m stressed, I start procrastinating getting my work done, and suddenly two days behind turns into two weeks behind.
How did I solve this problem? Well, by the time we got to the end of Building a Nation, I was only a few days behind. So when the weekend between it and the next project, I got down to business. I finished everything and went into Dulce Et Decorum Est with a fresh mindset, ready to enjoy the project like I did with other projects in the first semester.
How can I prevent this happening in the future? I think it’s important for me to fix my mindset. I need to stop having this idea that doing my work at home is harder, or slower, or impossible. I need to be able to take it home and have it be just as good as at school. That way, if I miss a day for whatever reason, I don’t get so completely, helplessly behind.
That was a bit of a downer, but now that I know this about myself, we can look to a future where I’m on top of my work all the time. We can also look at my accomplishments from this year.
First off, I was really proud of my book from the Power of Geography project for humanities last semester. I put a lot of thought into it and also spent some time making it look good, and I really think it turned out well. I think it was one of the best things I worked on this year. I also thoroughly enjoyed doing it, and I was actually invested on how it went, which included putting some real thought into it. Here are some of my favourite pages from it:
I’m also really happy with all the photos I put into it.
Something else that I’m really proud of that’s more recent was my final product in our project called Building a Nation. It was a board game representing Nationalism and the history of the Confederation of Canada. I found the project pretty interesting and I enjoyed making a board game. This is what the finished product of our board game looked like:
Finally, we had our World War I project, which we put on show for the exhibition. For this, I painted a mural to represent poetry created in WWI. I mostly wanted to do a painting to step out of my comfort zone, as I’m not a super artistic person and don’t usually do things like paint. I’m happy with how my painting turned out, even though it definitely could’ve been better if I had more experience painting. But I think I ended up getting what I wanted, which was trying something new for a project. Here’s what my piece looked like:
That’s a wrap of my 2023 tPOL! Thank you for coming/reading my post!
Hello, and welcome back to my blog! It’s definitely been a while since I’ve posted a blog post, but it’s nice to be back.Â
This last project was about nationalism and Confederation. We started with a simulation! In this we simulated the Confederation of Canada.
When our class simulated Confederation, I learned a lot about Canada’s history. I was leading the colony of New Brunswick with Evangeline, Charlie R, and Jasper. Together, we decided on things to demand of confederation. In the end, most of our needs were met, so we decided to sign and join confederation! Unfortunately, not everyone joined confederation, because not every colony’s needs were met. PEI and Nova Scotia decided not to, because not all their needs could be met because they were both so small with such big demands. For example, PEI wanted to remove taxes for all their farmers, which is a very big ask for such a small colony. The big colonies, on the other hand, benefited greatly, because they were granted a lot of political power and got more of their demands met. Our colony had quite a few demands, and we purposely made some that we didn’t care much about so that we could use them as bargaining chips. In the end, we had everything we wanted, because we made it seem like we had the Capitol taken away from us when really we didn’t want it that bad. By the end of the simulation I realized that I would absolutely hate being in political power. Confederation involved a lot of big decisions made with stubborn people, and it was a lot of work for a few decisions about our country. I did realize how important these decisions were, though, which is something I never thought of before the simulation.
The simulation was our first keystone. Our second keystone was a board game proposal.
Basically, for this whole project, we were building towards the finish line of a playable board game about Confederation, showcasing our learning about nationalism and Confederation. I was somewhat excited about this, but also afraid that I would be setting myself up for disappointment in the board game and it wouldn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. Luckily, my partner for the board game was Evangeline, and she helped to make the Confederation board game of our dreams!
Our proposal was a game called The Colonies of Confederation, and in it you can take historical perspective on the leaders of the different colonies as you try to come up with confederation and agree with the other people. In our proposal, there was also a timeline that we would aim for, trying to complete different parts of the game by certain days. I think we were mostly able to stick to the timeline, which is great. We were able to describe how our game showed nationalism by showing how people must come together and have shared beliefs or needs in order to become a nation.
Finally, the third keystone was the rules of our board game. Through this, we showed our learning in our introduction to the game, showcasing what nationalism is and how Confederation reflected it. We were also able to easily explain how to play our game, using understandable, descriptive language and also using our graphic design skills to make it set the mood and be possible to read. Here are our rules:
Here’s a picture of our board game:
After that, one of the grade 8 classes came and played our games with us!
Throughout this project, I learned a lot about Confederation and nationalism. Before this project, I didn’t even know what nationalism was! But now I know all about how it can connect people through different beliefs, races, experiences, and more. I think that the idea of nationalism is really important to who we are as people, and I think it’s a really cool concept.
