Tag Archives: #reflection

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Atomic Habits Reflection

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Categories: Careers, Tags: , ,

 

Intro 

“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” This is a quote from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’ve done projects before that centred around books that were quite similar, following the “self help” genre. I didn’t find them very helpful, so when I found out that this project was going to be similar, I wasn’t thrilled lets say. The focus of this project was to read the book, and pick a habit to try and accomplish using the systems James Clear provides. I’m happily surprised to say that this book became very helpful to me and I still think about some of the quotes now!

 Over the course of this project I learned “How can improving by just 1% each day help me take responsibility for my learning, strengthen my habits, and create balance and purpose in my future career and life?” This is also the driving question to the project, which I will answer at the end of this blog post! 🙂

What was my goal for the project?

For my goal I decided to choose something that I’ve been trying to work on for a veryyyyy long time. My sleep schedule/management. I have been trying to work on it on and off, but I always ended up falling out of habit. 

Because of the book I realize I focused more on goals than systems. I liked setting big targets because they feel motivating at first, but I often lost consistency over time. After reading Atomic Habits, I can see that focusing too much on goals can be frustrating when results don’t come right away. I’ve started paying more attention to my systems of keeping small daily routines that make improvement automatic. If I can build habits that make progress more natural, I won’t have to rely so much on motivation alone.

Something from atomic habits that stuck with me

There are two mains things that stuck with me because of this book. I’ve realized that I get hyper fixated on my homework and room being perfect before bed. I wouldn’t go to bed until my room was clean and I had no other side things that needed to get done. Because of this I stayed up late and never got as good of a sleep that I could have. Now i’ve become okay with things not being perfect and its actually paid off! 

Secondly, and most importantly, the quote that “removing the habit altogether is easier than trying to resist it.” For example, turning notifications off and putting my phone across the room is easier than having it right beside me and trying to resist the temptation while going to bed.

 

My focus Statement 

 

Screenshot

 

 

 

4 Steps to reach my goal

 

 

Video

The final assignment for this project was to create a video that explained the project but also shows the steps I took to reach the goal. Below I’ll add the video if you want to watch it! 

 

https://youtu.be/OjSYwSCdEco?si=9ZUcrWpOTTOeI_dj

 

 

 

 

Driving Question:

How can improving by just 1% each day help me take responsibility for my learning, strengthen my habits, and create balance and purpose in my future career and life?

Improving by just 1% each day has shown me that small, consistent actions are more powerful than occasional bursts of effort. By focusing on tiny, manageable changes, I’ve been able to take responsibility for my learning and daily routines without feeling overwhelmed. These small improvements are going to strengthen my habits over time, making the progress feel more natural rather than forced. In the long term, this approach will help me create balance in my life. Even a tiny improvement each day adds up to big results over months and years, showing that consistent effort outperforms short bursts of motivation.

Conclusion

This project taught me that growth doesn’t come from motivation or willpower alone, which is why I think I’ve had trouble with goals in the past. It also comes from building reliable systems and making small, intentional choices every day. By improving just 1% each day, I’ve learned how to take responsibility for my learning, develop stronger habits, and create a sense of balance and purpose that I can carry into the future. Yes, Atomic Habits helped me with my sleep schedule, but it also gave me a framework to approach challenges in all areas of my life. I now understand that lasting change isn’t about perfection, but about steady, consistent progress.

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Comic Quest WW1

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Categories: Humanities, Tags: , , , , , ,

 

Intro

This project was all about ww1, learning about the causes and effects of it, and then creating a comic book about it! Out of all the humanities project this year this has been my favorite, I love to draw, so i enjoyed this, but learning about the historical aspects was also very interesting. Without further ado lets get into this! 💪

World war 1 notes

Okay, so before we even started the planning for this graphic novel, there was a lot we needed to learn about ww1. There was lots of researching involved and class activities. For example, we watched videos on ww1, and took notes, as well as reading a graphic novel about ww1. 

This is the ww1 graphic novel, it’s very interesting with great visuals! Reading this book didn’t just help with learning more about ww1 but also how to structure a comic book, and all the different aspects that go into it.

 I enjoy art but I’ve never explored the making of graphic novels, nor did I have any idea on what different aspects of them meant or how to make them. The research part in this project wasn’t just about ww1, but also how to make a comic book! 

