Dulce et Decorum Est 🪖

Wish this is my last blog post for grade 9.  I will be talking about the last project we did in humanities and the spring exhibition! Our project was called Dulce et Decorum Est means It is sweet and patriotic to die for one’s country, and this project was all about the contrasting narratives of World War One. The driving question was “How can we make the contrasting narratives of war come alive for an audience?”

The first thing we did to jump-start the project was go to the MONOVA museum for a little field trip. The reason we went to a museum was that we were going to create our own museum to present our work for the exhibition.  On our trip to the museum, our goal was to learn how museums tell stories and what exhibits intrigued the audience more (and more).

I enjoyed the museum and I think my favourite exhibit was an interactive quiz about the history of movies (I think). Here are the notes I wrote about the museum and what I learned:

After visiting the museum we learned about the causes of war. Ms. Madsen taught us the acronym MANIA which stands for:

M – Militarism, a massive build-up of armed forces to deter rivals, glorification of military and war.

A – Alliances, Signed treaties in which each nation involved promised to defend another if attacked. Alliances made it more likely war would start and made war grow larger.

N – Nationalism, Pride and patriotism in one’s national identity, Nations wanted to assert their power it was a big cause of international tension.

I – Imperialism, The need for more colonies/territory.

A – Assassination, the spark that started the great war (ww1). Archduke Franz was assassinated by Gravrillo Princip on June 28, 1914.

Austria blamed Serbia for his death and on June 28th Austria waged war on Serbia. There was already tension between Austria so Archduke Franz’s death was the trigger for the war to start. 

Since we finished learning about the causes of war we started learning about what Canada did in WW1. We watched an interesting documentary called The Story Of Us which talked about Canada’s role in WW1 https://youtu.be/b-sTWJkmqpM. We continued to learn about Trench Warfare, weaponry, PTSD, medicine and more. Then we learned about ethical judgment, ethical judgement determines the difference between right and wrong decisions. We picked a topic to then justify if the governments use of it was fair at the time. I chose the topic of governments use of propaganda.

Our chart then expanded into a paragraph and the paragraph would be about a topic you chose from 3 options and I chose Myth vs Reality of war. I used some of the knowledge from my ethical judgment sheet and used it in my paragraph, I believe I did really well on my paragraph! You can give it a read:  

The Myth of War vs the Reality

People hold on to myths of war because they want to believe they were fighting for world peace. War costs much more than people think, both in regards to lives and money. The government shaped these myths through propaganda. For example, propaganda such as the posters used in WWI made war seem heroic and if you joined you would then be seen as a nobleman fighting for a cause; Much like the myths of war appealed to people and their patriotism. Most people will likely know the slogan that was on posters “I want YOU for the U.S army.” However, they did not show that war brings immense suffering causing physical and psychological injuries that stay with soldiers for life and impacts lives in many ways. Some examples are the loss of limbs which made it harder for soldiers day to day life or PTSD/shell shock which caused insomnia, headaches, trembling and more. Propaganda dehumanizes the enemy making it seem like the government is fighting the enemy because they want to protect their nation but it is just to get more territory and grow their country’s economy. People did not know about the destruction of the land from the fighting and the brutal conditions soldiers face. The war caused mistrust between groups of people, throwing immigrants into internment camps just in case they were spies or still loyal to the enemy nation. In reality, the war continues to be just as terrifying and gruesome.

Just like that we were on our last keystone! The exhibit for the spring exhibition. Our tiny class of 14 got split into two groups. My group got the topic of the traditional perception of women vs their role in the war. As I said above our plan was to transform the library into a museum. Although we all had to make individual artifacts/exhibits/art we had to talk as a group about what each person would be doing and how we would bring our section of the “museum” to life. 

Blondie had the great idea of creating two contrasting murals. One of the traditional view of woman and another of their role in World War One. I chose to make my mural women’s role in ww1. I wanted to create a mosaic type art piece using triangles to create the shape of a nurse. This was my rough sketch:

After a lot of cutting and a lot of gluing I ended up with this (not the best photo):

I was so done with cutting paper after because Blondie and I also create a sign for our museum that involved cutting and gluing…

Then it was off to exhibition night! Although Blondie and I were not allowed to work together we presented our art to the audience in one presentation together. I could have been fine presenting my mural on its own saying that it represented nurses in ww1 and give some history; but together we were able to craft a stronger presentation saying that the traditional view of woman was them cleaning the house carrying for the family and always being owned by a man. Then we moved on to mine saying women stepped up to take the jobs men had to leave behind and when the war was over they did not want to go back to being housewives. They fought for their right to vote because they felt like they had proven that they are just as capable. 

