We just recently fined a fun project in math, where we made a card game. Yes, i did just use the word fun to describe math, but it was a very fun project.
The process
The first step in this project was to make the rules of the game. My original set of rules ended up being too complicated, so I simplified them. Originally I was going to have characters with likes and dislikes on some of the cards, then i would have a deck of cards with pictures on them, and if three of the pictures on the cards in your hand matched your character’s likes or dislikes, you got a point. I don’t expect anyone reading this to understand that game, so I changed it around a bit. Instead of having character cards, I had cards with fruit on them. There are four cards that are bigger than the rest, and those cards have a number in the top right hand corner. Each player gets one of the bigger cards, and uses the five cards in their hand to try to get to the number in the top right hand corner. Once I finalized the rules, I started to design/draw the cards. This definitely took the longest, because my cards are very detailed. I used sketches pro Tayasui Sketches Pro by Tayasui.com to “draw” the pictures on the fruit. When I say draw the pictures on the cards, I mean get a photo off the internet, trace over it, then erase the original photo.
The rules
2-4 players There are four main cards that are bigger than the rest of the deck. Each player will choose one of those cards at random. Each player will then be dealt five cards each. The number at the top right hand corner of the bigger card is the number that you are trying to get to with the cards in your hand. The objective is to use the least amount of cards possible to get to the number on your card, but you have to use at least two of the cards in your hand. You can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents. You can only use the numbers in your hand, and you can only use each card once. Whoever had the lowest amount of cards each round gets one point. However, if you use exponents to get to the number on your card, you also get a point, even if you use more cards than another player. So if you use exponents, and you used the least amount of cards, you get two points for that round. You can play as many rounds as you like, and the person with the most points at the end of the game wins.
What I would do differently next time For once, I dont have a ton of stuff to write here. Overall I did really well on this project. I did have critiqued throughout the project, but I fixed those things as I went along. By the end my only critique was to make the cards thicker, and to write out the instructions. I did both, and handed it in by the deadline. There are still a few things that I would do differently next time, like drawing something other than a pea pod. The pea pod was the hardest to draw, and it was the hardest to arrange on the cards. It also didn’t/doesn’t really make sense to have 3 of the cards have fruit on them, and only have one card with a vegetable. I think I would just make all of the cards fruits, instead of half and half (half veggies half fruits).
Most of the time when someone thinks about science, they don’t think about sitting at a desk and writing stuff. They think about doing cool experiments with chemicals and explosions, but we can’t do that without learning about how to safely work in the lab. So naturally, our first unit in science is “safety in the lab”, and as I’ve already mentioned in my Calgary LPP, our theme for PLP this year is finding and telling stories, in video form. So naturally, we were given an assignment to make a video about safety in the lab.
We were in groups of three. I was in a group with, Tamara and someone else who doesn’t want to be named, so since they played Sam the safety wolf, I will call them “Sam”. When we were making the video, we had to make it with at least 3 things that we had learned so far this year. In my group, we decided that we would have a mascot named Sam the Safety Wolf, and that Sam would be narrating the video, explaining the rules of lab safety. My friend Tamara and I were acting out the narration on screen (along with Sam the Safety Wolf).
During class we wrote the basic script, so when we were filming it went quicker. We filmed our video at “sam’s” house after school. We set up “sam’s” iPad on a desk, so spew could all be in some of the scenes. This wasn’t the smartest idea though, because it made the video more boring to watch.
Work
“Sam” did most of the work, in terms of organizing everything, and planning what we were going to do. Tamara and I mostly just helped with making the video, and planning out where we would stand and what we would use as props. We filmed the video in one day, after school at “Sam’s” house. Once we were done recording all the scenes that Tamara and I were in, we had to leave, because Tamara is allergic to cats, and “Sam” has two cats.
Things I would do differently next time
Camera angle
As I’ve already mentioned, the video didn’t have very interesting visuals, because it was just one camera angle. If I did this project again, I would make sure that we had different camera angles, so you can enjoy the video while you watch it.
Work distribution
Looking back on the project, the work distribution wasn’t very equal. “Sam” did more of the work then me or Tamara. Next time I will try to contribute more of my ideas ideas into the video, so others don’t have to do as much work.
