Our power of imagination project was an amazing project which just might have to do with the field school we went on for it …. Florida aka DISNEY WORLD!  Our driving question: how do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors? 

Investigation 1

This investigation was about building your knowledge that you would need to complete this project and storing it in a PKM. I found this first investigation the most infuriating. Researching, which involved reading articles as a class and watching videos like the “Happiness Advantage”, was very enjoyable. Also, learning about the culture of Disney was very interesting. Walt Disney’s mindset when created these theme parks was so different from other people of his time. What was infuriating? While reading articles and watching the videos we had to MAKE (not to be mistaken for TAKE) notes, which was expected. But then we had to write a summary. The 4 – 2 – 1 structure was challenging.  I like the idea but I had a hard time finding the point I should get across in that amount of space. There was so much information and I seemed to include more than I needed. Concise writing is hard! Overall I liked when we found our own articles such as the PKM I made for Dole Whip. This whole investigation shows my growth on the processing curricular competency with critical thinking shown in the fleeting notes and the creative and reflective thinking shown in the connections I made and my thinking sections. 

Investigation 2

Early on we were put into groups and assigned a specific aspect of our driving question. My group focused on how Disney theme parks formed emotional connections for the visitors of the park. For this investigation, as a group we had to come up with a pitch board for a 10 minute documentary. The pitch board had to include the main concept we wanted to get across and the mood we wanted the audience to feel. This part of the project involved a lot of growth in the decision making competency. Working as a group we had to look at our topic from different sides and figure out how to put it all together in the end. A challenge for us? The groups were made up of students from both classes. This made collaborating difficult. We did not understand what the other half of our group had done the class before us. Communication was not clear. Thankfully we used time in our other classes to bring it together but it was still difficult and it was a problem throughout this whole project. 

Investigation 3

It’s story board time! While working on our pitch board, we came up with a reliant idea. We decided that the main concept we wanted to get across was how the merchandise is a way to take Disney beyond the boundaries of the park.  We would show the differences in the merchandise and how they remind you of a place or experiences in Disney.  Group members would each introduce different merchandise. The other choice we made was that the overall mood will be up beat and we will interview someone who obviously loves the merchandise.

Thinking back, I loved our idea and I wish our final product showed that more. Our idea evolved and that is ok but I loved our original idea. With the story board, we also created a script for our documentary. The collaboration was difficult because of the separate classrooms and we needed more time. When flights were cancelled the ONLY good thing was that we were able to finish our scripts and get better idea of when and where we would shoot and who would shoot what. I really enjoyed this part of the process because I could see the shape of what we were doing.

Shooting on location …. DISNEY WORLD!

originally I was going to interview a Disney Customer, someone who loved the merchandise. But we decided to have the same voice interviewing both of our interviewees to keep some consistency. So, I instead, was in charge of B Role which meant whenever I was in a store I filmed the merchandise about the 50th anniversary merchandise. My other job, was to film Noah and Gwen when they talked about the custom and limited time merchandise. I helped them film this at multiple locations within Disney Springs. We ran into a several problems. First of all it was very loud in there to get good audio. We also could not find custom t-shirts Gwen had researched before coming. These challenges meant we had to make adjustments so we could still get our point across and show our idea. Throughout our Disney trip, we checked in with each other to make sure we were getting the shots we needed to fulfill our plan. 

Since returning, we have been editing and assembling out documentary. I was not in charge of editing but I got audio from other group members and sent it to the main editor, Noah. 

This project made me think while I was in Disney World. When I was there, I would look at things differently. Instead of thinking “oh look at that tower” I noticed how the tower added nostalgia because it was the Tangled tower, which reminded me of my childhood. The research we did and the focus I had because of the project made this experience of Disney World different for me than when I went to Disneyland a few years ago. I noticed more. The way the cast members talk to visitors was really cool because it changed based on which part of the park you were in. In Disney World, nothing is out of place, which is good for fantasy but also shows a specific view of life.

