Destination Imagination reflection

For this DI tournament our destination really was imagination. It took place on a hot sunny day and I really was imaging that I was outside enjoying it, ok ok all jokes aside lets reflect. 

Its safe to say DI although a useful learning experience is generally frowned upon by the students competing and teachers organizing. Don’t get me wrong it was fun and the teamwork and creative skills I developed will definitely benefit me in the future but c’mon it was a Saturday that we all spent at school doing work to some extent. 

This tournament was quite a change for my team from the last one. The regional tournament was a sad experience for my group, nothing really worked and we were lacking in most departments but I’m happy to say this one was quite the opposite. Last time my groups machine failed and some group members broke out into laughter but this time I don’t think it could’ve gone better. The lead up wasn’t much different, I’d even say we were less rehearsed than last time but something just changed and we managed to get through it and prosper. 

There were a few things that worked for us. Now that its over I can say it but the whole day was supposed to be very structured and my group had a day that focused more on fun and we just kinda “locked in” so to speak when it was time. Everyone was accountable for themselves which in a way added up to a collective group accountability and I mean I can’t really say much more than we just tried as much as we could and it worked. 

There was maybe the slightest room for improvement in the way that I didn’t meet up quite on time for our first rehearsal of the day but my group wasn’t too upset and we moved on. In the future across all projects I would like to recognize that its not just my time but also my groups time I could be wasting. 

I think we came really far not only as a team but people as well and I’m proud of everyone and the work they put in that lead us to first place in our challenge and instant challenge. Go Carnival Crooks! 

Healthy ever after blog post

How can you live a life that is healthy ever after? Well my class was tasked with answering that question through video format and I came to a conclusion! 

My start to this project was a few days late after returning from a spring break trip a few days after school started but other than that it was smooth. Physical activity has always been something I love and so I liked the idea of this project. 

My focus for this project was physical activity and I decided to create the “Ultimate fitness plan” which consisted of 5 steps to become healthier through eating and working out. 

Here’s the actual video itself-

For the project we had to complete a workbook which has our overall idea and also the steps to completing our product. I honestly did put as much effort as I should’ve into the workbook and I feel like I would have benefited more if I did. The workbook itself was a great way to track ideas and it also payed out how to get to a final product quite well. 

Here’s the workbook- Healthy Every After Workbook

Apparently this project relates to the PLP programs upcoming trip to Disney World although I’m not quite sure how that will work so I can’t really say much on that topic. 

We had to do lots of research for this project and I did it in a way I wasn’t really used to. Instead of having a topic and researching it I had to do my research and kind of build my topic around that and for that new look on how to do things I’m grateful. 

Over all this project sort of played to my strengths and that’s why I enjoyed it so much so I definitely had fun doing it and I hope for more like it in the future. 

How can I finance my future.

I recently learned how to “finance my future” and now I have to reflect so lets begin. 

There were two parts to this project first was a investing simulator called investopidea simulator and the second was a presentation on the financial aspects off a topic. The topic that my partner and I chose was purchasing a house. I actually found this project quite fun and engaging despite hating all aspects of working with numbers and I think our final product wasn’t too bad. 

Ill admit I could’ve payed a bit more attention to my investopida account but at the same time it was quite glitchy and made it very difficult to do anything with it. The stocks and trading part I didn’t fully grasp but none the less I still acquired a basic knowledge of investing which I have no doubt will come in handy some time. 

My presentation on the financial aspects off buying a house was put together in a short amount of time but regardless I would say it tuned out pretty decent. For the presentation we researched the steps you would have to take to buy a house and we broke them town into simple enough chunks of writing. One thing I wish I did differently was have less writing on the slides because although still being understandable it made it less engaging and slightly harder to process. Again another thing I see myself using in the future if I can ever afford a home here. 

The thing that helped me understand finances during this project was how fund it was and the assignments we had were actually interesting enough for me to care about doing. What I didn’t quite get all the way was the investing and trading of stocks but I wouldn’t really say I was left with unanswered questions. 

During whatever career I end up having in the future I just worry that I wont be the most financially literate and aware and that I might make a mistake at some point. To fix this I’m going to just suck it up and do my research no matter how boring I might find it. 

Over all this was a very fun project and made the learning enjoyable to do and it also provided me with skills I can use in the future and for that I am thankful. 

Ology of that apology

How can we keep an apology alive so the wrongs of the past are remembered and not repeated today? Well that was the driving question for the most recent humanities 10 project I did. 

