Category Archives: Humanities

Launching Into WW2

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Greetings, welcome to my first Grade 10 blog post!

New grade means new goals, new energy, and new experiences. This project is about WW2, we’re going to be learning the main key points of WW2. Our driving question for the project is “How do stories, media, and propaganda shape how we remember WW2?” I find this driving question intriguing because it explores how media, stories, and propaganda shape our worldview. Can we truly trust that all sources are accurate? Do they present both sides of the story? In this blog post I am going to show you my learning intentions and knowledge for this project!

What do I know about WW2?

I know about Adolf Hitler and how he used the crashing economy and the fading hope of the Germans to start WW2. I know it helped the economy because jobs to make weapons were in demand. I know Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and it encouraged the United States to join the war which was a major turning point in the war. That is my knowledge of WW2 and I plan to build and understand both sides of the story.

What do I wonder about WW2?

Besides the driving question I have 4 main questions that I wonder about WW2:

1. How did WW2 end and what effect did it have on the economy when it finished?

2. Why did Adolf Hitler target the Jewish and why are they still mocked today?

3.Why did Russia choose to be allies with Germany during the beginning of the war?

4.Were there any positive outcomes from WW2?

Those are my wonders of WW2. I’m excited to learn more about WW2 because I think it’s important to learn from the past and apply our learning to today (in both a negative and positive way). That is my current knowledge, and with strong learning intentions, I can continue to grow and learn about World War II.

VMV Learning Intentions!

These are my VMV learning intentions. If you don’t know what a VMV is, at the top of the page there’s a section next to the “About Me” page called VMV that explains what it is.

I need to work on checking the quality and credibility of my assignments, which means checking sources and claims! To make sure the quality of my work is strong, I will ask friends and family to check over my work and revise based on their feedback. To check the credibility of sources, I will use the most common news sources to fact check other sources that may have more detail.

In Agency I am going to work on not procrastinating. Usually in projects I leave stuff until the last minute. To fix this I plan to use Things (an organization app) setting deadlines and goals on when to finish it.

I want to use my time wisely so I never reach a deadline unprepared. I can use time when I’m traveling to UBC twice a week and whenever I’m traveling to an away game.

In Self Regulation I am going to work on Balance. I have a busy schedule with field hockey, soccer, and basketball this means I need to find a balance between academics, social life and sports. The habit I need to apply is prioritizing. This means finishing work before a practice and communicating with my coaches and teachers about my schedule so they can help me adjust if I have too much at once.

That’s my learning intentions blog post! I feel I’m ready to take on this project!

the Name of Their Nation

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In this project, I learned nationalism has shaped Canada by bringing colonies and provinces together through a shared belief in unity and strength. It helped create common laws, protect language rights, and form a national identity that still influences Canada today. I’m proud of this project, so let’s start from the beginning!

What is Nationalism?

In the project, we first had to learn about nationalism and what brings a country together. Here’s some terminology we learned:

A large group of people of the same race who share the same language, traditions, and history, but who might not all live in one area.
Nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes loyalty, devotion, or allegiance to a nation or nation-state and holds that such obligations outweigh other individual or group interests.
The feeling of loving your country more than any others and being proud of it.
A political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world.
A system in which a country rules other countries, sometimes having used force to get power over them; a situation in which one country has a lot of power or influence over others, especially in political and economic matters.
Confederation refers to the process of federal union in which the British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada joined together to form the Dominion of Canada. The term Confederation also stands for 1 July 1867, the date of the creation of the Dominion. (See also Canada Day.) Before Confederation, British North America also included Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, and the vast territories of Rupert’s Land (the private domain of the Hudson’s Bay Company) and the North-Western Territory. Beginning in 1864, colonial politicians (now known as the Fathers of Confederation) met and negotiated the terms of Confederation at conferences in Charlottetown, Quebec City, and London, England. Their work resulted in the British North America Act, Canada’s Constitution. It was passed by the British Parliament. At its creation in 1867, the Dominion of Canada included four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. Between then and 1999, six more provinces and three territories joined Confederation.

 

Okay, so we have discussed patriotism and nationalism, defining each of the terms. However, you may not be fully grasping the differences between these terms. We made a Venn diagram stating the differences and similarities:

Hopefully, you understand what nationalism is now! If not, here’s a link to the definition on Google.

An Introduction to Confederation!

Now that we’ve learned about nationalism, we started learning how Canada came together! We began by getting sorted into groups. I got paired with Tyler and Chloe (little did we know we’d be working together for the whole project!). Our teacher asked us to pick a province to research, and our group ended up with Ontario.

Ontario!

Our teachers assigned us questions to research about Ontario! We did answer these questions and did a lot of work, but you’ll be able to see the document later in the post.

Video!

Our final project was to create a story that showed how our province either joined or helped create Canada. So, we got to work brainstorming and building our storyline!

Story!

