Inside Angela Chirico – Welcome to my Swamp

Twitter POLs

Angela on June 21, 2017June 21, 2017

Welcome back to my humble, humble blog. Today is a very special day, it’s the day where I have my Transitional Presentation of Learning. This is a semi-annual meeting for the student, teacher, and the parents to reflect on the year. These happen twice during the span of the school year and you can check out last summer’s post where I reflected the the work I was proud of and what I could improve on. There’s been a little change to our conferences and this time they’re called, “TPOLs” This stands for Transitional Presentation of Learning and are to address the question, “Why do you feel ready to advance to the next grade level?” Using examples from our blog, we are to reflect on our growth as a learner, our work habits, work ethic, areas for improvement, teamwork, responsibility, and production of high quality work as a PLP learner. We are also reflecting on our goals we set at the beginning of the year and seeing how we’ve progressed and completed those goals. Instead of reading off a blog or script, we are to tell a story about our learning and experiences this year.

To start this off, I’m going to reflect on my growth as a learner. Some things I’ve improved on would be my time management and organization. I’m able to predict how long something will take me and I’m able to break the work down into parts so that I can complete sections of the project little by little and I won’t feel overwhelmed. I’ve become a lot more skilled with the iPad and its applications. I’m able research things faster and I can use apps like Explain Everything, Keynote, or Paper by 53 to express my ideas. My ability to problem solve has grown a lot this year, with making prototypes for our Blue Sky project to our Metaphor Machines.

Lucas measuring wood for our Metaphor machine

I’ve learned the consequences of procrastination, such as staying up late, getting sick, missing out on events, or falling behind in school. Once I begin a project, I work very hard on it but I will sometimes put off initiating it. I would be delayed after school by eating and slacking however I’ve improved much on that. Knowing which project to work on first and prioritizing is something I have some room to improve on. Knowing how much sleep I need and how much I need to eat to have enough energy for the day is also something I could improve on. Working in a neat invironment is something I’ve learned to be key to having a quality project with little stress. I’ve learned to ask for help and when to ask. I need to continue on not procrastinating but planning and utilizing a calendar to my advantage. Becoming a leader is something I’d like to do to make it easier to bring my ideas across. You can look at how I plan to do this by reading my gifted writing blog post.

An example for revision would be my Cell City project. This was a science project we did where we needed to match organelles inside a cell to city parts and make a poster of the city. If I’m being honest, my first draft wasn’t all that pretty. So I took it home and spent way too many hours on it, paying a lot of attention to details instead of the overall picture.

In a project awhile back called the Metaphor Machine I was shunned out and wasn’t allowed to do much. I changed the situation by instead of asking, “Can I work on this?” To, “I’m going to work on this.” This helped me to be assertive in group projects so that I can take part in what I’m skilled with. Another example of teamwork is that I always try to help others whether it be stacking chairs after school, picking up garbage, or cleaning up after the Blue Sky exhibition instead of being in the gym.

I’m proud of lots of work I’ve done but some of the greatest would include my writing that was part of the Frankenstuffie project. These were journal entries that my frankenstuffie was sending to his long lost friend. Another piece of work I’m proud of would be my Jean Talon video which I spent a lot of time animating and it was worth it.
I think that moving up into grade 10 will be different however I think I can tackle the challenge. I’ve learned so many great skills from PLP that will help me in the future and my learning process. To have had the field trips made the concepts we were learning real and gave us a unique experience. Having the hands on learning gave me a better understanding and made me more passionate about the topic we were covering. I’m so fortunate to have been able to work in PLP and learn from the great teachers and students.

To conclude, this Twitter POL has helped me to know what my strengths are and what I could improve on. I can’t wait to see where grade 10 will take me!