We studied a few of the wrongdoings of Canada’s past and were each assigned one to design and create a memorial for. I got assigned the Chinese head tax and with my group re created a memorial for the event that lasted between 1885 and 1923. 

This was a fun project and although sad at some times I also enjoyed learning about the history of these events. One thing we did right after getting our topic assigned was create a smart brevity note on the topic and I think my smart brevity skills have come quite a far way since we first started them. Going forward I would probably try to follow less of a formula and try to use different axioms. 

Canadas Price on Chinese belonging

The actual creation and design of my memorial model was a bit chaotic and so there weren’t really any blueprints just more verbal plans and some drawings that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me and my group. Regardless I would say it came out well and it gas voted the best in one of three categories I just can’t quite remember which one. I have a photo of It though! Going forward I think the creative skills I developed some more will be helpful in the future in similar projects and life overall.

We keep an apology alive by actively remembering, educating others, and creating spaces like memorials where history is acknowledged instead of forgotten.

This project was a good sendoff to spring break despite the sad topics and I actually enjoyed it and I hope to do more like it In the future.

mPOL 2025

mPOL 2025 

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.

Yet again were doing this a little past halfway through the year but lets reflect on this 5/8 of the year!

The first project of the year (as you can imagine) was not my best work of grade 10. Entitled “the world needs more Canada” we had to create a multi paragraph composition which is essentially an essay with a different name. Although not being bad work by any means the first project after summer break ends is always going to be slightly sub-par (for me at least.) Sometimes you just need to ease into the school year, ya know? If I were to re-do it I would probably just try to make it sound more professional. I find that a lot of my writing has a conversational aspect to it and sometimes its just not the place for it and I need to really keep that in mind when I’m writing something important and professional. Below is a link to the multi paragraph composition but we haven’t really done any essays since so I don’t have much to compare it to. 

Why the world needs more Canada essay

My favourite project of the year this far is “swipe right for tragedy” which is the Romeo and Juliet modern parody project we just recently completed and It also is a good demonstration of my attempted academic comeback. There wasn’t too much actual learning “evidence” from this project because a big portion was reading the play and the other part was writing the parody but regardless I can still reflect on it. I have really tried to lock-in so to speak when it comes to my school work and the old me would’ve probably just looked up a summary of the play but I actually did the reading and I almost enjoyed it too! The creation of the parody was the most fun I have had at school in a while and I really liked doing it. The worst part of this project is the fact that I wasn’t there for the actual presentation of the play because I was very sick. Other than the part that I missed the day that the whole project was working towards it was awesome! 

I think that in the past my work has always been just kinda there in the way that it just wasn’t very interesting and tedious to read or watch. This year I have really tried to care about my work even if I’m not interested in or passionate about the topic and I think it’s showing a little bit. As I look back at things like my podcast about why the world needs more Canada or my business card I notice that Im getting better with every project instead of kinda just saying in place like I was in grade 9. This is of course not to say that I don’t have good and bad moments and that every single piece of work is better than the last but just the overall all quality seems to be increasing. As an example of that I would like to compare my WW2 essay to the Louie Reil essay I did at the end of grade 9. 

Ww2 essay

Louis riel multi-paragraph composition

Mentor for a day was the careers project I just did before the one I am currently on and I am proud of the work I did for it. The point of the project was to shadow and interview someone who has a job you are interested in and I chose firefighting because that is something I can definitely see myself doing. Although I couldn’t shadow a firefighter for a full day I still got a tour of the fire station and an interview which was just as great. I think my work was pretty solid across the board for this project, we did a smart brevity note that I am pretty content with and the audio reflection I made is definitely the best audio I have created for a project thus far. It’s a lot easier for me (for everyone I’m sure) to put out better work if I’m actually interested in or intrigued by a topic for a project and since I literally got to choose what career to write about my work came out pretty good. I think the smart brevity was professional and clear and the audio reflection didn’t actually hurt my ears to listen back to. Linked below are both the smart brevity not and the audio reflection 

Firefighting smart brevity 

How can I continue to grow in my collaboration with others? I personally don’t mind working with others, in fact I even prefer it sometimes. I feel for the most part I’m a pretty easy person to work with and I try to listen to others’ ideas even if I don’t necessarily agree with them but we can all improve, nobody’s perfect. Going forward I would like to maybe give my trust that my team members will do there part a bit more because sometimes I can get annoying by constantly bringing it up until they do it.