 

 

 The criteria for the comic book included:

  • A minimum of 1 Splash Panel
  • A minimum of 1 Open Panel
  • Reverse
  • Bleed
  • Close-up
  • Longshot
  • Narratory Blocks containing your narratior ‘
  • Speech Ballons containing dialogue ,
  • Thought Bubbles containing character thoughts*
  • Sound Effects
  • Labels and Captions

Below descriptions of some of the criteria  

 

Story planning

The first part of creating a comic book is of course, creating a story! I wanted mine to be a bit different from the usual storyline a man going to war, I decided. I wanted to show more of a behind the scenes perspective, so my comic book was about Clara Mitchell, a women woh joined the camouflage corps. Once my idea was planned out I drew a draft of the general panel layout, this helped guide me through the making of my comic.

 

Comic book progress

We were warned at the start of this project that everything would pile up quickly, and staying on task was important, especially since the due date was firm as its the end of the year. I knew i needed to lock in, outside and inside school! I created a system, coming prepared with a game plan before showing up to class, so I didn’t waste the time that was given to us. Anyways, wow after many weeks and LOTS of drawing, I’m ready to show the final product!!!

Finished product 

Response to the driving question 

The driving question for this project was “how can researching historical significance of World War 1 inform and enhance the storytelling in a graphic novel I create?” Historical information in a comic crucial, but even more so when talking about such a significant moment in history such as WW1. You can’t just throw in random facts and add inaccurate images because it looks cool. Furthermore, since I’m putting this novel out to the public its my responsibility to not spread false information.

 

Conclusion 

Overall, this project was ver enjoyable and taught me a lot. Being able to mix history with something I love, like drawing, made the whole thing even more enjoyable! I’m honestly really proud of how my comic turned out. It took a lot of work, but I stuck with it and created something that’s both creative and meaningful. I feel like I improved my time management, creativity, and focus throughout this project. Now that it’s finished, I’m proud of what I created and how much effort I put into it. Out of all the projects we’ve done this year, this one was by far my favorite, and I’ll definitely remember it!

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Spring Exhibition, pollination!🐝🌼

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Categories: Science, Tags: , , , , , , ,

Intro

This project was called “Don’t worry, BEE happy” it’s all about protecting pollinators in our local ecosystem. We were each assigned groups and different types of local pollinators that we would then present in the spring exhibition! My group was hummingbirds, so I’ll be talking about them in this post! 🐝🌼🦇🦋

Hummingbirds

Like I said before, my group researched and presented the hummingbird pollinators! I’ll add lots of photos of the information pamphlets, posters, and food webs we made, but first I want to talk a bit about how important hummingbirds really are are. 

Most people don’t see hummingbirds as pollinators, but they are, and really good ones at that! By transferring pollen, hummingbirds enable plants to reproduce, producing fruits and seeds. Sadly, their suffering habitat loss and other things that are decreasing their population. This leads me to the informative posters we made, so you know how you can help!

Posters 

Theres lots of things you can do to help hummingbirds, like making your garden grow wild, no pesticides, and feeding them sugar water. 

Pollination pamphlet 

In addition to the posters we made a pamphlet to learn more about hummingbirds.

Interactive food web

When you clicked on the animals in the interactive food web it would give you information on them, and when you clicked the hummingbird it would transition to show what would happen if the hummingbird when extinct!

 

Besides the information we gave out we also provided a balancing ping pong ball race and food! The food was quite a hit  

My response to the driving question 

The driving question for this project was “how can we support and protect our local pollinators to ensure a healthy ecosystem in our community?” There are lots of ways to protect our local pollinators, for hummingbirds specifically there are three simple ways to protect them. #1 getting a hummingbird feeder, BUT cleaning it every 2-3 days and only add sugar water. #2 make your whole garden, or parts of it grow wild. In the winder especially its good for hummingbirds to have cover, and places to hide. Lastly, pesticides are a big problem. When you spray your garden with them it makes hummingbirds or any pollinators sick, and harder for them to find food.

Conclusion 

 To conclude, this was a very fun project and I’m so happy it got to be the spring exhibition, since I’ve never had science as an exhibition before! It was a great way to educate the public and I had fun learning it as well.

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🇨🇦In The Name of The Nation🇨🇦

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Categories: Humanities, Tags: , , , , ,

Intro

The big idea for this project is that “collective identity is constructed and can change over time.”  Since nationalism was a key focus in this project we researched quite a bit about it, which then led into our group video. Let’s get into it🇨🇦

Researching Nationalism 

We watched videos, took notes and learned about nationalism history and consequences. Learning about the positive and negative impacts of nationalism, understanding the history and how it shaped countries all led to the final video about Canadian confederation. 

I’ll add the notes I made below. 

 https://s.craft.me/6mqY94nFHfpeiN 

American nationalism presentation

We were given groups to research about the nationalism in different counties, for example, my group and I talked about America. This wasn’t necessarily a hard project since it was a small presentation answering a few questions. The Idea was to to learn how to take notes, reviewing case studies and know how to present that to the public in a way that can be understood.