We brainstormed for a class and came up with this storyline:

Ontario wanted to convince Quebec to join Canada, and that idea became the foundation of our whole story. We decided to make a bold choice. Instead of just showing the characters talking and agreeing, we created a musical where the debate happens through singing to make the video more engaging and fun. We decided to do the song “The Other Side” from The Greatest Showman! In the end, Quebec joined Confederation, starting Canada!

Song and Script!

We used the background audio from “The Other Side” and rewrote the lyrics to show why Ontario and Quebec would thrive by joining Confederation. We showed how their strengths could help build a stronger Canada. To make it all work, we had to plan everything in a script template with dialogue and scene directions, which took a lot of time and effort. Here a link to our planning document so you can see just how much effort this took!

Filming!

We started by creating a detailed shot plan that outlined the angles and scenes for our musical, which helped keep us on track. After finalizing the script, we spent three days recording our song to make sure it sounded just right. Then we brought in props, planned our costumes, and began filming. We ran into a few challenges along the way, like having to reshoot some scenes that didn’t go as planned and working through a few disagreements about how certain parts should look. Despite that, we collaborated well and stayed focused on making the final video fun and creative.

Final Video

I’m so proud of our final video, it turned out amazing after editing, and I think we showed how Ontario joined Canada in a fun and creative way. So, without further ado, let’s watch the video!

What I Learned

From this project, I learned how nationalism helped bring Canada together and how provinces like Ontario played a big role in Confederation. I also learned the difference between nationalism and patriotism, and how they affect the way people feel about their country. Making the video taught me a lot about teamwork, planning, and being creative. Even though we had a few challenges like reshooting scenes and some disagreements, we worked through them and ended up with something we’re really proud of.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out our other posts for more fun and interesting projects!

Frankenstuffies: Rise of Change

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In this project, as writers, we learned how to weave historical details into our creative storytelling, conveying a clear and impactful message to the audience. For this project, we made Frankenstuffies and put them into our own story. So let’s start from square one!

Urbanization Game!

To launch our project, we were tasked with creating a white page with a graph on it, and the graph would represent land. We started by adding 40 trees, two bridges, and a river. Then, we had 11 rounds of adding buildings, more trees, roads, cars, factories, and a bunch of bars. This is what it looked like at the start versus the end of the 11 rounds:

  • Start

The overcrowded content on the second slide illustrates the Industrial Revolution’s impact on villages and land.

Doodle Notes!

In this project, we watched a documentary about the Industrial Revolution (link to the documentary). Here’s the link in case you want to watch it, but it’s not needed! While watching this documentary, we were tasked with taking doodle notes. Doodle notes are where you draw what you hear or see to represent the Industrial Revolution. Here are my doodle notes:

I thoroughly enjoyed creating the doodle notes because integrating images and drawings required deep thought, enhancing my understanding of the material!

Frankenstuffies 🧌

In this project, we created “Frankenstuffies” by bringing plush toys from home, disassembling them, and creatively reassembling their parts to form unique stuffed animals. Here’s a quick video of the making of our Frankenstuffies:

Here’s a photo of the finishes stuffy:

I thought this was a fun and creative part of the project!

The Hero’s Journey

Now that we had our Frankenstuffy, we had to create a story around the character while incorporating an element of the Industrial Revolution. Here’s my Hero’s Journey:

The Ordinary World

Jerry lived in a forrest in England as a happy hedgehog he lived with his mom, Jen and and his father, Joe. It was 1750 and the Industrial Revolution was just taking off! Then in 1752 a factory was created right outside their forrest. The factory didn't affect them at first. The only thing that annoyed them was the loud sounds at night and the air becoming thick and gloomy. Even though the factory bothered them they were still a happy family together!!! Little did they know their life was about to change.

Call to Adventure

Then the factory outside their forest was testing with dangerous chemicals and it caused a big explosion!!!!! Many people in the factory were killed or harmed harshly. Sadly, Joe and Jen gave their lives shielding Jerry from the fire. Instead of getting injured like the humans did, Jerry turned into a unique hedgehog. He had a unicorn horn and wings, grew bigger feet, and now had a tail. That wasn't the only thing that changed though, Jerry now was extremely smart and artistic. He had a talent for designing and creating elegant pieces that to anyone’s eyes were flawless. 

The Refusal to Call

He became deeply emotional and angry that he couldn’t protect his family or do anything about it. Due to his sadness and depression every day, his day consisted of waking up late and just sitting on the forest ground. He would cry himself to sleep most nights out of anger with a mix of sadness and his only coping method was to creating beautiful piece of pottery out of wood or anything he found in the forest. He had no passion, the only thing he loved was dead. The world was dead to him.

Meeting the Mentor

One day in 1753 August 2nd a witty young 23 year old was walking on a path near Jerry. His name was Josiah Wedgewood. He always dreamed of starting his own business but sadly didn’t have the talent to start one. 