Overall the exhibition was very fun and I enjoyed walking around and seeing everyone’s work, my highlight was probably getting a pea plant to grow in my garden. Here are some photos of the exhibition set up:

 

Now to answer the driving question, “How can we make the contrasting narratives of war come alive for an audience?” 

After going to the museum I learned that it is easier to engage people in your work if it involves more of their senses and is not just reading paragraphs. In our museum we had a performance to show what war could be like, we had models of gas masks made, audiobooks, even little boot camps, and actual artifacts. With all of those exhibits also came a story of war, and when our exhibits were explained orally the audience could ask questions and we could also learn from them which created interactive discussions that would be more memorable. I also learned that when talking about the history of someone’s life using quotes they have said can be quite impactful because it gives the viewer a sense of how the person was feeling. I am very proud of my work and Blondie and I had a very successful night.

Teleporting into summer with my Tpol!

TPOL TIME! 

Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

Pol Declaration: Thank you for coming to my presentation on learning. I am expert on my 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.

Hello and welcome back to my blog, unlike my other posts this won’t be a reflection of just one subject it will be a reflection of my learning as a whole. If you couldn’t tell from my wonderful hand-crafted image saying “TPOL 2023” This is my TPOL blog post which stands for transitional presentation of learning and in it, I will talk about why I think I’m ready to transition to grade 10. So without further ado let’s get straight into this. 

My goals for each subject and how I achieved them: 

Science 9

  • Since science isn’t my strong suit I aimed to stay on task and focus in class. I find science terminology confusing so I will do my research to help me understand. 

Honestly, I enjoyed science and I think I did well. I did not struggle with terminology because Ms Kadi explained it in a way I understood and I did pay attention in class! I think I did well on all my projects but here are two things that did not turn out the way I wanted them to: 

My operation board game:

blog post for project

For this project we had to create our own operation type game. I got frustrated because my wiring kept messing up and I had to keep redoing it.

My interactive periodic table:

Originally I tried to create it on scratch but I could not do it so I switched to keynote.

Humanities 

  • I wanted to work on strengthening my research skills and reading through different sources instead of skimming. 

I still need to work on how to research sources effectively but I have read through way more websites than I did in grade 8. How will I get better at research? 

I have tried making mind maps, printing out information and highlighting, and writing down key points from articles but I always end up trying to keep the information in my head. I think the best option that I have done with my mom is when we write down key points about the topic.

The project that made me achieve my goal AND play on my other weaknesses was Full Steam Ahead.

Full Steam Ahead post

For this project, we had to create our slam poem about the impact of the Industrial Revolution. I knew absolutely nothing about the Industrial Revolution so this project made me have to pay attention and research things to understand it. I was fine with creating my poem and going through the process of learning but the fact that we had to present the poem in front of the class scared me. How did I overcome it? 

Maker 

  • My goal was to think “outside the box” and try and be more creative and deep in my work. I also wanted to get better at narrowing down on a topic and not getting lost in thought.  

If you read my blog post about the winter exhibition I talked about the documentary we created. For this project, we had to pick a theme from the film Avatar and make a documentary. Originally I chose to do mine about corporate greed to challenge myself and get my brain to do a little more thinking. Alas, it ended up being too much of a challenge and I did not know where to start. Luckily I decided to switch my documentary to racism and it paid off. Although I still had to contemplate my plan I had a stronger base for my project. I think I did a good job not overthinking what I was doing but that is because that project was a bit intense and I didn’t have time to ponder my thoughts. To make sure I don’t spend too much time thinking about what I COULD do I will write down all my ideas, make sure I clarify what I’m supposed to be doing, asks peers for critique and think ahead about what I could best present. 

To achieve all my goals I wrote about who I want to become and how I will achieve it. 

 I wanted to be someone who got their work in on time and does not get distracted, so just a good student. I wanted my mind to be organized and balance my home life and homework. To achieve, that mindset I would take homework breaks, write down ideas, and would not rush. Have I achieved this?