Well this year (so far) has definitely been a learning journey and I (almost) can’t wait for to see what the rest of the year has in store academically for me!  

Destination Imagination- regional tournament reflection.

Have you ever had to build a machine that climbs up a rope for no particular reason? Well I hadn’t either until a few weeks ago when I got assigned the engineering challenge for destination imagination. Now that the regional tournament has come and gone its time to reflect and think forward about the provincial tournament coming up in April. 

In the beginning we were lost, my team and I had no idea how we were going to create something that followed the rules of the challenge because we weren’t even fully sure what the rules were AFTER reading all of them. To be honest my teammate Caelum did most of the building of the machine itself with design ideas from the team but the physical creation and most design was by him. Once we had a finished product the first time we realized it didn’t fit the rules and had to re-build the way it connected to the wire it was supposed to climb. One of the other engineering challenge groups built a replica of the wire setup and we were able to test out our machine that way. Getting the final machine to work was probably one of the less challenging aspects of DI compared to the other stuff. 

Our story was a really strange poorly formed idea in the beginning but through talking about it as a group a proper story started to form. Our challenge required the story to be about a circus so obviously we had to include that in our story. We settled on the idea that circus performers down on their luck in desperate need of money were going to steal a diamond from robbers that had just previously stolen the diamond from some transport trucks. Sadly I have no idea what the appraisers and audience thought of our story because during the performance some of my teammates broke out in laughter and we couldn’t finish the performance. I think if we got through the whole story calmly and composed it would’ve been a big hit. 

This years DI couldn’t have been more different than the grade 9 one for me. I wasn’t able to make it to the tournaments in grade 9 so I had no idea what I was in for but that honestly wasn’t the biggest difference. Last year We had a lot more time to prepare but a lot less class time to work on it. I spent a lot of days after school working on our solution last year but this year I was un available to meet up outside of class for the most part. I honestly don’t even know how it really turned out for us last year but this year I feel like I contributed more than just doing whatever my teammates told me too like I did last year.. 

Being one of the grade 10’s on the team since we had done it before we were expected to fill in the leadership role of of the group and I feel like in some situations I definitely did that. During our presentation the appraisers didn’t set one part up right so our machine broke mid performance and I had to fix it whilst we were preforming. I also had to explain how the machine worked to the person in my group who was going to use it. Although not leading too much I still think I demonstrated leadership a bit. 

DI was certainly an experience and its not over yet! See you soon when I have to write one of these after the provincial tournament. 

Mentor for a day- reflection post.

How can learning from others career journeys help shape our own? Well i mean it took me about five weeks to figure out so lets see how quickly I can explain it to you. 

The whole point of this project was to shadow someone in a profession you are interested in for a day and conduct an interview to find out more about the job than you learned in your research. I actually found this project quite useful and helped me decide if firefighting which I was already interested in could possibly be the career for me. 

This project was pretty straightforward forward and that I liked about it but at the same time finding someone to shadow was in my opinion and many other’s (at least I think) the hardest part of the project, in fact I didn’t confirm my interview until the first draft of the podcast was already due. Regardless I think the majority of this Project was still pretty good. 

After we chose the profession to shadow we had to write a smart brevity note on said profession so that if we didn’t already know anything we wouldn’t be going in with no base knowledge. It was nothing new because we’ve done smart brevity before but it was still useful to help understand more about firefighting. If you’re interested the smart brevity on firefighting is right below this paragraph.

https://carrots-show-toc.craft.me/zPU3rHnyzKIp4E

One skill that defiantly improved during this project is my professional formality which I had to use to write an email to my “mentor” asking for the interview. Actually talking to someone in person has never really been hard for me but reaching out through email I am absolutely awful at it because I just really haven’t had to do it much. Those skills will come in handy especially when applying for jobs. 

The end product was a “audio reflection” NOT a podcast. Im kidding, it was pretty much a podcast but it didn’t have multiple episode so we weren’t allowed to call it that. We have done lots of podcasts things in the past six months so it wasn’t much out of the ordinary but compared to the others this one had significantly more of the interview Instead of one sentence snippets. My garage band skills have developed even more this project but there is only so much garage band you can learn. The script on the other hand did help with my writing skills a bit. We write a lot of scripts but every time they get a bit better so I see the appeal although I do find them tedious. The podcast is right below if you would like to listen!

I know I said that the podcast would be linked below but I don’t actually have access to it yet so maybe come back soon! 

