I just finished my second ever PLP science project and it was just as good as the last one (Link to it here) if not better! For this project, we started by looking at objects and learning about their chemical and physical properties and making qualitative and quantitative observations about them. I learned how to use a triple beam balance (Check one out here) and user rulers to measure the size. I learnt the method to find the density (Mass X Volume = Density) of items. Then I found an object in the classroom that I used some of these strategies to describe. Can you guess what it is?

Mass: 65.765g (Quantitive)

Volume: 62.146cm³ (Quantitive)

Density: 1.058g/cm³ (Quantitive)

It is cylindrical. (Qualitative)

It has a big hole through the middle. (Qualitative) 

It’s a light brown-ish colour. (Qualitative)

It’s flammable. (Qualitative)

After my friends tried and failed to guess it (Are you better than them?), I learnt about different states of matter and how they change from one to another. I learnt about the kinetic molecular theory with this super cool website (?). Then I was ready to do a science experiment! I worked with Sidney (Link to his blog here) to design and execute our experiment.  We wanted to see how/if the type of liquid (Carbonated vs non-carbonated) makes a difference when diffusing a sugar free or regular gummy bear. Here is the slideshow we made.

The observations are a bit small, so you can read them here.

And onto the third and final portion (Not including writing this) of this project (And the funnest portion!). I learnt about atoms and their structure. 

Just remember:

Oops, i got carried away 🤪. So the final portion of this project is…

That’s right. I coded my own video game on scratch! My game is a obstacle course, but you, the player is a ice cube and you can change the temperature to become water, or gas as well! You can play it right here right now! Instructions are on the right side of the screen. See you there! 

Since the start of February, most of our classes have changed. For example, instead of maker, I now have science until the end of the year. In science, we just finished our first project, Small but mighty. For this project, we started by learning about cells and cellular organisms. I looked at many different things including dirty water, a dead moth’s wing, eraser shavings and more through microscopes and observed cells splitting and duplicating. Here are some pictures I took:

Water: (It’s way dirtier that I expected!)

Moth wing: (Woah! That’s a very cool pattern!)

Eraser shaving: (Looks like a… Cloud?)

Cell duplication: (The pink circle is 1 cell. The purple ones have both split, one into 2 pieces, and the other into 4 pieces.)

After that, I hypothesized that things we touch often will have more bacteria than things that rarely get touched, and I predicted that a doorknob would have more bacteria than a wall. I swabbed a doorknob and a wall and rubbed them on a substance called agar (A gelatinous substance used to grow bacteria.) in a Petri dish. I waited 7 days to compare the bacteria that had grown from the doorknob and the wall. The results? It turns out (Drum roll please)… I was right! There was more visible bacteria on the doorknob side than the wall side! The doorknob, however, didn’t grow nearly as much bacteria as I expected, or as much other people in my class who I used a doorknob. I think the reason for this is that I chose a doorknob that doesn’t get used as often as some others. here are the results: 

Next we learnt about the immune system and it’s components. I made character cards for each type of cell (And antibody) in the adaptive immune system. I used Pokémon as a base for my drawings, and I made puns out of their names. For some Pokémon, I tweaked their appearances to suit their cell more, for example the white blood cell (White blood CELLebi) had to be white of course. For others, I made up descriptions that make sense based on the Pokémon’s appearance and the cells. My personal favourite is the T-CELLesteela, which also happens to be based on one of my favourite Pokémon, Celesteela. 

We then learnt about vaccines, and how all four different types of vaccines work. An inactivated vaccine has a dead or inactivated virus that, when entered into the bloodstream, triggers the immune system just like how a activated virus would, giving the body a training session against that type of virus. A live attenuated vaccine works exactly the same as as inactivated vaccine, but the virus is weakened instead of killed. A subunit vaccine has small pieces of the virus, but they’re big enough to trigger the immune system, just like the previous two. mRNA Vaccines contain the DNA of the virus which, when injected, will be created by a ribosome inside of the cells, and that will trigger the immune system. I made a public health infographic with help from my friend Finn (Go check his blog out as well!) talking about a common reason why people might not want to get a vaccine. 

To finish this project, I made a public health poster for kids. My poster will likely be put in a North Vancouver elementary school (sd44/nvsd). I used drawings done by students at Eastview Elementary (An elementary school in sd44). 

Overall, I think this was a great way to start science, and I hope that the rest of the year will be just as good. 

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.

So what is a MPOL? 

A MPOL is a mid-year presentation of learning. In these MPOLs, students showcase their learning using work we’ve done so far this year. They demonstrate opportunities we have to progress as a learner for the rest of the year. MPOLs usually occur in late January and are student lead conferences between the student, a teacher, the parents, and sometimes more guests. 

Avatar- My most proud project in Maker so far.

For the project I did on Avatar, I had to make a box/artifact representing our chosen theme statement from the movie. The theme statement I chose was based on the ‘conflict between humans and nature’ and was “Too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

To represent my theme statement, I wanted to show the balance of the natural world. On one half of my box, I painted a forest and used real foliage to make the trees. The Mother Tree from Avatar is sticking up over the top. The other half of my box is a giant bulldozer. I put a balance scale on top of my box. On the scale, there used to be two trees, one on either side, and it would have been perfectly balanced. But, a bulldozer came and knocked one of the trees over, and off of the scale, unbalancing the whole thing. This shows how too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

I’m most proud of this project because I’ve never done anything like it before, and I think it turned out well. I’ve never presented my work to anyone other than my teachers and peers, so this was a big change for me. 

BLJ- My least proud project in Maker so far.