Hi, I’m back. And I already have things to write about for my blog.
A few weeks we (the class), went on a field trip to Calgary Alberta, and I’m going to tell you all about it.
Why we went
One of the main reasons that we went to Calgary, was to go to beakerhead. Beakerhead is an interactive mash up of science math and art. There are multiple exhibits, for you to visit and explore.
Beakerhead was only one day though, we went on a seven day trip. So, what did we do for the other six days you ask, and I’m here to tell you. We drove. It was a lot of driving, but other than that, we did a lot of fun things.
Videos
This year our theme is finding and telling stories, in the form of videos. So on this trip, we had a lot of videos to make, as I go through, talking about different parts of the trip, I will talk about the different videos that we made.
The last spike at Craigellachie
This was our first stop of our entire trip (unless you count lunch). The last spike, is where the last spike was driven in 1885, completing the Canadian pacific railway. We posed with the famous driving the last spike photo *to the left* multiple times. When we were there, we actually tot to see a train go by, (on the train tracks, obviously).
Three Valley Gap Heritage Ghost Town
This was our first stop where we got to make a video. We were told about this video a few days before we left, so we had time to prepare. We were told that we were going to a ghost town and that we would be making a fictional video there. We were split into group of 5 and 4, and got to work. My group decided to make it a horror/mystery film, about the ghost of the old train man. You can watch the video below.
We could’ve done better, but we planned on having two hours to film and edit, however, we were running behind that day, so we only got one hour. We also could’ve planned ahead better, but overall I’m pretty happy with how our video turned out. Our group worked well together. Even under the time constraints, there was practically no yelling at each other!
This was my favourite stop of the entire trip for multiple reasons.
First we ate our lunch (along with a very yummy brownie). Then once we were done our lunch, we went over to the wolves to learn about why they were there and a bit more about their lives. We got the wolves to howl by howling ourselves, then stopped so we could listen to the wolves. Once they were done their ‘song’, we got to meet one of the wolves and pet them! Before we did that we posed for a photo with the wolf, he was on a leash so he would stay still. So as we arranged ourselves into “photo formation”, I tried to make sure that I was in the front, so I could be closer to the wolf. What I didn’t expect, was that I’d be holding the wolf! I mean, yeah, it was on a leash, but still. I got to hold a wolf, and it almost sat on me a few times. He also licked Kailey’s face, a couple times, I’m sure you can read more about that on her blog. Kailey’s blog
Drumheller
We spent all day at Drumheller (minus the driving and eating). While we were there we did a lot of cool things, but the main thing I’m going to talk about is the video that we made when we were there. Unlike the ghost town video, we did not know about this assignment beforehand. It was a surprise assignment, in other words, we were only told about it when we were at Drumheller. Once the teachers were done explaining what we had to do, we got to work. We had already been through the museum, so we didn’t have to spend all of our time looking through it to see what we wanted to make our video on. For the video, our instructions were to find a dinosaur in the museum, and make a one minute video about its story. I chose to make my video about the Regaliceratops. You can watch it here:
Beakerhead
Now I’ll tell you about beakerhead, the main reason we came here. Surprisingly enough, beakerhead only took up one day of our trip. One very long, tiring and exciting day, but still only one day. I’m not going to talk about the whole day, because that would probably be long enough to be a post of its own. I’m just going to talk about the highlights. My favourite parts of the day were both after dinner. The first thing I’m going to talk about is the serpent mother. We technically saw the serpent mother earlier in the day, but it was a lot cooler at night. We went back at 9:00 (pm) to see the serpent mother on fire. It was on purpose of course. It was really cool, figuratively speaking of course, it was actually very warm there which was nice, because we were all cold by that point. After about 15 minutes of us just standing around looking at the art, they decided to “activate the egg”. We had to move away from the serpent mother, for safety reasons. Once everyone was a safe distance away from the egg, it opened up. After about one minute of workers setting everything up, and making sure nothing would go wrong, they backed up and *POOF*. The egg shot colourful fire up into the air. Everyone was instantly warmed from this sudden burst of flames. It shot fire for quite a while before we had to go, but it was nice while it lasted. The egg shot up pink and green coloured fire. Once we all got back on the bus we headed to my second favourite stop. It wasn’t necessarily what we did when we were there, but that was fun too. It was what we saw. We were all taking a quick break down by the river, in our groups of friends, when Kailey noticed something that looked like a plant, moving up the river, against the current. TAMARA KAILEY EMILY JAMIE and I were all looking at it, when it just poked it’s head above the water. That moving plant thing was actually a beaver carrying branches back to his dam. Now that his head was above water, the branches looked more like a cape. He also looked very happy. That beaver definitely made my day, and now I can officially say that I’ve seen a live beaver in person.