 

The final product

All the the researching, note taking and presenting led up to the final video. Now you may be wondering, what final video? As a group, we were tasked to create a persuasive promotional video, advocating for a territory to either join Confederation OR remain sovereign. My group and I chose Quebec! Thee next few days were used to research, and create a script for this video. 

I’m very proud of 1. How our video turned out, and 2. The script. The idea of our video was that it was going to be a debate between two people, and why or why not they wanted to join confederation. I had the idea for two important people to appear from the future (with a magic button of course) and give important insight on the debate. The idea came to life and with a comedic aspect! (Hint.. Donald Trump🟠) 

My group 

My group for this video were Sven and Evelyn, I’ll add their blogs below

Evelyn: https://www.blog44.ca/evelyns/

Sven: https://www.blog44.ca/svenz/

Our video:

https://youtu.be/_J5MDTCJcis

Response to the driving question 

The driving question for this project was “how has Nationalism’s influence shaped the global structure? Moreover, how has Nationalism impacted the establishment of Canada as a nation?”

Nationalism has shaped the global structure by motivating European powers to expand their empires and spread their influence. It led to colonization in places like Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. In Canada, nationalism played a key role in uniting British and French settlers and forming a shared identity that led to Confederation in 1867. It helped build Canada into an independent country, separate from British rule. However, this nationalism focused mainly on European settlers and excluded Indigenous peoples. Laws like the Indian Act and policies such as residential schools were created to erase Indigenous cultures and force them to adopt the settler identity. So, while nationalism helped establish Canada as a nation, it also caused long-term harm to Indigenous communities.

Conclusion 

 Throughout this project, I learned a lot about the effects of nationalism and Canadian Confederation. I always find projects like these helpful, since they’re not usually topics I’d explore on my own. But learning about them made me realize how important they are to understanding the world today. Nationalism has shaped so much of our history, for better and for worse and it helped my understand how identities and countries are formed. I also think our group worked really well together. Everyone did their part, which made things way smoother and more fun to work on. Overall, this project taught me a lot, not just about history, but about working as a team and thinking more deeply about the different perspectives and events that shaped how Canada became a country.

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The 7 habits of highly effective teens part 3/3

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Categories: Maker, Tags: , ,

Intro

We have made it to part 3, the final part of this series! Sadly, for this final video everyone was put into different groups which meant we couldn’t continue the twilight themed short we had planned. However this gave me a chance to focus on more of an educational aspect rather than comedy. (Not to say our other shorts weren’t educational, but there was just quite a bit of humour) Now that thats out of the way, onto the post!

 

Part 4, renewal 

Part 4 of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens was all about renewal, which is Habit 7, Sharpen the Saw. It focused on how important it is to take care of yourself in four main areas, your body, brain, heart, and soul. 

Sharpen the saw

Habit 7, Sharpen the Saw, really stood out to me because it’s all about keeping myself balanced in every part of life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve started to take it more seriously, and honestly, I think I’ve gotten quite good at it. For example, I make sure to get enough sleep and go for walks or stay active to take care of my body. Mentally, I’ve been reading more and taking breaks when I feel overwhelmed with schoolwork. Emotionally, I spend time with people who support me, and I try to keep a positive mindset. Spiritually, I take time to reflect and just be still, even if it’s only for a few minutes. I’ve noticed that when I keep up with these things, I feel more energized and focused. It’s made a big difference in how I handle stress and stay motivated. Self-care isn’t selfish, it’s necessary!

My YouTube video 

The original plan was to do all the filming on a Thursday, when we were given class time, however one of our group members had the leave for a trip last minute which meant we didn’t have everyone to film! I was determined to make it work out, so the day before my friend and I filmed all of her scenes before she left, so we could add them in after. Then we only needed to film a few extra scenes and our short was finished. I’ll add the link below if you want to check it out!

YouTube short:
http://The 7 habits of highly effective teens, sharpen the saw! https://youtube.com/shorts/1HN8HXZ6uE4?feature=share
Conclusion

Looking at the book as a whole, I think Habit 7, Sharpen the Saw, ties everything together. The other habits focus on how to be proactive, set goals, manage time, build relationships, and work with others, but none of that works well if you’re burnt out or not taking care of yourself. Renewal supports all the other habits. By keeping myself balanced and refreshed, I’m in a better place to actually live out the rest of the habits every day. It’s what helps me maintain progress instead of burning out halfway through.

Even though this last part of the series didn’t go as originally planned, I’m glad I got the chance to take a different approach and focus more on the message behind Habit 7. It was a good reminder of how important it is to take care of all areas of my life and how much of a difference that can make. Overall, this project helped me reflect on the habits in a real way, and I’m proud of the final result. Thanks for following along!

