Monthly Archives: October 2021

Environment, Individual Project, Pages, Reflections

People and the Environment Post

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog!

Today’s post will be about a project that I’ve just finished in Humanities. 

This project is called “People and the Environment”, and the goal of this project was to write a letter about an environmental issue that is important to us. I chose to write about illegal dumping in the ocean, and how it is affecting marine life. I chose this topic because I live Waterfront, and I really care about sea creatures. I addressed this problem to BC minister of environment, George Heyman.

The driving question in this project was: “How do people and the environment affect each other?” They affect each other because they both share the same home, planet earth. For example, humans can negatively and positively affect the environment based on their choices. The environment can affect human’s behaviour, and their daily mood, and they can also pose as a threat against humans with diseases.

 

 

To demonstrate my learning, I will highlight the milestones/stepping stones that helped me answer the driving question. 

The first activity I will be highlighting is “Guest Speaker: Megan Curren and Dennis Thomas.”

Megan Curren, an environmentalist and Dennis Thomas, a local buiseness owner, came to our school and answered questions we had about the environment, their buiseness, and their careers. I was one of the students chosen to ask them questions, the question I asked was: “Was it difficult to enforce the plastic straw ban? What steps did you take?” Her answer was: It was extremely difficult to convey the buiseness to use paper straws only. Her goal is to expand this regulation to a provincial and federal level.

This activity jump started my learning because it gave me information on the relationship between people and the environment. 

The next activity I’ll be highlighting is one of the Commonlit’s we completed during this project, “Lee Sherman and the Toxic Louisiana bayou”. This piece followed the story of a man who worked for a company called PPG for many years. During his career, PPG would order him to illegally dump waste in the local bayou. The company’s actions gravely affected the local community. 

This assignment helped me because this piece follows the same issue that my letter does. Furthermore, this piece helped me further understand the relationship between people and the environment. It told me that people are careless, and have zero respect for the environment.

This success criteria included in this assignment is “I can analyze how texts use literary devices to enhance both meaning and impact”. I demonstrated this criteria by doing well in my Commonlit assignments. However, something I could’ve done better was explaining my ideas.

The final milestone I’ll be highlighting is the letter. Writing this letter was no easy task and it took several drafts to complete. 

The critique that I received from my teachers was that my letter was too vague and needed more explanation. They noted that I needed to further explain what products were being dumped, as well as who is dumping these products. I applied this feedback tot my next draft. I added more examples of who is dumping products, and I made my solution more specific. 

The success criteria included in the letter was: “I can use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create original, engaging, and meaningful texts for a variety of purposes and audiences.” Also, “I can reflect, assess, and refine texts to improve clarity, effectiveness, and impact for purpose, audience, and message.”

I demonstrated this criteria by researching, picking my audience, getting feedback from others, and revising my drafts. Looking back, I feel that I should’ve done more research for my letter, and I should’ve taken feedback better.

In conclusion, I enjoyed writing a letter because writing is one of my passions. Also, I found it interesting to study the environment because I feel very close with the environment. This project was definitely a challenge, but that made the final product more enjoyable.  In all, I hope we can do another project regarding the environment in the near future.

Thanks for reading today’s blog!

Group Project, Pages, Reflections, Scimatics

Game of Exponent laws Post

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Hello readers! 

Welcome to my first blog post of grade 9!

 

 

 

Today’s post will be about a project I’ve just completed, “Game of exponent laws”. 

This project was based around exponential laws and the main goal of the project was to make a game that featured these exponent laws. 

This was a partner project, my partner was: https://www.blog44.ca/nolanf/.

 

The driving question in this project was: “How does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable? 

Math makes games more enjoyable by adding probability, meaning anyone can win. If games were one-sided, these games would be less popular. Furthermore, math adds that sense of strategy, for example in our game there were many different ways to take advantage of your opponent based on the cards you had.

The work that I felt best helped me in answering the driving question was our math workbook, as well as math YouTube videos explaining exponents. There were times in this project where I was really stuck and confused. However, I feel that I have learned lots since the start of the project about exponents, even though I still don’t have a complete understanding.

Another activity that helped me answer the driving question was the Game rules. Throughout this project, we created multiple drafts of these game rules. They helped because we were able to brainstorm/organize all of our ideas on these game rules.

Every project in PLP includes the “Cirricular Competencies”. These competencies help guide the project and display what the expected outcomes are. 

In this project we had 3 competencies, Reasoning and Analyzing, Communicating and Respresenting, and Applying and Innoavating.

 

 

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games.

I started in this competency with little knowledge about how to make a working game.

In the past I have made games, but they didn’t include much complex math like this project did. By doing the project, I grew this skill tremendously by trying things out, and getting feedback from others. In the end, I extended this particular skill.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.

I started in this competency with not much knowledge because I didn’t  understand the mathematical ideas of this project quite yet. Like I mentioned before, understanding exponents was pretty tough for me, and it took a lot of work in-school, and out-of-school. However, I began to understand more thoroughly, and that showed in how our game looked, and which exponent laws it had.

Applying and Innoavating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches.

I started in this competency as a a good group worker. However, I felt at times where the work was unbalanced because we were lacking communication. Nevertheless, we worked well without issue and that resulted in a good game.

 

To summarize, I really enjoyed the whole board game part of this project. Even though I struggled for a bit with understanding exponents, I feel as that I have learned lots. I also thought making the actual board was fun because I got to add cool medieval drawings, (even though it made it look like Clash Royale). In all, I hope the next project we do is even better than this one!

Thanks for reading!