Walt’s Light

Hello and welcome back to my blog. As you may have noticed I haven’t posted much, this is due to not have PLP for an entire quarter. But now I’m back and this first post is about one of my favourite topics. Disney. To understand what we talked about you need to know a bit about our current project. We are learning about post WWII leading to now. We are also working with the Deep Cove Heritage Society to help build up their archives by interviewing people who have lived in the cove the majority of their lives and creating a podcast episode. With studying post WWII we are mainly looming at the 50’s when a certain happiest place on earth was built. 

During Friday’s class we did a couple things. We showcased our school year as a ride or roller coaster, we learned about the building of Disneyland and of Disney productions, we then split into groups and compared certain rides from the 50’s till now. And finally we watched the trailer for Disney opening back up this year. 

While watching this I noticed that some people who were interviewed mentioned how Walt’s light was still on and I decided that in this post I will tell you all of my favourite Disney story.

In Disneyland, above the fire hall building in Main Street is an apartment, Walt and his family would live there from time to time. Whenever he was staying at the apartment he would turn on the lamp at the window to let the people visiting the park know he’s there. When he died, the cast members turned it off. The next morning, the cast members went to work to find the lamp on. The lamp was turned on by itself mysteriously. The lamp never turned off and never went out. It is believed that Walt’s spirit is connected to this lamp.

I don’t know what it is about this story but it gives me so much joy whenever I walk past it when I travel to Disneyland. I hope you enjoyed this post and stay tuned for more.

Adaptions are all around us

Welcome back to another blog post, today’s post is going to be a reflection on our third week of our Romeo and Juliet project. This week we were watching the 1968 and 1996 movie versions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I learnt quite a lot about adaptions and how the directors of these films adapted the movies to fit their filming style, the time it was filmed, and the time they wanted to capture. For example the 1968 version has a renaissance style to it rather than what the 60s were like, whereas the 1996 version wanted to capture the 90s.

There are many different movies or tv show adaptions, some are adaptions of a book or play, and others are adaptions of other movies or tv shows. Adaptions also apply to our daily lives. We created our second co hosted podcast this week and the focus was adaptions, we had to include our theme of our podcasts and possibly mention Shakespeare or Romeo and Juliet. My co-hosts Thomas and Julia mainly stuck to their podcast themes of ski and mental health, whereas I included more of Romeo and Juliet and reflected back on the first co-hosted podcast.

 

I have learnt this week that there are so many adaptions in life whether it’s in productions, manufacturing, or worldviews; everything keeps adapting. I also learned that sometimes an original does better than an adaption but an adaption can sometimes be better than an original.

Romeo and Juliet

Hello and welcome back to another blog post. This will be my last post for this quarter as I will be moving on to quarter 3 starting Monday. This post is about our latest project in PLP 10 and it’s all about Shakespeare. Now at the start of this project I thought “great another Shakespeare project” but in the end this project was by far one of my favourites. The driving question to this project was changed from “how do we modernize Romeo and Juliet to appeal to a younger audience?” To “how can we present a live audio story that makes an audience appreciate the relevance of Shakespeare?” The reason of the change is that we couldn’t create a good enough adaption of the entire play. So we just adapter certain parts in the end. But let’s not rush. This project started with comparisons, more specifically that of the original play, the 1968 movie, and the 1996 movie. I also created 2 new podcast episodes, these episodes were different because I had co-hosts, Thomas and Julia.

For this project we 3 curricular competencies that represent each PLP area of study, English, Social Studies, and Maker.

English 10: I can express an understanding of how a text uses literary devices to make meaning.
I can express an understanding of the role of contexts, values, and perspectives in texts and how language is used to construct personal, social, and cultural identity.

the stepping stone that best represented this competency was the act comparison charts. For these stepping stones we read through the Romeo and Juliet play and watched the movies to compare how they were similar and different. I found that I was able to get a better understanding of the play through seeing the movies.

Maker 10: I can select and use a design solution to a problem, process, or challenge.

The milestone that best represented this competency was milestone 2, this milestone was our first co-hosted podcast. For this episode i had to solve the problem of how does Shakespeare connect to the BC outdoors. I answered it with bard on the beach, bard on the beach is a festival held at a park in bc and they preform Shakespeare plays.

Social Studies 10: I can explain and infer different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events by considering prevailing norms, values, worldview, and beliefs.

the milestone that best represented this competency was milestone 4, our second co-hosted podcast episode. In this episode Thomas, Julia and I talked about how the location for the Romeo and Juliet movies we were watching in class adapted to fit the time era and characters. We also talked about our different views on the Romeo and Juliet movies and which adaption we liked the best.

The final step to this project was to wright our own adaption and preform it as an auditorial story. It was a challenging process but it turned out well.

