mountain sound

Have you ever wanted to go to your parents’ work for a day? Well we did.

 

In Canada November first is take your kid to work day and our school takes it pretty seriously. Almost everyone in my class went to their parents’ work! Normally this day you would just hang out with your parents, maybe write a paper or something like that but being in PLP we of course had to make a video about it and then write a blog post. So this is what I’m doing.

 

I really learnt a lot about my mom’s work and how hard it is to do her job. I don’t think I’d want to have my mom’s job, I always have an itch to be outside and being cooped up in my mom’s office wasn’t fun. I really respect her for what she does and I see how hard it is. I loved this day and I hope we get to do it again!

I don’t think I’ve ever done as many hikes in such a short period and been so close to death.

Yes I’m talking about the Alberta trip, and yes I’m overreacting. But to be fair I didn’t have my inhaler and the mountain air does not love my asthmatic lungs. Mr Huges decided that it would be a good idea to hike as much as he could when we were on the trip and he sure did that. I’m actually a huge fan of hikes and once I got to the top I totally forgot about all the complaining and all the: “there is no way any view would be worth this.” But always when I got to the top of the hike I was saying: “this was soooo worth the pain.” So I guess I switch up quick. Anyways let’s get back to the learning part of this blog post.

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For humanities our driving question was: “How has the geography of the west shaped who we are?” We answered this through different videos and assignments. The first assignment we worked on was the investigative video.

I covered this one in the maker post but this is also a part of humanities. The video was more in the maker area but the questions were based on our humanities driving question. We had to talk to people and ask them questions about the Rockies. We also had to create a thesis to base our questions off. I created mine based on tourism because based on what we learned about the Rockies and I thought it was the most relevant. I asked people about why they were visiting the Rockies.

We also created a multi touch book that showed our travels and what we learned. Each page we had to put a photo of the location we visited and then explaining how it showed one to more of the five themes of geography. If you’re wondering: “What are the five themes of geography?” Then I’ll be happy to explain.

The five themes of geography are basically five different classifications of geography. There’s location, (Which is basically talking about the surrounding area or the absolute location which is like coordinates or an address or something.) there’s place, (which is like cultural characteristics and physical characteristics.) there’s also human environment interaction, (It’s basically how the environment and humans affect each other.) there’s movement and (it’s like the movement of people, goods and ideas.) there’s region. (Which is like formal regions like B.C and there’s functional regions.

We did so much learning on this trip. A LOT more than our Oregon trip but all in all this was super fun and I’m happy i went!

“Mountains surround me. I havent seen or heard from anyone for twenty minutes and I’m starting to get cold. I don’t know I’ll make it out alive.” -Evelyn Ogden, September 21, 10:13 AM. PLP FIELD STUDY.

So recently we went on a field study to the Rockies (if you haven’t seen yet from the PLP instagram posts) and in the maker section of the trip we learned about the moving image. We created four different videos but one wasnt made on the trip. The videos consisted of: the investigative video, silent video, TikTok style video and the at home video.

THE INVESTIGATIVE VIDEO:

When we were in Alberta we actually had to conduct interviews with random people in the public! Before we left we created a thesis and we had to base our interview questions off of it. We visited many different locations and hikes so we had a lot of opportunities to conduct the interviews.

I got to do about five interviews but I wasn’t able to use one of them because I didn’t ask the right questions. But the information isn’t the point of the maker part of this video, it’s how we made it and we could tell a story with it. In my video I have myself introducing myself and the different places I did the interviews in. I also gave a quick explanation of the project and our goals for it. I tried to follow a storyline of a detective trying to answer the driving question and looking for evidence in my interview videos. I thought of this idea through the title. I explained the work we were doing in the video.

I ended my video with answering my thesis and closing the “case”

Investigative video

THE SILENT VIDEO:

The silent video was a video that we filmed at three valley gap and I worked with Monica, Alva and Meghan. We had to create a video that would be in total silence. We had to be really expressive with our actions so it would send a clear message.

My group decided to put the video into a black and white so it would look a little more old fashioned and kinda look like a real silent movie. We added old fashioned music so also set the mood and the emotions that our audience would feel.
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This story follows two friends and one day one of the friends forgot a pencil so the other one gave the pencil to the friend but they forgot to give it back. The friend is very mad and is plotting revenge to get the pencil back. The evil friend leads the other friend onto the train and then pushes her off! The evil friend grabs the pencil from the beginning and skips away. At the end it’s revealed that the friend that supposedly died was actually alive.

Silent video

I learned a lot about film making and using different camera angles to express emotions. And I also learned about over exaggerating my emotions!

