Hello!

This is a post were I will be reflecting on my most recent humanities project. This project was based mainly on the Middle Ages, which I already knew a little bit about but it was fun to know more so I enjoyed this project.

We started out by reading a book, the book of the lion this book is about a character named Edmund, and a few of his friends that participate in the crusades, each week we had to read 14 chapters of the book we did this for 3 weeks since the book was only 42 chapters. Each week we had a role sheet to do which is to show how we can connect the book to today and on Monday we would share this with our reading group. There was 3 different roles for this so each person could do each role once the 3 roles were artful artist were you had to draw a picture from the book that you think is an important part there was sumerizor where you summarize each chapter of the book that you read that week and the last one is connector where you connect events from the book to other books movies yourself or to the world today I will try not to spoil it too much so I will give you a warning the 3 pictures have spoilers so if you want to read the book then dont look at these.

I did not really like this book. it was hard to read and understand, it jumped all over the place at the end of each chapter and the book had way too many un necessary words. It was also not that interesting since it was very predictable it also used a bunch of slang from that period of time so some of the words I had to look up to be able to get what the author was trying to say.

The next thing that we had to do for this project was a group project. we were out into pairs of 2 and then we had to come up with 2 different examples of change and continuity between life today and in the middle ages my partner in crime was Ryder check out his blog he will also be doing a blog post on this project. so for the project our examples of change and continuity were change: sports in the middle ages and continuity: environmental concerns. For my portion of the project I did the sports as an example of change and he did the environmental concerns. this project was really fun to do since I love learning about the middle ages so it was a cool project to do in this project we had to make a keynote that we had to present to the class the requirements for the keynote were that we had to have only pictures and that there was a maximum of 3 words per page so we had to explain everything that we learned in this project out loud to our class. my keynote will be below right here as a video.

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Core competencies:

Comprehend:

I showed this competency when I was researching and I looked for good sources of information I also demonstrated this when I was reading the book of the lion when I was doing the role sheets and reading some of the chapters a second time I would always highlight all the most important parts of the chapters like when we meat a new character.

Identify continuity and change:

I showed this when I was doing my project I showed this by identifying all of the differences and similarities between today and in the Middle Ages I showed it as well in my research that I did for this project.

In the end I really liked this projects since it was all about the Middle Ages so it was really fun to work on. It was also really fun to work with Ryder he was really chilled out, and when we were presenting to the class it was really fun since he was really calm and it made me calmer so I was able to finish presenting without all the stress.

 

 

Hello!

Today I will be sharing my mid year presentation of learning or mPOL. The focus of my mPOL is to have an opportunity to improve as a learner and be able to reflect back on some of the projects from the beginning of the year to see what I can improve in my performance. At the beginning of the year I found I was often struggling with keeping up with all the different assignments. We tracked these using the apps Showbie and Basecamp which outlined everything I was supposed to be learning.

Now that I have gotten used to the apps and the process of checking-in with the Milestones which highlight step-by-step progress, and I find that by checking assignments everyday,  I have started to be much more proficient with doing these things. I now find the apps really help me to stay on track.  As a bonus, they are always available for reference whenever I am stuck on something which helps me to keep going.

One example of forgetting assignments that I needed to complete was with the Student Blogging Challenge. I found it really hard to keep up with all the due dates as I wasn’t checking the due dates as often as I should have in Basecamp and when I did,  I often could not find the exact details of the assignment that I was looking for. For the first few weeks I did not know where to hand-in my work, so I missed the due dates.

I also never got a spot to be public in the Google form, so I was not able to have anybody else look at my blog. Whenever I got stuck, instead of looking in Basecamp I would just look at other people’s blogs and then tried to see what they were doing differently than me.  When I saw that everybody else was getting tons of people to look at their blog and there were even views from people in Australia and yet I wasn’t even getting a single person to look at my blog it was really upsetting. It actually made me un-motivated to continue with the Student Blogging Challenge. Eventually, I went to my mom who had helped my brother do the Student Blogging Challenge and she asked me if I looked in Basecamp for the instructions. I said, “no” and then she said that I had to look in Basecamp for the details.

