Case for a nation.

Hello and welcome to another blog post! 

This project was about history and nationalism mostly in Canada but we did get to expand in to other parts of the world and learn about their nationalism.

 One of the first things that we did and one of the most fun to me was a simulation of signing the confederation in Canada. Discussing with my group that represented east Canada was interesting and it was fun finding ways to give and get what we want from the agreement. My group decided that we would sign the confederation.

Moving on to the part of the project that would answer the driving question which is “How can an understanding of nationalism in the past, help us make sense of today?”. We made pictures and a caption for an instagram post that would show and explain how the event we chose answers the driving question. I chose the Canadian pacific railway to do my project on, and I chose it because it was a part of history I hadn’t learned about yet and it seemed interesting to learn about. We were put into groups of people that chose the same topic as us to make the pictures and the caption.

This in my picture

I chose to put a picture of the old Canadian Pacific railway and the new because it shows how much change and growth have happened since then. The  caption that we put with our pictures was mad eBay us all writing one and then took parts of ours that we liked and put it all together into one.

see you next time.

You’ve been called for jury duty!

What makes a revolution effective or not? This was the question we answered in the only way proper, by taking it to court.

Now to specify we didn’t actually take this to court but we did the closest thing to it by organizing a mock trail for different revolutions.

Now, In preparation to understand revolutions, we learned about Crane Brintons Theory. If you didn’t know Crane Brintons Theory is a theory about the stages that a revolution can or does go through. It includes incubation – which is when people have a sense of government injustices and/or weak rulers, moderation –  protest against the government increase. Crisis –  the use of violence increase dramatically like the killing of a monarch, and recovery – violence diminishes and the old regime altered by the effects of the revolution returns. This helped me to better understand the how revolutions progress by pin pointing the stages of Crane Brintons Theory in the other revolution we learned about.

We connected Crane Brintons Theory to the story Animal Farm (if you haven’t read this book then  you should!). Animal Farm is a book based off of the Russian revolution by using the animal characters in the book to depicted key people who were in the revolution.                                                                            Here is my connection of Crane Brintons theory to Animal Farm:   

To start the process of making our mock trail, I was put in to my legal team, if you will, to start researching our revolution which was the Xinhai Revolution. In that group, before we were told if we would be prosecution or defence, we researched a lot about our revolution. This is my infographic on my revolution:

I learn a lot about this revolution, I went through almost every thing you could find about it online. There was a man named Liu Depang who wrote a daily journal during the time of the revolution. Though I could not find pictures of his journal to read myself I found a very comprehensive book on his journals that was had a lot of detail into his life and what he wrote. It was really cool to read about his daily life with his family and this helped a lot to find out what life was really like back then for people in a small town during the revolution. 

After a lot of researching, we were told that we were going to be defending the xinhai trial in court. Now I thought it was going to be easier to defend the Xinhai Revolution because, in the end the revolution was successful in toppling the Qing Dynasty but there of corse were many bad things before it got to that point. Never the less, we were able to put together a strong case to prove that the Xinhai Revolution was effective. We all had different roles in the trail and for my team I read the closing statements. Now I am terrified of public speaking, even if its scripted (which this was) its still pretty scary for me, but I feel that with all the practice I did, I didn’t do to terribly and doing this I feel it really helped me to not be so afraid next time I do something like this. In the end the the jury made up of our parents decided if the revolution was effective or not effective. Having my dad look right at me from the crowd and vote against my side was not a great confidence booster. Despite that the revolution was found not guilty!

For my first exhibition in PLP I think it was really fun and I’m really happy with how it turned out! 

Here Is a video of the trail:  

See you next time.

People and the environment.

Hello and Welcome back to another blog post.

To start this we read and answered questions on common lit readings about the environment. One of the story’s we read was “he-y, come on ou-t” which has a pretty clear theme to it. It’s a story and some towns people found a hole in the ground after a storm. Someone yells “hey come on out” and throws a rock in to the hole but they don’t hear a echo or the rock hit a bottom. The hole doesn’t seem to have an end, so they start to dump the towns waste and garbage in to the hole to get rid of it. Other countries start to dump their toxic waste in it as well. After a long time of doing this (spoiler alert) a worker on break hears “hey come on out” that seems to come from the sky and a rock falls on him which indicates that every thing that they put in to the hole with now fall from the sky. The theme is basically what goes around comes around even if there are no immediate consequences.

My topic that I wanted to write my letter about was about the problem of Canada sending its waste over seas and how funding companies that recover and recycle waste that will help not to contribute to the growing environmental problems in the countries that we send our waste to. I wrote to the honourable John Horgan because as the premier of BC he could help fund these companies. Here is my letter:

While researching for this letter I Learned a lot about how Canada and British Columbia, along with other countries, impacted other places by sending their garbage away. China banned all imports of waste because they were becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of waste in land fills. Jiangcungou landfill, which is the biggest landfill in China, Is around the size of 100 foot ball fields and receives 10,000 tons of garbage a day. I think this really speaks to the impact of sending waste over seas and other countries might follow in banning imports as they be come increasingly worried how much waste there is.

