(Photo take by Fraser)

The Set up

When my brother was in PLP he enjoyed every trip he went on. He would tell me about the cool and exciting stuff he did and learned about. This is the original reason about why i wanted to go to loon lake i knew i would regret it if i missed out on this trip and i was right this trip was definitely worth it. As with most worthwhile learning, going into something with a growth mindset makes all the difference. 

My Usual Pre-Trip Freakout

As soon as Loon Lake was announced there were three things I was worrying about:

1. Most of my friends were not able to come. 
2. I knew I would have a hard time listening and focusing for the leadership presentations.
3. I was very anxious about having enough time to do the homework that I expected would be assigned. I would not have access to LAC or my usual supports.

These concerns while still important did not turn out to be as much a problem as I originally feared. I also made the conscious choice to talk to my teachers before hand about the work load which really helped.

My Personal Growth Journey

On day one Jono had us write down multiple goals/intentions that we wanted to accomplish this week along with a quote. I wrote down the following:

I want to be open to learning and experiencing new things.

I want to build off skills I already have.

I want to have fun and connect with classmates.

I also wrote down how I would achieve this: participating in activities, having a positive attitude and being open minded. The quote I chose to represent my week was by Don Ward who said “your mind can focus on fear, worry, problems, negativity, or despair. Or it can focus on confidence, opportunity, solution, optimism and success. You decide.” I decided to embrace the whole experience. 

One of the first experiences that I am especially proud of is the rock wall that we did on day two. I was first up to climb the rock wall and I chose the left side in order to try something new but without too much risk. I finished it easily and thinking about my goal, decided to try the other side. That wall was much harder. I could not climb the wall with gloves on so my fingers quickly froze. I got stuck on a low point on the wall. Over the course of the activity lots of my peers got stuck there and asked to come down or eventually made it to the top. I am proud of myself because I did not ask to come down and I never said that I could not do it. I kept trying even though I was stuck for 20 minutes or so. Once I got past that part, I made it to the top fairly quickly. I knew that I could accomplish the wall and I promised myself that I would try everything! 

I had heard small mentions of us doing a really tall trust fall activity on the last day of the leadership program. Because of those hints, I was very anxious when my group was told they were going to do a trust exercise. We started off with a willow in the wind activity where one person stands in the middle of a circle of people, leans back and then gets pushed around the circle by those forming the circle.  Then we did personal trust falls, starting with only falling back a few inches to eventually falling back 45 degrees into the waiting arms of three people.  I had a hard time doing all those things because I’ve never trusted someone to stop me from falling.  Accidentally or otherwise.  Then we were taken outside to where a chair was on top of a table.  The speaker told us that we would now be doing a trust fall from that height.  My first thought was no, no way, not in a million years.  I watched four people stand on the chair, say their intention and fall back into the arms of 8 or 9 classmates.  I knew that all the kinks had been worked out and that I knew I would regret it if I didn’t do it, so I volunteered to go next.  You will see in the video below me saying my intention and then double checking twice with the catchers to see that they were ready.  I actually ended up doing it twice, as we were given the option for another. My intention earlier that day was to push myself out of my comfort zone and I believe I did that with this activity.  

The next activity that I showed a lot of growth was on the high ropes course.  Someone went first and then I volunteered to follow.  Once I climbed up the pole to the platform I pulled my torque over my eyes as a blindfold.  The ropes course was considerably harder than I expected it to be but I kept the blindfold and with the help of my friends I made it to the end. The other part of the high ropes course was called the milk crates challenge.  Two people on harnesses had to be on top of as many milk crates as they could pile. The challenge was to get more than the other groups.  While only the two people stood on top of the crates the other team members were on the ground add to the structure.  Even though I enjoyed being one of the people in the harness I found I showed more leadership when I was on the ground assisting.  Ben T and Dillon were the people in the harnesses and myself and my team helped build the structure 12 milk crates high.  Even though we didn’t break the class record of 15, I am still really proud of what we did.  