In conclusion this was my favourite project yet and i hope we get to do more similar projects in the future.

The Colourful 60s

Hey guys, welcome back to another blog post. In todays post i will be talking about the colourful fashion of the 1960s.

Many things were happening in the 1960s, one of the major things was women’s rights, now I’m not here to talk about that but about the style of the 60s. The 60s was known for their colourful style of neon and flowers

An Architectural Insight

Hey guys, welcome back to another post. In this post I will be explaining the structor and meanings of an Elizabethan theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you look at the image above you can see that there are many different levels, the bottom levels would be for commoners and those of a lower class whereas the top levels would be of the high class. One of the reasons that the wealthier people were at top was due to weather, a lot of the lower levels wouldn’t get covered and people there would get rained on. It’s quite similar to theatres now a days were if you want a box seat or a seat higher up you need to pay more money.

An interesting fact about the theatre there is that it is set in the round, meaning that you can see most of the stage from different perspectives. It is built this way to allow more room for the audience. This technique is still used today and one of the challenges in Destination Imagination uses this as a way to give more of a challenge.

I find these theatres quite interesting and learnt in class that during the Elizabethan time there were great differences of how people were treated if they were of a lower class than now.

The Mysterious Attack

Hey guys welcome back to another blog post. As you may know from my last project post we are creating podcasts this year. If you want to catchup on my podcast journey make sure to read my Greatest Canadian post and my podcast trailer post.

Anyways, for episode 2 of my podcast “Rhiann’s Nature Scope” we had to answer the driving question:

How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of WWII?

To answer this question we had to tell a WWII story and be able to support our story with an interview. With my podcast topic being the outdoors of BC I decided to see if there were any places in BC that were effected by the war. I happened to stumble upon a location on the west coast of Vancouver island. Estevan Point lighthouse has a very mysterious story, June 20, 1942 a Japanese submarine shelled Estevan Point Lighthouse.

Have I constructed an original connection between myself, the text, and the world? The milestone I showed my best work to respond to text would be my story connection milestone. The story connection milestone was where we read or listened to people’s story that had a connection to WWII. We had to listen or read the story, and fill out a template of the story’s story arc, connect it to another source, connect it to a personal story, find the message of the story, and find 3 or more vocabulary words and definitions. I found that as we work through the 3 stories I progressed in telling the different aspects to the story we heard or read.
Have I found diverse sources and evaluated them for their relevance, accuracy, and reliability? The milestone I showed my best work to using evidence and resources would be my research milestone. For this milestone we had to find 5 sources to support the story we were telling in our podcasts. One of these sources had to be an interview or piece of audio. I had found many website sources that informed me about the attack but a couple also gave me information about it’s history before WWII, I found all this information very helpful for this episode.
Who or what influences events to occur and what were the consequences of those events? The milestone I showed my best work to analyzing cause and Consequences would be milestone 1. For milestone one we revisite our nationalism project from last year and looked at how Canadian nationalism might be different to different countries. For example canada is very accepting whereas America can be seen as not so accepting. We created a collage of different shapes and photos to represent Canadian nationalism and presented it by saying how these photos or shapes represented and cause us Canadians to be who we are. We also had to create a small reflective paragraph about how we as individuals are impacted by where we grew up and where we live and how it shapes our identities.
How might I use technology to connect to the world? The milestone I showed my best work to Globally collaborate would be milestone 5. Milestone 5 was our podcast episode, I think that my interview within my podcast best showed my work for this competency. It took me a really long time to be able to find someone to interview, first I emailed BC Parks but they never responded, so I emailed someone on a website that I found who had a page about Estevan Point, luckily enough the person I reached out to had the email of the actual lightkeepers at Estevan Point Lighthouse, I got a response from Maureen Schmidt and we scheduled an interview. I feel that my interview with Maureen went really well, she told me a bit about her role as a lightkeeper, what happened at the lighthouse during the attack, and what she would do in that situation.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this project because I got to learn not only about how BC was connected to WWII but also a bit of our history here on the west coast. I felt that I didn’t represent my best work during this project but will hopefully be able to improve for the next one.


I hope you enjoyed learning about my recent project, make sure to listen to my podcast.

Peace ✌️

Kids during WWII

hey guys welcome back to my blog. With our new normal hybrid model at school we are doing a new project each 5 weeks for my PLP course. We are currently working on a new project that revolves around WWII. I have always known more about WWII than most major events in history.

On Wednesday the 25 we read a short book about a girl named Rose Blanche. This book was about Rose watching trucks with soldiers driving down her street and one day she noticed a boy trying to escape one of these trucks, so she decided to follow it. While following it she happened across a barbed wire fence, behind that fence were kids around her age wearing striped pajamas, she overheard some of the kids say they were hungry, she had some food left over from her lunch and decided to give it to the kids. She kept collecting food and going back to the fence to give it to the kids, she noticed that more kids kept coming to the camp and some were even wearing yellow stars. One day her small town starts to evacuate, she doesn’t know what is going on and decides to go to the fence. As she’s walking in the woods to find the fence there’s a shot.