After the letter, we planed an outline for a multi paragraph response to what common lit story theme connects with the theme to our letter. I connected my letter to a story called quite town. In quite town there is a family living in a town that everyone left because the water levels are raising and the town will eventually flood. Bev doesn’t believe the town will flood, not for a long time anyway. At the end of the story the town starts to flood and Bev realizes she should have done something and because she didn’t her family is in danger. I connected my letter to this because if more people don’t start changing what they do and being more environmentally friendly, it will cause major consequences that we wont be able to stop or reverse much like how because Bev didn’t do anything and now her family is in danger and she cant stop it but she could have before.

After we were done the letter everyone put the return address and where you want to send it to on your envelope, which took a couple tries for me, and then we walked to deep cove and mailed them. I am exited to see if and what john Horgan will write back to me.

see you next time.

The more things change.

Another day and another project finished. For this project we made a infographic on the European settlement with a partner. Now if you don’t know what an infographic is here is an example of one:

 

As you can see it uses concise paragraphs or sentences along with graphics to help explain or enhance the topic of the infographic. Over a couple of weeks we learnt about the European settlement and everyone involved, the French, the British and the First Nations. Are teachers gave us a choice on what part of the settlement we made the infographic, and we chose greed in the European settlement. My partner and I made informational mini paragraphs about each group to add to our infographic about the topic we chose. Then we made the graphics to go with the paragraphs that keep with the aesthetic of the infographic. After that we did some tweaking and revising until it looked like a professional infographic.                                                                                           This project was really fun and I’m really happy about how it looks, i hope you like it and learn something!

You can scan the QR code to get a different way of learning from our infographic.

See you next time.

here is my partners blog!

The French and First Nations and British, Oh my!

check out their post on this project.

 

Arg matey!

What is the first thing that you think of when you think pirates? You probably think about the clothing they wear, the mysterious eye patch they always have or a parrot on their shoulder that wont stop talking. All these thing have a history behind them, and I’m going to be talk about that in this post.

To start right form the beginning, instances of piracy started around the 17th century BC. The pirates threatened trading routes and seized cargos of grain, olive oil, candles and even parts of the boat to repair their own ship. Pirates back then did actually say yarrr and arg, these were used for exclamation or responding yes. Other pirate phrases such as bucko (a friend or another pirate, same as a buccaneer ) and carouser ( a reckless or loud person who drinks excessively ) were also actually used by pirates. parrots and monkeys were also actually used by pirates for company and often entertainment on long trips for the pirates, it was also a mark of status, as those exotic animals were very expensive.

Some may not know but piracy still goes on to this day. There is a movie on a real story of a cargo ship that gets Hijacked by Somalian pirates. The movie, Captain Philips, shows how terrible it is that piracy still happens, but there’s reasons why, it’s sometimes the only thing that people in places like Nigeria and Indonesia can do to make money. Piracy has made trading routes and even cruise routes unsafe, I think that this movie shows just how real it is and how it still happens to day.

If you want to know more about pirates and all the swashbuckling they did click here.

See you next time.

My first Destination Imagination.

Upon Reading this posts title you might already know what destination imagination is, but to start off this post I’m going to explain what it is for the people who don’t. Destination imagination is a global educational nonprofit dedicated to inspiring the next generation of inventors, leaders and creative problem solvers. Here’s more about destination imagination!

Destination imagination, or DI, requires a lot of team work, communication, Confidence and critical thinking. For my first DI, I was given a project which consisted of questions I had to answer and complete with a team. In this DI tournament there were four projects that you could pick from to finish, these were next level technical, in theory scientific, built to last engineering and epic remix fine arts. With these my teachers gave everyone a chance to tell them which project they wanted to do. I picked engineering. I chose that topic because I new I would be building something for the project and thought it would be fun. Before we were told what group we were in, our teachers told us that DI would be fun but hard and stressful. And they were right.

When we started the project it was mostly just looking at the rules of DI and making plans for the project. We learned that the main part of our projected was that we had to  make a building that had to have a purpose and, in the end, be a physical model. We also had to have a story that relates to the building and film it (if you already know about DI, then you know that usually we would have to preform our story live, but because if COVID restrictions this is not allowed). We decided to make a community centre with postmodernism style architecture and renaissance style interior.

Here’s some pictures of our finished model!

Throughout the project we had to do instant challenges, which is basically like a challenge that you have to complete in a very limited time and then present it. Those were hard but fun.

Near the end of DI there was a little more stress to get everything finished but we got it all done and now its over. I probably wouldn’t do DI again, just my personal opinion, but sense this is PLP i probably am going to do it again. its got me wondering what going to happen next time but sense I’ve already done it once I will be more prepared the next time.

here is our finished video. It’s about old people in Oregon that hate all of the community centres there so they decided to make there own, but they run into a few generational problems along the way.