As he was walking along the path he hit his foot against a random wooden objected. He looked down in pain to see a beautiful tea cup that had a bunch of unique and graceful features. He looked around wondering who was responsible for this master piece of a tea cup. 

He looked up and then down only to see Jerry, a weird looking hedgehog who was currently crafting a beautiful teapot out of wood. Josiah was astonished and could only speak the words “h-hoo-ww did you do that” he said in a astonished voice. He blinked again making sure what he was seeing was real. Jerry then turned around to the man staring shocked and startled. 

“What do you mean” he said trying to say confidently but inside he was nervous. 

“Making those wonderful pieces out wood” Josiah was replied. Jerry looked up confused but answer “as soon as my parents pasted I started making cups and whatever I could think of out of wood”.  

Josiah’s eyes lit up with a brilliant idea! Josiah spoke with excitement “I have an amazing idea. We could start a business: you the mastermind behind the rings, and me front and centre selling all your products. We could become rich and be world renowned potters!!! What do you say you in?”

Jerry looked up, sucking all the information in, and he thought about it a second before responding “I mean, maybe… but… I don't think it’s right, a factory killed my parents, so why should I start one?” 

Josiah thought for a second before responding. “Well, I understand that you didn't have control over the death of your parents, but, with the money we will be making, you could control everything around you. Money is power and control. Without it you won’t find happiness. You will be a hopeless fool wasting your life and dyin’ as a coward just like your parents.” His words struct a nerve in Jerry. He had a grin on his face imagining having control over everything that happens. He took a deep breath before responding “Deal” he said. He gathered all his things heading to the centre of London with Josiah Wedgewood!

Crossing the Threshold 

Josiah Wedgewood led him into the centre of London. Jerry had always wanted to see the place, but sadly, Wedgewood hid him under his jacket as people would wonder why he had a weird looking hedgehog with him. As Josiah opened the door to a little cottage, he put Jerry down to let him explore the new place. Meanwhile, Jerry felt a bunch of emotions not knowing how to feel. He was nervous and overwhelmed, but also excited and hungry for the power he deserved.

“Hey, I’m going to give you a day to relax into the new envirmont, but after, we are going to start working hard. We’ll have power and control over another industry!” He said with a grin so evil, you would think he came straight out of a horror movie. The next few days they got to work, getting ready for the unveiling of the tea pots and mugs. They had a few setbacks but on January second, 1754 they revealed their first piece and it was instantly a success! 

Tests, Allies, and Enemies 

Two months after the unveiling they got a letter from Thomas Whieldon: a renowned potter! He sent the letter stating he wanted to form a partnership with Josiah Wedgewood. Both Jerry and Josiah talked through it, looking at the ups and downs to having this partnership. In the end, they decided to accept this partnership due to the factories he already owned.  He would help them supply demand for their products.  

The Approach to the Inmost Cave 

From then on, their business began sky rocketing with Jerry coming up with the ideas. He came up with the idea of creating high quality creamware. He came up with making earthenware for the queen to grow popularity in 1765. He came up with Etruria Works that reflects his admiration for classical art in 1769. He perfected Jasperware, which became essential to the Wedgewood brand. He came up with creating a showroom for all to see his beautiful designs in 1782. He came up with all of this but felt empty inside and didn't know what to feel. He still missed his parents with a burning passion. Each night he would think of how everyone should be equal and each life should be cared about. He thought this cause he was the only one who cared about there death. So he came up with an idea…

The Ordeal 

He wanted to make something his parents would be proud of. So, he worked day after day producing his best creation yet. And in 1787 he finished making his Medallion that in scripted “Am a Man and a Brother”. He wanted to demonstrate how each every life matters and should all be treated equally. Jerry was so proud of this design and Wedgewood loved this idea! He grinned at the idea knowing foolish people would buy it. They showed it off in the showcase and it became a global success!!!!

The Reward

The medallion was bring it loads of money. Then one day Jerry overheard a conversation Wedgewood was having with Thomas. The overview of the conversation was how Jerry was foolish and he was only using him for his foolish ideas. After this Jerry felt shocked and hurt and he felt a rise of anger in his chest. So he came up with a plan to get revenge for all these years of getting used. So on January 1st 1795 he put a poison in Wedgewood’s drink. Then 2 days later he died. Jerry watched him at his funeral grinning ear to ear. He watched him get buried. After everyone had left Jerry walked up to wear he laced and whisper under his breath “who’s the foolish on now.” He said in a stern voice. After that he just left never to think of that name again. His reward was a new freedom.

The Roadblock

Time skip (1820). Jerry was on his death bed with a smile on his face. He felt like he make an impact in his life, he fell in love with a beautiful hedgehog named Jane had two kids and just lived his life in freedom out of Wedgewood’s control. He new it was his time to go and couldn’t wait to see his parents up on heaven knowing he made them proud. The End

Website used: https://www.worldhistory.org/Josiah_Wedgwood/#:~:text=Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795),creative sales and marketing techniques. 