I felt like such an idiot for not thinking about that! She showed me exactly where to look, then I started to get people to come visit my blog. I finally felt good about it. I started handing things in correctly online which allowed people from around the world to read what I had spent so much time producing. It was really satisfying when people took the time to comment and ask questions about what I wrote. I felt so good when I looked at my notifications one morning and saw that I had gotten my first visitor. I immediately showed my mom and she said, “I told you that you needed to look in Basecamp.” That was when I really took it to heart that I could just look in Basecamp if I was ever stuck on the instructions for something.

Another thing that I struggled with was the project entitled: The Media is the Message. This was the very first project and being totally new to both High School and PLP, I didn’t quite know what to expect. When we read out what we were going to learn, I admit,  I started to tune out since I was thinking about my future, and if high school was going to be fun, and if PLP was the right thing to join since the workload started immediately in the first few days.  So I definitely didn’t get much out of that start. Then when it was time to do some work.  I feel I started out ok and with good intentions, but as the work started to build up with all the different assignments: the Big Life Journal for Maker, Fractions of your Time for Scimatics, and Media is the Message for Humanities; it was really hard to decide what I needed to do and when.

Some of my assignments where easy and I thought that I could do them in like an hour or so, but boy was I wrong! It took a much longer time to do some of the assignments and others only  took around 30 minutes. I was a little confused on how to plan as there was such a big difference in the time required to do different assignments. I started to cram in multiple assignments on the last day that we had to complete them. Whenever I got feedback, I would just put it aside and then work on finishing the next project. Soon the work was too much to keep up with this work practice. I handed many things in late but whenever I got feedback and was expected to revise things, I forgot about them as it felt so overwhelming.  I didn’t listen to the feedback to make my work better.  I believe my primary problem was that I didn’t ask for help when I got behind.

It was also hard for me to make decisions on simple things with designing the ads for Media is the Message. As a result an assignment that should have taken around an hour would take me two or three hours. Here is the blog post that I produced for the project Media is the Message.

I have had a lot of ups-and-downs in PLP. Something that I believe demonstrates this was the Oregon field study. I really struggled in Oregon. Some of the time I really remember what I learned, other times it is a bit of a blur. One of my key issues was that I forgot to take my ADHD medications. These are critical for my ability to focus. It can be nearly impossible for me to focus on one thing without them, so a trip with so much going on was understandably extra challenging. I know I was very inconsistent with my focus.

It was hard to complete parts of assigned activities such as zip-lining. I literally wasn’t in the right mindset. When there was a zip-line that was high up, I didn’t think that the ropes would hold me. I have always been afraid of heights, so this made my thoughts go mad! All I was thinking about was all the things that could go wrong!  I had thoughts about the rope snapping or my harness unbuckling, etc. so I didn’t think that I could do them so I didn’t.  It really bothers me to this day, I still feel bad about it as I know that my own brain stopped me from doing something that would have been really fun. This was a very strong reminder to me that I have to program alarms into my devices so I don’t ever forget to take my medication. I need to take responsibility for being my best and giving myself the tools to do it.

During the Oregon trip, we had to write a book about our experiences. We had plenty of time over the trip and we had a few days after so I thought that I could just do it at home quick and easy. Then I remembered that we had to write a blog post about the trip as well and embed our book into it. When I handed in the blog post, I was asked to revise it and so I did a whole new blog post. Here is the link to the Oregon blog post if you would like to know more.

On the other hand, some of the things that I did well over Oregon was getting to know much more about my class peers. This was really important as so much of PLP involves group projects. Now when I have group projects with any of them, I am able to relate to them in one way or another from our shared experience.

One project I think I did really well on was my Blue Sky Star Wars project because I was really engaged. I had a great deal of fun with my research. I have always been a really big Star Wars fan.  I did well because I was becoming comfortable using Basecamp and Showbie so I was really able to use that to my advantage. I was always able stay on top of things. I had a plan in place for exactly how much I needed to do each day.  I was also having fun with making a full set of Mandalorian armour for my project which makes it even easier to complete.  If you would like to know more that project, here is my blog post about the Star Wars Exhibition

So overall, I think I had a bit of a rough start. I have learned a great deal about how I can use the available tools to make it easier to manage. Looking back, I think I’m in a very different place mentally and am much more comfortable with the program, asking for help and knowing how I work best. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the year.

