Hello Teachers and parents, and welcome to my Mid Year Presentation of Learning. 

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for 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.

First, I’m going to talk about my growth in Humanities. 

Humanities:

So far this year, we’ve completed three humanities projects: People and the Environment, which was a project about writing letters to government officials/organizations, that were about an issue that was important to us. Revolutions on Trial, which was a project about researching revolutions. In this project we had “mock trials” for each revolution. I was in the Xinhai group. And most recently, Working with Words, which was about writing poetry that showed who we were right now.

Some of my strengths in Humanities are being a leader, and staying on track with the work that is assigned, I don’t think I’ve had a single late hand in all year. Moreover, I think there’s room for improvement. For example, one of my goals for next semester is to improve the structure of my blog posts. I could accomplish this by adding more media, and by being more descriptive in my posts. 

To be able to reach these goals I need self-support. I have to be confident and I have to push myself to succeed. I also have to take it upon myself to improve, I could do this by asking others or researching.

To give you a better idea of what I need to work on, I’m going to talk about the skills that I want to develop this year. Like I mentioned earlier, I want to improve on my blog posts. I could do this by being more descriptive, and by enhancing my posts with media and links.

Furthermore, I think I could improve my technology skills. I could do this by exploring more apps, and by watching tutorials. I think accomplishing this goal would really help with my learning, especially in Maker. 

Another one of my goals for next semester is to achieve an extending in humanities. I could do this by “thinking outside the box” in certain aspects. For example, in extending work that I’ve seen, there’s always a unique part of that piece of work. So I think if I put that extra bit of effort in, my grades will improve. 

Also, I think I need to work on my communication skills. During the semester, there have been times where communication was lacking in group projects. Achieving this skill would improve the work that my group puts out to the world. 

There were also times where I felt dissatisfied during the process of group projects. For example, if the workload was put onto one person, or if people were off task.  

Now I’m going to talk about my growth in Scimatics.

Scimatics:

In Scimatics we’ve completed three projects. Game of Exponent Laws, which was a project about math, and creating a math game that included exponents. Correlation vs. Causation, which was a project about creating graphs that demonstrated multiple factors. Chemistry Stories, which was about creating a animation that demonstrated the covalent and ionic bonding processes. 

My strengths in Scimatics are communicating ideas well. For example, I do well in class presentations, and explaining my ideas when called upon in class. However, I could improve my math skills in this class. In the Game of exponent laws project, I felt as though it took me longer than most to understand concepts. Also, I felt behind in the project, cause I didn’t fully understand the concepts. I could improve my math skills by watching YouTube videos, or by asking Mr. Gross. 

In science, I think I need to improve my “Processing and Analyzing”. For example, in the “Chemistry Stories” project I didn’t explain the “covalent bonding process well. To improve upon this skill I need to understand the concepts better. Again, I could do this by watching videos, and by reading the science textbook more throughly. 

Like in Humanities, I think I need to work on communication skills. For example, there was a time during the “Game of exponent laws project” where the communication between my partner and I was lacking. It was a weekend and I didn’t know that we were supposed to do anything for homework. And on Monday, my partner pulls up with these nice paper mache towers, (for our game board). It just made me feel bad cause I coulda made some as well, its a group project for a reason!!

Now I’m going to talk about my Dispositions, Habits, and Systems. 

Dispositions, Habits, and Systems:

In my mind, a good disposition is where someone wants to change for the better and someone that puts in the extra work. To add, this person believes in themselves and finds the time to work on their goals.

I need to also work on my habits. I need to find the time for meeting my academic goals. I have to find time between my soccer, choir, and other activities. Also, I have to be more productive and take advantage of my work time. Coming to tutorial time is a good idea as well. 

I could develop a homework system that abides by my schedule. Again this includes going to tutorial.

Now I’m going to talk about Maker. 

Maker:

Although we haven’t done Maker yet this year, I think it’s important to mention my goals for Maker coming up. 

The project we have coming up for Maker is called “Destination Imagination”. We did this project last year, however this year it’ll be in person. 

Like in Humanities and Scimatics, communication is a big part of “DI”. The thing about DI is that there’s so many components and keystones, so communication is key. 

Also, having a growth mindset is key in this project. DI is a very demanding project so It can be lots for students. So I think having a positive attitude is key for being successful in this project.

To summarize, I have lots of goals for next semester. These include communication, Processing and Analyzing, growth mindset, and having a positive attitude in any project that I do. I can accomplish this by putting the time in after school, by getting help from teachers, and by developing specific systems. 

