Poetry is not my favourite thing to do. It proved to be quite relaxing and comforting to write it. While our teachers were away we had a T.O.C. (Ms. Finlay) come in and help us out. She was great.
We learned about and how to write several different types of poems. The ones we did were:
Similes/Cliches/Rhyme Scheme
Haikus
Metaphors
Found Poems
Imagery Poems
Sound Poems
Personification Poems
Experience Poems
Self-portrait Poems
Every poem we wrote was to be linked to our worldview, since we had just worked on a unit about worldview.
We then had to start making our book which should also include an explanation of the poem. If you want to read my book click on the box below.
Most of my poems are about hockey since it’s my favourite sport and activity. I’ve then got a few that are about actual worldview and what it is. One of my poems is about languages, as I am trilingual (I speak English, French, and Spanish), and it is a big part of my world view.
So far the Poetry unit has been probably my favourite. It proved to be really relaxing and when I wrote the poems it was stress-free and once I got into it they were really easy.
Well that just about wraps it up. Until next post.
Math Project: My main project for Math so far was My Door is a Bore (Surface area an volume).
My evaluation of myself in math is that I seem to understand concepts relatively quickly and beIng good with operations. I forget some things but I seem to remember most times by skipping the question and coming back to it after. I’ve always found an interest in math so I will work better or put more effort into it.
During the project we worked in groups of 4. We divided our work quite well and put our skills in places we had more experience with than the others in our group. I was more of the person who was calculating numbers in my head and drawing and measuring our shapes.
What I should probably improve in this subject will be make a habit of studying before quizzes or tests because soon I’ll be encountering math that will not have such an easy solution as to skip the question and come back to it.
Science
Science Project: My main project for Science so far was Kinetic theory of matter (iMovie video what it is).
Below is the video I made with my partner Caleb. We had a problem were some pictures and audio recordings were deleted and so you’ll have sections with a black screen with audio or a picture/diagram without audio except for background music.
We’ve covered one area in science so far and our project was to make an iMovie about it. You cou draw a diagram or make a little video represention (little act, stop-motion, experiment, etc.) to make an educational video. Ideally you had to pretend whoever was watching it didn’t know anything about the subject so it had to be simple. I mostly enjoy science and that’s a plus for me because it assures I will put effort into it. Besides I’m currently thinking of being a doctor (surgeon) after university so science and chemistry helps.
Science, being so related to math has me constantly developing applying skills that are useful in both subjects like volume calculations and distances.
I could probably improve my researching skills as most of the things we’ve done so far need to find information for worksheets or assembling and organizing information properly.
Humanities
Humanities Projects: Main projects have been our Advertisements, our Worldview videos and our infographics.
I’ll start of saying that’s procrastination has been a big problem because, unless you’re really crazy (at least in my opinion), watching YouTube videos or following your favourite sports team is a lot more fun than homework and school, and doesn’t require work.
I got quite frustrated at times when making our ads because no matter how good or bad your first ad draft, you were going to have to make ten drafts. I actually liked the experience and marketing skills might prove quite useful in the future. The ones we made were poster ads so we had to engage people with images and limit your text because we humans tend to be kind of lazy and don’t want to read an ad full of text.
For the Worldview however we had to make a video that you have to make completely from scratch. Finding kind of a story of your personal worldview, is not to hard but trying to make it relatively short is. The app we used, I din’t like, because no matter the tutorials I watched and the tips from my friends I found the app confusing and hard to use. My other problem is that I have a really bad tendency to leave things for last minute which eventually will cost me dearly.
The infographics had the same steps as the advertisements. For me one of the main differences between the two projects was that the infographics were in a group of 4 and the advertisements were solitary. I had to step up alongside another person in my group because we had little time left to finish it and our group members weren’t helping much as they were away or sick.
Maker
Maker Project: My main project for Maker so far has been Blue Sky (Star Wars themed).
Probably my least favourite subject out of all four, I just don’t enjoy what we do. Maybe because at my age I don’t really understand how it could be helpful as an adult. I’ve been told that I may not understand now, but I might as well take the opportunity. My parents a have told me this several times, and as a result I kind of believe it, except I still just can’t put my full effort into it because I don’t enjoy it. I have learned that adults will tell you bad things that they have experienced so you don’t have to go through them but kids always get into new bad things, and that’s way every adult will teach a different thing.
The Star Wars exhbition, I find, just pushed me to learn more about Star Wars, but the truth is I never found something in it that I have a big interest on. The project being so big pushed me to make sure I can control my time well or you won’t be prepared, or won’t get much rest. It may seem harsh in short terms but will help in the long run.
Back at it again with another blog post. We just finished a unit before the Christmas break called “Worldview and World religions”. Happy New Year’s to everyone, although it’s a little late already.
Anyways we’ve covering this subject for a while now and we had a few field trips and two projects during the span of it. We have studied several religions over the course of the unit. They are: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
First Project
After having studied the concept of worldview for 1 week and a half we were tasked with using a new app to make a video about 3-5 minutes long. The app was called Explain Everything. In the app you can draw while your talking and it’ll show up on your screen during the video. You can also combine a bunch of other apps into it to make certain sounds or animations. The project was to pick three topics that are important to you and have changed your worldview. These three topics had bigger divisions that were part of the 7 things in worldview (below).