O Blogpost, Blogpost, wherefore art thou Blogpost? …

What’s in a name? That which we call a Blogpost 

By any other name would still be homework

And still retain that dreaded hopelessness 

Which I feel without that title.

Like all English 10 classes before me, I studied William Shakespeare’s great play, Romeo and Juliet but in PLP we wanted to answer the driving question: how has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling? 

Keystone 1, a theme book, was our way to discover and record the themes shown in each act of Romeo and Juliet. The power of love and hate, revenge, naïveté of youth, are three main recurring themes that I talked about in my theme book. By reading the lines, I was able to engage with the text and by writing what I thought Shakespeare was trying to communicate, I extended my thinking. I used my Shakespeare sheet to help me understand some of the words. 

• Keystone 2, was part of the theme book that involved watching and connecting modern adaptations of Romeo and Juliet to specific acts, scenes and sometimes specific lines in the original play. Gnomeo and Juliet, Romeo + Juliet, and Warm Bodies were three adaptations I watched for enjoyment and also used to show my understanding of the themes and how they still appeal to modern audiences. One of the themes that was shown in the play and the adaptations was the theme that love and hate are powerful. In the play, the love Juliet had for Romeo made her make a naive decision to trust the Friar and take the poison. In Warm Bodies, the power of love was the cure for the zombies and started to bring them back to life near the end of the movie. 

To end the project, we had four classes to come up with an idea, script, storyboard, film and edit our own adaptations of one scene from Romeo and Juliet. This was Keystone 3. I was looking forward to this part of the project since we learned about it a few weeks before, but when it was time to start I was concerned about a timeline and the fact that my group could not decide on an idea. Collaboration was difficult because even when we came up with an idea, only one other member was willing to meet before or after school in order to create a project we could be proud of doing. The one day we did meet before school, only one team mate came on time, and the other two came 30 minutes late. Personally, I made some strong connections between the themes in the original play to our own script. We submitted a video that meets the requirements but with more time we would have had a better final product.

I have always heard about this story, I did not know the details, and did not know why it was still a big deal now. This play is relevant because it has connections we still use in movies, books, articles that are still being made now. You would not think that a love story between two garden gnomes and a story between a Zombie and a human could be connected, but they are because they deal with themes and ideas that still matter today.

MPOL Declaration

“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.”

There are two driving questions I would like to answer in my MPOL today.

First of all: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?

Secondly: How can I sharpen my learning plan to ensure that I reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?

What I LOVED and where I GREW!

So to answer the first driving question I want to talk about what I loved learning and where I showed growth in my learning during this first semester.

• Loon Lake was an experience I loved and showed personal growth. I loved the Pinnacle Pursuit activities such as rock climbing, hike, and ropes courses. My intention for Loon Lake was to try everything. I wanted to take risks and gain new skills and experiences. My Loon Lake showed growth in my personal and social core competencies.

• • I grew in the personal awareness and responsibility aspect. At Loon Lake I identified my strengths and came up with intentions for every day and smart goals for this semester and year.

    • One of my intentions that shows personal growth was to try and complete all the activities we did. At the rock wall, I completed the easier wall at first without any problems. The second time around, I tried the harder wall and got stuck. It was cold, I had no gloves or coat on, but I never asked to come down. I complained about the cold but managed to make it to the top.

    • One of my smart goals was to get 3 extending in Humanities this semester. As of this moment, I have earned 4.

    • The other smart goal, I accomplished this semester was to learn snowboarding, and be able to complete a run without falling on my face. Sadly, I never completed a run without face planting or losing my snowboard in a ravine, but I was close.

• GOLD Digger was a project I loved and helped me grow in my core competency, Critical, Creative and reflective Thinking. I enjoyed writing a story for the gold project and felt like I really grew in my research and writing skills.

  • I needed to research the main events of the BC Gold Rush and how it affected and shaped BC. We searched through many sources, looked at infographics, and watched a documentary. These sources helped me with my core competency skills related to thinking.