I really liked my story because all of the historical timelines actually happened—only the story behind the scenes changed. I thought that made my story creative and unique! I was really passionate about my story while writing it!

Creating a Short Film!

Now that we had our story, we were instructed to make a short film, selecting sections from the Hero’s Journey. The sections I picked were: Meeting the Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests, Allies, and Enemies, The Approach to the Inmost Cave, The Ordeal, and The Reward. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to jump straight into filming—we had to have a game plan!

Storyboard!

To make our game plan, we created a storyboard representing each shot we were adding. Here’s mine:

Reflecting on my storyboard project, I’m really happy with how it turned out. I stayed focused during class and managed to finish it in just two sessions, even being the first one done. This experience showed me the benefits of staying on task and managing my time well.

Film Drafts!

When I made my film, I used Keynote and a green screen. The green screen was really hard to use, and I had trouble getting the audio right because there was always background noise. With all the sports I do, I didn’t have time to fix it at home. I told Mr. Harris about these problems, so that’s why my first draft didn’t have audio. But here’s Mr. Harris’s feedback:

So I took my teacher’s feedback, ensuring my video’s audio aligned with the visuals and removing any empty spaces in my opening scene. Additionally, I replaced any placeholders with finalized content.

Final Draft!

I applied the feedback to my film, and Mr. Harris kindly found a quiet place for me to record audio. Finally, I had my final draft—I call it The Truth:

What I Learned!

In this project, I learned how to integrate historical details into storytelling, delivering a clear and impactful message to the audience. I also reflected on how to apply feedback to each project. One area I needed to improve was time management, ensuring I made time in my schedule for audio recording and anticipating potential challenges. Overall, I was super happy with how this project went!

Hope you enjoyed my blog—make sure to check out some of my other posts!

Winter Exhibition

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Hello, welcome to my blog! As you know in PLP every year we take part in a winter exhibition to showcase our work to the public! This year we made metaphor machines that showcases a revolution. It sounds simple but the process was a long a bumpy road, so let’s start from the beginning! 

In this project I learned that revolutions have influenced our political, social, economic, and cultural worldview. To help learn this we started by analyzing a book called “Animal Farm”

“Animal Farm”

In this project we analyzed the book “Animal Farm” this book is based on the Russian revolution where animals represent what happened in the revolution. The main reason we read this book was to understand Cranes Briton’s theory on the stages of revolution. Here are my notes on the book and Crane Briton’s theory:

Craft

After we used our notes  to create an infographic combining our knowledge of “Animal Farm” with Crane Briton’s theory. Here is my infographic with my critiques from my teacher:

You can see it got critiqued a lot on my first draft so I took all this feedback and applied it to my final draft:

 

French Revolution 

Now that we had finished our infographic Mr Harris wanted us to apply Crane Briton’s theory to a real world revolution. So our whole class was divided into 5 groups with different revolutions. I got the French Revolution and so did Elsa, Carmyn, Sam, Lianne, and Evelyn. This would also be our winter exhibition groups. Our first task was to make an infographic combining Crane Briton’s theory and the French Revolution. First we had to do some research on the French Revolution and luckily Mr Harris had a lot of good sources for us to read and take note. So after all the research and critiquing of each others infographics we finally had our final draft: 

 

So once we were done our Infographic we were now beginning the start of the winter exhibition!

Process of the Winter Exhibition 

So first we had to combine all our knowledge together creating one legendary Infographic to showcase at the exhibition! Here is a picture of it:

Now that we had finished our groups legendary infographic we were tasked to make a Metaphor machine on the French Revolution.

What is a metaphor machine?

A metaphor machine is a rube goldberg machine where each action of the machine is a metaphor for the French Revolution. Before we started building our machine we had to have a blueprint for the whole machine and have at least 10 actions representing metaphors on the revolution. This is where I believe my group did its best work because we had all 10 metaphors and actions drawn and written in one class. I believe my group did its best work here because everybody was pitching in ideas and really trying to make this machine detailed and knowledgeable. So once we had all our actions down I made a nice copy for Mr Harris. Here is our nice copy (keep in mind we made this in one class!):

This sadly was not enough for us to move onto building since we did not have enough detail in our actual machine so for the next 1 and a half classes we made detailed blueprints of how the engineering would work: 

Finally we got approved by Mr Harris to start building and we were all really happy because building it was the most fun part!

Building a metaphor machine! 

So now we started building our machine. We all brought in materials and started working away. The biggest challenge my group faced while making the machine was when an idea didn’t work cause we all found it discouraging but we always found a way to fix it. What my group did well was time management. Each class we would all use our time effectively making a big difference each class. One thing personally I was proud of was my creation for the ball to reach the top again beacuase I realized that we needed it done so I decided to create at home and I was really proud of my design. Here’s a video of it working:

So my group had finally finished the machine three days before the exhibition meaning we had time to refine each action and make it look pretty! I also made a video showing our progression through the weeks: 

The night of the exhibition! 