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.
MPOLS are all about growth, and you know what? I think I’ve grown a lot. So that’s what this post is all about.
Let’s compare: what did my work look like last year?
Last year, I wasn’t very invested in my own growth. I didn’t try my best, I didn’t care about my work, and I wasn’t ever proud of my work. Everything was a halfhearted attempt because I didn’t really care about school. An example of this is in the humanities project New Beginnings, when we made our visuals to represent an aspect of New France. I chose survival.
What does my work look like this year?
Well, I care a lot more this year. I try my best to try my best, and I work as hard as I can to hand in good quality work in a timely manner. While I don’t feel the most motivated because I’m not as surrounded by my friends in the classroom due to them being in different classes, I’ve been pushing through and I’m glad that I’ve been able to produce good work that I’m proud of. For example, I was really proud of my work in the Power of Geography, because I feel my finished product really showed my thought process throughout the project.
What do I want my work to look like in the future?
So right now, my work is something I’m proud of, and I put a concerted effort into the things I do. In the future, I want it to stay that way, but I also want to make use of my time better as well. I want to be able to get all my work done in class, and I want to be happy with my work all the time.
I’d like to especially talk about how much better at time management and organization I’ve gotten since last year. I’ve handed in almost nothing late, and I’ve given myself enough time to create work that I value and I’m happy with. I feel on top of my work, and it’s really helping me with my mindset at school.
Last year, we learned all about growth mindsets or the “PLP mindset.” This is a mindset of growth, a mindset where you’re ready to tackle the tasks you’re given, and try your best in the things you do. It’s also about looking to the future and knowing how you want to be, and making a plan for yourself to get to the point you want to be at. When we first learned about the PLP mindset, I thought it was a bunch of junk that we get told to motivate us to put more effort into our work. Or at least it was something I didn’t have and I’d just have to go on the way I was: handing in my work late, it being rushed, and not being happy with it. Somewhere between then and the start of this year, I lost that mindset and took on the PLP mindset. I come to school ready to try my best and put in a real effort. I actually care about my work and doing my best, and I really try to hand everything in on time.
Looking to the future, I’m ready to head there and see what it has to offer. I’m excited to grow as a person and a learner, and I hope I improve in the same ways that I already have.Â
One thing I could really grow on is my interaction with my peers and teachers. Sometimes in class, I’m really distracting to people because I get off task. Usually, I can redirect myself and still get my work done in class, but it’s really distracting to the others. It also comes off as disrespectful to my teachers when that’s not what I’m trying to do. My goal for the rest of the year is to improve on this by always making sure I’m working on what I need to get done for the class while I’m in class.
I think that over the course of this semester, I’ve grown a lot, not only as a learner but as a person, too. And even though I’ve grown a lot, I also know that I can still continue to grow, learn, and thrive throughout the rest of the year and even farther into the future. I’m excited to see where my growth takes me.
How do revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world? Well, before this project, I could’ve given you some rambling, wordy answer about Hamilton (the musical) because I had an obsession with it in Grade 7 and 8. Now that I’ve gone through this project, I can tell you all about revolutions and the full answer to the question. That’s what I’m going to do now.
What is a revolution? That’s kind of what the first activity in this project taught me. If you read my blog post about Nation X (click here to read) then you would know how I learned this. If you don’t want to read it, basically we did a simulation of a society. I was placed in the upper class, and there were a couple people placed in the top class, as members of the king’s court. There were a bunch of people placed in the two classes below me. The top class got paid $10/day, The class I was in was paid $5/day, the class below got $3/day, and the lowest class got $1/day. Basically different challenges in society had to be faced, but in facing those challenges, people were treated unequally and society fell apart, with people fighting one another and many deaths. What happened was basically a revolution. Now, how can we describe and define a revolution?
To do this, we made diagrams that reflected Crane Brinton’s anatomy of a revolution. I chose to do a hamster on a wheel, falling off and then starting over. Here’s the diagram:
After we did this, we chose which revolution we wanted to work on for the whole project. I chose the American revolution, mostly because I already knew a little bit about it from my past obsession with Hamilton that I mentioned, and I was really interested in digging deeper.
