March 8

loon lake

Before unpacking, we participated in an introductory activity to mentally and physically warm up. Our Pinnacle Pursuits workshop instructor and guide, Jono, introduced himself and described the plans for the upcoming days. It became clear that we needed a different mindset going into this experience. Following this introduction, we completed a low ropes course that required the whole team to move from one end of the clearing to the other, highlighting the importance of communication and teamwork.

Later in the week, we did trust falls, starting inside on the ground and eventually moving outside and up onto a makeshift platform. This exercise required focus and communication, and the risk involved ensured that the group was engaged and worked together to ensure everything went smoothly.

Lastly, we completed the high ropes course, which was similar to the low ropes course but at a higher level and a “one at a time” situation. The team aspect was still present as those on the ground helped guide and support those on the ropes. Additionally, we participated in workbook and social exercises that allowed for self-reflection and helped us identify our strengths and passions.

I personally thought the workbook activities were dull and lame but the outdoor stuff was sick, my favourite being the high hopes course.

overall this loon lake trip was way better than the one last year and I am now much closer to some of my classmates

February 13

Mpol

So far, this year has been rather strange. I started off pretty happy with my gold rush story. Despite my hatred for history, I almost enjoyed learning about it and wrote a decent story  about a character who was in search of gold during the Cariboo gold rush in BC after fleeing Siberia

Later on, we started a project called “Ology of Apology” where we learned about the Chinese head tax and Japanese internment

However, for the start of this project my hockey team went away to Grande Prairie, Alberta for a week. This was probably the worst place I’ve ever been to. To add to the misery of being in grande prairie, there was a flu-like disease going around Alberta and everyone on our team got deathly ill. We’re not sure what we all got, so let’s call it “Grande Prairie Disease”.

Our bus ride home took 2 days and I ended up being absent from school for over a week. After nearly dying i returned to school but was already over a week behind on my work and it was difficult to catch up on everything, especially with being sick.

The next project was Shakespeare, which was boring. We watched two movie adaptations about Romeo and Juliet, read the play and connected them. Later, we were put into groups and had to recreate one of the scenes. My group got the big fight scene so we recreated it with gang violence. The violence was awe some but the actual Romeo and Juliet play was my 2nd least favourite thing ever (grande prairie #1). Romeo and Juliet gang video: https://youtu.be/uHAWzAJvNWY

In conclusion, this year so far has been filled with strange events and going to strange towns, but I still need to focus on school and work on finding time to do my work outside of hockey and balance school and life more. And, I will never go to Grande Prairie again.

June 20

Tpol

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.

The driving question for this presentation is “why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level”. I will answer this question throughout the presentation.

Humanities: 

In the humanities course this year I was pleased with my Case For A Nation project. During the project there was an assignment that we had to write about a current event and present it to a group. I wrote about the riots in Kazakhstan. I really enjoyed writing about a topic I was interested in so I worked very hard on the assignment. Instead of using google, I talked to people from Kazakhstan and was able to get my information from people who are affected by the topic. I was also happy with the final product in that project. We had to make an image about a certain topic that connects to Canadian history. My topic was the Métis bill of rights, a topic I am not so interested in. Despite not being to thrilled with the topic, I did lots of research and pushed through the project to have an accomplished final product.

Maker:

For the maker course, I feel I did a great job on my documentary! The topic I chose for my doc was Roscoe Pito, a very successful race horse in BC. I professionally reached out to schedule my interview and was able to complete it successfully. Despite being absent for the majority of the previous project, Vibrant Video, which was on learning different video shooting skills, I was able to take some incredible shots and successfully add all the requirements to the documentary.

 

driving question:

I believe I am ready to advance to the next grade because I faced a lot of adversity during this school year and even though I am not yet to complete all of the assignments I missed while I was infected with the covid nineteen coronavirus but for the most part I was able to stay somewhat calm and have made lots of attempts to complete the work. I also learned a lot this year in the class room, and out of the class room.

