In this post I will be talking about my Take Your Kid To Work Day experience. Our assignment for Take Your Kid To Work Day was to make a one to two minute film showing what we learned at the place we went to. I went to my Mums school, Stratford Hall. I have been coming here a couple times a year when I have to go with my mum since I was young so I know a lot of the people that work there, as well as the community. I will give you all my rundown of today, what I leaned, and what i took away form this experience. 

I tried to focus my film on the community of Stratford Hall and how it has impacted and supported the staff and students. I learned that it is hard work outside the classroom as teachers, and that the support of the community within is often needed. 

I really enjoyed going to school with my mum and would definitely do it again. I learned so much about schools internally and would love to figure out more.

Here is a link to my Youtube video. https://youtu.be/U7qC3AYuIa8?feature=shared

During the process of creating the Remake of “Run”, there were a few steps. First we had to work as a group to make a story board, this story board would guide us to make the clips the same as a in the original. This was something we worked towards, because it was a remake, meaning it is has all the same clips and sounds. Once we finished our first draft, we watched them as a class and gave each other revisions. Our critique was kind, helpful, and specific. We decided that our movie needed revision in the facial expression, and sound effects part, because those two categories were not accurate to the original. We all got a chance to refill the entire movie after reading and reflecting upon our peer critiques. This was a good move it turned out because the monster had to be smaller. We also decided to change where we filmed, because in the first draft we filmed the entire thing on a hill, which is not accurate to the original film, and also meant we were running up a hill, making us slower. Our new film location was better because it was flat and more open like the path that the runner is running in in the original. Since we knew what to film and what to change in the film the process took probably half the time, meaning we had more time to edit. I think we did a lot better on the second try, because we knew what to do and what went well and what went well.

Link to my groups first draft: https://youtube.com/@Evelyn.Seycove?si=6IXs2alWdQbZJARo

Would you believe me if I said that my class and I traveled over 800 km for a project? Well, it’s true, I hope you believed me! Here’s what happened.

During this blog post I will be writing about our first Humanities project of the year, Rocket Mountain High. During this project we investigated the West by going there! That’s right, we went to Alberta to learn more about the West and how it impacts us. Our final product for this project was our Multi-Touch book, which told the story of our learning in Alberta. 

If you want to see the Maker side of this project you can check out my blog post at: https://www.blog44.ca/jonahl/2023/10/13/in-the-beginning/

During this project we each created a thesis that we would have to find evidence for throughout the whole project. My thesis was; Alberta, and Western Canada offer breathtaking natural beauty, with stunning mountains, lakes, and prairies, making them top destinations for outdoor enthusiasts, and people who just enjoy nature. I chose mine to be about nature, because that is something I am genuinely interested in, and was going to investigate during this trip regardless of us making thesis or not. I quickly figured out just how broad this subject really was, and that it would be tough not to find evidence for, although it would prove tough to summarize my findings. 

I think that throughout this project my main goal was to find evidence for my thesis and I did this by talking and often interviewing people, tourists and locals alike, about nature in the West, and how it impacts them positively and sometimes negatively. I really liked talking to the public, this was a skill that I developed throughout this project. At the end I also reflected on my own impressions of the places we visited because I spend a lot of time outdoors and wanted to see if I also had the same reaction as others.

Our final piece of evidence, our Multi-Touch book, was a collection of everything we learned on the Humanities side of this project. We made this book through an app called Book Creator, this app let us publish our books to the public once we were done! Our books had 25 pages in it in total, including a contents page, 16 pages about the places we went to, and an about the author page. This book made us really dig deep and show our learning in our own unique ways. We were given a template, but we could edit it if we wanted to. I feel like through pictures, and words I really showed my learning in this book. I hope you enjoy reading it!

Some of the most important things we learned as a class and individually during this project were: 

1. How to interact with the public, most of the time to get interviews, in a way that is respectful, but also lets them know what you want. 

2. Why the Five Themes of Geography are important and how they impact us in our daily lives. 3. How to effectively process and use knowledge that we gain during our project to help us with our assignments, and further knowledge of the subject. 

These were all important to our progress during this trip, because they helped keep us learning, and also on track.

Overall, I did enjoy the Humanities side of this project, a lot of what we learned in Humanities can help me in my academic, as well as daily life. I think that this project brought us as a class closer together because of all the memories we made in Alberta, good and bad, we all learned new things about each other. I really enjoyed this project and the opportunities that came with it! Thanks for reading my Humanities blog post!