 

My group members blogs:

https://www.blog44.ca/evelyns/

https://www.blog44.ca/isaacv/

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📦Unpacking Who I Am!📦

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Categories: Maker, Tags: , , ,

Intro

Throughout this project I’ve a lot about myself. I’ve never sat down and consecutively wrote and talked about my goals like I’ve done in this project. It’s guided me so much with learning about who I am now, who I want to be, and how I’m going to get there. Without further ado, let get into it!🙀

WDYRW  Activities

WDYRW or “what do you really want” is a book by Beverly K. Bachel. This book showed me how I can set goals for myself in a easy and manageable way. Throughout this project we went through this book, reading what it had to say and completed activities from it. Overall I completed 6 activities. Below I’ll explain my top 2 favourite ones. 

My top 5 goals

One activity I enjoyed was “my top 5 goals.” For this activity you choose 5 goals your passionate in completing, and then for each, be specific on the goal, talk about how you can achieve it, how it can help, and a timeline in which it can be completed. 

 

 

 

20 by 20

20 by 20 is writing down 20 things you want to do by the age of 20. This was probably my favourite activity. For 20 by 20 it doesn’t need to be CRAZY things, just anything you want to get done. For example, I want to get a job, get a driver licence and grow my nails out!

 

 

 

My Unboxing me Storyboard

The unboxing me video was the main/final part of our project. The driving question for our unblocking me video was “how might I tell a story about who I am and where I’m going?” However, before we jumped straight into filming we needed to create a concept idea. I created an animation in keynote of a general idea I was going for. I’ll put that down below!

 

Link: https://youtu.be/IrU8BGr2MzQ?feature=shared

 

My final Unboxing Me video

Finally after lots of hard work, filming and animation, I finished my video! I’m very proud of how it turned out. If your interested in watching it, click the link below to my YouTube channel.🫶

Link:

https://youtu.be/KTcxCRq-9B4?si=ACPW0OaFF7KykNX9

How I used technology to conceive, create and a tell a story

Of course, since this is PLP I used technology throughout all of this project. I used it to prepare for my Unboxing Me video, I used it film my video and learn all about how I can set manageable goals for myself.

How did I use questioning to reflect on myself and my goals?

I used questioning to reflect on myself and my goals by asking things like What’s working for me?, What’s holding me back?, and how can I achieve this? Thinking about these helped me see my progress and figure out what I need to change or improve. It also kept me motivated and made my goals feel more achievable.

My response to the driving question

The driving question for this project was “how did you tell a story about who you are, are where you are going? All throughout this project I talked about goals I wanted to set for myself, whether they were big or small. In my Unboxing me video I reflected on my biggest goal, who I want to be, and where I’m at right now. I showed helpful visuals throughout the video, evidence of my worth thus far, and I just talked about myself! I’m exited to see where this journey takes me next!

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, I’ve realized that this project has helped me understand who I am and who I want to become. From participated in activities like “My Top 5 Goals” and “20 by 20,” to creating my Unboxing Me video, each step helped me explore my dreams. I’m excited about the future and all the opportunities to keep growing, learning, and chasing my dreams. Thanks for coming along on this journey of unboxing me!

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2025 Destination Imagintion!

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Categories: D.I, Tags: , , , , ,

 

Disclaimer

This blog post will consisted of reflections on both the regional tournament and the provincial tournament. However the sections on my provincial tournament will come later on, since it hasn’t happened yet. Now back to the post!

Intro/explanation

Destination Imagination (D.I) is a creative challenge where teams develop solutions to present at a tournament. Challenges inspire students to explore passions, develop talents, and gain new skills. The categories include Technical, Scientific, Fine Arts, Improvisational, Engineering, Service Learning, and Early Learning. While each challenge has a specific educational focus, they are all designed to be diverse, incorporating elements from other fields, for example, the Fine Arts Challenge includes a technical aspect, and the Engineering Challenge features an artistic or storytelling component. Over the course of around 1-2 months we prepare for the tournament inside and (mostly) outside of school. It’s a unique and exiting experience that we are given! Now that that’s out of the way, lets talk about MY challenge. 

My Category/Challenge 

I have the scientific challenge “worlds beyond” which was great since it was in my top 2 favourites! 

Rules/criteria 

The description of this category is as follows:

Your team will tell a story about a character who figures out they are not alone on a planet. Show off your science fiction skills with some out-of-this-world technobabble. What will happen when you go beyond the stars?

Criteria:

  • Include technobabble in the story.
  • Design and build a device and/or effect that demonstrates what the technobabble describes.
  • Include a scientific demonstration that shows the science behind why a specific phenomenon of the planet happens and/or exists.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.”