TIKTOK STYLE VIDEO:

The TikTok style video is basically just a short video that had to show a TikTok trend and it had to show something about our trip.

I made two actually! The first one was a transition video and it was of me and Melissa doing a TikTok trend where you step to the side and then the location changes.

It was kinda hard to make since sometimes we didn’t have our phones so there wasn’t too much material to go off of. It was still super fun to do!

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The second video was more of a joke video. I was scrolling through my camera roll and I realized that people sat in some REALLY weird places so I thought it would be funny to make a video collage of the photos!

It wasn’t that hard to make but it was still fun to make

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I learned a lot about how to edit and do transitions. I think this was my favorite video to make so this was pretty awesome!

AT HOME VIDEO:

Our last video that we had to do was our at home video. We had to create a video about what inspires us. We had to answer a couple different questions through the video like; what do you daydream about?

I learned about doing voiceovers and photo montages.

There isn’t really much to talk about this since it didn’t relate that much to ou driving question but it was still pretty fun to do!

At home video

Thank you so much for reading and at the end I’ll put a couple photos from the trip!

Bye <3

So as you may know the grade eight PLP class (which I’m currently in) went to the Oregon Coast about a week ago, and if you know the grade eight PLP class you also know that we can really stir up some trouble. Luckily we were split up into two groups so it wasn’t as chaotic as it could have been. Actually the most chaotic thing was the bus breaking down which made the whole trip VERY complicated. It also happened right at a graveyard so that was a little foreboding.

But before all that we went to probably the most American store ever… Cabelas. Cabelas is a hunting and fishing store located in America. We stopped there for a while and we got to see a huge amount of stuffed animals. It was pretty cool but a little creepy as well. After that we set off to our campsite.

On our journey to the campsite the bus broke down and we had to be towed all the way there. We arrived at the campsite and it was a little different than we had imagined. The KOA campground had everything you could imagine. Swimming pool? Check. Games? Check. Basically it was awesome.

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The second day we went to Fort Stevens. The plan was to drive there, but at the time we didn’t really have a bus… so we had to walk. Honestly it wasn’t bad, it was about an hour long walk or something like that. Fort Stevens was actually really cool and we got to learn a lot about American history. We also got to go underground in this cool bunker type-of place.

We also went zip lining that day which was super cool. We actually went up super high and we also got to touch the water on one of the lines.

Later that night the band kids arrived. They had a Cabernet and had to come later. With them they brought the Death Star (a big black van that we named the Death Star), and the seycove van. Earlier that day Mr. Hughes also picked up a U-Haul to carry all our stuff.

The next day we went to Pig & Pancake for lunch and Maddie and Max had an eating competition. After that we walked down to Cannon beach. One thing I love about Oregon is that all the beaches are beautifully sandy. Cannon beach was no exception. We got to see the beautiful tide pools and I got to see a Nudibranch!

The same day we went to Tillamook Cheese factory. Sadly enough I am lactose intolerant so I didn’t appreciate the factory as much as the others did. We got to learn about how they created the cheese and ice cream.

That day we also got to visit our favorite store: Fred Meyer.

The fourth day we started off the day with whale watching. We didn’t actually see any whales but we got to see massive California sea lions. We also went crabbing and before we threw the fish head in Lucas kissed it for good luck. We got to ride really big waves on our tiny boat.

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Next we visited Hatfield Marine Science Center to learn about all the exhibits there and do an experiment. We tested on how fast crabs could run. Then we went to our yurts. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet but we switched over from the KOA campsite to a campground that has yurts. Anyways after we hung out for a bit we went back to the science center and we sucked up Ghost Shrimp and studied them.

The fifth day we went back to the science center again. We designed and built R.O.Vs. We got to use critical thinking and teamwork to create our R.O.V. We also had to find a perfect balance so it could float well.

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We went back to the yurts and then we drove to Yaquina Head Lighthouse. We learnt about its history and then we went down to the tide pools. We got to do a little side quest where we had to find and identify different beach creatures and plants, it was super fun and it was my favorite quest so far.

That night we went to Kam Meng Chinese restaurant. The food was super good and the atmosphere was really nice :).

The next day we started driving back to Vancouver. We didn’t do too much that day except drive but we did stop at this awesome place called Bullwinkles. It basically was a huge arcade and there was go-karting.

We got to our hotel that night at 11:00 and we fell asleep almost instantly.

The last day we drove to Wolf Haven and we got to see wolves. I had wolf haven as the business that I had to interview so I did that as well.