Lake Minnewanka
When we stopped here, the first thing I did was feel the temperature of the water, because we were told that it was one of the coldest lakes in Canada. It was very cold. Once we were done admiring the lake from the shore, we went over to the tour boat and, yep you guessed it, went on a boat tour. While we were on the tour, we learned a lot of different facts about the animals around the lake and its history. We learned about how the lake was a lot smaller before, and there used to be a town, but now it’s underneath the lake. We learned about the story of the lake monster that parents would tell their kids, to make sure that they wouldn’t go into the lake. They told their kids this story, because if they went into the lake they could get frostbite, because that lake is and was so cold. We also learned about the *slightly disgusting* way that they collected their data on approximately how many berries the bears by the lake eat. Basically, a group of students went out to collect bear… waste, and took it back to the lab. The point of this was so they count the number of seeds that they found in it, because that was the only part of the berry that didn’t digest in the bear’s digestion system, and (as I’ve already said) they wanted to know how many berries on average a bear ate each day. On the cruise we also got to see a bald eagle. Fun fact, there are more bald eagles in Canada then in America, but there are more Canadian geese in America then in Canada. Our tour guide told us that when we were looking at the eagle. There were lots of fun stories with this lake, if I were to ever go back to Calgary, I would definitely come back to Lake Minnewanka, and see how the stories have changed, and if there are any new ones.
Lake Louise
At this stop I made another video! What a shock. Unlike the other videos I’ve talked about, this was not a stop where the entire class made a video. Only three people, including myself, made a video here. This time, we didn’t have specific guidelines on what we were doing for the video, we were just told to tell a story about the place. Everyone chose a place to make a video about. I didn’t actually choose Lake Louise, I chose Johnston canyon, but we didn’t have time to go there that day, so I had to make my video on Lake Louise instead, without any previous research. But I think my video turned out pretty well, even without research beforehand.
Enchanted forest
This is the last stop I’m going to talk about. The enchanted forest was on our last day, and it was another video stop! This was the last place in Calgary where the entire class made a video. This video was also a surprise. So we had to think on the spot. Our challenge was to find a place in the enchanted forest, and make a video, we could put a spin a classic fairytale, or just create our own. My group decided to create our own fairytale, using the castle as our main setting. The video definitely could’ve used a better ending, and we probably could’ve normalized the audio better. Overall, I would say it definitely isn’t the best video I’ve ever made, but I wouldn’t say that it’s the worst.
This trip was really fun, and it was an awesome way to start off the year. I enjoyed every day of the trip (even when I was sick) because of all the fun things we did. It was a wide range of activities, which was nice, because if you didn’t like what we were doing, it would change pretty soon anyway. I would definitely come back to Calgary again if I was given the chance. It was a good chance to get to know some of my friends better, and I feel like I’m a lot closer to some people then I was before.
Winter exhibition I know I talked about the mini winter exhibition in my last SLC, but this time I want to talk about a different part of it. For the exhibition I was the DRI of my group. This meant I was in charge of keeping my group organized, and going to the teacher whenever we had a question, request etc. To be honest, I don’t know why I signed myself up for this position in the first place, if I can barely keep myself organized. Our group had *some* difficulties with agreeing on stuff, and actually COMMUNICATING. But other than that it was fiiiinne I definitely learned about leadership skills during that *fun* time. I think it was worth it, but I wouldn’t exactly want to do it again. Even though I will probably have to.