 

Evidence of learning and how I hope to improve

For the next tournament I hope to come more prepared. I can do this by collaborating and working further with my teammates, and making sure everyone is on the same track. I have some free time on spring break which I can utilize. Something that happened last year is no one (including me) worked on D.I over spring break. This made the week before provincials more stressful than it needed to be and I don’t want that to happen again!

 Now my evidence of learning section will be pretty vague since D.I isn’t over, but it is there!

Creating collaborative note and draft documents for D.I was a huge part of the process and something I found helpful. This included roles for people, things that needed to get done, the script, or general ideas for anything to do with D.I. 

Another thing my group and I worked really hard on is props. This is a tricky part to talk about since some of the props I’m really proud of, and some need some work. I think spring break is a good time to work on some props, as it can be done individually.

New skills I’ve built compared to grade 8 D.I

I feel I’ve grown a lot compared to last years D.I. Now that I’ve had more experience with it I know what to expect. I’ve become much more confident that everything is going to turn out okay, and not stressing out every 5 seconds, which has made my day to day life stress much better. Additionally, I’ve given a large effort to make sure everyone stays on task. Lastly, I’ve become better at problem solving. Before when something didn’t go as planned I didn’t have a plan b, and just freaked out. This year I’ve learned to problem solve and adapt to situations that aren’t always in our favour.

How we created the story

Getting a idea for the story was the easy part, but putting it all together was the harder part. Everyone in my group obviously has different schedules, so to get a time to collaborate and work at the same time was challenging. However, even though the circumstances were not in our favour we decided to be a (bit) more creative by FaceTiming late in the afternoon,therefore  problem solving and making it work even under the unfortunate circumstances.

Conclusion (for now)

This first D.I tournament was such an experience and I can’t wait to see what happens for provincials! Thanks for listening so far, stay tuned for the provincial post add-on!

 

Day of D.I

Okay, I’m back! A lot happened the day of D.I… thank god our presentation time was at 3:00pm, which gave my team the time to practice.

The first 2ish hours were spent fixing up props and looking over the script individually. Unfortunately, we had lost a second team member in our group so we were forced to change up the roles. One of our members had to learn a whole new set of lines because they took the place of the person who was unavailable. There wasn’t a crazy amount of things that needed to be done say of, but I think in the morning we were all a bit jittery.

Schedule

Once we started to practice for the life of me I couldn’t get my lines right, which sucked because my group members were counting on me. Thankfully, after lots of practice and a few snack breaks.. I got them down! We learned to adapt to lots of changes throughout D.I, wether it was not having 2 of our members, or our technobabble breaking. We all worked together to get it done, and that’s what happened. Communication was something we made sure to succeed in leading up to D.I. A huge part of working in a group is understanding what needs to be done, who will do it, and when. 

Changes we made

Some small props were enhanced or tweaked, and unlike last time, we had a technobabble to present which I’m very happy about! Additionally, the astronauts costumes were changed up (for the better.) Lastly, the script was changed slightly to incorporate the technobabble throughout our performance instead of just in once scene. 

I’ve grown so much since D.I grade 8, AND since regionals. The biggest thing I feel I’ve improved at is managing my stress. usually I would either overreact to things that came up. I’ve learned to pivot my way of executing the finals product while staying calm and collected. This might not sound like much, but for me it’s a huge step! 

 

 

The final Presentation!

I am proud to say my group was ready to present once the time came and we did great! Everyone remembered their lines and we got lots of laughs from the audience. 

My group members

 

Maggie: https://www.blog44.ca/maggiet/

Ella: https://www.blog44.ca/ellah/

Sebastian: https://www.blog44.ca/sebastianha/

Finn: https://www.blog44.ca/finnh/

Niko: https://www.blog44.ca/nekoh/

 

Conclusion

Final Thoughts (for real this time!)

Destination Imagination has pushed me to grow creatively, collaboratively, and personally. From learning how to manage stress better to adapting when things didn’t go as planned, this journey has been filled with lessons that go beyond just preparing for a tournament. I’m so proud of how far my team and I have come, especially after all the challenges we faced along the way. Whether it was late-night FaceTimes, fixing props last minute, or rewriting lines on the fly, we pulled through together. Until next time 🫶

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My 2025 M-pol

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Categories: m-pol/t-pol, Tags: , , ,

Intro

POL Declaration

“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

  How I am on track with my Vision Mission and Values?