Personal Credo

For a couple hours every day John-oh talked to us about emotional intelligence, leadership, strength and values.  Then from the information we collected there we were told to create a personal credo.  This credo would communicate your values and who you are as your best self and be revised every few months.  Twice we gave feedback to anybody who had completed theirs which I found really helpful in finalizing mine.  I chose to focus mine on my three main values; family, faith and trust.  Once I had written my credo I turned it into a wall paper which you can see below.  

Using this credo we all created personal logos that would eventually be printed out and made into stickers for our IPads.  In mine I represented faith with the main subject being a dove.  I represented trust with hand-shaking and family with a people-filled heart.  

Taking what I learned about intentions and setting goals I created 6 SMART goals 3 for this semester and three for this school year. The main academic goals I want to accomplish are:

1. Get three extending in humanities projects this semester ( so far I have achieved two) 
2. Raise my grade for humanities (all year goal)
3. Study not just the morning before tests (all year goal) 

My more personal ones were:

1. Try snowboarding: get good enough to go down hill with my family and not fall to far behind (this semester goal) by end of winter break 
2. Be able to wake surfing behind a non wake surfing boat like my dads without a rope (right now I can only do it on my uncles boat) I want to do this before the school year ends 
3. Learn people in my non PLP classes names ( I have always had trouble with names and I want to improve) I want to work on this all year 

I then took these SMART goals and added them to my things apps as different projects that I would be able to write steps in order to achieve them. I am planning on checking them off  before the end of the school year. 

In the end I accomplished all the goals I had written on the first day. I want to be open to learning and experiencing new things. I showed my growth with this goal in the rock climbing and trust falls.  I want to build off skills I already have. That one I used with the milk crates and high ropes course. I want to have fun and connect with classmates. Which I did in the activities, playing cards, and taking photos of them and our experiences that you can see at the bottom. 

I learned a lot about myself throughout Loon Lake. I learned about making (and most importantly following through) on goals and intentions that I make myself. I learn how I can work better with a team, and how I can be more confident in myself. I will take this information, my credo, and my logo and use it to complete my SMART goals and other intentions I will make myself in the coming months. 

Below here are photos I took during this trip. 

How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people? This was the driving question for my FIRST PLP TEN project of the year. We had to create NTKs, research, take notes, research again, write cause and consequences, do more research, design character cards and create a historical fiction short story all to answer that driving question. 

This time we were learning about events that were much closer to home than the places and people we learned about last year. The BC gold rushes were a big part of the growth and start of BC. Our final product was an individual short story based off historical events and people based on a variety of research topics. But before we could start this there was many keystones and steppingstones we needed to accomplish for us to fully understand the BC gold rushes and how they affected BC. 

Our first keystone was: how did the gold rushes shape BC? After gathering evidence through research and watching a documentary, we created a craft document using CraftPro. With our evidence we learned to analyze the causes and consequences of the BC Gold Rushes. We learned about the influx of people into BC that affected many small communities like Fort Victoria which saw 30,000 people come through there in a short amount of time. People were coming from all over. A lot of these prospectors were coming from California where the California Gold Rush just ended. Another one of the main consequences of the Gold Rush is that the British Colony had lots of debt when it ended which caused them to join the confederation. 

Our second keystone was all about the human story. Here we looked closer at who the migrants were, why did they migrate and what was their experience once they lived here in BC. From a variety of resources we created a chapter card. This character could be based on a real migrant’s story or it could be a fictional character but still based on historical information. At the time I chose Hawaiians for my research topic not knowing it was one of the hardest topics to research. While very interesting, there were limited resources to create a historical fiction story. My character, ‘Iolona, migrated from Hawaii to work with the HBC, then he moved to BC because he would have more civil rights here, and then he joined the gold rush. It was very interesting that the Hawaiians were not given rights in Oregon, but in BC they were treated like “white people”. Other migrants were not treated like that at all. Overall I had to gain more independent research skills to find the information on the Hawaiians and then communicate that information in an interesting way in a character card.