Oregon Oregon, like many other things this year has taught me more than I thought it would. You know, I’m starting to see a pattern with our work. It taught me about being responsible for my things. Girl Guides HAS taught me about this, but not as much as Oregon has. With Guides I’m only really responsible for my clothes, sleeping bag etc. With Oregon however, I was in charge of my passport (only for short amounts of time luckily), and I was in charge of money, and how I spent it. I also had to keep track of my iPad and Apple Pencil. Oregon also helped me become a lot closer to my friends.
DI
Destination Imagination was… fun? I don’t know how to describe my experience with DI, we (my team and I) definitely experienced some challenges along the way. Most if which I explain in my DI BLOG POST. If I were to quickly sum it up though, I would have to say the main problem was the work distribution. I’m not going to mention any names, because that’s not important. Some people did more work than others, and some people put in more effort and energy. DI taught me to see things from different perspectives, I’m not just talking about the main challenge when I say this. I’m talking about the main challenge, the instant challenge, and seeing the problem of work distribution from different angles.
Math
Math is a subject that comes somewhat easily to me. So far anyway. Since it doesn’t usually take me long to pick up on how to do something in math, I usually help others. This sometimes means that I don’t finish all the textbook work, but that’s mainly so we get the idea. I actually enjoy helping people with math, which might come as a surprise to some. I think it mainly comes from my nature of wanting to help people
Notebook/sales pitch
I think the notebook and sales pitch taught me more about group work than it taught me about actual history, and how to pitch an idea to someone. It taught me about how to deal with *difficult* group members, and people in general. It taught me to pick my fights. But most importantly, it taught me to stick up for my friends, and for myself.
Science paints
I haven’t presented this project yet, so I can’t exactly tell you how it went. However, I can tell you about the slightly disgusting process. First we ground up some different coloured pigments. That was the fun part. We ground up Verdigris, Oak gal Ink, Red ochre, Charcoal, and Violet. That’s not the part I’m going to tell you about though. I’m going to tell you about our “fun” experience with making the pigments into paint. The less disgusting way of making them was to mix an egg yolk with the pigment, then slowly add water. This way was fun, because it didn’t smell like fish eggs. The second way of making these pigments was to grind up fish eggs with our saliva. It made the entire classroom smell like “soft but satisfying” salmon eggs. It also made our hands smell like eggs.
Areas for further improvement I can definitely improve on many things. For example handing my work in on time, staying on task, not being a complete perfectionist when it comes to my school work. Last time, I focused on being a perfectionist. I haven’t accomplished much on this because, like I mentioned before, this will take quite a while to accomplish. I plan to be better at this by the end of next year. I will also work on balancing my work time with my spare time. I have already been working on this by setting a timer to work for 20 minutes, then taking a 5 minute break.
Biggest accomplishment?
If I had to choose my biggest accomplishment this year I don’t know what I would choose. There’s all of the in school awards, like my seyhawk award, or my outstanding grade 8 instrumentalist, or my trophy, medal and ribbons from DI. There’s also my outside of school awards and accomplishments, like my medal from my first ever tap competition, getting into pre-TapCo, doing a front tuck in trampoline, and. Then there’s my in school accomplishments. This includes coming to PLP, being a DRI of my group for the winter exhibition, becoming a mini teacher in math, and making all of my amazing friends here.
A few weeks ago in humanities we started a unit called this changes everything. It was about how advancements in technology create tension. So of course, we did, not one, but two projets with this unit.
Before the project
Of course, before we did our project(s), we needed some background knowledge. We learned about multiple things and people. First we learned about the red Fs of feudalism, fealty, fief and faith. When we learned about the three Fs of feaudalism, we were put into groups, and made a keynote (slideshow) about it. Once we were done that, we learned about how “back in the day”👴🏼 If you thought differently from everyone else, or if you were creative, you were considered an outcast.