Honestly, I have not taken initiative on my goals. The thing that sets back everything is getting distracted, if I didn’t get distracted I would not have to take breaks, I wouldn’t stretch out projects and overall doing work would be easier. Usually, my phone is the reason I am distracted so what I have to do is put my phone in a separate room and when I feel myself slipping I will step away from my iPad and do something else.  Something else I have noticed is that I am trying to be more independent well I do my work, this is a good thing but there are points where I could benefit from some guidance. 

Although I did not get very far with the goals I set for myself there are other things I feel like I have grown in. For example, I am getting better at going to tutorials when I need to and making sure to ask clarifying questions. Something I am also proud of is at the spring exhibition I conversed multiple times with the people walking around. These experiences tie into the communication competency.

Core competencies: 

Why do I think I am ready for grade 10? 

Throughout the year I have grown in many ways, but what I am most proud of is my perseverance and trying to stretch myself! I think the farther I go through PLP the more I will grow out of my shell. 

Thank you!

Creating Cards of Confederation – Say That 10 Times Fast

Cards of Confederation! Never coming to stores near you. Recently in humanities, my business partner, Blondie, and I created a card game involving Canadian nationalism and the confederation. 

After learning what nationalism was we had to find a “current” event that showed aspects of it. I ended up choosing an article about the difference between Canadian’s views on nationalism and the United States view. It also talked about Justin Trudeau saying when the country’s population no longer trusts their government (ie, public institutions), they start to look for their own answers on how to address the problems that the country is facing like lack of jobs/resources, high inflation, government corruption, etc. Some examples of what people might start considering as solutions are closing borders to immigrants (immigrants could take their jobs/housing, and compete in other ways with the citizens); stop trading goods with other nations and more. You can check out the article here! https://globalnews.ca/news/4745341/canada-nationalism-surveys/

To even further deepen our learning of confederation we created our very own simulation of how Canadas confederation came to be. Our class got split up into groups of 3 and each was assigned one of the following colonies: Canada West, Canada East, Newfound Land, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. Blondie, Jessie and I got PEI, and together we thought of what conditions we wanted the confederation to grant and what we could bring to it. At the final confederation meeting we pitched our needs and they were met. So then we officially joined the confederation. You can read my reflection on the simulation:

The last thing we were doing in this project was making our board games. We were split into partners and like I said above I was with Blondie. Blondie had an amazing idea of making a card game. The point of our card game was to join the confederation by fulfilling your requirement card.  You can read more about our game in the rules:

Here are some pictures of the game in action and how it looked like set up.

The driving question of this project was what did nationalism mean for people around Canada. Based on what I have learned from this project, my opinion is…

Nationalism is a group of people with the same ideas, culture, beliefs, values, ideologies etc. It is a sense of belonging between people that create a nation. Nationalism had different effects on each group of people in Canada. For the Indigenous people it was bad news since the people in confederation were white which was looked upon as the superior race. So the Indigenous people and culture were crushed by confederation. In order for colonies to keep growing settlers and colonizers stole Indigenous peoples land to build on without permission. Settlers started creating new infrastructure to help unify the colonies like a transcontinental railway. The railway was a critical part of trade and travel across Canada. Nationalism allowed settlers to feel unified with a shared identity. For colonizers nationalism meant making sure everyone was on the same page as them and reinforcing their control to make sure everyone had the same views on nationalism.

Thanks for reading have a nice day! ❤️

Full Steam Ahead 🚂

Toot toot..!

In Humanities Ms. Madsen led a project called Full Steam Ahead. We learned about the Industrial Revolution and its impacts on society. The final result was for us to present a slam poem about a chosen impact of the Industrial Revolution. It could be about the consequences of urbanization, the impacts on the workers, environmental consequences and more. 

The first thing we did was deepen our understanding of the Industrial Revolution. We started by reading through some textbook pages and watching videos. Our first keystone was to create two graphic organizers. One about the steam engine and the other of three important innovations that came from the Revolution. 

 

I am not super proud of my steam engine graphic organizer because I got confused about what to put in underlying conditions. 

The second keystone was to write a formal paragraph about a focus of the industrial revolution impacts that interested us. We could choose from this list: 

– the environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution

– the consequences of urbanization

– the consequences for workers

– the impact on and consequences for war

– the impact on children

– select a specific technological innovation and focus on its impact

I was stuck between the consequences for workers and environmental consequences. I almost did the workers but settled on writing about the environment. The environmental impacts was probably the easiest one to talk about. 