Our last and final keystone was all about writing a short story based off the character we invented in Keystone 2. We learned about the three act story structure and filled in multiple templates. For the short story we had to consider our audience, make sure our story was historically correct, and craft an interesting story. After creating our first draft, those of us who were done, (6 out of 18) read two stories and gave peer critique on how to improve it for the final draft. I really enjoyed seeing the variety of stories. One of the critiques on my story was on how there wasn’t a conflict in my story. In my story, there WAS both an external conflict and an internal conflict. ‘Iolana lost his equipment in a storm and was debating whether of not to go home for the whole story. BUT the peer feedback made me revise my story so that these conflicts were more obvious. Overall I could have used more time to write my story, but I am proud of what I have written.

All these keystones helped me be able to answer the driving question. Also I grew in my research skills and creative story telling skills. I enjoyed researching the world my character lived in. I especially liked how close to home this project was as these places are not far from us. The gold rushes helped shaped BC into what it is today.

This last Thursday was the PLP spring exhibition, “💥Impact!”, where we as PLP learners showed our work from throughout the last year to our family and community members. I was put in a group of 9 grade 9’s and we were tasked with the annex AKA the technology room. Our question that drove our room “How do we use technology to deepen our learning?” After several different drafts and a lot of revisions we decided that this is our answer

“We’ve used technology in all of our projects from making videos to keynote presentation. Technology allows us to present our understandings and learnings in different ways to reflect on a multitude of different projects such as our documentaries, animations, and medium is the message and overall enhance our learning for the better.”

Our first step in creating our exhibition room that shows our work in a way to answer the question was to brainstorm. We brainstormed what work we did that deepen our learning through the use of technology. We knew we had to include the maker documentaries and we also decided to show our vibrant videos and show our knowledge about how to use our apps.

Next we had to come up with food, costumes and an interactive activity. For food we decided to do something that in hindsight probably was too complicated to do. We created app cookies, what we didn’t think about at the time is that we would have to make 100 cookies!!!!!!!!!!!!

We ended up having four group members each make 25 and one group member decorate all the cookies with the help from her friends. The interactive station plan was for it to be a green screen and action movie area where you can try out some of the editing techniques we learned and applied to the vibrant videos. 

Now it was time for us to come up with a room layout. In the drawing we had to include where everyone was standing including all the grade 9 and all 10 of the grade 8 that were showing there work in our room as well. This took many different drafts and tested my teamwork and patience skills, but in the end we created a detailed map. 

The exhibition

The two hours before the exhibition was chaotic as my room realized that we have a lot of extra space in our room, that the projector we brought doesn’t work and that the drinks taste terrible.  At 5:30 the chaos ended and people starting entering our room it. On my break I was able to look at how other rooms how they answered the driving questions. I especially liked the beyond the classroom interactive station.

My room quickly ran out of cookies (my sister ate like four) and drinks. My station worked well and a lot of people liked being hit by a car😁 in the action movie app. 

Below there are some video my friends created about the exhibition.

I can predict the future.  Through this project, we have answered the driving question; “ How can we predict our finances for the future?”  To answer this question,  we were going to sell a product or service, using linear equations and graphs, and calculate our earnings for a year.

The first milestone was to choose a product or service to sell.  I handed in three options of something I was interested in selling:  cookies, bracelets and babysitting.  Out of the three choices, I decided to  babysit.  I then created a spreadsheet that showed my expenses, time, start-up costs and effect on the environment for one five-hour babysitting job.

Using the spreadsheet and the knowledge I gained through the workbooks, I created a linear equation that would predict my earnings for any amount of time.  Using that equation, I was able to use the Desmos website to graph my earnings for not only the next year but also how much I would make in a day, week, month and in my life.  I found out that I would make more if I did a minimum wage job or was a part time teacher.

I then put all this knowledge together into an animated keynote video.  At the end of the video, I compared my job to other jobs as well as to the cost of living and the effect on the environment to see if it would be worth my time.

Curricular Competencies

Understanding and solving:  Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations.  

In my spreadsheet, I accounted for all of the time, materials and equipment, and included that in my overall cost.  I also calculated the effect of the environment from the exhaust from the car that I used to get to the babysitting site.  I believe I showed an accomplished and detailed documentation showing my understanding of this curricular competency.

Communicating and Representing:  Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and 

symbolic form.