Once we chose our revolutions, we got straight to work making graphic organizers about them. Here’s mine:
As you can see, the graphic organizer basically gives you a crash course on the American revolution. The research I did to create it told me almost everything I needed to know for the whole project.Â
After that, we started to work on our affidavit. We chose the evidence we would feature and our arguments. At first, I was a little bit confused with what I was arguing for, but me, Cameron L, Jupiter, and Jessie pulled through arguing for the American Revolution being effective. I applied my research from the graphic organizer into the affidavit. It turned out really good and we had a pretty good argument. In the mock trial, we were going against Charlie M, Julia, Keaton, Silas, and Magnus, Makai. They were saying that the revolution was ineffective.
Once we had finished our affidavit, we started working on a script for the mock trial. Very soon after we started working on it, Mr. Harris, the DRI (directly responsible individual) of the project, had to leave because he was having a baby! Sadly, because he was gone, we had to pivot the project. Instead of doing a mock trial in front of our parents, we started working on a video. We were still writing the scripts in collaboration with the ineffective side, but for a video of a trial as opposed to an actual mock trial in real life. After about a week, though, we pivoted again. We started working on scripts as just our side of the argument. We did it more like the show Court Cam. We were given a due date for our videos and then Ms Maxwell spliced our video with the ineffective argument’s video.
I used my class time very efficiently during this project. The only time I handed anything in late was my graphic organizer, because I was sick for a lot of the days we were working on it. I’m proud of how I used my time well. I’m not quite as proud of our finished project. I feel like it wasn’t the best that it could’ve been, and our group could’ve put more effort into it. Next time, I’ll strive to be at the point where our group is putting a full effort, or at least I am.
What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about society today? Well, up until this last project, I didn’t even know what Avatar was about. I’m going to assume that you don’t, either.
Basically, Avatar is a movie about this guy. His name is Jake Sully. Jake’s twin brother was a scientist, but he died, and since they shared DNA, they sent Jake to take over his brother’s job. Jake got sent to Pandora, a far off planet, to transfer his consciousness temporarily to the body of a different species – the Na’Vi, a race of humanoids that are blue and have tails. He gets lost and runs into Neytiri, who is the daughter of the leader of the Na’Vi. Neytiri saves his life and brings him to the clan. It’s decided that he can learn the ways of the Na’Vi. He learns all about the flow of energy and respecting the world around him – which is a completely different worldview than what the humans have. After that, the rest of the humans start fully colonizing the place: destroying their home and all the land around it in an attempt to get to unobtainium, a rare mineral buried under the home of the Na’Vi. In the end, Jake basically switches sides and fights the humans alongside the Na’Vi – but he’s still an easy target, because at the click of a button, his consciousness can be removed from the Na’Vi body and back into his human body, a much weaker form of himself. Anyways, there’s a lot of gritty details but in the end the Na’Vi win and Jake has his consciousness permanently transferred to his Na’Vi body. Oh yeah and he fell in love with Neytiri, but that’s a completely different part of the story that you can see by watching the movie.
The film was full of different themes, and it was really easy to sort of sift through them and get a deeper look into it. For this project specifically, we had to choose a theme we saw and work through it along with others looking at the same themes. The theme I chose was racism, because it’s a relevant issue in society today and it was shown very clearly in the movie.Â
Our final product for this project was a documentary showcasing our theme and how it connects Avatar and the real world. We spend about 2 weeks working on this video. We conducted interviews, collected clips from Avatar, and learned about making videos. Here’s my video:
In the video, I touched on the racist terms used in Avatar that can easily connect to the real world. I also talked about micro aggressions and blatant racism, and I found recent stories to look at. I interviewed 2 people of different ages, which helps show what different kinds of people experience.
Something I didn’t talk enough about in my documentary was how the film itself could be racist. While I was researching for my video, I stumbled across an article that mentioned the people are finding it controversial. I didn’t pay much attention to it and moved past to other articles, but it kind of stayed in the back of my mind. What could that mean? If it’s bringing issues like racism into the spotlight, how can it possibly be bad? After the exhibition, the thought sort of started to snowball and now there’s this whole idea that I have.