Thank you for listening to my mPOL blog post!

Hello!

Today I am going to be reflecting and sharing my art that I have completed over this unit 

“The Power of a Pencil”. In this unit our task was that with our IPads and Apple Pencils we would look at different drawing techniques in sketches pro to create different effects. In this unit the driving question was “How can we use our Pencils to Enhance our learning?”

Throughout this project we were able to use a book in iBooks that shows some cool techniques. I will show the book in my slide show at the end

The first assignment that we had was we had to make our name in a creative way I will show you what I made in the end slideshow.

The second task that we were assigned was we had to make a self portrait of ourself. I made this by taking a picture of myself as the first layer and then turning the opacity down. Then I had to trace myself and my different features and then I had to make the skin colour by blending different colours together and then I added some shadows. The picture will be in the end slideshow.

the third drawing that we had to make was a fruit bowl. I really liked this one because I thought it was fun to do the shading and experiment with real life objects. What I found that was tough was to make the colours get darker and get lighter. We made this by taking a picture of the fruit bowl with a light source to bring out the lights and with the lights turned off to bring out the darks.

The 4th and final drawing that we did was make a logo. We first had to fill out a sheet with information like what we were selling and the main colours of the business. I found it fun to make up my own company and then give it a logo. For my company I chose to go with a skateboarding company. I called it skate bird because I thought that it was clever since it was similar to skate board and the catch phrase was if a bird brain can do it you can.

all in all I thought that the project was really fun and was a class to look foreword to. It helped me a lot with drawing with an Apple Pencil and an IPad. If I were to do this project again I wouldn’t change anything I felt that I was proud of my work and that I had learned what I needed to learn.

Here is my slideshow containing all my art work over this unit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the projects we started before our Oregon trip was about the power of media. Our driving question was “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” We started out by reading the novel, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch . In the novel the main character, Myles, was influenced highly by the media after getting a lot of media attention for discovering a giant squid on a beach in Oregon. In the novel he learns the importance of keeping the media and their influence out of his real life. 

We then went on to look at different advertising techniques and analyzed which ones were the most persuasive. One of the most persuasive techniques was called “a sense of roots”. In this type of advertisement the advertiser tries to make you feel connected to the past or family and friends in a positive way. “Love object” is where the advertiser makes the audience feel the need to love someone or something, hopefully their product if they have done a good job. The technique I think is the best is called “reassurance of worth”. This technique makes the audience feel that they have worth and are important. We looked at different types of mediums and tried to identify these different techniques. 

Mediums are the different presentations of the advertising message. They can include internet advertisements, video and TV advertisements, print ads, and billboards. The text is the media product, or the thing that the advertiser is trying to sell to the audience. We learned about the media triangle, which is the connection between the text (product), the audience, and the production (presentation of the product). The triangle shows all of the key elements that are taken into consideration when making an advertisement. For example looking at what ways the text tells a story, who is the intended target audience and why does the text appeal to the audience, and how is the text distributed or sold to the public. This is an image of the media triangle.

After examining advertising and figuring out what makes a good text, it was time to try our hand at making our own. To begin with, we were put into groups and got to choose a Deep Cove Business to try to create an advertisement for. We had to call the business and pitch our plan to create a print advertisement for them first. Our first business wasn’t interested, but we were really lucky that our second business accepted our pitch and it is a really cool business, Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak. One of their employees had been a PLP student so maybe that helped. We visited the store and interviewed one of their employees to find out more information about the company to make an effective ad that suits them and their style, as well as what focus they wanted their ad to have. In our interview we found out that they wanted to make the public more aware that they have activities in all seasons, not just summer. They wanted to make their audience, visitors to Deep Cove, aware of their fall and winter activities. Each person in our group then created a print advertisement. Here is a slide show of my 1st 2nd and 3rd drafts.

 

I liked the dates and schedule, the use of their logo, and the images (which were from their website). I used their images for the ad because they were really good pictures and because I don’t kayak, it would have been hard to get good images taking the pictures myself. I think I could have improved on how much empty space was in the ad.