Hello and welcome to my first blog post of the year. This year started with something awesome, a trip! Our class went to Alberta for our newest projects, Story Finding in the Rockies, and Rocky Mountain High. For this post I will be focussing on Story Finding in the Rockies, our Maker project. 

For this project we were tasked with making 4 videos over the span of this whole project, the videos were: a Silent Video, an Investigative Video, a TikTok style Video, and finally an At Home Video. We filmed two of these videos on the trip, and the others were done before and after the trip. During this blog I will show you what I learned during this trip, some highlights, and some low lights. 

First though, I want talk about the intentions I set before the trip. We all set individual intentions before the trip so that we could all be our best versions of ourselves during the trip. My behavioural intention was to behave like I’m in the class for the entire trip, because we were learning the entire time so I thought I should treat it like I was in the classroom. My academic intention was to know every place we were going before we got there, and know at least one fact about that place when we got home. I think that these learning intentions were great because they were little things that didn’t consume my every thought, but they made a positive impact on my trip.

I think that the best way to write this blog is going to be by splitting it up video by video, because during the making of each video we learned a lot.

Silent Video

 This the first video we knew about. Before beginning the video we were put into random groups and my group consisted of Sidney, Parker and me. We started the creating process by making a plan for the video and then also a script. We decided to make our video about a time travelling robber. This decision was very important because we had to be able to show the criteria: I can share ideas, ask questions, and research information from a variety of sources. If we chose a theme or plot for our video that wasn’t able to clearly show our understanding of the criteria that would not be good, because we only get one chance to film this video. The actual ghost town, Three Valley Gap, that we were staying in was really cool because everything in it was not from this generation. It was old! The town was an actual town too and it was surprisingly big! There were lots of shops that we could go into and learn about what would have been sold there during the 1800s-early 1900s and why the shops were significant. 

We got about 2 hours to film around the town which was awesome because I thought we would only get like 20 minutes. During those 2 hours we also talked to a lot of people, and even the owner of Three Valley Gap! We learned that the town had been built by the owner’s family about 80 years ago, because they were passionate in preserving history, and this was a way of doing it that they thought was an effective way. When we finished filming and editing we got another tour from our teachers, and we learned some more fun facts like we were actually over 20km away from the next town. Three Valley Gap is presently self powered, and that they even had their own fire station. I think this really shows how the town is really family run and how they were self reliant.

A few things we learned here were:

 1. How to film an effective silent video that shows what we intended using only facial expressions, body language and sound effects. 

 2. How to adjust ourselves and our learning to where we were, while still keeping our learning on track. I really liked filming and making this video, I would make it shorter though if I were to do this again.

Here is a link to the video. (Like please!) https://youtu.be/6WCepEgfSpo?feature=shared

Tic Tok Style Video 

This video was probably the most fun! We did this in groups as well and my group was Alex, Sidney and me. We decided to make a transition video because we thought it would be creative as well as easy. Our transition video plan was to have one of us film themselves in front of a mirror, then drop the phone into the sink, and then all of a sudden the image transitions into Lake Louise, or another lake. This plan was approved and so all we could do was learn how to make successful transition videos and then figure out how to apply it. We decided to film it at Lake Louise because we thought that was the most popular lake. We applied the skills we learned at home, and the filming was done in 5 minutes. When we got back from the trip we edited it into something that looks like a TikTok. This was tough because I don’t have any social media, and my friends didn’t have TikTok! It was okay though because we received a lot of positive feedback from peers. 

A few important things we learned about this were:

 1. That we had to make the video represent us, ours had to do with nature, and all of us like nature. 

2. We had to make the place that the transition video went look really good and it had to represent the place well. 3. We had to make the music appropriate and also match the video (pro tip: the video should change through the base-drop). 

These all helped contribute to our video being successful.

This video was a lot of fun to make because all three of us had basically zero experience making videos like this. I think something else that made it fun was making this video with friends. It is always more enjoyable to do a task when you have friends to help you. I would definitely do his video again. If I were to do it again, I would add text saying where the location was.

Here is a link to my video. (Like please!) https://youtu.be/81OYfjMxVT0?feature=shared

At Home Video

This video was harder to make than the others for me. While making this video we had to make a plan, and a script. We were told to express ourselves in this video, that means it could be anything from a voiceover, to talking in front of a camera. I decided to voiceover a bunch of images that represent my thoughts and what I was talking about. We were told to base the script off of an assignment we did in the summer that helped us learn more about ourselves. This task asked questions like, What do I enjoy doing? Why? Or, What gives meaning and purpose to my life? And even What do I daydream about? I never have really asked myself these questions, so this form was really good for me to fill out. These questions and a few more, basically laid out my script, and all I had to do was elaborate my answers.

