This is a list of goals I have moving into high school, from the Teen Wellness Compass.
Goals (For all different aspects of the compass):
Organization: I juggle school, friends, family, and other obligations in a healthy way.
Stress Resilience: I am satisfied with the way I handle stress, handling it in healthy ways rather than engaging in self-destructive habits to cope.
Healthy Relationships: I am satisfied with the amount of time I spend. with the important people in my life.
Rest and Play: I have at least 1 hobby or interest that renews me, and I take intentional time for it on a regular basis. (Picking up the guitar!)
Handling Emotions: I have a solid and healthy sense of confidence in myself.
Spirituality: I have a clear sense of meaning and purpose in my life.
School and Work: I am satisfied with the way I pay attention, participate, and prepare homework for my classes, extracurriculars, volunteer work, or job.
Care for the Body: I am satisfied with the amount of exercise I get on a regular basis.
This post will be a reflection of my learning in Unit 2 about mental health.
Previous understanding/beliefs.
I used to think that the whole concept of mental health was just about being depressed or happy. I didn’t know there was a lot of different variations. I didn’t know what bipolar disorder was before. I also thought that some of how the media portrayed these mental disorders were actually true (I was uneducated on the wide spectrum of mental health before and didn’t know).
I didn’t know there was such a huge variety of things that fit under “mental health” and I thought you could easily tell if someone has a mental health condition.
How my thinking has changed
But now I think that the media doesn’t portray mental illnesses very well, and sometimes, couldn’t be further from the truth like OCD. A movie called In Trap portrayed someone with OCD as being clean by being a serial killer, which I learnt from the research conducted in the graphic organiser. My perspective has shifted and I realize some of these mental illnesses are actually very hard to deal with, like Schizophrenia or eating disorders.
And what really blew me away and opened my eyes to the topic was that for some of the symptoms of each mental disorder actually look perfectly normal. That’s what scares me the most. This also reinforces how much asking for help can really help.
Here are some artifacts from the unit to demonstrate my learning:
The approaching on preparation for assignments would turn into a meeting. My 3-for-3s are a lot more consistent with 3s.
The demonstrating persistence and positivity part would be an exceeding, as I put in a huge amount of extra work in science assignments.
The contributes to class/ group member area would also be exceeding as one of my strengths is collaboration.
An area of growth: CERs. Although I have improved in them a lot, I believe I still need some work to fully master them.
Evidence of Understanding of Key concepts.
3-for-3s.
This is a screenshot of my past 3-for-3s. These display all 2s showing I missed understanding in a tiny key concept.
Now, this is my 3-for-3s in semester 2. I show more consistency of understanding key concepts than in the beginning of the year.
Evidence of Growth in Science Skills
Standard 1: Developing and Using Models
Standard 2: Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
Standard 3: Engaging in Argument from Evidence (CER)
Standard 4: Asking Questions and Defining Problems
Standard 5: Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking
Standard 6: Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information
These are all of the science standards. Artifacts for growth will be shown in standard 3.
Engaging in Argument from evidence:
(First image shows my grades from the past going up each time writing a new CER)
(2nd image shows my improvement on only keeping evidence in the evidence section.)
Strengths
-Modeling (a HUGE one!) (Artifact below)
(This is a screenshot of my natural selection simulation, made using Scratch.) The image wasn’t loading on my end when I made it so i’ll have to see if it’s actually there.
-Group Collaboration
-Critical Thinker challenges.
Weaknesses
-Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
In the duration of the net and wall PE unit I displayed significant improvement in badminton and pickleball.
My main strength that was improved upon was my agility and footwork within the confines of this unit. I felt that this helped me overall become a player that displays gameplay of a higher level in net and wall sports.
One improvement I could make is I need to refine my technique a bit more if I wish to display mastery. I don’t render all of my serves to be successful, but this could be improved by making an effort to practice these skills in order to make myself a better player. This was present in both badminton and pickleball.
This unit in health I have learnt about how the brain works when dealing with stress, to make a final product in the end about a habit I wanted to improve on. In the unit, I have learnt about parts of the teenage brain, why adolescence is a crucial time for mental development, and how to deal with stress in relations to how the brain works. I had to develop a WOOP goal (which is an acronym for wish, outcome, obstacles, and plan.) about a habit and show evidence of working towards that goal. I also learnt about techniques for regulating emotions like the meta-moment (where you envision what your best self would do) and the breath anchor (finding the sensation where your breath is felt most and focusing on that.)
My goal was to drink more water throughout the day, and I used an app to help track how much water I drank. The final product of my whole journey will be shown here:
(my favorite feature is the custom notifications which I used a little bit)
In Art, I made a mixed media self portrait, which is where different mediums and materials are used to make 1 artwork. Mine included spray painting on a canvas, collaging, and digital art as well as the use of paint pens. I will show all the planing and the artwork Here’s they are:
Audience Insight: What key message do you want your audience to understand about you as they view your artwork? How did you communicate this message?
I want my artwork to communicate certain personality traits. In the artwork I communicate who I am. I do this in ways like using the light bulb to indicate I have a bright mind, and the brain symbol to show that I am very thoughtful. One of the other symbols I used was “∃!” which is a symbol in mathematics that represents uniqueness. (I also like math so that works out).
Risk and Experimentation: During the creation of your artwork, how did you take risks and experiment in order to effectively express your intended message?
Definitely! At first, I was really unsure about what color scheme I wanted to use. I just tried the black and gold, which worked out REALLY well!
At some points as well, I thought I was done, but figured out I could keep adding certain stuff to make it look better. I am happy with my final result!
This is a reflection about the DT tissue box unit that I had.
In the unit, we were assigned an aesthetic choice and were challenged to make a tissue box inspired by that design aesthetic. I was given cubism as my design movement and made my tissue box around that.
The process included the full range of design thinking, from prototyping, to the final product, it included everything.
We had access to Vex Robotics competition-standard equipment and were tasked with 3 challenges. We had to take a standard base bot and build it for the following 3 challenges.
Speed challenge: We had to design the fastest robot we could that via a controller could be raced around the classroom. I learnt about the concept of gear ratios and utilized them to attempt to make my robot faster (but failed and made my robot drive backwards.) Gear ratios were new to me. We were still a little bit successful.
2. The Autonomous test
Basically the speed test but there wasn’t a controller. A bumper was utilized and the code was written so when we hit a wall, the robot would turn around automatically and go the other way. Our robot didn’t work that well and for some reason the code wasn’t working.
3. The Stack Test
We had to build a claw on our robot that enabled it to stack blocks, and the more blocks we stacked, the more points we got.