When I read that part I immediately knew what happened (she was shot). It took a couple other people to realize what happened. I found the story very sad because the girls mom didn’t even know that she had been giving kids food at the camp or where she had gone the day of the evacuation. I decided to tell my mom about the book once I got home from school. She told about a book she read called “The Boy in The Striped Pajamas” and how it was similar to the Rose Blanche story I read.

the boy in the striped pajamas is about a boy whose dad works at an internment camp but doesn’t want his family to know. The boy decided to go explore behind their backyard, despite his father telling him not to. The boy stumbles apron a barbed wire fence and meets this young boy around his age. The two boys become friends a come up with a plan to play together, the boy in the camp gives the other boy some extra pajamas to be able to come into the camp. Little do they know that the day the boy enters the camp under cover is the day of the showers. The dad eventually realizes that his son has died.

In conclusion I have learnt that people interpret things differently and don’t always understand things for what they really are. I am very grateful that I didn’t grow up during that time of war.

Revisiting nationalism

Hey guys welcome back to my blog. In today’s blog I will be reflecting on the first week of quarter 2. Due to covid our school has changed the year to be in 4 quarters. In each quarter we have only 2 classes, grade 8’s and 9’s have all their classes at school whereas grade 10, 11, and 12’s have a hybrid system. The way the hybrid system works is that for the first half of the quarter our second block is a mix of at school and at home, the second half of the quarter is the opposite, the mornin class is a mix of at school and at home. My two classes for quarter 2 are tech styles and humanities.

During our first humanities class we revisited one of our past projects about nationalism. We also discussed what is nationalism and how Canadian nationalism met be different from other countries. We were put in breakout rooms to discuss and create a keynote slide to represent different parts of Canadian nationalism.

The main notes my group came up with were: religion, sports, geography, flag, and people. Some of the points other groups came up with were: lumber, leadership, culture, sense of belonging, music, language, and politics/government. When it was my groups turn to present I talked about how geography impacts Canadians. I personally am very connected with this due to growing up in a location where we have both mount Seymour and the ocean within a 10-15 min drive.

In my opinion canada is the most beautiful country. We have mountains, forests, lakes, oceans, plains, and beaches. My family has this old trailer up at a lake that many don’t know about called Pavilion lake, it’s near Lillooet which is a small town that was featured on the Canadian show “Still Standing”.Me and my brother grew up going there during the summer time, even my dad went up there with his family when he was younger. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to still have that little getaway spot to enjoy the outdoors and family time. I found that it was perfect during covid to be able to get out of the house for a bit.

In conclusion I have learned from revisiting our nationalism project that people connect to nationalism and understand nationalism differently than others due to where they live and when they were born.

Who is the Greatest Canadian?

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog. Today’s post will be about our second project so far this year. For this project we had to make podcasts. At first I thought I would do it about dance, but I then realized I do most of my projects about dance and that I should choose something else. I decided to do mine about the great BC outdoors because I have grown up loving nature and always being outside. For this project we had to answer our driving question: Who is the Greatest Canadian?

The Canadian I decided to research was Tim Jones. Not many know Tim Jones but he has impacted many live, he was both a paramedic and apart of the North Shore Search and Rescue team. I chose Tim Jones because his job working with the NSSR team was out in nature on the mountains of BC.

~ my podcast ~

The most important thing I learned in this project was how to back up opinions with significance and research. The assignment that helped me the most with this was the significance chart that we looked at while researching our Canadian. It helped me understand how to identify if someone was significant or not.

The most enjoyable part of this project was our team time activity at the beginning of each class. Doing these team times really helped me get to know my class mates better, I realized that if we know each other better we can work on group projects better. I also really enjoyed learning about the Canadian constitution. I have always been interested in the American Constitution and the American revolution, especially watching Hamilton.

I found creating transcripts and scripts for my podcast episode very helpful because with the transcript I could write down not only what I say or what my interviewee says but I can also write down different sounds, different effects and tricks with garage band and so I was able to manage my episode better and effectively prove my Canadian was significant.

Now to answer the driving question. Who is the Greatest Canadian? I think that there isn’t just one great Canadian but in my opinion I think that Tim Jones has affected and inspired others to strive to be a great.

Lightsabers at the ready

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…..

  • Endor Moon

Our class knew that this December the new Star Wars movie was to be released in theatre. So we knew that for this years winter exhibition it would be based on Star Wars. So lets begin.