A lot if my video had to do with sports, because that is probably the biggest thing in my life that I do, but I found it really hard to find words to express how I felt when I played. I was trying to write a script for how I felt when I played Field Hockey, and why it was so prominent in my life, but all I could think of was either too short or didn’t make any sense. When this happened I would either have to stop and come back to it later, or ask someone for help. This really set me back quite a bit and was also very frustrating. This was probably one of my biggest challenges throughout the whole project.

2 important things I learned while making this video, 

1. I had to make it sound like the audio was as if I was speaking to a friend or something, If I was to formal it sounded really weird, this was a challenge for me and took some time to get used to.

2. Something that was super important that I learned my lesson on was using a mic. not everybody in my class had access to a mic bust luckily I did. This was a game changer for me because the audio would always turn out really bad if I just did it into my iPad mic.

I definitely learned some hints about myself during this video because I have never really asked myself these deep questions. If I were to do this video again I would try to have more of a clear beginning middle and end to it, because that is always important in a story.

Investigative Video 

This was for sure our hardest video, This video was our opportunity in maker to sum up what we learned in this trip in one assignment. Thought this whole trip we learned and explored so much as a class, that It was hard to sum it all into one assignment. However, this was a great assignment for that because of the freedom we were given while making this video. the only thing we had to follow was the criteria; 

-Investigates a story, idea, or facts about the West

-Supports an understanding of how geography of the West impacts the people who live and visit here

-Questions must be developed and approved by teacher prior to interview 

-Work with your interview partner (anyone on your trip) to help you film 

-Video must include a stand up explanation by the filmmaker 

-2-3 minutes in length 

-Individual videos 

-Must include at least two digital enhancements (voice over, music, effects)

This criteria was tougher, because it made sure that we put our full effort and attention into the video. I decided to do a voiceover again because it worked really well for me in the at home video.

My video was also evidence for our thesis we made at the beginning of the project, our thesis was something we made before we left, and had to prove during the trip. I proved it through doing interviews with people I met, as well as just learning about significant places we went to.

I talked a lot about how beautiful Alberta and Canada were in my video, because that is something that really stood out to me. Throughout this video making process, I feel i have met all of the criteria. I had a lot of fun making this video and would do it again.

This project was so fun for me, not only because we had a trip, but also because of what we were learning. The topics we studied during this project really caught my attention and I enjoyed adding to my knowledge about them. Overall, I really liked this project. Some of my highlights were getting to know to classmates better, driving in the middle of nowhere in Banff at 10pm, and getting to see the nature of Alberta. 

Thank you for reading my blog post I hope you enjoyed.

Hello, and welcome to my first ever Tpol! Tpol stands for transitional presentation of learning. As you might know, earlier in the year we did something like this called a Mpol. When I think back on my Mpols, I think that I prepare too much because I know how well my brothers always do in these, and I tried to live up to that expectation. Overall, I think that I have realized that I have to do much better this time.

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.

For this Tpol I will be answering the driving question: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to grade 9? To answer this I will be showing how my learning and work ethics in a couple projects that I did this year, because I think I did very well in a few projects. 

For my first project and piece of evidence is one of our science projects, Mind Over Matter. I think that I did well in this project because I managed my time very well. I did this by not wasting my work time that we were given in class, so that when I got home I didn’t have that much to do. This was important to me because I like to have time to myself without work at home to just relax. This strategy proved to work for the rest of the projects we did in this year. This project was the first time I tried this because I thought I wasn’t using my time well enough and needed a way of saving time. 

Link to this projects blog post

These characters were a big part of this project.

The second reason I think I am ready to move up to grade 9 is because I have progressed so much since I first arrived in PLP. In my first month of PLP I didn’t know anything. I knew that my brothers were in PLP and that they say it is awesome. What I didn’t know is that it would take me late nights, early mornings, Saturdays of work, and more questions that I have ever asked before to succeed in PLP. Throughout  this year I realized that PLP is hard, and it’s going to be hard, but that is a good way to learn. Another thing I realized is that I’m not always going to get my way, and that when I don’t, I have to take it and move on.

Before I get to the last reason I am ready to move on to grade 9, I think that it is kind of important to note that I had to do a lot of work on my own outside of class more than my classmates I think, because of how many classes I missed, especially toward the end of the year. A lot of this was do to track and Field but some of it was also appointments. I think that this is relevant because this shows my dedication to school and keeping up with my classes.