During the first project
In order to be sorted into the groups that we would be in for the next two projects, we made a list of our top three topics that we wanted to focus on. Next class we were sorted into our groups, I was in a group with Tamara, Sofia and Emily. Our group was focusing on weapons. The first project was to make a book about your topic. Obviously weapons would be too big of a topic to cover in about 8 pages, so we had to narrow our focus, and make a question to answer throughout the hole book. Our question that we made was “how has the evolution of portable gear and weapons affected law enforcement?”. All of us got two pages to write about our question in a certain time period. Sofia worked on the Middle Ages, I worked on the renaissance, Tamara worked on the technical revolution, and Emily worked on modern day. We each chose 2-3 weapons to research/write about that we thought had made an impact on people’s lives.
Drafting the notebook
Our first draft looked like four different books put together. I think that was mostly because we couldn’t come to an agreement on if we would have our text on top of, or beside our photos. Eventually we came to an agreement that our pages that were specifically about our time era would be text beside photos, and all of the other pages would be text on top of photos. Overall our first draft was a bit of a mess. It got a lot better after we got feedback on it though. It started to look like an actual book, nit just a bunch of random pages SLAPPED together. We were continuously working on the book, making small changes along the way, so we didn’t have to do as much work all at once.
The Sales Pitch
The second part of this project was to make a sales pitch. Basically, we had to come up with a revolutionary invention in the field we were studying. My group invented a weapon, the transportation group made a new way to transport people/things etc. My group decided to essentially make a bomb that would shut off the electricity in the area it was set off. Our invention is basically an EMP that lasts longer, and has a wider range. We also “designed” small attachments that you could clip onto any device, to ensure that it would not be affected by the C4-E Alpha (our invention).
Presenting
Originally we were going to present outpr final draft of our sales pitch to people from Apple, and people from the school board. Then we (the teachers) realized that it would take too long, and it just wouldn’t work. So instead of that, we were at a table with some other people talking about different aspects of PLP. Not everyone was able to come, because it was during a different class. Most people from band didn’t go because we had cabaret the next day (which was fun by the way). I wouldn’t know much about what happened because I wasn’t there presenting. This was because I was in band, and (like I mentioned before) I couldn’t go. No one in my group ended up going, because Emily Tamara and I were in band, and Sofia wasn’t there the day we signed up. This meant that after all of our hard work, we weren’t able to present our final draft to anyone other than our class. I don’t think that any of us minded that much though, so that was good.
When we found out that imagination of 5 (my group for DI) was in third place we were ecstatic! We couldn’t believe that even though our vanishing act didn’t work, we came in third. We were happy to say the least, to be going to regionals alongside all of our classmates.
Prepairing for Provincials
Even though we didn’t get our scores at regionals, we did get feedback on our performance. Once we got back, on Monday we reread the notes and decided what to work on. We had to prioritize, because we only had ____ classes to prepare for provincials. We decided to change one of our team choice elements, from live music (singing with the ukulele) to a lightning bolt rainbow staff, because we got a very low score on it. We kept our other team choice element (costumes) but we decided that we would get a higher mark on it if we sewed them. Some of the fabric was difficult to work with because it was so fine. Luckily we didn’t have to change much when Sofia came back, all we did was give her the narrator part so Luca wouldn’t have to change in and out of her costume. We made some edits to the script (which I partly regret) to enhance our storyline.
The lightning bolt rainbow staff took a while to make, because; first we had to find a stick the right size for Syrah, then I whittled it, then over spring break, Alivia created the lightning bolt to go on top of the staff, after spring break, we covered the lightning bolt in white tissue paper and put a light inside, we wrapped rainbow tissue paper around the top of the stick, glued it all together, and we were done!
We also added a few props, and by a few I mean two. We added a sun amulet for citrine (me), and a wand for emerald.
During and after Provincials
We definitely did better job at Provincials. This could’ve been because we had more time to practice and improve. It also could’ve been the fact that we had one more person helping out “backstage”. Maybe it was just because we were more comfortable performing the second time around. Whatever the reason was, I know I’m very proud of my group and I for coming in second place in Provincials. Even though destination imagination was a fun experience, I think everyone (in my group at least) was glad once it was over.
Coming in second place means we could go to global stage, but we aren’t going, for multiple reasons, money being one of them.