The big life journal was essentially a big worksheet on my IPad. It was asking about my goals, my dreams, my mindset and much more. I’ve never liked things like this because it’s hard for me to think into the future. My answers ended up not as thoughtful or deep as they could have been. 

The Outsiders- My least proud project in humanities so far.

Way back in September, I did a project on the book “The Outsiders”. I read the book two chapters at a time, doing small assignments related to the book at each interval. I’ve always been a slow reader and have never liked novel studies, so therefore, I found this assignment very challenging. I definitely think I could do it better next time, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it again. 

The Renaissance- My most proud project in humanities so far.  

I just finished a project on the Renaissance in which I made a triptych featuring me and some innovations from the Renaissance. A triptych is an art piece with three panels. On the left side, I am in the Renaissance with some of the new things that were created in that time period. In the middle was me with what those ideas became. And on the right, I am with the ideas that they used before the Renaissance. I am proud of this because I had no idea how it would turn out and I think it was great. 

Did all of my work meet my standards?

Almost all of my work was up to my standards so far. Only two things at the start of the year didn’t. My least proud project of each subject was the first one I did in each, the BLJ and the Outsiders, which are the only two that were below my standards. Being the very start of PLP and high school altogether, I guess I just wasn’t quite ready for the jump. 

For the rest of this year I want to…

I want to improve my note taking skills. I usually struggle to pick out useful information, especially when it’s being read to me, and can’t be paused (I don’t want to miss something important while taking a note!). My goal is to listen and read with the assignment in mind. 

I also want to get better at breaking big projects down into small pieces. I can find projects overwhelming, and tend to procrastinate as a result.  This will be a big challenge for me next semester, but hopefully I’m up to the challenge!

To make my triptych, I used a combination of many apps on my IPad, including Keynote, and Superimpose X. I used Superimpose X to edit my face into historical paintings and I used Keynote to put everything together.

To make this triptych, I had to learn about the Renaissance and the innovations from that time period. This wasn’t too hard, because we had a pretty good source as a classroom resource. We also had to look up some external sources. We learned how to do some fact checking, which started quite tough, must became easier.

By far, my biggest takeaway from this project was learning how to fact check. My life will be way easier from now on!

What do you think?

This is a book that I made using pictures I drew in Maker recently. I learned about a lot of cool tools in Sketches Pro. I learned about symmetry lines, different brushes, the fill tool, layers, and the airbrush tool. I also learned about colours, shapes, and lines. I think the picture look great and I put them all here for you to see!

In PLP, we just had our first exhibition of the year, and my first exhibition ever!

The grade 8s had to make a box/artifact representing our chosen theme statement from the movie “Avatar”. The theme statement I chose was based on the ‘conflict between humans and nature’ and was “Too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

To represent my theme statement, I wanted to show the balance of the natural world. On one half of my box, I painted a forest and used real foliage to make the trees. The Mother Tree from Avatar is sticking up over the top. The other half of my box is a giant bulldozer. I put a balance scale on top of my box. On the scale, there used to be two trees, one on either side, and it would have been perfectly balanced. But, a bulldozer came and knocked one of the trees over, and off of the scale, unbalancing the whole thing. This shows how too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

Overall, I thought the exhibition went smoothly. Building the box was fun, and it helped me reflect on the importance of the themes in the movie. I was proud of the work I did and enjoyed showing it off to my friends and family. It was also nice to see what some of my peers did for this project.

I found the presentation kind of difficult, but I think I can keep working to improve my presenting skills. It was quite hard to stand for the entire setup process and presentation (Almost 5 hours straight) and giving my legs a bit of a break would have been much appreciated.

How might I use the still image to create and communicate through technology?

I can use a picture to show an emotion or tell a story. A picture can add impact to important points and make things more interesting and engaging. 

The 3 skills that I found most important are 

• the timer – It allows me to take a include myself in a picture.
• the lighting – It allows me to adjust the mood and/or emotion in a picture.  
• being able to move part of an image onto another. – It lefts me tell a story and make a more interesting and engaging image. 

Here are some photos I took using some of these skills.

Who am I as a PLP learner?

Today in Maker, we are making our first blog post to answer this question. To do so, I’m going to describe some work that we have done in Maker so far this year. It’s only been two months, but we’ve done a lot.  So let’s dive in!

The first project I’m going to write about is the ‘I am’ WordPack that we made. We wrote down a list of thing that can finish the statement ‘I am’ and then we put it into WordPack (An app that makes a shape out of a list of words). For this project, I had to really think hard about who I am.  I found that my identity is related to my family, the sports I play, my hobbies, and more.

For our next project, we made a user manual for ourselves. It is structured and formatted like a product user guide. I wrote a lot of information about myself. We had to write under titles including Product guide, Getting started, Accessibility, Settings, Warnings Troubleshooting, and Tips to maintain optimal performance. 

Meanwhile, we’ve done many projects in our Big Life Journal. Some of those include our Dreamboard, our Bucket list and our YouTube channel.  These projects show who I want to be or what I want to do in the future. I wouldn’t have thought so much about my future without these projects. Some thing that I put on my dreamboard is that I want to learn to play the piano, I want to get into university, and I want to do robotics. 

Last but not least, I’m going to write about the Laptop Memoji that we did. For this project, we had to make a Memoji to resemble ourselves and use the Memoji with a laptop. We then added ‘stickers’ onto the laptop that are meaningful to us. The stickers that I put on my laptop show different things about me. Pie is my favourite dessert, I play the electric bass guitar, I play hockey.

Welcome to my first blog post.

In Maker today, Thursday October 20th, 2022 the grade 8’s learnt about our blog posts! From now on, you can expect frequent new posts about PLP.  In Humanities, we are on the home stretch on our ‘From the Outside(rs) looking in project.