We also did a Q&A video about the project process.

See you next time.

My group members blogs.

http://www.blog44.ca/alfieh/

http://www.blog44.ca/faiths/

http://www.blog44.ca/inesm/

http://www.blog44.ca/Mateok/

http://www.blog44.ca/maxl/

http://www.blog44.ca/Samuelk/

check them out!

My how it started/how its going reflection.

You have probably heard about a how it’s started/ how it’s going to be meme. And if you have it here’s what it is.

The meme usually shows before something and after something, like in this photo there’s a picture of a nurse before COVID-19 and after COVID-19 when she has to wear more protective gear which results in marks on her face.
For this project we made a how it started/how its going meme on how the the worldview in the renaissance or medieval times has or hasn’t changed.
How I made my meme was I picked a picture from the renaissance and sense I was in the values group I had to find an art piece that shows a part of the values back then, and I chose lady with an ermin by Leonardo de Vinci:

I chose this painting because I pick Humans are superior to all species and I think this shows how this was true back in the renaissance because she is using the ermin for the painting and sense she as a human is stronger and smarter that the ermin she can make the animal do that.
For my how its going art I used the original painting and put it in to supperimposex to add to the painting to show how that hasn’t changed.
I would like to warn the reader that it looks extremely weird.

As you can see I change parts of the paintings to add more modern items to the painting to show how humans being the superior species has not changed.
To this painting I added my face to where her face used to be and I added my cat to wear the ermin used to be to show how we still keep animals and how that is a form of superiority because we take care of them and they are our property. I added a fur scarf and a 100% wool tag to show how we also use animals for in clothing and fashion, and I also added treats because treats are mostly used to help train your animal and motivate it to earn commands more quickly.
After we were done the meme we started to make a virtual museum for people to go through and see our art. the museums split into 8 different rooms. The first room is an introduction room that all the groups made a picture for that shows a part of their groups world view and then every group got their own room to decorate and add their art to. Within the worldview groups there was directly responsible individual(or D.R.I), writers, techies, art, designer, and flex, and room designer which was what I was, which means that I decorated and planed the values room for the museum. I picked the wall colours and objects like plants and seating to help show values. When we finish the museum (which is really cool, if you want to see the museum click here! search up Artsteps and type PLP in the search bar!) it was really cool to go through And see all our art and the recorded statements. There are a lot of great art pieces so go check it out!

See you next time.

My groups blogs.
http://www.blog44.ca/davidp/

http://www.blog44.ca/fraserw/

http://www.blog44.ca/Gabriellab/

http://www.blog44.ca/Hannahs/

http://www.blog44.ca/Jocelyno/

http://www.blog44.ca/kwosenb/

http://www.blog44.ca/maxr/
Check them out!

Rules by Cynthia lord.

Rules was given to me by my librarian at my elementary school. She gave it to me during the first times of Covid-19 just when classes were starting up again. She gave me a couple books but rules caught my attention.this is going to be kind of like me explaining the book. Oh right, just a warning if you haven’t read the book and you are or your going to there’s going to be spoilers in this so ⚠️SPOILER ALERTS⚠️.

Rules by Cynthia lord

In the starting of the book it explains about Catherine, a 12-year-old girl with a brother that has  autism. The book takes place in the summer and theres a girl the same age as Catherine moving in next door. To help her brother with social  situations she makes a set of rules to remind him not to do things to help him like don’t take your pants off in public or no toys in the fish tank. David, her brother, goes to occupational therapy or OT. Here is a video explaining how an OT can help kids!

the story goes on to explain how at the OT’s Catherine usually likes to draw so starts to draw a a boy in a wheelchair in the waiting room near her. Jason the, boys name, is unable to walk or talk so he points to cards with different expressions and word to communicate. 

A little later in the book Catherine makes more cards for him saying more expressive words or him to use. 

After a while they became friends but she doesn’t want her new friend Kristi, the girl next door, to know she’s friends with him.

Throughout the book theres a community dance coming up and in the end she invites Jason to come with her to the dance because she realizes that her true friend is Jason and she doesn’t care what other people think. I did skip allot so here is a Wikipedia page explaining the book. This was a really good book for me and even though I’ve basically explained it I hope you read it to find your own view on it and if you like this book here is some more books by Cynthia lord!

See you next time.

Updated all about me!

Hello my name is Gwen! I am an 8th grader in PLP. Some things about me is that i love to do all  all different types of art i like embroidery

painting

and drawing.

I used to ski but i switched to snowboarding a while ago and i love it. I have two cats named stormy and cruisy, they like to cuddle sometimes and they love catnip but it makes fall of their cat stand. I like to do mind games and puzzles like riddles. One of my favourite book is Friends For Life by Andrew Norriss but I think that murder mystery books like The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci  and a good girls guide to murder by Holly Jackson. Anyway, that’s all about me!

See you next time.