If you’re wanting to check out my teammates’ blogs’ here they are;
Back in January we started the adventure that was DI (Destination Imagination). I have talked a bit about this in my SLC blog post. Basically DI is a competition between students, competing in multiple different challenges. This year we had six different categories, technical, project outreach, sciencetific, improv, fine arts and engineering. We were sent a survey about what our first, second and third choices were, we also put down one option that we really didn’t want to do. My first choice was the fine arts category, so I was really happy when I was told that I was in the fine arts group. The requirements for the fine arts category are; you have to have two team choice elements (something to show off your team’s skills and interests and make your performance stand out from the others), A colourful character, a colour that disappears and a vanishing act (where either the colour or something else disappears). I was definitely glad that Alivia was in my group, because I didn’t really know Luca Sofia and Syrah that well. After a few weeks however, we got to know each other more, and started to get along better.
(You can skip over this paragraph if you want.)
When we first started working on DI, our story was very different. Our original storyline was about a little girl and her grandmother. One night the grandmother read the little girl a book about a young girl (around her age) who went off into the forest one day. She found a box of gems in the forest on a rock and took one of the gems. As soon as she took it from the box, that colour disappeared! This book was actually written by the grandmother about what happened to her when she was a kid. She didn’t want anyone to know it was real though, so she said it was just a fairytale. The book had a “fake” map in it that the granddaughter decided to follow the map, to see if it was real. She eventually found the box of gems in the forest and took the yellow one. She was bringing it back, when she tripped and fell. The gem flew out of her hand and broke. All the sudden, all of the yellow disappeared from the world. When she got home, she was in BIG trouble. Her and her grandmother had to go back to the gem box and summon a colourful character to fix the gem. On their way to the gem box, they stopped by a village and they saw the effects it had on people in the village. Once they got to the gem box, they summoned the colourful character, who was actually covered in a cloak to make her look like a rock. The colourful character mixed various ingredients in a couldron to make another yellow gem.
We decided that it would be too challenging to preform that version of our story, so we basically started over. We kept the idea of the gems, and someone taking one, but that was basically it. We changed our storyline to, a story about seven colour gods, who all controlled their colours, plus something else related to their colour. For example; Blue kept the oceans and lakes healthy and fresh, and provided calm in times of distress. They lived in/by Summerville, where it was always summer, because the only god that could control weather was banned from Summerville for causing fifteen years of grey and darkness in the town, by covering the rainbow. She came back, stole the yellow gem, and yellow disappeared! Once emerald (the green goddess), citrine (the yellow goddess) and amethyst (the purple goddess) found charcoal (the white goddess who controlled the weather) they talked about what had happened, she said sorry, returned the gem, and became the official colour god of weather again.
to decide who would be who when we presented, we wrote down our top three choices of who we wanted to be, and everyone got their first choice! We had to adjust slightly once we found out that Sofia wouldn’t be able to make regionals. This was our original list of who would be what character; Melanie (me) as yellow, Alivia as green, Luca as purple, Syrah as grey and Sofia as the narrator. Once Sofia told us she wouldn’t be able to make it, we decided Luca would be the narrator as well as the purple goddess.
We came in third place in regionals! We didn’t get our ribbons however, because the computers weren’t working. We got our ribbons at provincials when we went up to get our awards for the second time we preformed.
A while ago in humanities we were learning about worldview and how it impacts our lives. After a while we moved on from worldview, so naturally we thought we were done with the topic. Until we were assigned our first poem. Our simile poem. To everyone’s “utter delight” it had to be about worldview. Wait, let me rephrase that; everyone was so excited that we got to write a poem about worldview!
Our next poem was an extended metaphor poem. We had to write a poem 6-8 sentences long comparing a part of worldview to something else in expanded detail. The third type of poem we wrote were haikus. Since haikus are so short, we wrote three about, can you guess it? Yep, about worldview. We were starting to see a theme, and not all of us were too fond of it. It definitely is harder to write a poem when you are restricted to a certain topic. On the other hand, I am glad that the didn’t just say “write three haikus”, because I never would’ve gotten them done. Our fourth poem was a found poem. A found poem is where you take a chunk of writing that you think is poetic and scale it back into a poem without adding too many of your own words. It’s safe to assume that from this point on, all the poems are based off of different parts of worldview. The fifth poem we wrote was an imagery poem. An imagery poem uses words that appeal to our senses. The sixth poem was a sound poem. This poem is exactly what it sounds like. It is a poem described using onomatopoeias. Our seventh poem was an experience poem, where we describe an experience we had when we were kids (even though we still are) that we think helped shape our worldview. The eighth poem we wrote was a personification poem, about what it would be like if Worldview walked in the room. Our ninth and final poem was a self-portrait poem about ourselves. This one was the longest poem. We had to wrote 25-30 lines! After we wrote all of our poems, we put them together into a book.