So the night of the exhibition arrived my group was dressed in fancy attire to showcase France’s posh lifestyle. I was wearing a red dress with a black blazer. Also in each exhibition we have to serve food to the audience so we decided to serve chocolate croissants and French flag sugar cookies:

At 5:30 we the door swung open and we were all nervous for how our first run of the machine would go. Luckily my groups machine was very successful and had only 4 failures out of I think 30 which is a very good percentage! Here’s a video of my group presenting to a public audience (sorry for the bad audio):

So finally the doors closed at 7:30 and everyone was relieved that we were done! We cleaned up our machine and reflected on what we learnt through this project!

What I learnt! 

From this whole project I learned that revolutions have influenced our political, social, economic, and cultural worldview. I also learned how to be very time efficient and learned how to best help my group through this project! 

That was my winter exhibition post! Make sure to check out more of my blog!!!!!!!!

Echoes Of Colonization

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In this project we learned about the consequences of colonization. For this project we did a deep dive into how the indigenous were affected by colonization.

Craft
For this project we learned about an app called craft. What is craft? Craft was designed to share your documents and capture your notes to share with your team. For this project we mainly used it for taking notes. Here’s an example of my notes on colonial wars: https://ghosts-wink-qxs.craft.me/lOVenS3vkUnqDW. As you can see from my notes I love to use toggles. It makes everything more organized and easier to understand from my perspective. Craft will be one of my most used apps by the end of the year!!!

New France

New France was led by Samuel de Champlain. New France is what we now call Canada. Samuel de Champlain traveled to Canada with his men and when they arrived and colonized, they needed to get to work quickly because winter was coming fast. Samuel de Champlain and his men built a camp for them to live in. With the help of the indigenous, they survived the winter.  This is one of the first recorded acts of colonization. After New France’s first winter in Canada, many men were lost but Samuel de Champlain had to push onwards and think “What does New France need?” He realized they need women to encourage people to settle and grow the population.

Final project

Everybody learned the basics about the topics and with our selected group (my group included Brooklyn, Elsa and Evelyn) we picked two topics we all wanted to do a deep dive into. Our two topics were Gender Roles and Health. These both played massive roles in colonization. Gender Roles: As women in the 21st century we were curious to see the lives and roles that the different genders played hundreds of years ago. Health: We picked health because we wanted to learn more about the deadly disease, smallpox. Here’s all my notes about each topic:

https://docs.craft.do/d/2cc1b775-f74f-0481-bc0a-db4a93f49638/F0044CF4-59BF-4BEA-9C98-44A298AA0F48/b/26655C67-6CD3-47A4-9E4C-657B9DB15F3D/Eloises-research-?s=QTrHf4wUymdxpcSpU76HeZ9Ho8btwdfmadf7kRCfRMoj

Now that we had our to topic, we put it in a keynote that we had to present in front of grade 11s. This was really scary but we pushed through it. Here’s our keynote presentation:

Health and how the Indigenous were affected by it (my favourite topic)

There we are bunch of diseases that affected the indigenous people. Europeans didn’t even know they were carrying a deadly weapon small pox. Small pox was a deadly disease that a lot of Europeans were immune to but the indigenous had never come face to face with it.  This killed thousands of indigenous people. An example would be the Beothuk people who went extinct after colonization.

Gender roles of the Indigenous/ Europeans

Women’s rights in Europe were horrible. Everyone thought of them as lesser and men thought they were better than them in most ways. Now the women who travelled to New France had more rights.  They got to pick out their husbands but also had to do all the house work and give birth to a lot of babies, so New France could get a bigger population. For the men who came to New France, they were looking to restart their lives or were looking to be a big part of New France and luckily most men in New France got some opportunities.

Answer to driving question

After we presented to the Grade 11s,  Ms McWilliam asked the Grade 11s, what the end of the project should be. They suggested we use a keynote presentation to answer our driving question “what are the consequences of colonization?” Here’s my keynote and my answers:

Colonization
Colonization had a huge affect on the indigenous people and changed their lives. One of the biggest things that affected them was population decline.

Population
When the Europeans arrived, they introduced new weapons and guns that the indigenous had never seen before and the guns made warfare more deadly but, that’s not the only thing that played into population.

Health
This played a massive role because the indigenous people encountered new diseases that they were not immune to which was deadly.

Nature
The indigenous would only take what they needed for the land and treated it as equal, but when the Europeans arrived they saw it as an opportunity to take resources from the land and take advantage of its wealth.

Heritage
A lot of groups lost their heritage which created loss of identify and a forgotten language.

Reconciliation
We are now trying to rebuild our relationship with the Indigenous people and make up for how we treated them.

These are my biggest learnings from the project. Hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to check out another one of my blog posts.

