Well it turns out it’s the end of the year, and with that the end of blue sky. In this blog post I will talk about my creativity journey from the idea, to the product!

Take the ‘ L’ ( and learn from it! )

Our first phase was the L phase which was Look, Listen and Learn. I wrote some sentence starters, Like “I really care about _____” or ” It would be great if _____”. I also did some research on a potential idea, a snowboard carrier.

I finished off with a poll about Snowboarding.

A, The first letter of the alphabet, the second letter in LAUNCH! ( + A Pitch )

The next part was A, ask tons of questions. We looked into the different levels of questions and how to ask questions with different websites and videos. We had to make a list of NTK’s ( Need to Knows ) and our action plan, a timeline of events to do.

We then had to pitch our project, I was pretty concrete with the idea of a snowboard holder, and Ms. Willemse approved with a minor tweak that would multi use, not just snowboarding.

U, underestimating the work!

Next up was the U Stage which is Understand the problem or proccess. I interviewed a friend who is a snowboarder and pitched the idea to him, he thought it wasn’t very useful since there are many snowboarding holders.

Here are some highlights!

I then started transitioning to a screwdriver for backcountry snowboarding.

I researched the materials and designs.

N, aNother stage!

The next stage was N, Navigate and bundle ideas, this was fairly easy as my ideas were transited to a screwdriver holder that was fully concrete. Here’s how I bundled the good ideas and bundled the bad ones too!

C, Si senior? Yes, finishing up!

The next to last stage was C, Create! I started with some concept sketches,

And then made a 3D model online using a tool called Tinkercad.

I contacted Mr. Hughes, my teacher who has access to the school 3D printer and asked him to print this model, he happily obligated.

With the model printed it was smooth sailing which brings me too.

H: Help needed? naH.

The final section was H, highlight and fix, I took some criticism but knowing the timeframe , it was a bit late. I created a burndown chart for the remaining work and burnt down the Work!

Which now brings me too…….

Presentation Night!

I will only talk about this briefly, but presenting was really fun! I was in the Unique Sports Group with some Gr. 9’s and a couple of grade 8’s but every presented and we had a fun booth with Games, Snacks, etc.

Overall, I really enjoyed conceptualising and working on a project/ product. It was a great project and a even greater year!

For our final PLP 8 humanities project we created, presented and memorized a Tableaux Vivant which dealt with the question: “How can we use Shakespeares The Tempest to show the effects of colonization?” In this blog post I will Show you my creative journey.

Europeans and The First Nations: In our project, a major part of it and our learning was the relationship between the First Nations peoples and the Europeans. I think the most interesting thing was a paragraph that revolved around that relationship was a paragraph we’re we explained our answer to the question: Why did the first people trade with Newcomers?

Like my opinion on the subject most of the research is around the camps in New France and the surrounding First Nations tribes, the location of the tribes greatly affected the fur they traded which in effect affected the materials they got.

Here’s a photo show the different prices of items.

My points in the paragraph boiled down to these.

– The Europeans respect of them affected the First Nations attitude of trading with the French

– The availability for different items with different companies gave the tribes many options for things to trade for

– The vastly new and more powerful resources gave them even more incentive.

You can see the paragraph here.

Shakespeare and The Tempest:

If you didn’t already know, the tempest was wrote by William Shakespeare and it was one of his last plays. Throughout this project we also talked about the themes it showed. I will know talk about those themes and the themes in our tableaux.

A brief synopsis of the play would be this: The Tempest is a play about magic, betrayal, love and forgiveness. It is set on an island somewhere near Italy where Prospero, the one-time Duke of Milan, and his beautiful daughter, Miranda, live with a sprite called Ariel and a strange wildman called Caliban. Prospero is a powerful magician who creates a storm, or tempest, that sets the scene for the play. In the events that follow we see a plot to murder the King of Naples, a drunken scheme to kill Prospero and a romance between Miranda and the King’s son, Ferdinand. In the end everyone is forgiven and they all set sail for home.That synopsis was from BBC, you can find the original article here . A large portion of the play is dedicated to Prospero who’s themes and character arc parallels Shakespeare himself as both characters careers ( and lives ) were ending as this was one of Shakespeare last plays.

The other themes are betrayal, love and forgiveness which I feel translated well in to our tableaux’s .

Conclusion:

Overall I believe that the themes we learned by reading ( and watching ) the Tempest really helped us alongside our research of New France on answering our driving question.

Well the time has come to reflect on my learning in Grade 8 of PLP. In this blog post I will show how I have gained knowledge and skills from the beginning of the year to the end.

1. A evolution of learning

This was a answer from my first project in Humanities 8 and honestly I don’t think that it was a unique or honestly good answer, it’s a single sentence and represent me or the novel ( The Highest Tide ) interestingly.

This is a answer for a similar segment for a later book study ( The Book of The Lion) and I think it’s a better paragraph as it shows my thought on, Current Events, The Story and is overall better written.

As I kept learning in PLP I developed better writing and creative skills ( E.g Singing, Drawing, Photo Creation etc).

2. A cleaner schedule

Right now time blocking is not only really affecting and helping my life with my responsibilities and schoolwork, but it is helping me stay on top of subjects.

3. An evolution of teamwork ( and a arduino!)

As the start of my PLP journey I attended my first two Destination Imagination tournaments and DI has really helped me with teamwork, responsibilities and failure. Even though me and my group didn’t make it into the top 3 in regionals and provincials, we accepted it and tried to improve. I was in charge of the technical element, which worked sometimes…… But overall this project helped me work in a group.

4. Presenting and praying

The first exhibition in the winter was a new experience and helped throughout the remainder of the year. In the exhibition ( if you don’t remember) all of the grade 8’s exhibited there religion they study with snacks and activities. This really helped me with presented because, usually when I’m presenting I’m stuttery, nervous and fidgety even when it’s something small, but the exhibition really helped build my confidence.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that this year I have experienced a lot and worked a lot through the Good, Bad and Ugly and not only has it helped me as a learner but it has helped me as a person.