How can learning from other career journeys help shape our own? We can learn from others career journeys by listening to their stories and applying their lessons to our own lives, at least that’s what I got from this project. 

This project really helped with my communication skills among other things and for that I’m grateful. Im not trying to leave you with a boring goodbye but thanks for reading and come back soon!   

Swipe right for reflection

Was this project on Romeo and Juliet “to be, or not to be” well, lets find out. I would just like to start by saying i know that quote is not from Romeo and Juliet but I thought since it was a pretty famous Shakespeare line it would work just fine. 

The most recent project in my Humanities 10 class was entitled “swipe right for tragedy” and it focused on Romeo and Juliet. For the project we read the play and then created a modern parody that tied into our local community. It was a really fun project that gave us (the students) mostly total control over the final product and I’d say it came out pretty well. 

The thing we did for most of the project is read the play witch I thought would get boring but we started acting it out and that made it fun. We had comprehension tests to make sure we were actually doing the reading we were supposed to and they were kinda annoying but I get why we had to do them, it would be very hard to create a parody if no one knew the original. We also had a few small writing activities about the traits of the characters but those weren’t too bad. 

After we read the play we pretty much right away got into groups and started writing the parody. I was in the group assigned to act 5 (that was the one I wanted) and this was my favourite part of the project. Writing the script and coming up with other elements of our play was very fun and although I usually don’t like Plays and drama I thought it was really fun. Speaking in front of people has never really been a problem for me but speaking smooth with rhythm is something I do struggle with and I think this project definitely helped. Going forward I will definitely be using these skills, especially with the amount of presenting we do in PLP. 

This might be my favourite project of grade 10 so far and I’m actually sad its over but I’m exited to use the skills I learned in the future. And with that “bid me farewell” (also a Shakespeare reference not from Romeo and Juliet.) 

WW2, Canadian Identity, and… my reflection😬

What role did the conflict of World War Two play in shaping Canadian identity? Well it… actually.. we will talk about that in a little bit. 

For our most recent humanities project we focused on Juno Beach witch was the beach the Canadian soldiers fought on while the Americans were at Omaha during the battle of Normandy. To honor the Canadians who fought there the Juno beach centre was created. A few years back a French developer tried to buy that area and  he was going to get rid of the centre. Luckily that is no longer but it shows us what could happen and the fact that so many people were outraged shows us just how many people are and were effected by World War Two. 

I thought that the entire project was very interesting and I definitely had fun learning more about the war but i do understand that it is not for everybody, especially some of the more graphic details of the atrocities that happened. I thought for the most part that the work I created was pretty good and something I could be proud of. I do have to admit that the smart brevity note I made was not entirely correct and there is always room to improve everything but the most room to improve was definitely that note. 

Smart brevity- the economy and the advancement of tech 

The main thing we made was a “Zine” full of an easily consumable and visually appealing version of the essays we wrote. Mine was definitely a struggle to finish, I was having serious trouble getting the formatting to work and then I went away for two weeks and did have access to the Zine but I’m happy to say it has finally been completed! I was frustrated by that but I’m proud of the work I put forward. I thought the idea of the Zine was very interesting and a cool thing to do for this project. 

(Zine yet to come)

What role did the conflict of World War Two play in shaping Canadian identity? World War II shaped Canadian identity by fostering a sense of unity, strengthening its global reputation, and instilling confidence in its independence through shared sacrifices both on the battlefield and at home. World War Two had horrible atrocities but in that way it was good for Canada and my essay talks more about that. 

Ww2 essay 

This project was my favourite one thus far and I really enjoyed learning about how my country contributed to the war. Although there were some difficulties I still am proud of the work I made and hope to do more projects like this in the future! 

 

T-POL 2024

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. 

Success behaviours. To be a successful learner you must demonstrate the behaviours required to learn, I would like to touch on a few of the behaviours think I believe I have improved on and that demonstrate my learning. 

Agency: ownership and responsibility. One of the things that has been listed on my report card ever since I can remember is always something along the lines of Max needs to stay on task or Max needs to talk less in class. While I agree that I can get off task and talk sometimes, I think I have been improving on taking responsibility for my learning. I still need reminders sometimes to stay on task but for the most part I’m improving. 

Self regulation: Balance. Balancing your school work with a social life and sports is in my opinion one of the keys to academic success. I can’t speak for anyone else but if I had only school work and no sports and no social life I would go crazy. This is one thing that I haven’t improved in but I definitely should. Sometimes I can spend a little to much of my time on the social life part of the equation and that leads to sometimes doing projects last minuet but for the most part I think I have a pretty balanced life. 