After that we stopped in a mall and we got to go shopping.

We drove for a while and then we got to the border. We crossed out and officially our trip had ended. We got back to seycove and said goodbye to our friends.

Honestly this trip was such an amazing learning experience and I’m really looking forward to the next field study!

Thanks for reading!

Hello and welcome to my tPOL blog post! Ok let’s do this again…

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.

So I have three major subjects to write about: Science, Humanities and the Oregon trip.

Science: we had a bunch of different projects in science this year. I think that I’ll probably list just the most important projects.

Number one:

Small but mighty: In this project we studied mainly microbiology.

I think that my favorite part of this project was using the microscopes. I got to see a mini world and tons of cool stuff. At some point we looked at pond water and we saw some weird looking stuff.

But our main part of the project was studying and identifying bacteria and/or cells. For our second keystone we learned about different types of pathogens. We had to create characters for every type of pathogen that we learned about. We also had to create stories for each character.

For our third keystone we had to make posters that were talking about washing your hands and keeping up hygiene. The posters were specifically targeting elementary kids. I think that I did pretty decently on this one but the final product could have been better.

Mind over matter: This project we learned about the different states of matter and atoms.

For the first keystone we chose an object and calculated its mass and made some observations. We did some math which I haven’t done for awhile. Overall it was interesting to learn about the mass and the calculations for everything.

For the second keystone we studied gummy bear diffusion. Basically what we did was choose a gummy bear and then chose a liquid to put it in. After a day we studied the differences. For this project me and my friend Claire worked together. We decided to see if there was a difference on how quickly each color diffused. We chose the colors : red, yellow and green. We observed that it seemed like red diffused the fastest and grew the biggest. I think this was a very fun project and I thought it was a really fun project.

For the last keystone we coded a game on scratch. To be completely honest with you… I. Hate. Scratch. Oml it’s so confusing, I wasn’t here when the teacher explained it so I was quite confused. So to give you a run down, we had to make a game with something to do with what we learned. I made a maze game. Honestly I think that my game could have been more interesting. If we ever did a project like this I would definitely put much more effort into it. All things considered, all my tears were worth the final product. I’m just kidding, it was terrible but I still really enjoyed the concept!

(I dont have a link to my game anymore)

My review of science so far: to be honest science is my favorite subject so far. If you know me then you would know that I am a huge lover of everything alive, and in science I got to really talk about it! I think that science is going to be my favorite subject moving on, especially if we get to do some marine biology!

Humanities: again we had a ton of different projects but I’ll just list my favorites…again

Consequences of colonization: whooo ok, so as the name states this project is about the consequences of colonization. We mostly studied the First Nations but for some parts we also had to learn about the colonizers themselves.

For the first keystone we each got assigned a certainty member that played a role in colonization. I got assigned the filles du roi. I learned that they were a group of women that were sent to New France when it was first founded. They were sent there to help increase the population and make New France a bigger colony.

For the second keystone we had to do a paragraph outline about our group of people. In this project I had to re-do it a couple times but in the end I finished it up.

And for the final keystone we had to create a script for a video. We worked on our videos in a group. There was one person from each group in the video so we had a video compiled of everyone’s group of people.

The medium is the message: this is our most recent project. In this project we learnt a lot about advertising and mass media. I think that “the medium is the message” is our biggest project yet, and probably the longest.

For the first keystone we had to interview our parents about certain parts of advertising and what they think of it. It was cool to see how my parents’ perspectives were different about media.

For the second keystone we had to make a chart listing about different types of advertisements and how they present themselves in ads. We learnt stuff about Pathos, Ethos and Logos and other stuff like that. We had to choose a bunch of different types of ads, Ex: video ads or web ads. And we had to talk about who their target audience was and a bunch of other things.

For the last keystone we made ads for a business that we interviewed in Oregon. We had to incorporate their logo and the color that our business groups decided on. We got to learn a lot about our business and America itself.

My review of Humanities: Humanities is that I really learned a lot this year and I’m excited to learn more next year

Now this brings us to our next subject:

The Oregon trip

Ok so finally we’ve reached the Oregon trip… I won’t talk a huge amount about it because I know I’ll be talking forever but I’ll highlight the parts that I learnt the most about. We learnt a lot about a place called fort stevens. We learnt about it’s history and the attacks against it

We also learned about Louis and Clark and the general history of Oregon.

The main reason why we went to Oregon was to talk to our businesses. My business group worked with a place called Wolf Haven and it’s a wolf sanctuary.

Learning plan: I think I almost did what I wanted to complete.