This project was all about the process, I had to create multiple drafts of my paragraph. I started off writing about what I knew and want I needed to know. Then I headed off to start my paragraph. My peers and teachers helped critique my paragraph to make it the best it could be. In the end, I had about 3 drafts. This was my finished result!

The Industrial Revolution was the starting place of many great things, but it also had drawbacks such as its negative impact on our environment. First off, the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gasses and coal resulted in a lot of air pollution. For example, coal which was the main fuel source of the Industrial Revolution, and was used to power the steam engine and factories, created a large amount of soot to be spewed out, in addition to significant amounts of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses made the Earth go above normal temperatures, which in turn, impacted the world’s natural biodiversity of both plants and animals and lead to the mutation or extinction of some species. In addition, other toxic threats to plants and animals were heavy metals like lead. Scientists claim that the “Industrial Revolution caused an epidemic of metal intoxication” (source), and the impact continues even into today. Not only did lead make its way into the rivers and other water sources, but so did raw sewage that came from the factories. This was due to the fact they did not have effective protection in the plumbing system to keep the sewage from mixing with water, and unfortunately, people drank the polluted water unknowingly. Also, since machines were replacing human labour, people moved from rural areas to the cities. This made the demand for houses higher, but there was limited land to build on, and so trees got cut down. People also wanted lumber to build, as there was a need for more factories, houses and farmlands were expanding which all resulted in deforestation. Given all these factors, it is said that the Industrial Revolution is one of the reasons climate change began. In the end, while great inventions and advances and enhancements in technology came about from the Industrial Revolution, one must not forget the environmental impacts and sacrifices that came as a result as well.”

I am proud of my paragraph and I do feel like revising it over and over again made it way better and had more of a flow. 

Finally, we moved on to the part I had been dreading.. writing the slam poem. To present what we learned the knowledge we gathered had to be converted into a slam poem. The slam poem would be about the focus we chose as well. I did not know what a slam poem was, I knew it was more like a story-like poem but I had never heard one. In class we watched a video of Shane Koyczan presentinghis poem “To This Day”.  Well watching it I picked up on some characteristics he used to capture his audiences attention. He starts with a little story then slowly eases into his poem. He speeds up at intense parts and raises his voice which creates different moods for each part of his poem he is talking about.

 

 

I had to find a way to make sure I presented my slam poem as powerfully as I could.

Just like my paragraph, I had to revise my poem several times. I am not a huge fan of poetry so it took me a little while to figure out how to make it rhyme and flow.

I called my poem “What Are We Doing?” and this is how it turned out:

I do not like presenting so when I heard that we had to present our poem in front of the whole class I internally freaked out. But on the day off I decided I should just get it over with so I volunteered myself to go 4th! Even though I spoke a bit fast I am proud of myself for taking the jump to be one of the first people. 

The driving question of this project was “How can slam poetry help us connect to issues?”  At the start, I kind of wondered why we had to write a slam poem about the industrial revolution because I didn’t think a poem about coal was going to pull on many heartstrings. But the more I understood the project the more I understood why the end result was going to be a slam poem. Slam poetry allows people to talk about a message they want to share in passionate, and captivating ways. Many people use slam poetry to bring society’s issues to light. Instead of just reading that ice bergs are melting and skimming past article on a newspaper slam poetry channels people’s emotions that they feel to others and it resonates with the audience.

Bye! ❤️

About me!

About me!

 

My name is Kira and I’m a PLP learner at Seycove. I will be including some photos I have edited and took in class to show more about my self.

This is my name in photos, it was hard to find interesting subjects that could create my name ( K is a letter in a sign, I is a Christmas light, R is a branch of a Christmas tree and A is from a book cover). After we took photos we had to a sort them into our name in keynote. Then we learned about adding shadows, borders, and reflections to make it more eye catching. Or realistic. Here is my finished result:

Then we had to create a personal collage about what’s on our mind or what we think about. Sometimes the most random things pop up in my head but I stuck with the more practical thoughts. When creating this we had to draw doodles to spice it up and add borders and reflections for a 3D effect. Also using our keynote skills we used instant alpha to make transparent backgrounds, and we also masked images into shapes. Here is how my collage turned out:

We ventured into keynote some more and learned about how to create a GIF. We learned about animations and transition between 2 slides. My sister was singing “I believe i can fly” so I decided to make a GIF with her flying in it. As I’m writing this I realize it might have been better to do a Live Photo and make it bounce between movements but I can’t do that anymore.