I believe I showed an understanding of this curricular competency.  I made a linear equation that properly determines my profit for various amounts of time.  Then using this equation I was able to create seven graphs that showed those earnings over time.  In my final video, these graphs were labeled and explained in a logical way.

Connecting and Reflecting:  Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas

and personal interests.

I was able to connect mathematical concepts to a business that is of personal interest to me.  I compared my business to a minimum wage job and to my mother’s part time teaching position.

I also considered the cost of living and the value of my time, along with the sustainability on the environment to decide whether the job is worth it.  In the end, I decided that I would not be able to live in Vancouver with the amount I earned and it would be better to think about another possible career.  The only thing I would have done differently is consider different levels of jobs.

Why I KNOW I am Ready to Transition to Grade 10

To me this year was like finishing a good book. A good book requires a lot of time and a lot of thought. It is full of different characters, perspectives and experiences. But then comes the time when you come to the final chapter. You can look back and see how everything has changed form the start. This TPOL marks the end of Grade 9. It is bittersweet; there were things I loved and grew in and things that I think should have been written differently.

What I loved

I loved showing my personality more in the poem project and the Vibrant videos.

Through the poems project, I was able to show the things that shape my world view like my family, my move to BC, and my experiences with friends. In the first Vibrant Video, I showed my Iove of reading in an exaggerated and funny way. Another part of Grade 9 I really enjoyed was the revolutions on trial project. I did not know anything about Revolutions. From Nation X to the Mock trial, I feel like I learned the content better in these creative ways. To this day I can tell you a lot of facts about the Haitian Revolution.

Where I grew

Looking back on my learning plan, I see my growth throughout the year in my core competency profiles. For example, in the Communication Core Competency, I grew in my communicating. At the beginning of the year I was in profile two: “in familiar settings I communicate with peers and adults.” At the end of this year, I demonstrate a strong profile four and even some of profile five. I can “communicate clearly and purposefully using a variety of forms appropriately.”

I showed this through my Scimatics video when I used Keynote where I put together all the learning I showed in the milestones into the video. TinkerCad models, voiceover, and animations were all ways I communicated my understanding of the project.

I have also grown in the Thinking Core Competency. At the beginning of the year, my critical and reflective thinking profile was at profile two, but now, looking back at my work, I believe I am at a profile 4: “I can gather and combine new evidence with what I already know to develop reasoned conclusions, judgments, or plans”.

One way I showed this was through my Documentary for Maker. Researching games, their benefits, and interviewing Ms. Brady, I gathered evidence, made a plan, and created a documentary that clearly communicated my message. My video skills and storytelling skills also show growth. I am particularly proud of my editing in that Documentary.

Part of the Personal and Social Core Competency is personal awareness and responsibility. This is the part of the Personal and Social Core Competency that I think I grew in the most this year. At the beginning of the year, I would describe myself at profile three but now I am at profile five. I “recognize my value and advocate for my rights. I take responsibility for my choices, actions and achievements.” I showed this growth in multiple projects, but the one I am going to highlight is DI. I planned out when our group would meet, how we would meet the deadlines, and made sure I contributed using my strengths. I knew I didn’t want to write the whole script so I built the hydraulics in the mysterious object. When a group member dropped out, I helped to alter our story to adapt. 

Like a good book, there has been great character development through these projects I mentioned as well as through the the Loon Lake trip. I learned I do NOT function well without caffeine in the morning and that sitting on the ground in a basement for two hours is NOT something I enjoy. But I learned that I am very good at battle archery, that my class CAN work together through the scavenger hunt and ropes ferry, and that fans were a hot commodity. Joselyn is also really afraid of being hit by a battle archery arrow. This year, I have improved in managing and using my time well with going to LAC to not asking for extensions the day the assignment is due. The Things app has been really helpful with keeping track of what I have to do and I will continue to use that in Grade 10.