 

 

Next we used what we learned to create an advertisement for a business that we were going to visit on our Oregon trip. This time the groups were assigned a business, but we still had to conduct an interview. Our group was assigned Clark’s Restaurant. We got to interview one of the owners, which gave us a chance to get a really good idea of what they wanted their audience to know about the restaurant. It is really important to them that they are a family owned restaurant. The restaurant was started by lumberjacks as a place to eat when they were logging. The restaurant changed hands a lot until the current owners bought it, and several members of the family work in the restaurant.

It is a family restaurant not just because of the family that works there, but also because their regular customers are like family. In fact, they have such a close relationship with their regular customers that if they haven’t seen someone for a couple of weeks, they will go to their house to check on them to make sure they are OK. They take a lot of pride in the family recipes as well. Their recipe for their homemade ice cream is the original recipe from the beginning of the restaurant. They are also famous for their burgers, which is why I used the burger image in my ad. This is a slide show of my 1st 2nd and 3rd draft of my ad.

The first draft I made had an orange background and the print was too small. On my next version, I changed the background colour to match the green on their website and made the text about the family owned and run restaurant larger. I wanted to add the wagon wheel icon that they use on their website as well, but I made a mistake in how I added them. I should have copied the icon right from the website, but instead I used the wagon wheel icon that was native to the app I used to create the ad. I really liked the picture I used, and the information I included about the history of the restaurant. I could have improved on making the logo stand out more, and using their wagon wheel icon.  

 

I found this unit really helped me view advertising differently. When I was little I fell for the advertising techniques really quickly and always begged my parents for the latest cool toy I saw on TV. Thankfully, my parents were more aware of the effects of advertising techniques than I was and didn’t buy me most of the things I asked for. As I got older, I always viewed ads as really annoying and advertisers just wanting to get their products viewed. I would get irritated when ads would interfere with games I was playing on my device. Now I understand how much work, thought, and analysis goes in to creating all kinds of advertising. I think it also helps when I feel like I did when I was little and am feeling convinced that I really need to buy something I see in an ad. I can take a step back and analyze what technique the advertiser is using, have an appreciation for how well they have done their job, and not beg my parents to buy it for me.  

Competencies

Creating and extending shared understandings:

Historical perspectives:

Text comprehension and appreciation strategies:

Literary identification and analysis:

 

In the Performance Learning Program (PLP) we do a lot of learning outside of the walls of the school. This type of learning allows us to connect what we are doing to the real world, and is a lot more interesting, especially for people like me with ADHD. Most of the time our learning outside of the school building, called field studies, are just short trips or a day spent somewhere of interest. But once a year, we do an extended multi-day trip. For the Grade 8’s, that trip is to the Oregon Coast.

After crossing the border, we went to the Astoria Column which is 125 feet tall and decorated with pictures. The pictures loop around the column to tell a story and look like a ribbon with images wrapping up the column. In the gift shop you can buy wooden planes to fly off the top, but we brought our own. It was super windy that day and most of the planes didn’t go far, they just stared spinning. We continued down the coast as far as Yaquina Head, staying in Yurts for all but the last night.

One of the fun activities were going zip lining at High Life Adventures, which was fun and scary at the same time for me. This is how I demonstrated thinking about thinking. I knew what my fears were and I cheered other people on who did something that they didn’t expect they could do, like hanging limp in your harness.

We spent two days in the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center. At OSU I demonstrated questioning and posing problems  quite clearly when me and my team were racing crabs. Our task was that we had to have some sort of question about how fast the crabs would be ours was are crabs with all their limbs faster that crabs that are missing limbs. Our thinking for this one was maybe crabs with all their limbs have more weight making them slower or maybe crabs with more legs have more pushing power with more appendages, it turned out that the crabs with fewer legs were more shy to run if they didn’t have to.

Also at OSU we were able to make underwater ROVs. This was fun because we got to work in a group and then drive the ROV in a pool afterwards.  I demonstrated thinking interdependently during this project because I worked well with my group sharing ideas and listening to ideas from others. Our ROV worked out great in the end and we were all proud of the work that we put in to make such a cool machine. I learned a lot from working with my team because they shared ideas that I never would have thought of.