The first idea that anyone put into my head was about the plot line. This is because they thought that it’s “just another movie where there’s a race that needs help and a white guy swoops in and saves them.” I see where the point can go, but there’s really not much other evidence to back it up, because you don’t see many other similar cases in the film and it could just be dumb luck that Jake is white. After pushing the thought to the side for later, I realized something. I didn’t see many people of colour throughout the entire movie. I saw white people, and the blue Na’Vi people, but looking back, I can remember only noticing one face that was a person of colour, and he was a background character in one of the scenes with all the people in the military. This bring another question into light: was this intentional, or just showing actual racism in the real world? Obviously, because of discrimination, it would be more of a struggle for a person of colour to get to the point that they can have a role in a big movie like Avatar, but to that extreme? Or did James Cameron sit down and say, “hey, maybe we can make racism even more of a central theme in this movie by showing less people of colour.” Because if so, it worked, and it shows that the humans in the movie, despite being 100 years ahead of us, still display a discriminatory nature.Â
Looking into the cast of the movie, there are actually many people of colour. But most of the main roles played by people of colour are Na’Vi people in the movie – so they’re covered in effects and CGI so much so that skin colour does not matter to the role at all, and has no impact on the racist theme in the movie. Almost all of the main human roles are white, which makes me think that it was planned by James Cameron. However, I’ll never know unless someone asks him themself.
Anyways, that’s a lot of my thinking on the racism portrayed in the movie. Once we finished our documentaries, we started planning for the exhibition. In order to show how privilege works, and how some people get an easier starting point than others, we had two sides of the room. On the side I was placed in, there was a game where you throw a ping pong ball into a box through the holes. On our side, you were close to the box, and got more of the prize for doing it successfully. On the other side, it was dark, you were farther away, and you got less of the prize even though you had to put more effort in. The other grade 9’s on our side were Silas and Mackenzie. We set up the room to showcase the work of the grade 10’s and 8’s. It was nice because everyone in the room had chosen to dig deeper into the theme of racism.
I believe that the theme that everyone chose really says something about those people, and specifically, their worldviews. I think that because that’s true, everyone in our room worked well together and it was really nice working with a great group of people with similar views and values to mine. It was really interesting to have a look at a movie and be able to apply it to the real world. In some ways, the line between the fictional and real world blurred. Maybe it’s because the fictional world is supposed to be like this world, but in the future. I really hope that it isn’t our future, though. I hope that we can advance our views and how we treat other people so that one day, we don’t have all the crazy technology that’s in the movie but not be able to treat everyone with the proper respect they deserve.
Hey guys, welcome back to my blog. In humanities, we just started a new project. It was started with a blind launch with a simulation. We were placed into a society with different classes. Here is my character’s diary of the experiences I had:
This diary belongs to: Susan E.
If found, alert authorities, and they will know what to do with it.
October 31 (Day 1)
Today was an eventful day. The first thing that happened was me finding out that I’m in the nobility (group c.) This means I have many freedoms and many more dollars. I spent almost my whole paycheck on a lemonade to fuel my body for the day. I only had a dollar left, and I kept it safe to begin my day with the power that I have. Since I’m a part of the law enforcement, I have the ability to arrest people in the lower classes (group a and b.) I can arrest them for anything (or nothing,) and as long as the majority of group c or the king doesn’t disagree or doesn’t know, they can’t stop me. It’s not like I’m going to use that, though. Group b is thriving because they’re selling well at the shop, but group a is struggling. They make $1 per day, and the tax is $1 per day. Because my job also includes tax collecting, I chose to pay their tax for them for today. My life goal right now is to help them out and improve their quality of life. Currently, they don’t even have chairs to sit on! Today, I tried to talk to the noble King Luca about it, but he was too busy with other kingly duties. That was okay, and I decided to talk with him again tomorrow. For now, I’m getting ready to sleep. I feel content in what I’ve started today, and I’m excited to get back to work tomorrow.
November 1 (Day 2)
Today I did another good deed. I bought some food for some members of group a, and asked for donations for them from group b. Since group b has so much money, I collected donations for group a from them. I also gave the remainder of my money to group a at the end of the day, because they’re not very well off. Today also wasn’t super eventful, but the prices in the shop went up because there isn’t a lot of food to go around. There are mobility restrictions for group a, where they can only leave their territory to buy things from the shop, but it’s a bit of an issue because they don’t have enough money to buy things in the shop. So basically they’re trapped in their territory. Until we get the king to step in a bit, we’re kind of screwed. I’ve got to go off to sleep to feel refreshed for tomorrow.
November 3 (Day 4)
Yesterday, I completely slept through the day. I was just so tired. Today we found out about a disease sweeping our nation. This disease is highly contagious. We located traces of it in group a. Since no one has really been unlawful, we converted the jail into a temporary quarantine for the infected. So far, only 2 are infected. The two are Ronan and Kadin, and they’re both quarantining until we have a cure. The king is looking towards getting a cure, and decided that the uninfected members of group a will work on making a cure. Originally, I thought this was a good idea because they can make money from it. Looking back, though, it’s kind of a bad idea because group a shouldn’t have to be working long and hard hours just to help out their friends a little bit. A temporary cure got found, but just now we found out that it was a fraud and the disease has spread even more because we let the “cured” out of quarantine. I also got a gift for Kadin and Ronan to celebrate their perseverance through the disease. Other than that, nothing else really happened today. Tomorrow I will bring change and help group a get back on their feet. I’m really tired, but now I’m going to bed.