Coming to the end of a story, you also notice the things you wish had been different. I really struggle to talk to my teachers. This has always been the case for me and even though I am getting better at it, I wish I improved more. I could have had a less stressful year if I had communicated better or sooner. I think making efforts to talk to my teachers about non-school related subjects would help me feel more comfortable to communicate with them when I am stressed. Something else I really wish could be written differently is team work and peer critique. I know the importance of team work but I found my teams this year very challenging. For example, in my last exhibition, my group was full of students who would not contribute or follow through on a plan. Often times, in team work situations others do not follow instructions, which I find disrespectful to the teachers and other learners. Other students tell me not to worry about deadlines and this creates a problem for me that I have not been able to solve yet. Next year, if I were writing the story, I would have more projects where I could pick my partners. 

Finishing this book, I look forward to the next one in the series. I predict the main character will have many more struggles and problems like deadlines and too many blog posts. But there will also be adventures and growth and hopefully a field school that includes caffeine.

In my ten years in school, I have never heard my teacher say that we are going to watch a film every day in class … for weeks. To prepare for our final maker project, we watched a “doc a day”. All of these documentaries were to help us learn story telling and filming techniques so we could implement them in our own documentaries. The driving question for this project was “how can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and story telling skills?”

Our assignment was to create a 3-5 minute documentary on a topic that is meaningful to us and fulfills all the criteria that our class set out. The first challenge I face was coming up with a topic that was both meaningful to me and would have a message. Out of all of my ideas, my best two were:` social media affecting kids my age and the value of strategy games. In the end, I chose to make my documentary about strategy games because I could personalize it more.

The next thing we had to accomplish was to create a treatment and a logline. I found it difficult to say my idea in one sentence for the log line and I found that throughout the project as my vision of my documentary became more clear, I had to change and alter my logline to fit it. 

After this step, we wrote a screenplay and story board. I found the screenplay particularly challenging because it was the first time I had to fill in the details of what my documentary was going to look, and sound like. The storyboard was easy because I took what I wrote in the screen play and created a visual representation of what each shot was going to look like. 

The next step was getting the interviews and filming. Because my documentary was about strategy with a special look at the benefits of chess, I wanted to interview a person who had been playing chess for most of their life. I Could come to the Chess Club one day and interview the seniors who play there. Even though she responded, the times did not work out at all so I interviewed Ms. Brady who runs the chess club here at Seycove. I was very concerned with how I was going to film everything. I needed shots of people playing specific strategy board and card games. I ended up inviting over my friend and her sisters for a game night after school. My younger sister played games with them while I took shots from different angles. To get the credits video section I played a chess match against Gwen while taking a time-lapse video. In case you were wondering … I won!

The peer critique process was not effective except for the voluntary one I did with Teva. We exchanged iPads on our own time and watched each other’s documentaries and gave kind, helpful and specific feedback. 

I am proud of some of my editing choices. For example, I worked hard on the interview. My first draft showed the questions written on the screen paired with Ms. Brady’s answers. The interview was 2 minutes long. I decided to take away the questions on the screen and make it seem more like I was having a conversation with Ms. Brady. With every question, the screen would change to show part of a chess game being played. The overall effect was a more interesting and effective interview. 

While this project was not focused on one of the core competencies, I believe I grew in my communicating core competency when throughout this project I learned how to communicate new knowledge through the form of a documentary. I also showed growth when I had to email a person I did not know for an interview which is not something I would normally do. I really enjoyed talking to Ms. Brady because I could see more of what she enjoys to do. 

Below you will see my final film called Your Turn.

The Vibrant Video project was a short maker project that taught us the history of film making as well as many of the key steps to making a great video. Throughout the project Ms. Willemse told us the interesting history of film including the fact that the first film was of a man sneezing. The first larger scale film was of a train arriving and when audiences first saw it, they ran away because they thought the train was coming through the screen and would hit them. 

This project also taught us the process of how to make a great video. The first skill we learned was thinking like a moviemaker. We had to create a simple story with a soundtrack that set the mood. In order to keep track of my story, I wrote them down and ordered them how I thought they would go together. Then using an app called Clips, I filmed all the scenes I needed to tell my story. Then using Clips features, I added filters, stickers, posters, a soundtrack and other effects to my video to bring it to life. My film was about me reading and an exaggerated version of how I sometimes get absorbed by a book and pay attention to nothing else. 

