Hello!

Recently in school we have been working on a really cool project! About the history of global exploration and why explores wanted to explore! We started this project off by learning about the Vikings, which later lead to learning about explores and why people wanted to explore. We found that it was for these three main reasons; Gold, Glory, and God. Our next task was to write about either a made up explorer or a real life one, and I chose Christopher Columbus, and decided to write my story as it was his journal. If you read carefully you will realize I mention Gold, Glory, and God. I hope you enjoy his journal!

MPOL

Hello!

This is my MPOL something non PLP learners would be confused by. MPOL stands for midway presentation of learning. We do this instead of parent teacher conferences which instead of rushed five minute talks about my learning. I will present a blog reflection that i am making about the learning i have done this year.

In my mPOL I am going to be talking about my learning experience in PLP.

Our Driving Questions:

• How have i demonstrated my growth as a learner so far this year?
• I have definitely improved this year and I know that by looking at my first few assignments 
• How can i sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? I am going to change my learning plan in humanities because as. A learner, I think I might want to change my learning goal in humanities to get a 🌈 instead of a sun, because I think I would rather get revisions giving feedback on how to get rainbows instead so I can extend my learning to the peak of its abilities this way I can be happier with the results of my grades.

Circular competences:

Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Oral Communication, Quantitative Literacy, and Written Communication.

Core competences:

CREATIVITY, COMMUNICATION, CRITICAL THINKING, COLLABORATION, CITIZENSHIP AND CONNECTIVITY FOR THE FUTURE EDUCATION.

Skills I have improved on that I can continue to develop:

Writing✍️

I have improved on my writing skills allot this year and I would like to continue to develop my writing to its full and best potential. I can achieve this by using my curricular competences like creative thinking and literacy.

Communication🗣️

I have meet many new people in PLP thanks to the random seating plans! This has helped me get to know more people by developing and expanding my communication. And this helps me get to collaborate with different people!

Before We started using the seating plans I Barely knew anyone’s names. I would like to expand my knowledge in communication with other people from PLP that I don’t know as well, in the future!I have used my core competences like my communication, and collaboration.

What does my work in PLP reveal about me as a learner?

I would like to say that I am quite Creative and I say this because I love art and I love thinking outside of the box. some evidence to this would be for example my Pandora’s box for the winter exhibition many people that I presented to said I was very creative and they loved my detailed boxes! the work we have done maybe hasn’t shown that yet but my creativity really forms when we are doing crafty projects like the Pandora’s box.

I would love to do more projects like this in the future since I find that they are super fun and exciting to make!

Projects like this help me explore both my circular and core competencies like, creativity, and creative thinking.

Revisions and critique:

I have gotten a few revisions this year but I am happy I did! Revisions and critiques to my work from both peers and teachers has helped me improve my work to its full potential. Without my revisions I wouldn’t be able to get the grades I was reaching for this year.

An example of why feedback is so important is because when i was making my mPOL i got feedback on what i was doing wrong that i could improve by talking less about what the project was and more on my learning plan. I grew by using curricular and core competence and i took that feedback i got and used it to improve on this.

Here was my learning plan!

To break down my learning  lets start off with maker!

Maker 

In maker my learning goal was to get 🌈’s

(Which I achieved)

In maker we have done a total of 12 assignments/projects. 

Some of these key projects i did in maker that has showed my growth in these following projects.

User Guide

My user guide was the first writing project I did in maker I am proud of this because I got a 🌈 and my teacher liked it . Some of the skills I developed while doing this were writing on a professional and organized format and peer critique. I also explored my circular competences like, Quantitative Literacy, and Written Communication.

Big Life Journal

I loved this project because I got to plan out my future and write about my passions. This let me expand my knowledge about myself and I was able to be creative by writing and drawing. I also feel like I got more in depth with my passions and realized why i love them so much.

This helped me with my writing skills and my creativity (using both core and curricular competencies)

Making Interesting Images

For this assignment we were working on taking different images using new skills on our iPad. I learnt allot of different ways to make my images better and I had fun learning and participating in this project! Using the markup skill shows how different people see our world and and vision the surroundings around us. This shows our perspective of the world because I might see things/draw stuff differently then one of my peers would, and that’s what makes us unique! this also might tell about you about me as a learner depending on how unique and different my drawings are.

Some skills i can take away from this that I didn’t already know were lighting and exposure, different angles and perspectives, markup on my images, silhouettes and more! 

I explored both my curricular competences as well as my core comediennes like, creative thinking as well as my critical thinking during the span of this project.

if you want to see what this project looked like you can check out my post/reflection on it!

Pandora’s Box 

This project was our first exhibition it helped me improve my circular competences and core competences by presenting, communicating, socializing and learning new things about PLP and other projects. I made two boxes for the exhibition based on the movie avatar. One box I made was showing our polluted and destroyed planet in the future, and humans heading over to my other box ( the one representing pandora) trying to take over pandora like they did in the movie.

Doing this project helped me be more confident in presenting to strangers since it was my fist time doing so. This project will help me be prepared for our next exhibition in the spring.(that I am very excited about!)

If you are interested in wanting to see my reflection on this project you can find my blog post on it!