 

 

 

Agency: Resilience & persistence 

 

Running a Remake

One of my vision mission and values this year was showing resilience and persistence when met with challenges and setbacks from the agency section. A good example of this is the “running a remake” project in maker. There was a bit of a mix up with the groups which made the project harder. To put it simply, we needed to recreate a scary short film! Once our first draft was done two of our group members were unavailable to be present in the making of the final draft. Therefore I had to complete the video with only one other group member. However I persisted, and made it work! There was another group filming nearby us, so I utilized this, and we decided to help each other film, problem solving!

This is my final video I made with my group member:

https://youtu.be/NeAOnONEWD4?si=CYPe1n0LmIr5H8dN

 

Self regulation: Managing distractions

In the humanities “Frankenstuffies” project my positive time management skills definitely paid off! When people talk about managing distractions the first thing that comes to my mind was staying focused in class. Of course, that is a big part of it, and is something I’m already pretty good at. However I’ve improved managing distractions at home now too. Sometimes I find it hard to do work once I get home, because all I want to do is chill out! I’ve learned that if I can get homework out of the way as soon as I get home, instead of getting distracted by my phone or some other thing I want to engage in, it makes school work a lot more manageable! Using my time wisely in class and using the tactic I just talked about outside of school has helped me finish my frankenstuffy video quicker, and with less stress! 

My frankenstuffy and his beautiful wife👇   

          

The final video               

https://youtu.be/-5RqGAumXZM?feature=shared

 

Something in my VMV I can work on

Okay, so I’ve talked a lot about things in my VMV that I’m improving at, but not what I can work on! Something I really want to start prioritizing is my sleep, which falls under the self regulation category. Some days I do really great and I’m asleep at 10:30, other days.. not so much💀 A bad habit I’ve noticed I do quite frequently is trying to finish or start random things RIGHT before bed. This varies from re-organizing my room, cleaning a fish tank or organizing random things. This might seem like reasonable things to be doing, however when your room is on the top floor and your loud… people may say otherwise (the fam) I’ve started to find ways to improve and have landed on a conclusion. Setting aside all screens 30 minuets before bed is insanely helpful and I’ve been getting great sleeps the past few days I’ve started doing this. These 30 minutes I set electronics aside I’ve started the habit of reading, to wind down.

 

 

 

 How have I shown growth as a learner this year?

 

Independence 

When I say independence is something I’ve grown on this year, I don’t mean getting work done on time or something. What I mean is, for pretty much all of my life, in general or academic wise, I wasn’t very confident. Overtime thats gotten a lot better, however I’ve grown to notice, (so have my teachers) that even when I know what I’m doing in certain assignments, I don’t have much confidence in myself. It’s like I wanted reassurance on what assignments I had completed, even though what I did was very much okay. This is something I’ve greatly improved on this year. Instead of constantly seeking approval, I’ve started trusting my own judgment much more, and If I did have questions, I would ask a peer before a teacher. I think there is still room for growth, but this is still something I’m really proud of myself for improving at.

Conclusion

“In conclusion, I am committed to building upon these strengths and addressing areas for improvement, ensuring that I remain proactive and continue to reflective on my educational journey. Thank you for being part of this process and for supporting my growth as a learner.”

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Frankenstuffies The Rise of Change!

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Categories: Humanities, Tags: , , , ,

 

Intro

Another blog post….😃 lots has happened, for example this frankenstuffy project! This Frankenstuffy project was so much fun, from making and designing a stuffy (abomination) of my choice, to creating a story and learning all about the Industrial Revolution. The final product of this project was a video about my stuffy, the time and area he lives in, and how he deals with it. However, even with all the fun aspects of sewing stuffies and whatnot, this project is based off of the Industrial Revolution, so of course we did some research!

 

Learning about the Industrial Revolution:

I don’t want this blog post to be a step by step of what we did, so these are in my opinion, some good key points of the research we did. 

 

Urbanization game

At the very start of this project we did an urbanization game. We started off with a grid background, (this is all digital of course) and for a few days straight we had 5-15 minutes to draw parts of a town. Even though this was done in groups, It was very stressful for me. The whole purpose of this exercise was to see how urbanization worked. So, if we added 50 houses, we took away some trees to account for this. My groups final product is down below! 

 

Note taking and collaboration with classmates

There was lots of great information I learned before creating my frankenstuffy. As a class, we watched informative videos while taking notes, or came together as a group to discuss what we learned.   

 

 

 

Creating my frankenstuffy

OKAY MY FAVOURITE PART!!!! I was able to use my creative, artistic wonderful, beautiful, gorgtastic skills to create none other than Peter Malarky! He is the main character of my story, with a well thought out background, history and lifestyle. He is a brave sole and I treasured the moments I had while making him.

 

This is a time lapse of me creating the one and ONLY Peter Malarky

For some darn reason it will only put a link in, not a video!!!   