If you’re reading this, my video didn’t upload when I tried. I’ll try again later.
Field Trips
We went on 3 excursions during the unit. During the three we went to a Sikh Temple, a Buddhist Temple, a Hindu Temple, a mosque, a synagogue, and a church. At each place somebody was there to help us understand their worldview and how it has been affected by the religion they choose. They also explained to us what they did there, how they prayed and certainly things about the religion we didn’t have in our charts already.
First field trip:
Mosque pictures:
Synagogue pictures:
Second field trip:
We went to Richmond for a day where they have a street that has like 20 religious properties in a row.
Hindu Temple pictures:
Buddhist temple pictures:
Sikh Temple pictures (we had lunch there and it turns out they can only serve vegetarian foods really, but man was it great, with fresh made naan bread):
Third field trip:
We went to a church and met up with the father of the church. He explained to us many things and we asked a few questions about things we saw or experienced.
Second Project
Our second project was to make infographics in groups of 4 about a certain religion’s worldview. My group and I got Christianity. I referred to my chart a few times but sometimes it felt like religion is a really interesting and confusing topic.
We started off of with a wireframe (below).
After the wireframe we started off our infographic. Our first draft was horrendous and was just a picture of Jesus with a Fish and a loaf of bread beside him. THis represents that our group didn’t work well at the start. The other groups were way ahead by then. We still managed to hand it in on time.
Our second attempt was this. We’d used another app, added symbols and had decide on making almost like a circle or a square around Jesus.
We our third try was getting somewhere. We put the arrows in to make a cycle and so and order of who to read it.Was really crowded so we had to change it up. The colour coordination had improved. The main colours were white, golden yellow and and blue.
And finally this is what got approved. We changed the text colour so it would pop out a bit more. We spaced things out to make it more organized. We made the chart better with it being a perfect circle and not what we made before which a picture that had been edited 3 or 4 times. We added a box of text at the top so we could have 2 squares instead of one and an unfinished one. We decided on not blurring the clouds into the image but instead put a border around them.
These are some of the other groups’ infographics.
These two groups infographic had the most progress overall according to the teacher. I can see why. And they kept ahead the whole time.
Religions’ Chart
In order to remember better what we learned and have information right there, we had to make a chart with different religions and there similarities, differences, and traditions. For our second project we refferred to the chart often and we had some activities like worksheets that basically required the chart. We had to write things down in our own words so it got engraved in our heads and we could understand it better. While making it, I learned that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have the same roots so they actually have a great amount of things in common. For Buddhism and HInduism there is also a great similarity, they believe in reincarnation. You can read more by clicking the link below the pictures.
These are the symbols of the religions we studied.our group didn’t
It’s been a long time since I last wrote something. I’ve been busy with some new units we had introduced to us which we are finishing for Christmas break.
Anyways, our probably biggest project so far this year was for an exhibition. This year’s winter exhibition was Star Wars themed. We got told to start thinking about it since day one but our class got caught up in everything else, so I start thinking about it until a month before.
The first step was to create an inquiry question. Preferably it had to be something you are interested in so you’d enjoy the project more and with that put more effort into it. I was stuck for a bit creating my question but when we watched Rogue One, there is a scene where there is a fallen Jedi temple. It sparked a conversation between my teacher and I. It led to me thinking that my question could be about the Jedi Religion.
Below is a picture of the scene with the fallen Jedi statue from the temple.
I thought that the question was only fitting because in Humanities we were doing a religious world views unit. I had to formulate my question differently a few times before approval.
Organizing myself and my time was probably the hardest thing I’ve done for something this big. I’ve had experience with presenting but just to your classmates to get feedback or a PowerPoint on something.
After about a week of waiting for my approval of my question my teacher finally passed this idea. “How have fictional Jedi ideals and principles affected people in real life?”
After that I had to make a project pitch. It included ideas for what I was going to do and when.
Once the pitch was filled out, we had to start our research. Our research time was about a week before we had to start building. In your research it was recommended to contact an expert who might be able to give you information. I found a few websites that had information about them and I found out that some people actually believe in Jediism or Jedi Religion.
After that last fact came up, I saw that when I typed in Jediism in my search bar, one of the first links was a website that was similar to social media website for Jedi. I was almost sure that if I would be able to contact somebody it would be on that website. Unfortunately I was never able to get any response from who I e-mailed.
Preferably our research had to be based off of at least 1 video, 2 websites, and one contact. I got mine off of 3 websites, and two videos. Below are the links.
We kept doing smaller bits of research afterwards but it was time to build the physical part of your project. After thinking what it could be, I had finally decided on making a Jedi temple out of cardboard, paper and tape. It would have LEGO figurines on it with paragraphs of what they were doing behind them.
I based off the temple I made off of this picture.