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog. Today’s post is about take a kid to work day. Because I explained how my day went in my video, this post will follow what my expectations were, vs. How the day actually went.

I learned many things during this day. For example, I learned about sales, what my parents really do in a day, and to remember which floor the open house is actually on. (Yes I walked into some random dudes house with coffee and muffins). 

My expectations going into this day were sceptical. I knew how much my parents worked and I didn’t want to follow that same job career. However, I learned throughout the day that real estate is a good job in many ways. For example, you can choose your hours, you can also choose your clients. Also, in real estate you make money in bigger quantities less prequently. You could also argue that having your own hours isn’t so good because you don’t have defined breaks and times to eat. 

To summarize, I learned lots on this day. I learned that sales requires social skills, and honesty. I learned lots about real estate, how it works, and whether its right for me. I could see myself becoming a realtor because I’m good with people and I’m honest about things. 

Hi everyone, today I’ll be writing about a project I have recently finished called “Argh Matey”!

This project was all about European exploration and the impact that it had. It was also about pirates, hence the Argh Matey name. 

The driving question in this project was: “What was the impact of global exploration”?

My answer to that is that exploration of the americas impacted the people living there, the foods in Europe (Pizza from tomatoes), and affected humanity as a whole.

This project also included analyzing worldview, which is what our last project was about. To read that post click this link: “How it started How it’s going” Post.

To represent my learning, I will show you guys the milestones/stepping stones that helped me answer the driving question best.  I will also show you the final product to this project. 

Milestone 1 was about analyzing cause and consequence. Cause and consequence is a technique that historians use to examine tragedies and accomplishments from the past. There are underlying causes, immediate causes, and immediate consequences, and long term consequences.

For this milestone we used an app called “AR Makr” to tell a story using the cause and consequence technique. Also, we created one object for our display using keynote to bring our story to life.

Here’s what ARMakr looks like:

The competencies assessed for milestone 1 were Discussing, Listening, and speaking, Analyze Cause and Consequence, and finally Empowered Learner. 

For Discussing, Listening, and speaking, I think that at first I was pretty solid at that competency. However, there’s always room for improvement and I think that I did just that. I did that by being more engaged in lessons, and keeping focus on whoever is speaking.

For Analyze Cause and Consequence, at the beginning I didn’t quite know what I was doing. I got better at this competency by working on it more and by exploring different topics and finding the causes and consequences of those events. Now, I think that I’m pretty good at organizing different ideas into the web.

For Empowered Learner, at first I knew how to use my iPad tool pretty well. However, learning how to better use both ARMakr and Keynote expanded my knowledge more.   

We learned about cause and consequence and drawing in keynote because they ultimately tied in to the final product. This milestone helped me answer the driving question because when we were learning about exploration we used cause and consequence to learn why they explored and what the effect of it was. 

The next thing that helped me answer the driving question was learning about global exploration. This helped because the driving question is based on what the impacts of global exploration were. Throughout these lessons we first learned why the Europeans explored. They explored for the three g’s, Gold, Glory, and God. We also learned lots about Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian Exchange was a period where trade of food, animals, and disease happened between the Europeans and Indigenous peoples.This information was crucial because it was the main piece in the final product.

Finally, the milestone that helped me answer the driving question best was the final milestone/final product. For the final product we first created a web of cause and consequence based around “the age of exploration”:

 I then took those ideas from the web and created a story spine. A story spine is a technique of storytelling that is very commonly used in movies. Soon after, I converted the story spine of ideas and wrote a script about why the Europeans explored and what the causes of that were.

The second step of the final product was creating a ARMakr scene with objects that we created ourselves. Also, the script that I wrote ended up going along with our scene, so I spoke my script while I was moving around my scene. Furthermore, these objects fit with each paragraph I said. We ended up posting our ARMakr scenes as videos to YouTube.

Here’s my Scene:

MY AR VIDEO!

The competencies in the final product were the same as milestone 1. 

To add, at the end of the project we were treated with a pirate pack from White Spot! 

I ordered a hamburger, fries, strawberry ice cream, and a chocolate milk.

We also took our ships that we received and played around with the White Spot app.

Here’s my pirate ship:

In conclusion, I thought that this project was really fun because, well our reward was a pirate pack! I also found it interesting to learn about pirates and exploration, however I found that pirates are portrayed in a fictional way in today’s society. It was also good to learn more about how to use Keynote and ARMakr because using visual/artistic techniques to represent my learning is one of my personal goals.

Thanks for reading today’s blog!