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Character resume and Storyline

Before any filming could happen Peter needed a backstory and character traits! I created a large pamphlet about Peter, and any facts you may need to know about him. Additionally, after I few drafts I finished the storyline and chose a few important sections to include for the video. There was so much I didn’t include in the final draft, so I’ll show a bit of the ideas I had. 

 

Final video draft/overview

 

 

 

The final product of my video

I’me not sure why, but for some reason, the final video was really easy for me. We had so much class time to do it and i worked a few times after school, so it got done fairly quick! The idea for creating the video was, either get a photo of your frankenstuffy and animate it in certain backgrounds, OR attach string to your stuffy and move it around in front of a provided green screen. (There’s also the option to do both which is what I did) here is my final video!

 

  

 

 

 

 

My response to the driving question 

The driving question for this project was “How can we, as writers, weave historical details into our creative storytelling to convey a clear and impactful message?”

 Weaving historical details into creative storytelling in my opinion, is about making your work still have important relevant information, while also making it an engaging story so a clear message can be conveyed. For example, You do your research, look into what life was like in the Industrial Revolution and pick out relevant facts that help your characters and plot, not just random dates or events. By mixing genuine historical information whilst still making it an engaging story, you can make your message clear and impactful. For example, characters in my video open up an apothecary shop, using this opportunity I added information about time relevant things they would sell in their shop such as valerian root and Teatree.

 

 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, I learned a lot throughout this project, from learning about urbanization and the Industrial Revolution, to designing and bringing Peter Malarky to life. I showcased my time management skills and had loads of fun! Thanks for reading my blog and stay tuned for more.🫶

by

Vive Les Machines À Métaphores❄️ Winter Exhibition ❄️

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Categories: Humanities, Uncategorized, Winter exhibition, Tags: , , , , ,

 

Intro

Welcome back! It’s been so long, but I’m here to talk about the Winter Exhibition, what led up to it and the “Vive Les Machines À Métaphores” project as a whole! In this project we learned that factors precipitate revolution and that  they have shaped the modern world view. There was so much that went into all of this, starting off with the book Animal Farm, by James Orwell. Let’s get into it!

Reading Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a representation of the Russian Revolution, and since later on we would be making metaphor machines BASED off of revolutions this was a very informative book to read and gave me a lot of perspective on revolutions.

Each character in the book has specific people they were based off of, for example, Old Major represents Karl Marx, Snowball represents Leon Trotsky, Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin, Squealer represents propaganda, and Boxer is a representation for all the Russian labourers and workers. This information isn’t 100% important to the blog since I know not everyone reading this has read the book, nonetheless it’s still good to have!

Note Taking

While reading Animal Farm I made sure to make many notes, whether that was general observations from the book, or if I was making connections to the actual Russian Revolution (which comes in handy later on…)

There was a LOT of not just note talking in this book. Every few days, we would do chapter overviews with the class, and everyone including myself, made discussion questions to ensure everyone knew what was happening in the book.

In addition to this, I made sort of character cards for all of the important characters in the book as well as the roles they played.

My animal farm note taking: https://s.craft.me/OaMYkzVwMyUtO4

Cranes theory

The largest and most important part of this note taking was learning about cranes theory. This consisted of his definition of a revolution and all of the stages in one. A revolution is made up of four stages, incubation, moderate, crisis, and recovery. Learning all of these stages helped quite a lot when I made the infographic, which was an explanation/run through of the book and which parts fit into which stages of a revolution. (It’s mentioned more in depth later)

 

Animal Farm infographic:

This is my infographic of Animal Farm after a few revisions, and I’m quite proud of it!

 

 

 

 

Russian revolution

 

Choosing My Revolution

Everything I did for note taking in the Animal Farm project, including the infographic I’m going to be doing AGAIN! However, this time I would be researching a revolution! I needed to choose my top three out of 5 revolutions, and then I would be sorted into a  revolution group. My top three choices were Russian, French, and American. In the end I got the Russian Revolution! I was sorted with a few other people who would be my group members for the rest of the project.

 

Researching the Russian Revolution

Everyone in the class, no matter what group, individually researched their revolution before coming together with their group. To have a full understanding of the Russian revolution I made a timeline, overview, researched important people, and made notes on each stage of the revolution. Most, but not all of what I did was necessary, however I know my learning style and doing the amount of research and the way I did it helps me understand the project.

All of my research on the Russian revolution, timeline, cranes theory etc is here!

Link to all my research:  https://s.craft.me/Rxpob0aRoDRv0o

 

Russian Revolution infographic:

After researching our revolution, we were tasked with creating an infographic, similar to the one we made for Animal Farm. Once each group member completed their individual infographic, we combined our knowledge and design skills to create one final, refined version. The layout closely resembles my original design, so I decided to showcase this final infographic instead.