This was the first picture I took of the Temple. It was just started so you can’t see the resemblance.
This was the second round of pictures.
This was the third round.
And this was the finalized Jedi temple with the information before the exhibition.
All the paper wrapping was last minute the night before the exhibition.
The exhibition was also with the grade 9’s so since we couldn’t all be in one classroom we split up. The two big groups were the Light Side (the group I was in) and the Dark Side.
The hard part about this is that we had to communicate with the grade 9’s to decorate our room for a bit more of a Star Wars vibe and we had to give and receive feedback so we could improve our projects.
This is what the room looked like.
I had about 20 people come by and look at my project. Because every different person that came by had a different amount of knowledge on my topic or even Star Wars, I had to explain my project a bit differently every time. You couldn’t have a script. The first person who came to my station so I think it was somewhat of an easier start and then I settled in. In the end explaining what you did wasn’t even that hard. Except for when your friends came to your station to “check your project out” but don’t pay attention.
Besides the groups we had subdivisions within. I was in the philosophical group with Kai, Logan, Emerson, Grace, Emily, Melanie, and Tamara. Since our projects had more things in common than those of the the other subdivisions we were put into the same area of the room.
I had never really seen Star Wars before except for a few Clone Wars episodes nor had several other people in my class. Our teachers set times for us to watch some of the movies to inspire us into creating a question. But probably my favourite part of the project was that we went on a field trip at the end to watch Star Wars episode VIII: The Last Jedi. I really liked the movie but it was really long. It had some good humour and had a slow start but the end was pretty good.
That was the story of the project and how I learned to enjoy Star Wars. Until next post which will come out shortly.
Hello again. This post is about what we’ve had drilled into our heads for the past two months.
Close to the start of the year we saw a video of a cat who was trying to get into a hammock. He tried and tried for several months but kept falling off. He eventually learned a technique that worked all the time. Here’s the video.
We learned that you’re not just born with a certain amount of talent or a growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset you can change. You can even just start off with finishing sentences like “I can’t do it” to “I can’t do it, yet”. It will move on to most other things you do.
We were asked to make sketch notes from a video called “Why you need to fail.”These were my sketch notes which are line the person said with drawing representing the line. This was my work.
The video that went a long with it is this one, if you want to watch and see what it’s about.
One of the assignments I thought I did pretty well was a paragraph about somebody you knew or a famous person with a growth mindset. I chose to do it about my grandpa. As I knew him he was really friendly and he was always looking at the bright side of things. Here’s what I wrote about him.
Last year there was a poster in my class which I noticed every day. It was a comparison of different things from a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset. I didn’t understand, but after this unit I can see the differences better. I noticed it again in one of the posts of our iTunes U course. Below is a picture of it.
Right now we’re in the middle of probably the biggest project of the unit. We had to create long-term goals for ourselves and have a picture of your face. After that we had to edit the picture a bit and put the goal somewhere on the picture. We’ve had a few drafts and we’ve been able to use new apps. We’ve undergone several critique processes. The goal had to be a sentence that was not too broad but not to specific. We had to find wording to make the goal sound the best possible.
Draft 1
Draft 2
Honestly, after getting this idea drilled into our heads for two months it was getting boring. But that’s just my opinion. Although I do recognize that it will be able to help us in the future.
I’m back. My class has a different program to most people. We use iPads for most of our work and get field studies. What is that. It’s basically taking a small and packed bus with your class for a week somewhere. Instead of being in a normal class, that week we explore outside, go to museums and interact real life with what you’re learning. You’re putting things that you learned into real life.
We were asked to still work a lot, except it’s not as bad when you’re on a trip. One of the big things we had to do was make a book about the trip. It wasn’t even that hard but it was long. If you want to read it, just click on it right down here. It’ll describe the trip better than this.
Anyways, every year for the past 4 years or so they take the grade 8 class to the coast of Oregon. It’s one of those trips you’ll never forget and you get to know every one else a whole lot better. Especially after having to sleep in the same room with some of your pals.
Usually it rains a lot there. My friend Jason bought a shirt with the Grumpy Cat and it said “I went to Oregon once, it rained.” Luckily for us we didn’t get much rain.
The food there was great, but when you’re on a field trip it’s usually going to be good. We ate at DQ, Pig’N Pancake, Cabela’s, Nisa’s Thai and a lot of other places. We went to a chain buffet called the Golden Corral, man, was it good. It had cotton candy and a chocolate fountain. The breakfast kind of got repetitive and I’m used to something a bit different at home. We went zip lining, and on a boat tour.
While we were on the boat, our net pulled some eggs that even our science teacher who studied marine biology and the marine biologist guide had no idea what it was. The shells were like translucent rubber.
We also stopped at big department stores occasionally and we had, let’s say, little adventures. You could check things out and “test” couches.
The scenery was amazing. You’re just driving on the highway 100 meters above the water, and you can see the big waves that start from way out. Here are a few pictures.
That about wraps it up in the post. Like I mentioned before, the book has more pictures and certain descriptions about things we did. It also might have reflections.