Humanities!

For humanities my learning goal was to get ☀️’s(which I did achieve but I would like to change that goal to a rainbow 🌈)

In humanities I have done 11 Assignments/projects overall but I will just show some that I think have best represented my growth as a learner.

The outsiders

A project I am least proud of this year is probably my outsiders novel reading roles journal the reason I think this is because I was just learning how to use my iPad properly and I did not put as much effort in this project as I did with my other projects. I also think I could have done much better in this if I had organized the due dates better, and put more effort into my writing.

I also got a couple revisions on some of my roles because, I was talking with mr. Harris and he asked me if I thought I could improve or revise any of my roles. I said a couple things I could focus on to improve and he said it was great that i was aware of improvements i could make. Overall this project did help me with my skills as a learner like, writing and communication with peers.

here was our final book cover:

Middle Ages slideshow

I found the humanities sector about the Middle Ages really interesting because at the start I thought I didn’t know any thing about the Middle Ages but I soon learnt so much new knolage about this topic that I didn’t before i could also make connections with what i was learning to prior knowledge. Overall for this project I think it was really fun and I have a lot of interesting information to take away from this project. I got a couple revisions that I fixed and after I got an ☀️.

Crusades slideshow

This was the third keystone to our humanities (leading on from the Middle Ages) 

Since this was my second power point I had a bit more experience and knolage to put into my second one so I think I did better on this one because I got a 🌈, which I am really happy about!

Both these projects helped me with my competencies for example, WRITING SKILLS, CITIZENSHIP AND CONNECTIVITY FOR THE FUTURE EDUCATION.

If you are interested to see my reflections on these power points you can check out my blog post on that.

Keystone#1 world view and mind note 

This assignment is a good example of how i have improved as a learner, and how far I have come with my writing skills, understanding, and dedication to PLP.

I fell like at the start of the year I wasn’t dedicating my learning as much as I am now at the start of the year. I think this because I was still working like I was in elementary school and I think now I could have done a better job in this project so my work could reach the peak of its ability.

Conclusion:

PLP has been really fun for me and I would like to continue to do this next year. I think that I have improved a lot as a learner and I have improved with my writing skills especially. I would like to keep getting better at everything I have improved on.

PLP has helped me be more creative and it has helped me meet many new people overall, I think that I have done a good job reaching my learning plan this year. Thank you for reading about my mPOL !

My triptych:

To make this triptych i used the apps: Superimpose X, things, calendar, Google Arts & Culture,  procreate, and sketches pro. First, i had to learn to put all my due dates on things for the different keystones of the project and then i used calendar to add the due dates and when to stat working on each keystone. Next was my fist draft we made this using SuperimposeX so we could add our faces to a painting from the renaissance, we got the renaissance image from Google arts and culture. I used markup to add what innovations i would add into the painting. Next i went into procreate and drew my draft of the entire triptych. Then i would go on to draw all my drawings to add into my triptych for each panel. Lastly i took all my drawings from procreate and put my triptych together using sketches pro! This was my final product and i think i did pretty good considering my unexperienced techniques with Photoshop!

My drafts!⤵️

sorry I don’t know why it has been cut in half.

I have learned allot through the process of making this triptych.I have been learning how to take better and more affective notes using craft, i learned about the different  innovations created during the renaissance and how it has impacted the renaissance word as well as our world today, and i also have learned how to edit and create images using SuperimposeX.

though in am proud of my results if i had to do this project again i would probably change my background  so the paintings weren’t hanging off the e walls because there wasn’t much space for my paintings in my triptych. I also think I could’ve used SuperimposeX more so i could become more advanced on using it, otherwise i am really proud of my triptych and i think i did a good job!

Overall i have learned allot about the renaissance and its innovations during the span of this project and i think i have come a far way from were i started.

See you in my next post!

Hello my name is Alva.

These past weeks in maker have been so fun by learning how to use new skills in sketches pro!

To show what we have learned, what better way then make a short book about what we have been experimenting with!

For people who are interested in drawing and maybe learning more about it you should try reading my book it also teaches you a couple of skills you could use in sketches pro!⤵️

To make this book I used the app book creator where I played around with different tools like the text and the drawing one.

Book creator is super fun and easy to use and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in making their own books.

That’s all!

Thanks for reading!

In this sector we were supposed to make two keynote presentations, one on the Middle Ages and its  feudal system, and the other about the crusades. I think that my presentations were  thorough and could teach people about the Middle Ages and the crusades. Press here to see my Middle ages presentation

Click here⬆️to see my crusades presentation

I know this because my peers and teachers stated this and i overall, think i did a good job since many parts of my presentations were simple and easy to read.

Questions I still have:

When and why did humans stop using the feudal system?

What happened after the feudal system? (What was the power structure like instead?)

Why did the feudal system stop being used?

Did life return back to normal after the last crusade? Or was there a difference in how people lived (with many things destroyed like houses.)

The driving question: 

How did the power structure of the time period affect the different groups of people?

The feudal system:

Peasants would have terrible lives just working, but the king and the elites would be living their best privileged lives.The peasants where the ones paying taxes even though they had no money. They would also need to pay taxes to the church and the church did not need to pay any taxes. Since the peasants had no power they would not have any land of their own, they would need to work all day. Their life condition was terrible with diseases every were. 