June 20

Vibrant video

in April we completed a project called Vibrant Videos which I do not know much about as I was sick for the majority of the project. In this project I was supposed to learn different filming skills and how to add different special effects to videos. I was there for the first week and it was how to add voice overs and what not, then I got sick and when I returned about 2 weeks later you could imagine how shocked I was when people were putting car crashes over videos of them biking. this seemed like it would have been an awesome project and it was a shame to miss most of it.

March 11

Case For A Nation 🇨🇦🇰🇿

In PLP 9 we have just finished our recent project called “Case For A Nation”. In Case For A Nation we learned about Canadian history and iconic figures from the past.

We started this project talking about things that are important to Canadian culture and identity. Then we discussed nationalism and current events. We had to do a presentation on a current event and connect it to nationalism. I wrote about the 2022 Kazakh Unrest. I connected it to nationalism because the protests show that the Kazakhs have pride in who they are. Now rioting and burning stuff down isn’t necessarily the best way to get something you want but when the Kazakh government has been as corrupt as it was for so long it was probably the only way to do it. My question on the topic was “the citizens of Kazakhstan achieved what they wanted, but cities were damaged, hundreds were killed, and thousands arrested, so was it really successful?”.

After this we had debates about different statues of famous Canadian figures being torn down. Then it was time for the big part of the project. We picked a crucial event in Canadian history and had to make an image about it. I chose the Metis List Of Rights. I learned a lot about Louis Riel and Metis history over the course of the project such as how poorly the First Nations were treated and how crucial the List Of Rights was to the creation of Manitoba. I learned about Louis Riels “Red River Resistance” that lead to the signing of the Metis List of Rights. The final project, as i mentioned, was 3 images created by me and 2 other group members that we feel represent our topic. This is my image. It is a painting of the land of the red river colony, with a map, Louis riel, and the metis flag faided into the back. It also has the red river rebellion on the side

It will be posted here

March 7

Loon lake

Recently in PLP 8 and 9, we went on a trip to Loon Lake in maple ridge! It was a pretty big deal considering it would be both classes first felid study, even popular cartoon character carter pewterschmidt tweeted about this incredible event.

the bus ride there wasn’t too bad,, only took about an hour. When we arrived everyone was shocked with the beauty of the lake and the forest (no loons though). When we arrived we did a nature walk and I didn’t see one bird or a squirrel which i found rather odd because we are in the woods.

The food on the trip was super good and there was a decent variety of meals. The activities were really fun too. We did a big game of capture the flag, battle archery, laser tag, and building shelters in the forest. During shelter building, i went to grab a stick and about 45 more sticks fell on me, it hurt a lot and i thought i was going to die until about like 7 minutes later when i was ok. Overall it was a pretty fun trip!

Learning Advance 2022

February 3

Chemistry stories

Hello, welcome back to my blog. Today i will be talking about our latest scimatics project “chemistry stories”. We had to make an animation cartoon thing that included covalent and ionic bonding.

One of the first things we did in this project was an experiment. But before we could do the experiment we had to make an animation on the procedure to make sure we knew what we were doing and to make sure that we wouldn’t end up setting fire to the class room. 

IMG_4092 IMG_4074

The experiment was pretty cool and nobody ended up setting fire to the class.

 Processing and analyzing:

I showed this while working on milestone 4, the story board of our final animation. I didn’t show it in the storyboard but i ended up doing a wile e coyote and roadrunner theme. I had correct information and models of chlorine, magnesium and nitrogen that i really wished i had used in milestone 5 because it wasnjt so good.

 

After i made my story board i could move onto the final project. I wish i had spent more time in class to finish creating my final animation. Overall this project was kinda fun but would have been a lot better if i had paid attention the whole time.

 

final animation (average)

IMG_4074

January 31

What’s a poetry

What’s a poetry? I don’t know! Well that was until our most recent project in humanities “working with words”. For this project we had to write 2 poems a class about worldview. I’ve never really written poetry nor do I really enjoy poetry so this was an interesting experience. 