• • Using the research of the people at that time, I had to create a Hawaiian Gold Digger that could have existed. Designing a character card and writing a story off of our character card helped me practice my creative thinking skills.

  • My blog post on how I understood that the extent of how much the Gold Rush shaped BC, gave me a chance to show reflective thinking. The story format helped me really learn the information and think back on it.

• The Komagata Maru Monument was also something I loved creating and felt like my core competencies for communicating showed growth.

• • The monument itself is a way of communication. The design shows my learning in a creative way. A lot of thought went into the symbols and projection of the symbols.

  • https://youtu.be/5lO6ZvqQ2fQ
  • This project required me to collaborate and communicate with my teammates. As my teammates were two people I felt familiar with and could rely on, we were able to come up with lots of ideas to reach a final product we could be proud of. Everyone met deadlines and was responsible for their parts.

• •  I felt like I stepped up my communication skills at the exhibition when I explained to people passing by what our project was meant to represent.

• Other specific areas of growth I am proud about are in work strategies, and collaboration.

  • I go to LAC every morning, use the THINGS app consistently, and am proactive in asking for extensions

  • I really improved on my collaborative skills this semester not only in the exhibition project but also just in small class activities. In Grade 8 I would not have asked my PLP friends for critique outside of critique time. But now I feel more comfortable asking my friends in the class for feedback with blog posts, key not videos and even asking for random decorations like the drawing at the top of this post which was made by Ariane.

To answer the second driving question, I want to talk about my learning target or where I need to grow

• English Skills: I would like to improve my grammar and sentence structure.My dyslexia is the main reason I have many people check over my grammar and spelling. It is difficult for my brain to recognize if something is missing or out of order. Even though I have gotten better about asking for peer critique, I would like to improve myself in the area. For example, the comma and apostrophe literally look the same to me. I not only don’t really see the difference but I can’t remember which name goes with which one!

• Risk Factor: One long term goal for myself this year is to show more personality in my work I enjoy my project but I don’t think my blogs fully show that and I want to have my work seem more authentic and not just like its a school assignment. It is challenging for me to get time to show more personality as I am stressed about getting things done on time.

• Communicating with teachers in group work: I would like to improve in communicating with my teachers, when my group hits a roadblock. In Romeo and Juliet, I was excited about the project. No one would meet after school, before school. They also would not have any helpful suggestions about when we could meet to get it done. When we did set a time before school, only Ariane came on time. The other group members came almost when the tutorial time was done. I was very proud of my theme book for Romeo and Juliet but not with the final video.

Another part of answering the second driving question is to plan for how I am going to reach my learning targets

• I will investigate apps for dyslexic students such as picture grammar to start – it may look like it is designed for 4 year olds, but hey, my confidence could use a boost.

• communicate with teachers more regarding extensions and reducing work load

• communication in class raising my hand more, goal once per week. The main reason why I don’t put up my hand, is because with my dyslexia and processing,  words don’t come out the way I want them to come out. I can think them, but something else entirely comes out.

• Adding personality to my work through photos and humour and trying different sentences in blog posts.

(Photo take by Fraser)

The Set up

When my brother was in PLP he enjoyed every trip he went on. He would tell me about the cool and exciting stuff he did and learned about. This is the original reason about why i wanted to go to loon lake i knew i would regret it if i missed out on this trip and i was right this trip was definitely worth it. As with most worthwhile learning, going into something with a growth mindset makes all the difference. 

My Usual Pre-Trip Freakout

As soon as Loon Lake was announced there were three things I was worrying about:

1. Most of my friends were not able to come. 
2. I knew I would have a hard time listening and focusing for the leadership presentations.
3. I was very anxious about having enough time to do the homework that I expected would be assigned. I would not have access to LAC or my usual supports.

These concerns while still important did not turn out to be as much a problem as I originally feared. I also made the conscious choice to talk to my teachers before hand about the work load which really helped.

My Personal Growth Journey

On day one Jono had us write down multiple goals/intentions that we wanted to accomplish this week along with a quote. I wrote down the following:

I want to be open to learning and experiencing new things.