Grey Sky Summer 2017

Angela on June 21, 2017

Aloha! On this bright and beautiful day we’ll be covering something that I’ve been doing for a few years called Blue Sky! You can check out my winter exhibition I did in the winter here or last summer’s exhibition here. For this summer’s exhibition we had to choose a problem that impacted either babies, toddlers, pets, seniors, or Tweens. We had to turn this problem into an inquiry question beginning with “How might we…” At first it was very hard to find a problem and I was stuck. I knew that I wanted my blue sky to be centred around pets because my mom is a vet and I love animals a lot. I also wanted to play with my cat, Tripod. With that in mind, I went to my mom and asked her about a problem that she has with cats. She explained that there are a lot of cats that aren’t as active as they should be and that maybe I could create a cat playhouse that would help with that issue. She suggested an idea where the cat’s food or treats would drop from one side and the cat would have to run to that side to retrieve it. It would then drop another from the other side and the cat would need to run to the other side to eat it. I did a lot of research about cats and what diseases they can have by being overweight such as But as I explained in my tPOL post, started on the actual building of this was very difficult for me. So then one day my mom had a meeting with a behaviouralist who talked all about cat’s behaviour and toys people can buy where the cat would need to work for their food.
What I thought of doing was making cost-effective ways for people to help their cat get more exercise at home. Home, being a smaller living space such as an apartment, condo, townhouse, etc. Where the cat won’t have enough roaming space. I began by researching toys that I could bring into the cat playhouse, like this toilet paper roll toy, or this cardboard mouse. I also brought in some toys made of pipe cleaners and feathers. I used a baby’s crib as the structure of the playhouse and it worked really well because it has some transparent walls. Here’s a picture of my cat playing in the experimental crib:

I just so happened to make a video of Tripod playing with the toys which I had on next to my poster board. Here it is!
At the moment I’m unable to insert my video.
This project was a great learning experience and I loved how it turned out. See you in the next post!

The Many Things I Carry

Angela on June 13, 2017June 21, 2017

We’ve been learning so much in health & career lately that I’m surprised our brains haven’t exploded, much like Ruby‘s appendix. The more recent project is the Things I Carry one. For this one, we needed to put together a Keynote presentation that includes: * at least one image where we adjusted the mask

* at least one image that we adjusted the size of

* At least one image that we used insta alpha on

* At least one magic move

* at least one object grouping

* at least one added animation

* at least one added transition

* at least one object build

* presenter notes
We also needed to include at least ten things we carry, both mental and physical. The things I included in my presentation are:
– my optimism

– my creativity

– my friendliness

– goal setting

– diving

– my perseverance

– my pets

– my exitableness/enthusiasm

– my parents

– my siblings

– my bus pas
At the moment I’m unable to show you my keynote.
One of the things I carry would be my optimism which is so helpful because it promotes happiness, self respect and integrity. I use it to cheer up others and I find that I have fun doing almost anything.

Next up I have my creativity which is very beneficial, especially in school. It helps my ideas to be original and interesting.
Being outgoing helps me a lot in many cases. Being around friends makes me happy and encourages me to go out and make lasting memories with them.
I often find myself procrastinating and goal setting helps teach me to be more disciplined and motivated to get something done. I use it a lot diving when learning new things and when I’m feeling overwhelmed with schoolwork.
Diving keeps me moving and physically fit. Being active helps me to be awake and I’m more attentive at school. This is especially important nowadays with people in their devices so much, I pride myself on staying active.
Perseverance is especially important when I do fourteen hours plus of diving and it can be very tempting sometimes to just give up. Without my perseverance, I likely would’ve quit diving a long time ago along with other commitments.
My cat brings me lots of comfort and support. My old dog, Morgan was really close to me and was a great source of love.
My ability to get excited over just about anything helps spread happiness to others.It helps me to look forward to little things and have positive thoughts.
My parents are very supportive with my extracurricular activities, driving me all the way to West Van or downtown Vancouver for diving. They help me with homework and my organization, helping me to stay up to date on assignments.
I spend a lot of time with my siblings and they’re always with me whether it be my thoughts or the pictures of them my mom snuck in my bag.
My bus pass symbolizes my independence and it helps get me place-to-place. Just like my independence will take me places in life.

All in all, I had a lot of fun doing this project and I found that it helped me to appreciate what I have a little more.

See you in the next post!

Gifted

Angela on June 4, 2017

What does it mean to be “Gifted”? To have such raw talent that others watching would stare speechless, in awe of your brilliance. This is what we’re studying in health & career and it’s very thought-provoking. We read the piece of writing above and were told to write a 100-150 word “plan of action” to become gifted at whatever we pleased. Here’s my paragraph:

The word count may be a little over the limit, but I’ve just got a lot to say. This piece of writing can from my heart and presenting in front of others while having confidence is something I’ve desired for longer than I can remember. I’m working towards this goal and I hope I can become more accustomed to sharing my opinions and thoughts in front of other people.
Toodles!