We wrote 8 different types of poems, haiku, simile, metaphor, experience, personification, self portrait, sound, and imagery. We also learned 18 different poetry terms. I don’t really enjoy writing poetry but writing the imagery poem was kinda fun.

As we wrote our poems, we would add them to a poetry book, and every poem included a voice note about how it connects to us. I also included images with every poem. Our books also included an about me page.

For this project the driving question was “How might I construct text that shows who I am right now?” We answered that with our poems. Here is my book:

https://read.bookcreator.com/uPrf71dQ60Mvor6Cvw7PlFgQVU52/p4pBV-eeSUWESQQ_hF3mdw

Overall I didn’t really enjoy this project but it was something new and I did learn a lot of new things about poetry.

January 31

Mpol

Hello, welcome to my MPOL blog post, I will be reflecting on my learning so far this year. The 2 driving questions I will be answering are “How have I demonstrated growth as a learner this year” and “How can i sharpen my learning plan to ensure i will reach my learning targets by the end of the year”

Communicating:

For this competency I chose profile 3. Profile 3 is “I communicate purposefully using forms and strategies I have practised”.  I would say I demonstrated this the best during our most recent project in humanities “working with words”. We had to write 4-5 poems a week and I was able to communicate through my poems. I was able to communicate purposefully about my life/worldview in my poetry. To write these poems I used various types of poems/writing styles. 

Creative thinking: 

I believe I am a profile 3 for this too. I showed this during our correlation and causation project. I collected enough information about the topics my group and I chose to create successful  graphs.

Critical and reflective thinking:

I think I could get to profile 4 by the end of the year but once again I say im profile 3. I need to ask questions/for help so I can gain other people opinion about the topic.

Personal awareness and responsibility:

I would say i am at a profile 2. I haven’t figured out how to balance hockey, work, school, and other stuff. I either spend to much time with friends, hockey, or work and spend no time on school. Or i might spend all my time working on school stuff, then get frustrated that im not doing any fun things. The second half of school will probably be easier considering the hockey season is over so i will have more time to focus on school.

Collaborating:

I think I am only at a profile 2,,, in familiar  situations, I can coroporate with others for specific purposes.

Positive personal and cultural identity:

I would say profile 3 again. I know what’s important to me, what I like, what I don’t like etc.

Social awareness and responsibility:

I’d say once again im around profile 3. I am good at interacting with people i know, and don’t know.

So far this year I have used some of my class time efficiently, but the second I get confused I just do other stuff instead of asking for help. I participate in group discussions/projects and worked with my peers to accomplish the assignments. I need to improve on asking for help in class so I can finish the project quicker instead of trying to do it myself and handing in late un completed work.  

January 7

French Revolution 🇫🇷🥖

We have now finished the final PLP 9 Humanities project of 2021. The project was a trial based off a major revolution in history. We went to court and had to explain how the revolution you were given was either effective or ineffective. The group I was in was given the French Revolution and had to explain how it was effective.

We kicked off this project with this thing called “Nation X”. Basically the class was split into 4 groups,, group 1 were the really poor people, group 2 were the store owners, group 3 was police, and group 4 was the government. Some how, I was put in the government and had a very corrupt nation, my great leadership led to the people storming the capital. It was pretty fun and kinda funny how bad of a government I had.

We then started reading George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. We would read a couple chapters at home then we would discuss what we thought about those chapters, any questions we had, what we think will happen, etc. I thought the book was ok, not incredible, but not horrible.

Then we were put in our revolution groups. I as mentioned before, I was given the. French Revolution. For the first couple of days, we just discussed what we knew about the revolution. Then we met with the French group in the other class to start building our script. We obviously did many run-throughs before it was time to present.

We would be presenting in front of our family and friends at the PLP Winter Exhibition. I was playing the role as a lawyer. During the presentation, I thought I did half decent, the lights on the crowd were dimmed so you couldn’t see the people watching. I think that helped a lot because I hate presenting in front of people.

Overall, this project was really fun and I would totally want to do it again!

Watch our presentation here!