November 4 (Day 5)
Today, we got a special news bulletin about the disease. More are infected and today Kadin died. That is the least of the action, though. We found out nation Y, our neighbours, are on the rise and starting to attack our borders. The king and his court have received weapons, one of which is a very dangerous axe. I also just found out that they have had a cure for the disease for a while, but kept it from the rest of us, which killed one of the group a members in turn. I talked with the members of group a and b and we decided to assassinate the king and his court. A few minutes later my friend Owen, a fellow group c member, asked me if I wanted to kill the king and his court. I went up to them and told them I was there to kill them, while holding out my gun. I shot, but they all have very strong armour. I maimed Dylan, who was in our group but working for the king. They all told Owen to kill me to prove that he worked for them. The traitor shot me, and I collapsed, unconscious. I was almost dead, and they completely looted my body, but once they all left, I was able to crawl all the way to group a. I knew that they had medicine and I would have a higher chance of survival if I went to them. They told me that if I joined them, they would save me. I had no choice, but I thought it was a good idea anyways, so I agreed. The kind souls saved my lives. We received word from nation Y that they wanted us to join them. We were willing, but we had no way to get there without going through the king and his court, who would kill me on sight. Eventually, they came over to group a and killed my new friends, my saviours. I ran away and hid. Right now, I’m sitting in a little shack I built myself in the woods, far off from nation X, nation Y, and any other civilization. I’m on my own and I’m going to spend the rest of my days in peace, knowing that I’m safe in the woods using my survival skills.
Thank you for reading through my diary of nation X (renamed to Nation King Cool, which is a name I do not acknowledge because of the disgraced, dethroned, king)
Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be writing about my most recent maker project: Vibrant Videos! Vibrant Videos was a project that we’ve been working on for a while, about, you guessed it, some vibrant videos. We also learned about setting goals.
The essential question to this project was “how can I use my video skills to tell a story?” You’ll be able to figure out how I answered this for myself over the course of this project through the rest of this blog post.
We started out this project by reading a book about setting goals. Within this book we did a few activities about ourselves, our goals, and our dreams.
One of the first main activities we did was a form called “what inspires me?” In it, we answered questions about our likes, dislikes, favourite things, etc. Then, the next day, we learned skill #1 in video making: clips. Clips is an app for video making that we had to use for this. In clips, you can import videos, film videos, import photos, add text and stickers, and so much more. Here is the video that I made about what inspires me, using my clips skills:
I did really well on this because I told a story and included different titles. I also drew a few images to help explain what I was saying, and as an extension, I explained not just the what, but the why, as well.Â
Our next moviemaking assignment was a silent film. This silent film had to portray a “goal getters” story – a story about someone reaching a goal. Some people used one from their own life, while others, like my group, used a story that was in the book. The people in my group were Julia, Evangeline, and Owen. Here is our silent film:
I think we did well on this because we were able to tell the story without even speaking! We used clips to make this video as well, and aided the silent film with some music.
After this, we took a quick swerve in a different direction with this project. Because the exhibition for our humanities project (here’s my blog post on the Power of Geography,) we made different videos to be played at the exhibition. I was in the group for the fun video, which basically showed the highlights of our trip. The people in my group were Jackson, Keenan, Jasper, Cameron B, and Julia. Here’s the video:
After the exhibition, we got back on track with the project. The next assignment was actually not a video. Instead, it was a goal ladder, which is a ladder that shows the steps you must take to get to the top (your goal) on each rung. Here’s mine on getting a standing back tuck in gymnastics:
I’ve already completed the first step, and I made sure to time each step so I wouldn’t forget about my goal. I also included some rewards for myself to motivate myself to complete the goal.
Next, we had our very last video of the project: skill #3, planning and shooting. In this skill, we needed to learn how to make a storyboard and follow it. We made this video in a group, and my fellow group members were Silas and Ronan. The video was a tutorial, and the goal was to show one of these three topics: how to set goals, how to be a “goal getter,” and how to stay on track. We chose how to set goals. Here is our video:
After all that, we moved on to our last assignment, AKA this blog post. I’m very proud of my work in this project and I hope my work in maker continues to be this good all the way through to next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