Here is my GIF:

Becoming A PLP Learner

A

This is my customized memoji/memoji laptop, the people with stretched out faces are my friends (I do have friends). 

The driving question for this project was, “How Do I Build & Strengthen The PLP Learning Team?” 

The first big thing we did was the big life journal (lots of “bigs”), and during this I realized that I have a lot of interests and I mapped down all of the things I could get better at. There ended up being 5 different chapters we had to do and in each one we wrote about our strengths and stretches. Also, we went deeper into our lifelong goals and hopes. Then we were told to pick 3 assignments and amp them up! Here are the before and after:

  • This is my mantra

To build team strength we did team challenges. The first one was a spaghetti tower and my group was really awkward at the time (after all, it was the first time we ever collaborated) so we struggled a bit. As we did more group work and challenges our group started supporting each other more and realizing everyone’s strengths (💪). Some people were good at presenting well another was good at writing things down and creating ideas fast. The hardest one we did was probably the cup challenge, the goal was to stack 6 cups on top of each other with an elastic band that had strings attached to it. We had to each take a string and pull the elastic and put it around a cup to move it to the position we wanted it to be. Sadly, we never finished (big surprise) because our cups kept on falling over and not cooperating (very rude in my opinion). We did more challenges, but our last one was the spaghetti challenge again… Our group thought we had a different idea but didn’t…it was almost the exact same (shows our creative juices 😎). Although, even if it was the same we definitely improved on talking to each other because everyone contributed even if it was in the slightest bit. Here is our first and last towers!

  • This was our first tower

For teachers to get to know more about us we were assigned to make a user manual about ourselves. There were multiple categories we had to write about like, warnings, trouble shooting and tips to maintain performance. The hardest one to write was probably trouble shooting because I didn’t know how to write about what to do when I’m in “distress”. We had to format the document to the exact same as the teachers and doing that helped us figure out how to use features of pages! Here our some parts of my user manual:

Then we had to make a blog post of how we work in a team, this was difficult for me because I was trying to learn how to use my blog (I still am). The post included my Memoji laptop, a paragraph of how I work in a team, some parts of my user manual, another paragraph explaining my creative media (hip hip hurray) and then my actual video I made. It explains how I work in a team (creative media). I had fun creating my creative media because I enjoyed editing it but I could have done way better. If you haven’t seen my creative media here it is:My Creative Media sorry if the slides where to short I couldn’t upload the full video.

All of this work came up to one big assignment, a keynote guided tour (for an exhibition). In this tour we had all of our work we created (most of it at least), and we presented it to the parents. The presentation was fun to make and we got to learn a lot more about keynote, I’ve learned a lot about keynote (Im practically a expert, not). For example when making the Memoji laptop I learned how to erase the backgrounds of photos and in the keynote guided tour I learned how to link words to slides in the presentation. Here is a video of my Keynote Guided Tour

Not everything for the exhibition was on an iPad (plot twist) we also created a physical piece out of a variety of material. This was quite hard because my brilliant brain of mine had a whole plan set up then realized you were aloud one of each material. So I picked a different box and tried to use the same idea. My idea was this:

The hot air ballon states big ideas and the person is me (obviously), and it shows how I’m made out of different things. When I created this I used box A instead and it was much easier to create something with it. I never took a picture of the finished product all together, my bad, but the photo is what my hot air balloon ended up looking like. I never got a photo of my person so I have drawn a draft of what it did look like. The colours on my person represent different things, and here is what they mean Yellow: sunshine, happiness, warmth Orange: joy, creativity, determination, enthusiasm, fun Blue: calm trust intelligence Brown: safety stability dependability  Green: nature, taking action, growth White (its my head): purity, balance, understanding. Here is my photo of what my creation looked like:

In the end I think I’ve learned a lot and I’ve gotten better at working in a team. What I bring is inclusiveness (that’s a word?) and creativity (super original). I can show my learning through projects better then presenting in my opinion. I had fun working with group 4 and this was our very last project we did to together. It was a “horror” film trailer our star actors are Christian as the innocent boy and Hayden as the creepy stalker/murder. Keenan was the producer? And I was the camera guy. Sadly Naomi wasn’t there, but she was in spirit (so sentimental). Here is the amazing video: Very Horrific Film

Group members blogs!

Caden

Hayden

Naomi

Christian 

Keenan 

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