We started this unit by learning the different aspects of story telling and story plot. The different aspects we learned through this unit were: Departure, fulfillment and return. There are other aspects of more detail such as plot, setting, character, conflict, point of view, symbol, theme. I found that though learning these aspects it gave me a better understanding of a story plot in the way of details.

While learning these new concepts we started our project for the humanities side. Our goal was to write a story about a character that somehow helps in the Star Wars franchise and had to relate to a certain planet. My group (Ally, Kaia, Asha, Liam, Ben and Ryan) got the planet Endor. This is great since one of my favourite planets. This was also great because it gave us a variety of characters to write about. After a lot of discussing review and research our group decided to write about an Ewok named Nicki. This Ewok appears at the end of the 6th Star Wars movie (return of the Jedi) doing a cartwheel at the celebration. My group decided to have our character help in the battle of endor by having her distract some imperial troopers.

We had to do quite a lot to create this story, first we came up with a brief plan for the story, then we split the story into seven parts so each member of the group could write a part. After deciding what parts we wanted we each made a plot diagram describing exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. After this we started our first draft of our story. I think that it was good for a first draft but not as good as it could be, so I worked harder on it and tried to make it as best as possible for the final draft. Once done our final draft we printed it of and put on a board for the exhibition.

As all of this is going on in the humanities side of this project we also had the maker side to all of this. Now here’s where it gets crazy. We had to create something that has to tie in with the part in the story that we wrote. This took me a while to figure out since I’m quite creative and can’t always think of just one idea. But I eventually came up with the idea of building a stormtrooper helmet out of cardboard. This took me a while to research but after a while I found a video of someone making the helmet out of cardboard. I tried my best to recreate the helmet. After three days of hard work it was complete, in the end it was created with cardboard, hot glue gun, news paper and paint. It did not turn out how I wanted it to be. It was too tall and narrow, i got the measurements wrong on some parts and some parts were bulgy. But it was still really cool that I was able to accomplish it.

Then it was time to get ready for exhibition. This was a lot of fun to put together but took a lot of work. The first few steps were to receive our designated room and create a floor plan to show how we want to set up our room. This was just the start of it, our group collaborated with a grade eight group. Our goal was to make it so if you walk into our room you would be transported to Endor. This goal was a bit exaggerated but that mad us set our minds to it. We had to go out and get all the supplies we needed so our group decided to split up the jobs.

Food:

• Ham solo’s – Simon
• Yoda soda (mountain dew)- Ryan
• Ewok jerky (beef jerky)- Rhiann
• Cambylictus berries (fruit and candy)- Kaia
• Ants on a log (cream cheese)- Evelyn

Activities:

• Pin the tail on the ewok – Kaia
• Endor trivia – Ryan and Dries as part of pamphlet
• Photo Cut-out – Ally, Rhiann, Kaia

Tables:
• Grade 9’s – 4
• Grade 8’s – ??
• Food – 1

Projects:

• Ryan – Spear
• Liam – Imperial Shuttle (clay model)
• Asha – Animation (travel ad for Endor)
• Rhiann – Stormtrooper Helmet (cardboard)
• Ally – Hologram (Princess Leia)
• Benjamin – Spear and heart (paper mâche) (paper mâche dented helmet)
• Kaia – Environment Replicator (VR Animation)

• Quinn – Eco-friendly civilization
• Simon – Star Fighter
• Evelyn – Anti-slavery poster
• Raymond – Music Remix
• Sophia – Models of trees
• Dries – Timeline

Ewok Village:

• Scream Box as Ewok hut – will paint 3 or 2 sides
• Dries and Liam are residents in village
• Admiral Akbar’s Snack Bar is inside village
• Asha is designing it

Great Tree:

• Cardboard
• Green paper

Forestry and Plants:

• Asha, Ben, and Kaia will bring in plants
• Everybody else is encouraged to bring plants

Lights:

• Wrapping paper over lights
• Rhiann – Lightup Bluetooth speaker, three starlights, curtain light
• Benjamin – lamps that can change colour
• Kaia – string lights, green Christmas tree lights
• Asha and liam May be able to bring lights and white Christmas lights
• Part of overhead lights will be turned off

It so quickly fell on the day of exhibition, for the past week we had been getting organized. While sitting through some of my other non PLP class I sat and worried that it would be a huge mess and that we wouldn’t have time. Once that 3:00 bell rung I was feeling panicked. After a few hours of rushing around we got it done, it looked amazing, it might not have been what we wanted it to turn out but it was great. We got a quick break to devour some pizza and then they would let the spectators in. When I say spectators I mean everyone’s families come to see all of it.

As I look back on this project I reflect on what I could have changed, improved and even my accomplishments. Through this project I was able to learn how to communicate better, show my work in a creative way and a written project, and was able to enjoy a project and just calm down when things are tough.

Thanks for reading and sorry for it being so long.

remember to just chill🌿❄️