I want to build off skills I already have.

I want to have fun and connect with classmates.

I also wrote down how I would achieve this: participating in activities, having a positive attitude and being open minded. The quote I chose to represent my week was by Don Ward who said “your mind can focus on fear, worry, problems, negativity, or despair. Or it can focus on confidence, opportunity, solution, optimism and success. You decide.” I decided to embrace the whole experience. 

One of the first experiences that I am especially proud of is the rock wall that we did on day two. I was first up to climb the rock wall and I chose the left side in order to try something new but without too much risk. I finished it easily and thinking about my goal, decided to try the other side. That wall was much harder. I could not climb the wall with gloves on so my fingers quickly froze. I got stuck on a low point on the wall. Over the course of the activity lots of my peers got stuck there and asked to come down or eventually made it to the top. I am proud of myself because I did not ask to come down and I never said that I could not do it. I kept trying even though I was stuck for 20 minutes or so. Once I got past that part, I made it to the top fairly quickly. I knew that I could accomplish the wall and I promised myself that I would try everything! 

I had heard small mentions of us doing a really tall trust fall activity on the last day of the leadership program. Because of those hints, I was very anxious when my group was told they were going to do a trust exercise. We started off with a willow in the wind activity where one person stands in the middle of a circle of people, leans back and then gets pushed around the circle by those forming the circle.  Then we did personal trust falls, starting with only falling back a few inches to eventually falling back 45 degrees into the waiting arms of three people.  I had a hard time doing all those things because I’ve never trusted someone to stop me from falling.  Accidentally or otherwise.  Then we were taken outside to where a chair was on top of a table.  The speaker told us that we would now be doing a trust fall from that height.  My first thought was no, no way, not in a million years.  I watched four people stand on the chair, say their intention and fall back into the arms of 8 or 9 classmates.  I knew that all the kinks had been worked out and that I knew I would regret it if I didn’t do it, so I volunteered to go next.  You will see in the video below me saying my intention and then double checking twice with the catchers to see that they were ready.  I actually ended up doing it twice, as we were given the option for another. My intention earlier that day was to push myself out of my comfort zone and I believe I did that with this activity.  

The next activity that I showed a lot of growth was on the high ropes course.  Someone went first and then I volunteered to follow.  Once I climbed up the pole to the platform I pulled my torque over my eyes as a blindfold.  The ropes course was considerably harder than I expected it to be but I kept the blindfold and with the help of my friends I made it to the end. The other part of the high ropes course was called the milk crates challenge.  Two people on harnesses had to be on top of as many milk crates as they could pile. The challenge was to get more than the other groups.  While only the two people stood on top of the crates the other team members were on the ground add to the structure.  Even though I enjoyed being one of the people in the harness I found I showed more leadership when I was on the ground assisting.  Ben T and Dillon were the people in the harnesses and myself and my team helped build the structure 12 milk crates high.  Even though we didn’t break the class record of 15, I am still really proud of what we did.  

Personal Credo

For a couple hours every day John-oh talked to us about emotional intelligence, leadership, strength and values.  Then from the information we collected there we were told to create a personal credo.  This credo would communicate your values and who you are as your best self and be revised every few months.  Twice we gave feedback to anybody who had completed theirs which I found really helpful in finalizing mine.  I chose to focus mine on my three main values; family, faith and trust.  Once I had written my credo I turned it into a wall paper which you can see below.  

Using this credo we all created personal logos that would eventually be printed out and made into stickers for our IPads.  In mine I represented faith with the main subject being a dove.  I represented trust with hand-shaking and family with a people-filled heart.  