Next up on the trip were doing a quest at Yaquina Head, touring the Tilamook Cheese Factory, and visiting the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.

The quest at Yaquina Head was one of my favourite activities because our group worked really well together to figure out the clues after a bumpy start. And the view at the end was amazing! In the first quest that we did I learned how to manage my impulsivity. When my team and I were trying to figure out where we needed to go instead of thinking things through, we decided to just jump right into the clues and we were running all over the place trying to figure out where all the clues were. As a result, we ended up missing a bunch of clues. I learned that instead of just jumping into something I should at least know what I need to do. I feel that me and my team were persistent the whole time, working through problems when we got stuck. We never got off task and we were the first team back. Even when my team was having trouble finding the actual geo cash at the end we didn’t give up and we eventually found it.

Yaquina Head Quest View

True to reputation, the food on the trip was awesome! From the flaming (literally) dishes at Nisa’s Thai Restaurant, to the arcade and entertainment at John’s Incredible Pizza, to my personal favourite, the Pig and the Pancake. The Pig and the Pancake was most people’s favourite. No one went hungry on this trip!

Over the trip, I was able to get to know a lot more of my classmates, and know a lot more about each of my classmates. Sharing yurts and long bus rides gives you plenty of time to talk to each other. You also get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Before we left I didn’t think I had much to learn about my fellow PLPers, but by the end of the trip I realized that I was wrong about that and I feel a lot closer to the people in my class. I think that is the second reason for the field studies.

I’m going to end my post with my Oregon Book and a photo gallery of some of my favourite things from going coastal.

 

Hi again! Today I will be sharing my reflection on the tectonic plates project. In this project we had to create a book with 10 key concepts based on the topic, this book we had to share with grade 4-5 students.This project was fun for a number of reasons. My favourite was the fact that we could use Minecraft to help us create the images we used. I used Minecraft to help me create videos to help explain the different key concepts.

During this project I demonstrated 4 key concepts including: Evaluating, Questioning and Predicting, Big Idea, and Applying and Innovating.

I’m going to start by explaining the Big Idea of tectonic plates. Tectonic plates cover the earth and have cracks in them called plate boundaries that allow the plates to move. There are 3 types of movement: divergent which is the 2 plates separating, convergent which is the 2 plates colliding, and transverse which is 2 plates rubbing against each other. Each of these motions creates earthquakes that come in all different sizes ranging from ones that you can”t even feel to ones that will bring down buildings. Some earthquakes can even form tsunamis which are giant tidal waves that are able to bring down buildings. Mountain ranges and volcanoes are also formed by these movements.

We then had to make a book explaining tectonic plates to Grade 4/5 students. This is where I met the rest of the curricular competencies. I had to use evaluating, predicting, and questioning to figure out how to explain this concept to the Grade 4/5s. So we had to think about how we could write the book in such a way that they would be able to understand how the big idea of plate tectonics worked. We also had to predict what might intrigue them so their attention wouldn’t wander. On top of that, we had to put all of this into a book. So I decided that I should have a main character that they would like and that would help them understand. I chose to do a creature that lives underground since this book is about plate tectonics that are in the earth and under water. I decided to use my favourite burrower, the burrowing owl. I named him Benny because Benny the Burrowing Owl had a nice ring to it, and it would be easier to remember for them.

I used applying and innovating to create the book itself. I decided that the book needed to have pictures, but I was having trouble trying to draw the burrowing owl. Then our teacher said that we could use Minecraft to create the pictures. So I decided that this was the route that I wanted to take. I was also able to use something in the game called red stone which is like using machinery, and it helped me to explain certain movements since I was quite good at it. I’m quite happy with how these mini videos turned out in the book.

We then took a walk down to Cove Cliff Elementary to read our books. When we were done with reading the book, the grade 4/5s gave us feedback. The kid I was partnered with really liked that it took place in Minecraft, and he was able to understand the concepts of the book. I would say that was successful applying and innovating!

Here is the mind map we made for this unit showing our learning.

 

And here is me reading the book