The next skill I learned was framing shots and developing angles. To learn this skill we had to create a silent film in Clips using certain filters and posters to get an “old-time” effect. I am proud of how this video turned out and happy my friend could star in it with me. To further enhance the video, I first put the videos in iMovie to speed them up to get the look that old films have when people are walking around. I also think the music I chose fit the old fashioned theme and if you watch it without the music it looks weird. The music brings it to life.

The third skill introduced us to planning and shooting. We learned about writing a treatment, a logline, followed by a storyboard. For this skill we created a tutorial which we did as a group using an new iMovie feature. Before we started filming, we created and filled out a storyboard to grow in our planning skills and to make sure we included everything we needed to for the instructions to make sense. My team created a tutorial on how to use a vending machine which in the end turned out quite funny. 

The fourth and last skill I learned about in class, was about different effects I could use when making a film in iMovie. Unfortunately, I missed the class when we created the film with effect sequences because I was at volleyball provincials. However, I did see how a green screen can be used. 

At the end of the project, my class also had to film an interview but sadly I was sick the week they did it. I found it really fun to expand my knowledge about how to make movies and I know that will be very helpful for future PLP projects. In the future, now that I know more about making a treatment and a storyboard, I will include more of a planned out plot to my future videos. Laying out the angles and shots will help me get the purpose of my video across and using effects will make the video more interesting. 

The war to end all wars also known as World War One was the focus of this humanities project. Our driving question was “How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?”. To answer this question we did many activities and assignments but our final product was a graphic novel. The graphic novel we were to create had to be about a topic from World War1 and Canada’s involvement. I chose to do Women at War the ones holding down the home front. Before we could get to creating the graphic novel we had to learn about WW1 and how we were going to create the graphic novel. 

To start off this project, we looked at possible causes to WW1. We read about tensions in Europe especially with Austrian, Hungary and Serbia. We read about concepts like Nationalism, Militarism, Imperialism and alliances. Each one of things led to the growing tensions in Europe. I then had to write a paragraph about what we thought the main cause was of WW1. I had a lot of trouble choosing one because I believe there were many things that made WW1 happen. In the end, I decided that WW1 would not have happened at that time if it wasn’t for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Later, closer to the end of the project, we thought about the consequences of WW1, both the immediate and the long term ones.  For example, an immediate consequence was the loss of life and infrastructure in many countries in Europe. A long term consequence was the weapon development like the use of tanks, machine guns, and chemical warfare. These were created around WW1 in a larger scale and have been around ever since then. These two parts of the project connect to the curricular competency: Analyze Cause and Consequence. When I look back at my understanding, on Cause and Consequences, I think I did a very detailed job on this competency. I feel that I have a thorough understanding of the complicated causes of the war and also of the consequences. 

Aside from the Nelson Text pages we read, we read The War to End All Wars 1914-1918 written by Alan Cowsill. This graphic novel informed us about many battles in the war and gave us a visual about what was happening at this time. Many parts of the novel was from the perspective of a soldier which was a very interesting choice. I had only heard of WW1 with some facts but the soldier’s perspective helped me to understand what it was actually like to be in WW1. It was interesting to see how all the relationships between the countries such as the alliances that were made, who supported who and why they supported them. Another interesting part to see was the propaganda that countries would use to get more men to join. They would guilt them, scare them and make men feel that it was an honourable thing to do to make their country proud. The graphic novel mentions the story about the famous story about the men who took a break at Christmas. I wondered, if they could take a break and be happy together, then why were they really fighting? It seems like the war really had nothing to do with the average person. 

Looking at the War to End All Wars 1914-1918 graphic novel prepared me to create my own graphic novel, which was the final product. This final product would show the curricular competency of Create Effectively which means “Effectively incorporating technical and narrative writing within a comic panel”. My chosen topic was Women at War=: those holding down the home front. For this topic I needed to research, use at least two sources, create a 5 W page, storyline and story board before I could even start the graphic novel. My topic was more challenging then I thought because I could not find exact dates and events of women here at Canada because most people were paying attention to the War and not as much as to what was happening here in Canada. Another challenge for me was creating the images for the graphic novel. Because there were not many photographs in my sources, there were not many to trace to then use for the graphic novel. I also found it very hard to actually to draw. However, when I look at my final product, I believe I was able to communicate what I wanted to say. 