My First Mpol!

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“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.”

What is Mpol?

In PLP we are presenting an Mpol to our teachers and parents about our work we have done half way through the school year! We present for seven minutes and show our parents what we have learned using a blog post! I will be sharing my favourite project, my most challenging project,  what I best learned from, my first science project, and DI.  So without any delay let’s get to it!!!

My Favourite Project!

My favourite project is Bon Voyage, this does not take away from my other projects I just felt very proud of my work. In this project we showed through an AR Makr video that we can learn to use story telling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact. In this project we made an  AR Makr video to show a part of the Europeans coming to America and colonizing. I made my video about the general greed Europeans had for power and resources. In this project I practiced my storytelling skills and drawing skills (to draw the characters in the AR Makr video), which is good because it’s something I really need to work on. Here is a few of my favourite drawings:

After all our blood, sweat and tears in this project we were finally done and to celebrate, we ordered pirate packs because we were learning about sea voyages. It was a delicious way to learn more about it. In this class we also did Kahoot and a pirate ship building contest!! This was the most enjoyable day in PLP this year so far (that i can remember).

My most challenging project.

My most challenging project this year was my Power play project and how it started. In this project we learned about medieval times through reading The book of the Lion and made medieval artwork. It showed a medieval worldview which made me understand we are lucky to live in a place where we get opportunity to learn. One of the reasons this project was a struggle was because I didn’t enjoy reading The Book Of The Lion. The book was a hard read, used old fashioned language and found it hard to relate to the characters. Despite all of this I did learn a lot about medieval times, check out my medieval artwork:

What I Best Learned From!

We made poems to express how I feel on paper and then put all of them into an ebook. But it was not that simple, we had to learn about different types of poems and how to interpret their meaning. One struggle to this project was learning all the types of poems but, once I overcame that I learned how to put true meaning into a poem. This is one of my favourite poems (which we also used as a team choice element in DI)

Climate Change.

Climate change is the terror of a nightmare, the devil on your shoulder. 

It is a tiger creeping up on its pray.

 It is a kettle boiling the ocean; an ice cube melting in your drink.

 It is the ocean spinning in a blender; the earth sizzling on a barbecue.

 We are children destroying our mother.

 We are the monster destroying the planet.

We also created an Ebook filled with poems. So make sure to check:

 

My First Science Project!

In this project I discovered that I can communicate my knowledge of atoms in a fun and creative way! This project helped me with my observational skills when we did experiments in lab. My favourite parts of this project was coding. I think it is a very important skill to know because it taught me patience and how to persevere since when making a game you have to have patience if the code doesn’t work. My video game is all about states of matter and facts on the atom. It is very hard to explain so here’s a quick clip of it:

RPReplay_Final1712641150

 

Here’s my link to my game: Link

Destination Imagination (DI)

DI is a global competition. There’s usually groups of 5 or 6 kids, competing in an age group where you complete a challenge that has a category. An example would be the engineering challenge. In this challenge you have to make a modular device that launches a bean bag and know how far the bean bag will go before it lands and build a story around the device (this is my challenge). If you want to learn more click the link here.

Destination Imagination was my most unusual project because it included a competition and two months preparation. I learned how to communicate to peers in an assertive way, which is a very important life skill. This because for 3 months straight you are meeting up, writing scripts, and agreeing on schedules. All of this demonstrates teamwork and communication skills. Aside from the skills that we learned it was also a bonus that we won regionals and placed second at provincials (getting first place on our instant challenge).

My learning plan!

I worked on my learning plan at the start of the year. It included what I’m good at, what I need growth in and what support I need from my peers. There’s two things in my learning plan that I think i have done well on and one thing i still need to grow on.

I think I could work on setting more realistic goals because sometimes I find myself finishing a project the night before the deadline.  To accomplish this I will use Things more often (Things is a self management app) and try to get things done early. I have improved at this skill but it needs a lot of work.

This year I think i most improved on self discipline. Before the year I would not remove distraction from my room such as tv or candy. Now before I do my homework I remove distraction from my room and turn my iPad on work mode.

Thank for coming to my first Mpol!!!

Bon voyage

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What’s one of your favourite foods? Well I know that a big contender is pizza and without the age of exploration there would be no pizza. In this project we showed through an AR Makr video that we can learn to use story telling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact.