The last reason I think I am ready to move on to grade 9, is our latest project: The Medium is the Message. This project is something PLP has been doing for a long time. It is a great project based around advertising and what it does to us as consumers. This project may have been the most fun project we did this year in my opinion. During this project we took our learning down to the Oregon coast, because learning can happen everywhere. I really think that during this project and trip I demonstrated great responsibility in keeping myself on task as well as my friends. I did this by doing what I needed to and being where I needed to at the right time. I think this helps answer the Driving Question because this shows how I am in charge of my own learning, and how I understand that learning is important, even if you are in a different country. Link to this projects blog

This was the final product for this project

Looking back on this school year, I feel that I did really well in PLP. At points in the year I had some doubts about the learning style, but then I remembered the great experiences I had, and realized that PLP is actually helping me learn. This first year showed me that I can improve my skills and ideas by trying new things and connecting important issues to my own life. It’s amazing how understanding the big picture can help me with the smaller things that I am learning. I think that I have done quite well and reached my learning goals this semester more than I had initially expected. I can also confidently say I have had new and different experiences than elementary school, good and bad. Looking forward, I hope to stay in PLP and keep growing my understanding of topics, and continue working hard. I think this is all achievable with a bit of extra work. 

Im back with another exhibition blog post, but this time its our spring exhibition. Our topic on this exhibition was our ads that we made in the last project. (Link to my  last project blog post)

Our main goals in this project were to,

1.show our learning In a creative way, 

2.keep everything running smoothly, 

3.most importantly, keep everybody entertained.

During this post I will show you how my group and me accomplished all of these.

Preparing for this exhibition was actually pretty easy, because, my group really worked together and had assigned roles, which worked for our group. It worked because we all knew what we had to do, so preparing didn’t seem that hard at all. We all contributed ideas for the set up, and messaged each other a lot so we were all on the same page. 

For our first goal which was to show our learning in a creative way, we decided to hang our final drafts over our table so it looked like the ads were zip lining. I think that this is creative because it made it easier to see for everybody, and it had an aspect of our company in it. We also had 3 of our first drafts out so everybody could see the difference and improvement. That was how we showed our learning in a clear creative way.

For our second goal which was keep everything running smoothly, we had to be creative. We were all assigned roles, two of these roles were DRI (Directly Responsible individual), and recorder. The DRI was a in charge of telling everybody except the recorder what to do, like the leader. The recorder took note in a public document, so we could all see it, of everything that was important. So, this meant that the DRI was in charge of keeping everything smoothly, and we were just the people to cary out the instructions. This is why it was a bit hard, because it is easier to say things than to do them, not saying that our DRI did anything wrong, its just that the things we were tasked with were often complicated and had many steps. 

Finally, for our third and most important goal which was keep everybody entertained, we had to use a little strategy. One piece was having high energy and really selling how much process and work we put into these ads. This was important because it isn’t very entertaining if we acted bored and like we weren’t having fun. Another piece was sharing our talking roles equally. This was just as important because it was good to have different people explaining how we made our ads instead of one person doing the whole thing.

Overall, this exhibition was fun and new. I think if I were to do it again I would try to prepare farther head of time, and have more time, because everything can always be improved with more time.

here is a photo of our setup p from the exhibition.

This project was our last of the year, meaning it was big. In this project we learned about ads, the making if ads, and how ads influence us buying things, or not buying things. During this project we also had our first field school! We travelled to the Oregon Coast over 6 days. 

Our final product in this project was an ad we were making for companies and businesses that agreed to help us with this project. I think that making an ad for these companies was a good opportunity to work on communicating with real people and receiving real feedback. These companies agreed to work with us and have agreed to work with PLP grade 8 for the past 10 years. Before we even went to Oregon we were given a business that we were told we would interview during this trip, and then eventually make an ad for. We were interviewing them, bceasue we wanted to know what they wanted in the ads. As you could assume, this sounded like a lot of work for a class of kids that were just told we would be going to Oregon on a school trip. I don’t know about all of my class, but me and my friends just heard ‘trip to Oregon’. We were all very excited.  

During this project we went to a lot of places, many of these were our businesses that we interviewed. We had already wrote out interview questions, so we knew what to do we just needed the interviewees. 