Overall, when I think about this topic, I think that WW1 was a waste of life. I recognize that it is hard to understand all the different perspective, thoughts and ideas that went into the war. I might never fully understand why it happened and what the point was. It seemed like a lot of tension over land and power and at the end of the war it looked quite similar even with some land and power shift. I would hope that today we would have better ways of dealing with regional and national disagreements.

“The 7 habits of highly effective teens” by Sean Covey is the book that we have been focusing on for the past three months. In maker, for this project, we have been working on answering the driving question “How can I use the 7 habits to be my most effective self”? We were given the option of reading three books: the one for people, teenagers, or a graphic novel, and I chose to do the one for teenagers written by Sean covey. The book was separated into four parts and for each part we completed a workbook and a choice board activity. To answer this question I have read, practiced and shown my understanding of the 7 habits. This final blog post is titled “Believe in Good” because our final product will demonstrate how in the future I am going to use the 7 Habits to be a more effective teenager. 

The Process

Highlights from my Choice Board Assignments:

I am really proud of most of my Choice Board assignments. They were all different and all showed the part of the 7 habits I needed to show representing my understanding of my learning. 

• • Paradigms: For my first choice board I took a photo up close of my brother’s hair and then a photo further back. You can’t tell what the first photo is without seeing the second picture.
  • Private Victory: For my second choice board I used the app Sketches Pro to create notes with graphics. These notes were about each of the first three habits to show how my brain remembers the learning from this section. The images represent an idea.
  • Public Victory: For my third choice board, I created a Keynote animation that clearly shows habits four, five and six. My focus was on visual representation.
  • Renewal: For my last choice board, I created a playlist to represent the four sections of habit 7, Sharpening the Saw. 
  • Overall, throughout the choice boards I was able to grow my skills in using ipad apps I had not used as much as the others such as animating in keynote. I showed I was a creative communicator through the variety of ways I represented my knowledge of the 7 habits. 

Highlights from the Workbook:

• The workbooks made me think about the 7 habits and how they could apply to my life. For example, I found it very interesting to look at my personal bank account assignment and discover how many withdrawals I have in a week. 

Highlights from the Notes Chart:

• My notes chart helped me to remember the main ideas of the 7 habits, especially when I was doing the choice board activities. Using my ipad to construct my understanding was one way I showed myself to be an empowered learner. Even though my notes to some people, may not make sense, they help remind me about what this whole book has been about which is developing habits that will make me an effective human.

The Final Products of My Learning

Our final product needed to demonstrate my learning of the habits by connecting them with the core competencies. This meant that the habits would be shown within three products to relate to the three core competencies: communicating, thinking, and personal and social. Even more challenging, we also needed each product to focus on communicating knowledge in a different style such as visual, audio and kinesthetic.

Communicating/Visual

With a focus on the communicating core competency, I chose to represent my learning of habits 5 and 6 in a visual way. I decided to create a photo Collage of group projects. This visual display demonstrates my growth in collaboration skills. We have had a variety of projects that require working in a group such as DI, Revolutions on trial, metaphor machines. Seeing all these photos showcases all the skills I have to use when I work in a group.

The next competency I reviewed was thinking which I chose to represent my learning of habits 1, 2, and 3 in an auditory way. I created an audiobook recording of me talking about future jobs I could have and ways I could accomplish those goals. 

The final core competency are personal and social skills which I chose to connect to Habits 4 and 7 in a kinesthetic way. Since building relaxes me and allows me to show my creativity, I decided to make a fort. I like to be in comfortable places and forget the world around me. I also love being with my family/friends and decided that building with my friend Maya would be something we both enjoy and a way for me to recharge.

All of these assignments and products ultimately are good evidence that I am becoming more of an empowered learning and that I can construct and communicate my knowledge in many, many, different ways. I will continue to build my skills in the 7 habits and bring good into my life.