Morris the Moose Goes to School

Angela on May 30, 2017June 4, 2017

Hello, welcome to my blog! Today I’ll be sharing with you a long lost tale about a Frankenstuffie. This little guy was a creation part of the “Who’s in Control: People or the Environment?” unit we’ve done in PLP. We’ve worked on this unit for a huge chunk of the year and we’ve been very busy bees. To start it off, we read Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ and filled out sheets that asked questions like, “Who is in control in this section of the novel: the humans or the environment? Justify your answer with at least two examples from the book.” We would read a handful of chapters every week and fill out these sheets as a reflection to the section we read. Here’s an example of one of the sheets we filled out.

This reflects on the very last few chapters in the book (Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!) where Mark makes his way to return to his team on the Ares 2 mission. He gets there safely and everyone is happy. But as you can see on the sheets, there are still a few unanswered questions that are driving me crazy. This book had an interesting style because it would include different perspectives from different characters/groups of people. We were introduced to that style of writing so that incase we wanted to include something like it in our epistolary story, we’d have the option.

To give you a better understanding of the epistolary stories, it was basically entries we wrote about the whole story arc of our creature and its adaptation to this new change to its physiographic region. Meaning, the environment changed and so the animal had to change in order to adapt to it. We were first given a place with a certain climate around Canada and my group was assigned the Prairies. I chose to do the SouthEast Prairies and brainstormed what I could put into my story. Here’s a picture of the storyboard I came up with:

After making the storyboard for the epistolary story, it was time to get writing! We did drafts of our epistolary stories and after finishing them had our peers critique them, giving us feedback.

For my epistolary story, I wrote it in a way that Morris the Moose would be writing letters to a friend who’d gone traveling. I went for an older style of writing and was inspired by the language and expressions included in the letters sent in the time period during WW2. I got my inspiration from the letters on this website and found it to be quite easy to adapt to that writing style. Here’s my final epistolary story:

If you read my epistolary story that i’m so proud of, you’ll notice the antagonist. This was a monster we made as a part of a math project and it was really fun to put together.

The final part of this project was the video. Our videos were based off of our epistolary story but we were allowed to change a few things. Here’s a picture of the storyboard for my video:

In the end, I didn’t include the antagonist because I just thought it would be a simpler and easier to comprehend if there weren’t any complications with the characters. In its place, I took the environment struggles to a new level and they went on for a long time. Here’s my video:

The Great Intendant

Angela on May 28, 2017June 2, 2017

Hola, soy Angela. Today’s magnificent post will be all about a man named Jean Talon who was the Great Intendant of New France. He lived from 1626 until 1694 and did lots of memorable things for New France. I’ll give you a short background of what he did.

Jean Talon, statue in front of the Quebec Parliament Building

Jean Talon had a revolutionary role in the development of New France. Talon aspired to change the economic base of the colony from fur-trading to agriculture, but it couldn’t be done unless the population grew. And so, Talon had organized a plan for settlers to come to New France and called them Les Filles du Roi (The king’s daughters). The plan he had was for these women to marry and have children which he provided financial support for. He paid grants consecutively every year to couples with large families and over one thousand women came to New France within the time that he was Intendant.

Once the population grew, Talon proceeded to begin his goal to diversify the economy in France. He introduced a shoe factory, a shipyard and lumber industry. He popularized the mining of copper and iron which helped the colony greatly. He encouraged farming in which he brought in pigs, cattle, horses, and got colonists to harvest wheat and other products suchlike.

He managed to get the citizens of New France to respect him by having them be a part of what decisions he made. He visited the people’s households and discussed their needs and problems at that time. He did this from 1665 until 1672 when he was recalled to France by the King. Because he made all these vast improvements to New France, he was known as the Great Intendant.

Here’s a video I made that captures nearly all this information in under two minutes:

Cites I used:

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jean-talon/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Talon

I Eat Lots of Chicken…

Angela on May 26, 2017May 30, 2017

🎶it’s that time again🎶
what time, you ask?
🎶blog time🎶
Flight 9 in PLP is back at it again with the great projects. This time it’s a pretty interesting one so let’s get right into it. We wanted to start off health & career with a BANG and so, we are doing the ‘You Are What You Eat!’ project. With the inspiration of the artist, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo” from Italy, we are filling a self portrait of ours with the different foods we eat in hopes of learning about maintaining a healthy diet and about the challenges to food supply in the future.