Taking what I learned about intentions and setting goals I created 6 SMART goals 3 for this semester and three for this school year. The main academic goals I want to accomplish are:

1. Get three extending in humanities projects this semester ( so far I have achieved two) 
2. Raise my grade for humanities (all year goal)
3. Study not just the morning before tests (all year goal) 

My more personal ones were:

1. Try snowboarding: get good enough to go down hill with my family and not fall to far behind (this semester goal) by end of winter break 
2. Be able to wake surfing behind a non wake surfing boat like my dads without a rope (right now I can only do it on my uncles boat) I want to do this before the school year ends 
3. Learn people in my non PLP classes names ( I have always had trouble with names and I want to improve) I want to work on this all year 

I then took these SMART goals and added them to my things apps as different projects that I would be able to write steps in order to achieve them. I am planning on checking them off  before the end of the school year. 

In the end I accomplished all the goals I had written on the first day. I want to be open to learning and experiencing new things. I showed my growth with this goal in the rock climbing and trust falls.  I want to build off skills I already have. That one I used with the milk crates and high ropes course. I want to have fun and connect with classmates. Which I did in the activities, playing cards, and taking photos of them and our experiences that you can see at the bottom. 

I learned a lot about myself throughout Loon Lake. I learned about making (and most importantly following through) on goals and intentions that I make myself. I learn how I can work better with a team, and how I can be more confident in myself. I will take this information, my credo, and my logo and use it to complete my SMART goals and other intentions I will make myself in the coming months. 

Below here are photos I took during this trip. 

How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people? This was the driving question for my FIRST PLP TEN project of the year. We had to create NTKs, research, take notes, research again, write cause and consequences, do more research, design character cards and create a historical fiction short story all to answer that driving question. 

This time we were learning about events that were much closer to home than the places and people we learned about last year. The BC gold rushes were a big part of the growth and start of BC. Our final product was an individual short story based off historical events and people based on a variety of research topics. But before we could start this there was many keystones and steppingstones we needed to accomplish for us to fully understand the BC gold rushes and how they affected BC. 

Our first keystone was: how did the gold rushes shape BC? After gathering evidence through research and watching a documentary, we created a craft document using CraftPro. With our evidence we learned to analyze the causes and consequences of the BC Gold Rushes. We learned about the influx of people into BC that affected many small communities like Fort Victoria which saw 30,000 people come through there in a short amount of time. People were coming from all over. A lot of these prospectors were coming from California where the California Gold Rush just ended. Another one of the main consequences of the Gold Rush is that the British Colony had lots of debt when it ended which caused them to join the confederation. 

Our second keystone was all about the human story. Here we looked closer at who the migrants were, why did they migrate and what was their experience once they lived here in BC. From a variety of resources we created a chapter card. This character could be based on a real migrant’s story or it could be a fictional character but still based on historical information. At the time I chose Hawaiians for my research topic not knowing it was one of the hardest topics to research. While very interesting, there were limited resources to create a historical fiction story. My character, ‘Iolona, migrated from Hawaii to work with the HBC, then he moved to BC because he would have more civil rights here, and then he joined the gold rush. It was very interesting that the Hawaiians were not given rights in Oregon, but in BC they were treated like “white people”. Other migrants were not treated like that at all. Overall I had to gain more independent research skills to find the information on the Hawaiians and then communicate that information in an interesting way in a character card.

Our last and final keystone was all about writing a short story based off the character we invented in Keystone 2. We learned about the three act story structure and filled in multiple templates. For the short story we had to consider our audience, make sure our story was historically correct, and craft an interesting story. After creating our first draft, those of us who were done, (6 out of 18) read two stories and gave peer critique on how to improve it for the final draft. I really enjoyed seeing the variety of stories. One of the critiques on my story was on how there wasn’t a conflict in my story. In my story, there WAS both an external conflict and an internal conflict. ‘Iolana lost his equipment in a storm and was debating whether of not to go home for the whole story. BUT the peer feedback made me revise my story so that these conflicts were more obvious. Overall I could have used more time to write my story, but I am proud of what I have written.

All these keystones helped me be able to answer the driving question. Also I grew in my research skills and creative story telling skills. I enjoyed researching the world my character lived in. I especially liked how close to home this project was as these places are not far from us. The gold rushes helped shaped BC into what it is today.