 

What is a metaphor machine/Rube Goldberg machine?

A metaphor machine and a Rube Goldberg machine are very similar.

A Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated machine or contraption designed to do a very simple task. It uses a chain reaction, where one step leads to another, like dominos falling or a ball rolling, to complete the job. For example, instead of flipping a switch directly, the machine might use a ball, a pulley, or something along the lines of that to make it happen. It’s named after Rube Goldberg, a cartoonist who drew funny, overly complex machines.

Now, a metaphor machine is the same thing, however each or most actions represent something. For example, since my machine was based off of the Russian Revolution, the actions were based off of certain events in that revolution. It’s a creative way to show an idea using actions or objects!

Action Script (planning the exhibition)

This was pretty early in the planning process, so lots has changed! My group and I made a planning document, consisting of ideas for each stage. Here it is!

Document: https://s.craft.me/mYVZkujWXv6Tbj

 

Teamwork Problems

Okay so…. I think the contributions leading up to the exhibition were pretty uneven.🥲 Throughout the project I felt I was doing most of the work. This isn’t directed at the whole group, and even so, everyone I worked with was WILLING to help, however I felt like most of the time I had to tell them exactly what to do for it to be done. Again this isn’t true all the time or for everyone, however some group members weren’t very good at giving larger contributions without support. Because of this I guess I felt the need to take the leadership role, or be more bossy? Honestly this wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, and keeping people on task and being bossy isn’t much fun. Looking back, a lot of work was done at later dates rather than earlier ones, and it caused a lot of stress leading up to the exhibition.

Some of this was bad luck, like one of our group members calling in sick day of, or another group member that was gone the first week and a half, or that we had no backboard for the first week, unlike or fellow class mates.😅 USUALLY, I’m very organized, but since I couldn’t count on EVERYONE it was a lot harder. Moral of the story, you need everyone to put in a 100% for it to go smoothly. Yapping about what sucked isn’t helpful though… and this is a reflective blog post so I should.. well.. reflect!

This experience taught me a lot about teamwork and the importance of balanced contributions. While I stepped up as a leader when needed, I realized how stressful it can be to take on too much. Next time, I’ll work on setting clearer expectations with the group early on and assigning tasks more effectively to ensure everyone is equally involved. I also learned that starting earlier and having a backup plan for unexpected challenges, like absences or missing materials, can help prevent last-minute stress.

How the exhibition went

The 2-3 hours before the exhibition were VERY VERY VERY CAPITOL V, STRESSFUL. This ALSO includes the whole day leading up to it! It was stressful for all the reasons I said before of course, but 2 very important actions of our machine were left to the last second, and the mechanics for them were not planned to the best of our abilities. That day, every chance we got, including lunch, one group member and I as well as a wonderful friend, worked on it. The last 2-3 hours of prep time were very stressful. Thankfully, the machine worked in the end, but unexpected changes were being done last minute, and well, it wasn’t as perfect as I strived it to be. I’m really proud of myself for problem solving in the end though, despite everything. The actual exhibition was great to my surprise! Not because it was perfect, we didn’t always get good runs but we knew what we were talking about and were confident explaining our machine to the audience. In short, we had fun! We served root beer (representing beer) and pretzels, which represents the food Czar Nicolas 2nd served at his coronation. At the very end we all felt relieved, and happy after the stress, and now we had the night to rest! Here are videos and photos from the day of! (Some of these are preparation videos)

 

Trial run video:

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5 seconds after everyone finished presenting….

 

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My response to the driving question

The driving questions for this project was “What Factors Precipitate ‘Revolution’ and How Have They Shaped the Modern World?” Revolutions happen when people become discouraged by existing conditions, for example poor working conditions or food shortages. When their basic needs or rights aren’t met, people push for change!

For example, the Russian Revolution got rid of a strict monarchy that had been ruling forever, and replaced it with communism. This changed how politics and economies worked, not just in Russia, but all over the world.

Conclusion

The “Vive Les Machines À Métaphores” project was a challenging but rewarding experience that taught me so much about revolutions and their impact on the world. From reading Animal Farm to researching the Russian Revolution and building a metaphor machine, I learned so much! Despite the teamwork challenges and last-minute stress, I’m proud of what my group and I accomplished, and the Winter Exhibition itself turned out to be a success.

This project gave me valuable lessons in collaboration, leadership, and problem-solving under pressure. Looking back, I can see how much I’ve grown from this experience, and I’m excited to carry these lessons into future projects. Thank you for reading my blog you absolute diva💜 I hope you enjoyed it, and stay posted to see what happens next😨

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