Engagement: Contributions. I’d like to believe that I participate often, sometimes I may need a shove. One thing I would like to improve on is not needing prompts to write good work. It’s not that I don’t try but if its free reign with no prompts or examples I can’t choose because there are to many options and I dont know witch is the closest to correct. That’s something I would like to focus on in grade 10. 

Since September of late year we have done a lot of projects, some I was more fond of than others. All the projects had one thing in common, work. Now I know that’s obvious but that’s not really what I mean. All the projects across all the classes have work submitted by me or a group member that can be reflected on to better my work for the upcoming school year. 

The first project I want to look back on is Rocky Mountain High, that’s the project we traveled to Alberta doing. The main goal of Rocky Mountain High was to learn about Canadian history through the CPR (Canadian pacific railway.) To wrap up the project/trip we made a book that had elements from each location we stoped at. Reading back over this book it was just so bland. Imagine if an unsalted cracker had a personality, that’s who wrote it. The book gave me an understanding of what was written it just made me almost fall asleep from boredom. I think I can learn and improve from this by trying to make a personal connection to the learning so that it seems like a human with emotions wrote it. Below is an example of writing from the book.

I’d also like to demonstrate a project I am proud of to show that not everything I’ve made this year needs to be 100% changed. For the spring exhibition that happened just last Thursday we made a WW1 comic book as the finale to a project titled WWI Con – The Great War Graphically Told. I have always had an interest in the world wars and during this project I have learned more about the negative and positive impacts of the war. Although the comic book took so much time it wasn’t as tedious as I thought it would be, since I was passionate about the topic I had lost of fun storyboarding, writing, and illustrating the comic. I also think that a historical fiction comic would be the perfect way to educate someone who may not be able to handle paragraphs upon paragraphs of information. I think this project displays my growth as a learner quite well, during my m-POL I talked about getting my work in on time, good quality, and work that meets the criteria and for this project I ticked all the box’s. below is the comic itself. 

WW1 Comic

One of the things I would definitely change is my final submission for the CHEMhistory project we did in science class. The project was about the history of the elements on the periodic table. My element was lead and for the final piece of work we were supposed to make a drawing of something that symbolizes our elements. My element being lead the first thing I thought of was a pencil and so that’s what I drew. I could’ve drawn a battle scene using lead bullets or lead pipes witches caused many deaths due to lead tainted water. If you were to think of the bare minimum and then go 15x barer that’s what my work would’ve been. I think I could’ve made this project better in so many ways and going into science next year even though its not a PLP course I’m going to remember this anytime my work isn’t up to par. Below is the drawing 

 

I think near the start of grade nine I had not a horrible work ethic but it wasn’t great either. I got most of my work done on time but I would still prioritize social activities before school work. Now in the present at the end of the year one thing that has been on my mind is that grade 10 is when your grades start to count, not that you shouldn’t try up until then but its when they get taken more seriously. Realizing that has made me start prioritizing my work a little more and making sure im prepared for the year to come. 

My learning portfolio. As I look back at some of my blog posts from the start of the year they are a big improvement from grade 8 but still lack in certain areas. I feel that they have a lot more emotion than the ones from before but they could either be longer or get more into detail and be less of a stream of consciousness. Some newer posts like my m-POL and my rise of the frankenstuffies project post are full of detail about the project and also where it applies what I can learn and take away from the project besides the project material. (E.g. I learned from the WW1 comic project graphic deign skills not just about WW1.) Below are the posts from the beginning of the year and some recent ones to compare.

Recent post-

Rise of the Frankenstuffies

Old post-

The moving image.

Destination Imagination. DI Is a hands-on program where students lead projects and learn to solve problems creatively. Students work in teams to come up with unique solutions to seven different challenges, getting ready for a fun problem-solving competition. DI this year took place at Seycove and I competed in the technical challenge with a group of peers. Our challenge was to make a pinball machine. There was two competitions that took place although I had unfortunately scheduled events so I was unable to attend to preform with my group. Even though I couldn’t make it to the preforming I learned a lot from the building of our machine. As a group we had to overcome challenges together and settle disagreements within our group and those will be skills I use for ever in the future.   

I think grade 9 has left me with lots to reflect on and to learn from and I think im going to be quite prepared for grade 10 because of this, and so ill leave you with a quote from Phineas and Ferb “The only thing that is impossible is impossibility” – Phineas. 

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