This last Thursday was the PLP spring exhibition, “💥Impact!”, where we as PLP learners showed our work from throughout the last year to our family and community members. I was put in a group of 9 grade 9’s and we were tasked with the annex AKA the technology room. Our question that drove our room “How do we use technology to deepen our learning?” After several different drafts and a lot of revisions we decided that this is our answer

“We’ve used technology in all of our projects from making videos to keynote presentation. Technology allows us to present our understandings and learnings in different ways to reflect on a multitude of different projects such as our documentaries, animations, and medium is the message and overall enhance our learning for the better.”

Our first step in creating our exhibition room that shows our work in a way to answer the question was to brainstorm. We brainstormed what work we did that deepen our learning through the use of technology. We knew we had to include the maker documentaries and we also decided to show our vibrant videos and show our knowledge about how to use our apps.

Next we had to come up with food, costumes and an interactive activity. For food we decided to do something that in hindsight probably was too complicated to do. We created app cookies, what we didn’t think about at the time is that we would have to make 100 cookies!!!!!!!!!!!!

We ended up having four group members each make 25 and one group member decorate all the cookies with the help from her friends. The interactive station plan was for it to be a green screen and action movie area where you can try out some of the editing techniques we learned and applied to the vibrant videos. 

Now it was time for us to come up with a room layout. In the drawing we had to include where everyone was standing including all the grade 9 and all 10 of the grade 8 that were showing there work in our room as well. This took many different drafts and tested my teamwork and patience skills, but in the end we created a detailed map. 

The exhibition

The two hours before the exhibition was chaotic as my room realized that we have a lot of extra space in our room, that the projector we brought doesn’t work and that the drinks taste terrible.  At 5:30 the chaos ended and people starting entering our room it. On my break I was able to look at how other rooms how they answered the driving questions. I especially liked the beyond the classroom interactive station.

My room quickly ran out of cookies (my sister ate like four) and drinks. My station worked well and a lot of people liked being hit by a car😁 in the action movie app. 

Below there are some video my friends created about the exhibition.

I can predict the future.  Through this project, we have answered the driving question; “ How can we predict our finances for the future?”  To answer this question,  we were going to sell a product or service, using linear equations and graphs, and calculate our earnings for a year.

The first milestone was to choose a product or service to sell.  I handed in three options of something I was interested in selling:  cookies, bracelets and babysitting.  Out of the three choices, I decided to  babysit.  I then created a spreadsheet that showed my expenses, time, start-up costs and effect on the environment for one five-hour babysitting job.

Using the spreadsheet and the knowledge I gained through the workbooks, I created a linear equation that would predict my earnings for any amount of time.  Using that equation, I was able to use the Desmos website to graph my earnings for not only the next year but also how much I would make in a day, week, month and in my life.  I found out that I would make more if I did a minimum wage job or was a part time teacher.

I then put all this knowledge together into an animated keynote video.  At the end of the video, I compared my job to other jobs as well as to the cost of living and the effect on the environment to see if it would be worth my time.

Curricular Competencies

Understanding and solving:  Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations.  

In my spreadsheet, I accounted for all of the time, materials and equipment, and included that in my overall cost.  I also calculated the effect of the environment from the exhaust from the car that I used to get to the babysitting site.  I believe I showed an accomplished and detailed documentation showing my understanding of this curricular competency.

Communicating and Representing:  Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and 

symbolic form.

I believe I showed an understanding of this curricular competency.  I made a linear equation that properly determines my profit for various amounts of time.  Then using this equation I was able to create seven graphs that showed those earnings over time.  In my final video, these graphs were labeled and explained in a logical way.

Connecting and Reflecting:  Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas

and personal interests.

I was able to connect mathematical concepts to a business that is of personal interest to me.  I compared my business to a minimum wage job and to my mother’s part time teaching position.

I also considered the cost of living and the value of my time, along with the sustainability on the environment to decide whether the job is worth it.  In the end, I decided that I would not be able to live in Vancouver with the amount I earned and it would be better to think about another possible career.  The only thing I would have done differently is consider different levels of jobs.