The crusades:

When the crusades began the pope (Urban 11), made a speech to the knights and peasants. He said that if you joined the crusade all your sins would be forgiven and you would find paradise. Of course they agreed to join because they believed him. Since most of the peasants and knights when off to battle, the nobles and barons had less peasants and workers to handle the crops. That resulted in a shortage of food that occurred and many peasants and they would starve. With the loss of many loved ones life was hard for many. The crusades left over 5 million people dead.

-To get these answers I learnt about different group’s of people and how their lives were affected by the feudal system, and crusades at the time.

To show I have learnt from this, I have evidence from my power point and my reflection. I think other teenagers can learn from my power point by how I have formatted my information.

When we started learning about the crusades I found that I understood the Middle Ages information more than the crusades. Later when I started to work on my crusades presentation I found that I understood it better when I was teaching the information.

-I definitely know more about the crusades now, than I did before (since I didn’t even know what the crusades where.) I can definitely take away allot of important information.

-I now have so much new information to take away from these projects, this has helped me learn a lot more about history and its historical significance.

-What learnt could maybe lead to another project like learning about the renaissance(-;

To get all this information that I have learned, I was taught by: Textbooks, Videos, PowerPoints, and of course, my teacher.

All the new information I learned helped me answer the driving question because I had so much information to write down. I learnt a lot from these projects.

These new skills that I have learnt can be helpful for future classes and my knowledge on other subjects that relate to similar topics like the renaissance.

Avatar reflection blog post 

For our first winter exhibition, each grade made boxes relating to how lessons from avatar teach us about the real world. Our driving question was “ what does James Cameron‘s world of avatar reveal about our society?”

I made two boxes for the Exhibition. One was representing our destroyed and polluted planet with humans heading to pandora to take over. in my second box (my pandora world) I made a box showing the humans trying to take over pandora.

It am pretty proud of my boxes and I think allot of people at the expiation liked them too!

I think I did a good job at presenting and many people said it made allot more sense when I explained how the story from my box connected to my theme statement, which was-‘if we keep destroying our planet we need to remember we only have one.’’Many people found the topic I was talking about very important and they liked the detail I put in my boxes.

In avatar they were destroying the home tree because in the movie they were using pandora as a planet ‘B’’and taking all natures resources for granted and taking with no respect for the Na’vi  or their nature.

This teaches us to respect ur planet and it shows what could happen in our future if we don’t do any thing about destruction and start making changes in how we live.

Making the box:

To create my first world (the destroyed planet) I used:

 -paint on the back round

 -resin to make the polluted water 

– some cereal boxes to make factories

For pandora I used:

-Paint for the background

-Moss for the ground 

-Sticks on the ground as decoration 

-fairy lights to make it more visible 

-A branch for the home tree with some leaves on top

-The humans were little figure’s from Michaels 

-The Na’vi people i made by printing out images of them and then I stuck them to cardboard to make them stand upright 

I have a couple of questions about the movie avatar itself including-

 -Why was Jake chosen by the spirt seeds, even though he was a human and his avatar was      fake?

-What are the Na’vi afraid of?

-What is their Na’vi biggest frustration?

This Project has made me open my eyes and realize some major issues in our world and I was happy to share the Things I learned with others as the winter exhibition.

This also kind of opened a window to our nature for me, I already knew about Pollution  and preserving nature but this let me extend and share my Knowledge with others. 

This can lead to me and others really step up for what we think is right. 🙂

How might I use the still image to create and communicate through technology?

My three favorite skills I learned are probably:

1. Opacity-because I really love how the images look when you lower the opacity, and I will definitely be using these skills in the future.

2. Worms eye view and Birds Eye view because as I said, I have some photo ideas for those techniques.

3.Mark up-because it is super fun to make regular objects into art!

Who am I as a PLP learner?

YouTube channel 

The purpose of this assignment was to identify something that I was passionate about, so I wrote all about how I want to be a fashion designer. My YouTube channel would be about clothes, DIY’s, hauls, outfit inspiration and GRWM. I even designed  logos for it!

I think I did good because I worked hard and stayed on task. My performance in this assignment tells people that I am creative, and that  have a passion for clothes. It would be so much fun to make clothes and share how to make them with the world!

Bucket list 

I love bucket lists because I want to have a adventures life with loads of things to do!
The purpose of the assignment was to identify what you want to do in a lifetime. I would love to do these things one day. I think I did good at coming up with ambitious things to do. Now what does this  say about me? Well,  if you look at my list you will see that I love to travel and that I am quite ambitious. Here are some things on my bucket list:

Dream board

This assignment was to show your dreams and what you day dream about. I think my teachers wanted me to learn to reach for my goals and plot them down, similar to the bucket list. I think I did well on my dream board because I drew some nice illustrations and kept it neat. My performance in this project shows what I am passionate, creative and adventures.

Hello! Welcome to my blog

My name is alva and I am 13 years old, and my birthday is October 9th 2009.

I like horseback riding and dance.

my favroate food is sushi