During all of this, while my friends were all in Oregon, I was not. I wasn’t because I had stayed back two days for our big band cabaret. I decided to stay back because I really wanted to play in it, and I think it was worth it because I got to ride down in a bigger, nicer bus, and I got to  know the other PLP teachers better. Unfortunately, I did miss my interview, meaning I had to go off my classmates notes. This still worked and I could still make the ad.

One of the places I really enjoyed during this trip that was not one of the businesses was the Tillamook cheese factory. I really enjoyed this place because it showed how they made all of their products, but it was still very clean and organized. I thought that it was cool to see these products being made in front of me, because how many places can you see this? It was very entertaining to see the stuff we eat being made by people machines. 

The actual ad that I made was not very good in the beginning, but it eventually started to get better. My company was High Life adventures, which was a zip lining company that we went to. They wanted the ad to be in nature,. Because they’re zip lines were in nature and that was a big part of they’re business. It took me 23 drafts, but I eventually made an ad that was excepted by my teachers. here it is.

During this past unit have learned about ally of things. These subjects reach anywhere from the 4 main types of matter, to the general structure of an Atom. All of these subjects were quite interesting to me because of how jammed packed with information they were. 

Our final project for this unit was to create a game on scratch relating to one of our studied topics from this unit (Matter, The Kinetic Molecular Theory, and the structure of the Atom) . I decided to make mine on Atoms and what they are made of. I really liked how it turned out. 

During the creation of our games I was away for a week, so I did not get the game on in time. This was a thing that almost never happens and was very disappointing for myself and my standards. I did really like how my game turned out though.

Link to my game

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/845074077/fullscreen/

Our driving question for this project was; How does the behaviour of atoms influence the properties of solids, liquids, and gasses? I really liked this driving question because it was hard to answer, and also it was different than all of the other driving questions that we had been given before in the sense that this one was more scientific. I think that the best answer to this question is that the behaviour of Atoms influences the states of matter in every way we see them. I mean that Atoms change how the states of matter look feel, and even smell. Atoms do this because they decide the structure of the states which make them have all of these attributes.

Overall, I really liked this project because of how much I learned mostly. If I were to do this project again I would try harder to learn what we were doing while I was away so that I don’t fall behind. 

Thanks for reading!  

During this project we learned all about the colonization of Canada and how different people had different experiences. We focused on poor people, rich people, Fille de Roi, missionaries, and Indigenous people. I really liked this project because we got to learn about how they all benefited and lost from the colonization of Canada. 

Our driving question for this project was: What are the consequences of colonization today? and also How did colonization effect all involved? I think that the European people colonizing Canada benefited, where as all of the indigenous people did not at all. The Europeans that came over benefited, I think, because they ether got more money, a fresh start, or a chance to explore, or even all of the above sometimes. These were the main things people were looking for in this new land and the main reasons why they also moved over. The indigenous people however did not benefit overall, I think this because it may have been good in the begging with these new foreign allies coming over and giving them new tools and other things. Later on though, they realized that the foreigners that were coming over were not coming over to make their land better but to take it away for themselves. This is why I think overall all the Indigenous groups involved did not benefit.

This was interesting to me because I hadn’t realized to the extent of how much the indigenous lost in the big picture, and how much the Europeans gained while taking this land. The Europeans fascinated me though the most because of how much planning they took to take over and exploit this new land and how many people were involved. 

Overall I think that this project was beneficial for me because of how much I learned about things that I should have already known. If I could do this project again I would try to study a different group of people instead of the poor people, because I think that it would be really interesting to see another perspective on the colonization. This project was a lot of fun and I would totally do it again.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome back to my blog, today I will be talking about a project that we just wrapped up in Science. In this project, we were learning about our immune system, more specifically how and why it works. During this project, we also learned about how vaccines help us fight against germs and why people don’t get them.

Our Driving question for this project was: How can our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health? I think that this is a pretty easy question to answer, our knowledge can contribute if we educate more people. I think that the more people are aware of what these germs do and how we fight them, the more people that know how to defend themselves against them. These educated people could have a lower chance of getting sick because they know these things. I think this is how we help public health, by educating people.

Our final product for this project was a public health poster for kids that will eventually go up in East-view elementary school. Our posters are targeted at kids that don’t know that much about how our immune system works or germs in general. I made my poster about washing your hands and how this can help your body when germs try to get in. I really liked how mine turned out. 

Overall I liked this project, it taught me more about how my immune system works, and why we should try to help it as much as we can. If I were to do this project again I think that I make my poster about less obvious ways of keeping germs away, like cleaning surfaces or something like that. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked my poster!