Causes and consequences
For this project, we had to learn the cause and consequences about action and one of my favourite examples is failing a math test. A cause of failing a math test could be the teacher didn’t teach it well, you have no passion for it, or you didn’t get an enough sleep the night before the test! A consequence for this could be that your parents are disappointed, you fail your whole grade, or parents might take your iPad taken away. From this example we learn what a cause and consequence is and now it’s time to write our own about the age of exploration. Here’s an example of what I did on padlet:
Causes: https://padlet.com/eloiseg2/causes-of-exploration-9clxw49y30o52y9b

Consequences:https://padlet.com/eloiseg2/consequences-of-exploration-9g5mehaewsmqextt

Story mountain
If you have written a story before you know you can’t just write a story you have to brainstorm it. For our brainstorm we wrote a story mountain. My story mountain showed to me the power of storytelling, because if I just read in a text book about The Age Of Exploration I wouldn’t remember half of the information. But learning about the age of exploration through telling a story, made sure I got invested in the characters which helped me learn about the concepts of The Age Of Exploration. This is my story mountain;

Drawings
One of the main things that helped me engage in the story was the characters and how they looked so here are all of the drawings I made for the AR Makr video:

Video + story
For my story I received a lot of feedback back. I changed a lot of detail in my story. After the improvements, it was as good as it was going to be. After, I created my video which I’m very proud of. Check it out:

I think my video shows my understanding of Europeans worldview because I had one character who was very cocky and loved thinking they were taking advantage of the first people and another who just loved being there to understand more about the people and culture he was meeting.

Best PLP Class!!!
After all our blood, sweat and tears we were finally done the project and to celebrate, we ordered pirate packs because we were learning about sea voyages. It was a delicious way to learn more about it. In this class we also did Kahoot and a pirate ship building contest!! This was the most enjoyable day in PLP this year so far.

Make sure to check out some of my other blog posts!!!!

My Thought in a poem

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What is the Project

To answer the driving question “How might I right poetry that I enjoy and shows who I am?”  We made poems to express how I feel on paper and then put all of them into an ebook. But it was not that simple, we had to learn about different types of poems and how to interpret their meaning.

How do we interpret  poems?

Above, is one of many examples of how we interpreted poem’s. First someone in the class reads the poem out loud while we would try to interpret the meaning of the poem. Next we would read the poem in our head and make silent opinions in our head and let it resonate with us. Then we would read it out loud one more time and make an opinion on the theme of the poem.

These are the types of poems we wrote and interpreted.

– simile

– extended metaphor poem

– sound poem

–haiku’s

-found poem

– experience poem

–imagery poem

–self portrait  

My Favourite Poem

My favourite poem I wrote was my extended metaphor poem that is called “Climate change”. It’s about the affect that were having on climate change and how scary it is. My favourite line from the poem is “Climate change is the terror of a nightmare, the devil on you’re shoulder” this line shows how climate change is coming fast and we have to try to save Mother Nature.

My Ebook

Our final part of the project was to create an ebook with all of our poems in it and publish it. We created this book on book creator! I made drawings and videos to express the theme of the poetry and what it means to us. How can you know the theme of the poem? Well in each page we put an audio recording to tell you the theme of the poem so you can know the true meaning.

Make Sure To Check out my Ebook!:

Driving Question

After doing this project I realized how to express and enjoy poetry is that you do not hold back your imagination and opinions and do not rush your poems and let the words come to you.

My First Winter Exhibition

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My name is Eloise and I’m in grade 8 in my first ever PLP exhibition. We made a triptych to answer the driving question “What can we learn from the past and why does it matter to us today?” Keep reading to find out my point of view!

Power play Post
Building up to the exhibition we had to do a project on medieval times. This project made us read a book, make art, and learn about Medieval worldview. This played a crucial role in our tableaux because it made me learn how lucky we are to get to live in a place where we get the opportunity to learn.

Renaissance
Leading up to our Renaissance artwork, we had to learn about golden age inventions, witch trials, ethical judgements, and Renaissance worldview. Once we had this knowledge, we made an artwork choice chart to help us create our artwork. This chart was much harder than the medieval chart since felt i understood the Medieval times much better. Once we had our chart we started to make our abstract art using SUPERIMPOSE

Once we completed the art we wrote a describing paragraph of the renaissance artwork taking the feedback from medieval times paragraph. This is my describing paragraph:
What can we learn from the Renaissance? What did they do better? Learning about the Renaissance worldview showed us how we can be more engaged to learn to improve the future. In my artwork there are Christians buying indulgences. I chose this aspect since Christians believed that if you paid for indulgences, you would be forgiven of all your sin and go to heaven. When they made indulgences they were thinking about the future and how it would have a lasting effect on their religion. Martin Luther nailed his ideas to the wall and these ideas were the start of the reformation which caused Catholics to divide into two groups. These groups are still here today. I think Martin Luther hoped what he wrote would have a lasting affect on society and the future. The word press was one of the biggest inventions of all time. It provided opportunity to learn and made stories spread world wide because it was affordable to make books. This affects my worldview because the WordPress allowed knowledge to be spread to more people. This is why I think we can learn from the Renaissance to be more engaged in the future.