Here’s my book:
I used sketches pro to add colour to some of the pictures,
This blog post will be filled with highlights from the year so far. It will include an example if the work that I’m most proud of, an example of my learning, an example of my growth mindset and three goals that I have set for myself.
What work am I most proud of?
The work that I’m most proud of is definitely my work for destination imagination. I’m proud of how well my team and I worked Together and I’m proud of how well we did at regionals, despite the fact that our vanishing act didn’t work very well. The story that we created was very creative (in my opinion anyway) and we managed our time well (most of the time). We worked very hard and in the end you could definitely tell. When I heard that we came in third place out of all the groups that were competing in the fine arts category I was thrilled!
One example of my learning this year
One example of my learning this year is my work on advertising an advocacy. We started at the beginning of the year, where we made an advocacy ad about disasters caused by earthquakes. A tourist ad about one of our favourite places to go that is somewhat secretive or hidden. And a business ad where either our parents were the boss, or we knew the boss. I’ve written more about these ads in my advertising and advocacy blog post. During our trip in Oregon we made three more ads. We all made an advocacy ad about tsunamis, but we were split up into separate groups for our business and tourist ads. For our tourist ad, my group was assigned Fort Stevens non historical. Our business that we interviewed was the South Beach Fish Market. I wrote more about these ads on my going coastal post. I think I have really improved on my ads since the start of the year. I now have a better understanding of how to use pathos logos and ethos in my ads to make them better.
My growth mindset experience
In my mini exhibition blog post I explain how I had to completely change the design of my house a few days before the exhibition and normally that would make me really annoyed and think “why me? What did I do to deserve this?” But for some reason I wasn’t even that annoyed. If this happened at the beginning of the year however, before i knew about having a growth mindset versus having a fixed mindset I probably would’ve gotten really stressed. The final product would’ve probably reflected my mood at the time (meaning I would have done a poor job, just in case you couldn’t figure that one out). In the end I ended up loving my project and it was all thanks to my growth mindset.
My goals
I have set three goals for myself for the remainder of the school year. I will now explain what they are, and how I plan to achieve them.
My first goal is hand more work in on time. I will achieve this goal by staying on task, and not talk to my friends as much during class. This is definitely something that I will have to work on for the rest of the year, because I like to talk, A LOT. I know I can improve by the end of the year because at the start of the year I was much worse at focusing, but now, I’m not so bad.
My next goal is to make sure that all the work I hand in is work that I am proud of. To do this I will make sure that I proofread my work before I hand it in. If I ever wonder if my work is good enough I will revise it and make some edits until I know that it is more than just good enough. I will focus in class more, so I have more time to revise my work.
My third and final goal is to be more organized when it comes to my school work. I will do this by prioritizing my work when I am doing my homework and I will organize my work in my binder or on my iPad at the end of class. I will set aside five minutes just to organize my work so I don’t lose any of it.
I haven’t blogged about scimathics on my learning portfolio yet, so why now you may ask. Well we’ve been doing a lot of cool things in science and math and I figured it was time I told you about them. Also we were told to, but that’s not the point!
What is scimathics?
Scimathics is a combination of science and math. It is taught by Ms Klauses. She calls us her lambs/plamps/little lammies.We have scimathics every day because it is two blocks combined into one. I explain how this works more in my Day one Day two blog post.
At the start of the school year in scimathics we (PLP 8) were introduced to The rightness of being wrong. In September I wasn’t completely used to the idea that being wrong can be right but as the year carried on I became more comfortable with it. Now that I’m so comfortable with the idea of the rightness of being wrong when I’m in my other classes I am less stressed. This doesn’t mean that I put less effort into my work, just that if I fail or get something wrong, I don’t get as disappointed and I know that I can learn from my mistakes. This also ties into growth mindset and fixed mindset and learning from your mistakes.