I’ve made a short video that shows the process I used and I think that it would’ve been a lot easier to do this project by beginning with a silhouette but I guess it worked out in the end. In the video, you can watch as I change certain things throughout the project and that’s just because explain everything has a way of layering the different photos so it’s a little difficult to get it just the way I wanted. Midway through the portrait, Explain Everything would keep on crashing whenever I brought in a new photo but not all was lost! I simply saved the video I already made and created a new document with the video inserted. I used quite a few different apps to make this project including Snapseed, iMovie, Explain Everything, Eraser, and Documents. This project was really fun once I got the hang of it and it was really awesome to see what monstrosity I’d created with a few peppers and some raw chicken.
Now, behold my video so good you’ll never want to stop watching…

I’ve reached my Imagination Destination

Angela on April 18, 2017April 20, 2017

Yes, it happened! Destination Imagination provincials have come and gone and I’m now left with armfuls of certificates and ribbons!

Incase you are completely lost and have not a clue of what I’m speaking of you may head over to my enlightening blog post where I explain the regional tournament and how we got there. If you really don’t want to read my first post, heres a brief summary of Destination Imagination (or DI for short):

DI is essentially a set of tournaments that teams from elementary schools, high schools, and universities of a region go to compete in their chosen challenge. The teams compete against each other within their age category and the type of the team’s challenge. Every team will have chosen one main challenge, and will be given one “instant challenge” while the team is at the tournament. Depending on the main challenge that the team has chosen, it takes a lot of preparation before the team is able to present it infront of a panel of judges. The instant challenge is somewhat self-explanatory, where the team is given a challenge that’s either performance based, task based, or a blend of both. The team will have a set time to do the task and there will be appraisers judging how the team works together to accomplish the challenge. Of course, with a maximum of 100 points to earn, there are many other factors that the team will be scored on, for example the execution of the challenge, creativity of material use or the creativity of the performance, teamwork and maybe something specific for the certain challenge.

My group had the pleasure of tackling the 3-peat Improve challenge. Now, I’m certainly uncertain that I know what you’re thinking. ‘Angela, you can do improv? No way! I thought you needed to be entertaining and funny to do that!’

Uhhhh…yeah…that’s often a requirement. But you see, I want to take risks! To get the most out of this wondrous, opportunity-filled life! I want to make every second of everyday of every week of every month of every year of every decade, worth while. And so, I put on my big-boy underwear and decided. ‘Maybe, just maybe, I could take a leap of faith,’ Often times, I do “shoot for the stars” but, I’m usually too busy gazing at the moon and end up crashing into a meteorite or something.

So, on the day that my teacher separated us into our DI groups, (mine, consisting of beloved Kate, Willa, Robberto, and Claire) we got our map to the destination of imagination together…more or less. We brought in our 13″ x 13″ x 13″ box of goodies to class like good students and began to ever so slowly bring in props to fill this magic box. But we had even more planning to do! We had to plan out our two Team Choice Elements. Now, I was very thankful and appreciative that we only had to do two team choice elements because I, for one, lack what some may call “skill” which may have been a problem due to the team choice elements being a reflection on something that the team’s “passionate” for. Passion, meaning being good at something or having enough passion to be good at something, and being able to demonstrate it at the DI provincial tournament. But, not all was lost! The amazing grade nine improve group put our almighty heads together and thought up some extraordinary ideas! Because of the group’s passion for music, we had Kate teach Robbie how to play the flute, and we included it in our majestic box o’ stuff. And later, yours truly hand crafted a clay jem which was also included in the magic box. But, not for long my friend. This jem betrayed me and decided to become an almost liquid blob which I was forced to quarantine by putting it into a container and eventually throwing it away forever.

But, do not lose hope just yet! Our dearest Claire managed to keep the ingenious clay idea alive by making new clay and not dumping buckets of water in the formula. So it’s settled then! All that the team will need to do is practice improv skits and games daily with provincials in mind.

DI provincials crept up on us as a predator would do its prey. When the time came to preform our three skits, our team was pretty OK I think. Looking back at the performance, our team definitely performed our best on our first skit, the prompt being that the stock character is working in a car dealership and the stock character was a royal person, our genre was parody. Our group is very experienced in the whole Kim K field and so we had our royal person be the one and only, Kimberly Noel Kardashian.

All in all, I had a lot more fun doing improv than I did doing fine arts last year. Learning how to improvise and becoming just a tad more experienced made all the difference. In a simple form, t’was pretty good. Stay tuned for further blogposts, where you will hear all about a small moose’s story in a big world.

Given these points, it’s very clear that we all have one question that needs to be answered: Why does a round pizza come in a square box?