 

The Day of the Winter exhibition

As soon as the clock hit 3 we rushed to the gym, we set up the black curtains, blue mats, and we moved all our props. Once it hits 5:30 the doors open and we start to perform our triptychs. As the exhibition went on there were some struggles that made it more difficult like changing the costumes, moving the props, getting the audiences attention, and having tired legs. Of course there were a lot of positives to the night like having fun, feeling happy after a good performance, seeing other grades work, building on team spirit, and personally I was happy with how i read my script!This is a video of me performing the script:

Once it hit 7:00 everyone high fives each other and helped clean up!!!

Our Triptych

We made a digital tableau with 7 aspects of worldview, then we created a real life version. What are those aspects? Read the next paragraphs to find out.

Our medieval tableaux: Danny is an apprentice to Isaac and characterizes knowledge because apprenticeships were how they learnt. Griffin is a king to depict society because kings ruled over the lands. Elsa is paying taxes to Eloise which displays economy since they gave a lot of their resources to the king. Isaac is holding a sundial showcasing time because sundials were one of the only ways they kept time. The cross conveyed belief since Christianity drove the crusades. Griffin is holding a staff to represent values since people value having knights who had weapons to protect the land. Finally we have a river to indicate geography since in Medieval times you would be considered lucky to live near a river because it’s good for growing crops.

Next up is our Renaissance tableau. Griffin is the Catholic Church displaying society because the church held great power. Danny is reading a book to show knowledge because the WordPress was invented in the renaissance. Elsa is buying indulgences from Robin to distinguish the belief that Christians believed you would be forgiven of all your sins. For values we have Isaac praying because people valued the churches words and would listen to them with open ears. We have a clock to symbolize time since the clock was one of the biggest inventions in the golden age. Economy and geography is illustrated with a port since Italy’s location had a many ports which allowed increased luxurious trade.

Last we have our contemporary tableau.  We have Griffin as an Apple Store to represent society because apple is one of the biggest ways society communicate these days. To convey belief we have Eloise (me) as a scientist since today we act with facts and proven solutions. To portray values we put in an iPad since we value having knowledge at the tips of our fingers. We indicated knowledge by Danny reading Wikipedia which shows how much knowledge we get from websites. To depict time we showed Elsa checking her watch since now we are lucky to be able to look at our wrists and know the time. Lastly to define economy we put a taxi in because today gas cars affect our economy and we are trying to switch to electric cars because it’s better for our climate.

Why does the past matter to us today?

After learning about worldview, I think learning about history lets us understand how societies functioned in the past and we can better understand how they function today. It also helps us understand how we can build from what they started.

 

We can Learn from The Past

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Why do we learn about the past? Why is it relevant today? As part of this project we learned about medieval times through reading The book of the Lion and made medieval artwork. It showed a medieval worldview which made me understand we are lucky to live in a place where we get opportunity to learn.

The Book of the Lion
First we read the book of the lion, to teach us about medieval worldview. The book of the lion is story about a young English man named Edmund,  he was saved by two knights who made him fight for the Lion’s Heart crusade in the Holy Land. We read this book to learn about Medieval Worldview and why it is still relevant today. My opinion on this book is that it had the right information but, it didn’t share it in the right way. I found this book hard to read and very boring with barely any moments that kept me hooked. If you’re trying to learn about worldview this is your book, if you just want a fun read as well I would not suggest it.

 

Medieval Times
Before I go on, what is Medieval times? After the fall of Rome the Catholic Church became the most powerful and leaders would get a lot of power from it and this lead to the Crusades which was a big part of the medieval times but, who and what were they? The Crusades were Catholic Knights and would go to the holy lands to spread the word and fight for Christianity. They were told if they fought for crusade all of their sin would be forgiven and could come back with Muslim treasure. If you want to learn more about medieval times click here.

Medieval artwork
After we finished the book we started the process of our final project.  We made medieval artwork of ourselves in paintings and included objects in the background that relate to medieval worldview. We couldn’t just go straight in to making the artwork we had to plan it out and have a reason for each object. So we made artwork choice charts:

 

Artwork explanation

After we finished the choice chart I started the artwork using superimpose and combined all of the images together. I put a king, farmer and an apprentice in my artwork because in medieval times, having an apprenticeship was a common way to learn. This shows that I can learn from my elders experiences.In the medieval times kings ruled at the top and farmers and peasants were on the bottom. Even if a farmer was more intelligent than a king he would have to stay in his role. This makes me learn to not judge a book by its cover and how important it is to hear everybody’s opinions. In medieval times you were considered lucky to live near a river so I put a river in my artwork. This affects my worldview because in medieval times most people would have to travel to get water and now we can just get water from a tap. I learnt, how grateful and lucky I am to live in a time period where engineering has evolved enough for us to get safe water. I have learnt so much about medieval times and how it connects to our learning.

Reflection

After completing this project I realize it’s important that we learn about the past so we can relate it to the present day and avoid making mistakes in the future.

Conclusion
Looking back on the project I learnt several key things , first and most important I can learn from my elders, second to hear every bodies opinions and last to be grateful for what I have.