Thanks for reading ]

This is my very late assignment and I’m gonna have a mid-life crisis

Hello welcome to my mPOL! Wow look I wrote something for a blog post.

First let me tell you what an mPOL is! mPOL stands for Midterm Presentation of Learning. Basically we present little revisions of what we’ve done this year. The stuff we’re proud of and the stuff we want to reflect on.

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.

The exhibition: First I really want to talk about the exhibition. In the exhibition which was based off of Avatar. In this project I’ve developed a lot as a learner. From improvised speaking to time management the avatar project has taught me a lot. In elementary school I thought I was the worst at public speaking but it turns out that the only reason that I was so nervous was because of my script. Yes that’s right my script. I’ve found out that when I have a script it really limits me from adding emotion and confidence into my presentations. But while speaking to people in the exhibition I found out that I had barely any fear of talking to the people! I think that the exhibition really improved my people skills and I’m happy with my work.

Making interesting images: So another thing that we did this year was making interesting images. The project was actually pretty fun but my issue with it was my attention span. Cue the title this project’s name, this project was about taking different kinds of photos. And my attention span (it’s about the same as a goldfish’s) didn’t help with it. We had a lot of free time so I decided that instead of listening and properly doing the project I fooled around with my friends. It is still important to have fun while working but I was slacking off too much. In my learning plan I mentioned that I wanted to do better with paying attention, and I have definitely improved but I still think that I could have payed more attention.

The outsiders: the outsiders was one of our first big projects in Humanity’s. I think that because this was one of our first projects I was very inexperienced and my project wasn’t at it’s fullest but for my first time I think that it was good a first try. I think that I really improved in my team collaboration skills. In my learning plan I mentioned that I didn’t want to get distracted by the different parts of my iPad. I think that in this project I definitely improved on that and kept decently on task. I did in fact get decent grades on this one.

The Middle Ages: The Middle Ages! Wooo that was definitely one of our longer projects. In this one we definitely gained more experience in doing harder projects and also taking notes. We learned a lot about the Middle Ages and feudalism. When I was doing this project I think that I improved on my writing and some of my time management skills. I did submit my last keystone a little late (eheheh) but I still think that I did some decent work here. And I learned a lot. I think that I could have improved on turning my assignments in earlier and also reading more through the guide. Most of my feedback from these assignments was telling me to follow the guidelines a little more closely. Overall this assignment was fu and I learnt about a lot of my learning habits.

The renaissance:

The renaissance was one of our shorter projects that we did recently. In this project we had Mrs. Williams as our teacher. I found out that she is quite persistent with handing in work and making sure I 100% do it. And if you know me then you know that I procrastinate a lot and put aside a lot of my work. That means that I was one of Mrs. Willemse’s special students. In this short project for the first part we focused a lot on note taking. I am in fact quite bad at note taking. I seem to kinda just zone out and all the information goes through one ear and comes out the other. Luckily some of it stuck in my head and I completed the assignment but I probably could have focused a little more. All in all I enjoyed this assignment even though it was short.

Summer learning:

Summer learning was an assignment that we had in… you guessed it! Summer. It was our first PLP assignment. It consisted of three “fun” assignments. And for thirteen year old children doing work in summer break was like getting shot in the foot. Not fun. Surprisingly enough I did all the assignment and handed in them in time. But I didn’t seem to do them correctly. One of the assignments was one where we had to elevator pitch a book. I put in a ton of effort in that one and it took me awhile to do it, so when I was told I had to re-do it I got mad. I ended up not even handing it in out of lasting bitterness.

Things:

Things is an app that you can set up little reminders for yourself. We started learning how to properly use it at the start of our renaissance project. One of our keystones was learning how to set reminders and also make checklists for projects. Things is actually a really helpful app and I use it for my personal stuff too!

My learning plan:

My learning plan is the thing that we get graded by. We made it at the start of the year to guide our learning and to show what we want to improve on. Again because It was at the start of the year I didn’t put a ton of effort in it so next time we do it I want to be more specific. In all of our works we are supposed to look back at our learning plan to review that we are up to standards. In my learning plan I mentioned that I wanted to improve on my organizational skills. Honestly they have been fluctuating. One week I’m completely on track, the next week I’m way behind. I think that I’m improving but it still needs a lot of work. Another thing that I mentioned in my learning plan was that I wanted to use my iPad for work. Honestly I’m doing better then I expected myself to. Occasionally when I’m really bored during class I’ll read a web novel or scroll through Pinterest but I never get super distracted. I’ve definitely improved but I still have space to grow.

Thank you for reading my mPOL.