What have we done this year?
Lemme/Llama
Our lemme project, or as Ms Klausen called it, our llama project was mostly about the Pythagorean theorem. We learned about the spiral of theodorus. We started out outside where she challenged us to first make a triangle using only three cubes. She then challenged us to create a curved line using straight lines, on a piece of paper. Then we were challenged to do the same thing, only this time we had to add right angles. I didn’t figure out how to make a curved line with right angles, but once she showed us the spiral of theodorus, I understood.
My door is a bore no more
for this project we got into groups of three and had to increase the surface area of a door by three fold. Even though we were in separate groups, we had to work together with the other groups to make sure that when we were done, the total surface area of the door was increased by three fold. To increase the surface area, we built 3D shapes out of paper and taped them to the door. Before this project we were working with surface area and volume, so we knew how to calculate surface area. At the end we wrote an engineering report on it.
Minecraft earthquake proof project
For this project we made an earthquake proof structure using Minecraft. We were in groups of two. Our main objective was to add earthquake proofing features to a 100×100 building. We had to choose an earthquake prone region of the globe and base our architecture off of the kind of buildings they have in that certain area. Tamara and I chose Ancient Greek/Rome. We painfully placed all 10 000 blocks down for the floor, 968 blocks for the pillars, all 429 blocks for the arches, 10 100 blocks for the roof and 260 blocks for the Y beams. If you think that was a lot, there was also the HUGE amount of blocks we had to destroy for the ocean that for some reason we decided to build, (it was actually so our landscape looked more like Ancient Greece). You know, that and the fact that we had to redo our structure about 6 times due to complications with running into mountains, rivers and TNT exploding too close to our building (that may or may not have been my fault). We made half of the building the same as how they were originally built, and added earthquake proofing features to the other half. Once we were done, we made a video explaining how our earthquake proofing features work.
These are all of the main projects that we have done so far. I will continually update this post as we learn more.
to have characters with likes and dislikes on some of the cards, then i would have a deck of cards with pictures on them, and if three of the pictures on the cards in your hand matched your character’s likes or dislikes, you got a point. I don’t expect anyone reading this to understand that game, so I changed it around a bit. Instead of having character cards, I had cards with fruit on them. There are four cards that are bigger than the rest, and those cards have a number in the top right hand corner. Each player gets one of the bigger cards, and uses the five cards in their hand to try to get to the number in the top right hand corner. Once I finalized the rules, I started to design/draw the cards. This definitely took the longest, because my cards are very detailed. I used sketches pro Tayasui Sketches Pro by Tayasui.com to “draw” the pictures on the fruit. When I say draw the pictures on the cards, I mean get a photo off the internet, trace over it, then erase the original photo.
There are four main cards that are bigger than the rest of the deck. Each player will choose one of those cards at random. Each player will then be dealt five cards each. The number at the top right hand corner of the bigger card is the number that you are trying to get to with the cards in your hand. The objective is to use the least amount of cards possible to get to the number on your card, but you have to use at least two of the cards in your hand. You can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents. You can only use the numbers in your hand, and you can only use each card once. Whoever had the lowest amount of cards each round gets one point. However, if you use exponents to get to the number on your card, you also get a point, even if you use more cards than another player. So if you use exponents, and you used the least amount of cards, you get two points for that round. You can play as many rounds as you like, and the person with the most points at the end of the game wins.
For once, I dont have a ton of stuff to write here. Overall I did really well on this project. I did have critiqued throughout the project, but I fixed those things as I went along. By the end my only critique was to make the cards thicker, and to write out the instructions. I did both, and handed it in by the deadline. There are still a few things that I would do differently next time, like drawing something other than a pea pod. The pea pod was the hardest to draw, and it was the hardest to arrange on the cards. It also didn’t/doesn’t really make sense to have 3 of the cards have fruit on them, and only have one card with a vegetable. I think I would just make all of the cards fruits, instead of half and half (half veggies half fruits).
