I learnt about dystopian fiction by writing academic paragraphs and discussing topics collaboratively – related to the book: The Giver
What did I learn?
We learnt different vocabulary words, had collaborative discussions and wrote academic paragraphs which included lots of different transition words such as therefore, likewise or similarly.
What worked?
Something that worked well in this unit was the discussions. We had three discussions this unit. The first one, we were assigned group according to our topics and the rest of the two, we picked our own groups. I think we all collaborated well in both groups that I was in and we had a good discussion.
What did not work?
Something I could improve on is understanding some of the dystopian characteristics such as Conformity vs Difference – The tension between societal norms and individual uniqueness. I didn’t quite understand what it meant.
Personal Relevance
Learning this could help me achieve my goals in life since I collaborated with my friends and in the first discussion, I worked with my classmates that I didn’t know very well and when I become older, I would have to work with people I know and people I don’t know well.
We started by an investigation to determine the relationship between potential energy and height. We also built a model of the rollercoaster, took the data, filled in a lab report and wrote a conclusion with a CER and made a video about the rollercoaster.
In this unit, we learnt how to do a legal underhand serve, we also sort of learnt how to bump and a little bit about how a match goes.
What helped?
Something that helped me during this unit is bumping and setting to a few people in a group. This helped me with my collaboration skills and how to control the strength of how I hit the ball
What is something I am proud of?
I am pretty proud of my underhand serving because I improved a lot on this during this unit. At first, I could’t control the ball the I couldn’t serve it over the net but now, I can usually serve it over the net and I can control the strength better too!
What is something I can work on?
I could work more on my controling the direction to where I hit the ball since when I try to hit the ball forwards, it sometimes goes across or in a completely different direction.
I really like this unit of volleyball and I would like to do it again sometime!!
In this unit, we worked on our observations, inferences and wonderings. For this, we looked at images and wrote down what we observed, inferred and what we wondered. We also wrote a CER paragraph. CER stands for Claim Evidence and Reasoning. Lastly, we also worked on asking and answering opened and closed questions to get ready for a mock trial.
What did I learn?
We learnt the that observations are something fact based that we notice or experience through one of the five senses and inferences are what we think based on our observations.
We also learnt how to write a CER paragraph. We must first write a claim (One sentence). A claim is a logical statement to a question based on what we learnt. Then we write the evidence. The evidence is what we use to prove our opinions. Next, we write our reasoning which is something that connects my claim and my evidence. Finally, we write the conclusion which wraps the whole paragraph up.
We also learnt what a opened and closed question is. A opened question is a question that cannot be answered by a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and needs to be a detailed response. And a closed question is a question that needs to be answered by a short answer such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
What worked well?
I think that something that worked well for me was preparing for the mock trial such as coming up with questions that the lawyer might ask and answering them. What I did well in that was that I answered the questions quickly on the paper and some of the questions the lawyer actually asked us!
What did not work?
Something that I could improve on is not using too many filler words such as ‘um’ and ‘like’. Next time there is something like this, I think that I could try to prep more at my house and ask myself questions so I could get ready for the mock trial and answer the questions right away instead of keep saying filler words.
Personal Relevance
The collaboration and communication skills that I practiced in this unit is important for my future because I will have to work with someone, I didn’t choose to work with in the future like in this unit. This could be a practice for me in the future when I have to work with someone I don’t really know.
We had a bake sale so me and my partner, Sevilla, decided to bake Brownies so we found a recipe and found out the amount needed in the U.S. System and the Metric System. After all that, we calculated the unit price for each ingredient. Later, we took all the information we knew and found the cost of each ingredient per batch. On part 6, we found out the batch cost and serving price and on part 7, we determined the final sell price. Lastly, at the bake sale, we sold the brownies and recorded it.
What did we learn?
We learnt how to calculate the unit rate and what a markup is. A markup is a percentage of a cost that sellers determine for their sell price. We calculated the unit rate in part 4 when we had to find the unit price for each of my ingredients. I also learnt how to make a brownie…
What worked?
Something that really worked well was the teamwork and the math process. Me and Sevilla found a way to fix something quickly and we worked together well when we were bringing customers to our stand and telling them about the process.
What did not work?
What did not work well was the looks of the brownie. It did not look that appetizing even though it was really good when eaten. Next time, we could try to focus more on making the brownies look good. Some thing else that we could improve on is choosing the sell price since lots of people said it was too expensive and some of them didn’t buy our brownies just because of the price! But the thing was that we only marked the price up by 20 percent.
Personal Relevance
This learning could help me in the future when I become an adult and I need to earn money since I learnt how to sell things. When I become an adult or even when I become older, I might want to start earning money on my own and I could start by selling food that I baked. I could use the knowledge that I learnt in this project such as marking up the price and making posters.
In this unit, we learned about soccer. We learned how to dribble, pass and we also learned about the rules of soccer.
What helped?
What helped was all the matches that we played since I wasn’t sure about all the rules and how to collaborate with my teammates.
What is something I am proud of?
What I am proud of is my teamwork with my team. We worked and collaborated well. I am also pretty proud of my dribbling.
What is something I can work on?
I can focus more on my passing. I can kick the ball but sometimes, the ball doesn’t go to the direction that I want it to go to. I could also try to be a goalie next time since one or two of my teammates were usually the goalie.
We built a egg car to learn about Newton’s laws. We had to keep the egg from cracking when rolling down the steep ramp while the egg is on a car. The car was built with limited materials such as 3 sheets of A4 paper, a straw wheels and axles. We had to make safety features such as seatbelts and airbags to protect the egg.
What did I learn?
Newton’s first law is the law of inertia. If an object is at rest, it tends to stay at rest and if an object is moving, it tends to stay moving unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This law is seen in the egg car when the car rolls down the ramp and crashes on the cement brick. The car is moving down the ramp and when it crashes, the egg would want to fly forwards because of its inertia.
Newton’s second law is the law of acceleration. The greater the mass of an object, the more force needed to accelerate the object. I’m not sure how Newton’s 2nd law applies to the egg car challenge.
Newton’s third law is the law of action-reaction. Every action has an equal, opposite reaction. This law is seen in the egg car challenge also when the car hits the cement brick at the end of the ramp. As the car hits the brick, the brick will hit back with an equal and opposite reaction and will cause the car to crumple. That’s why we could have a long crumple zone to decrease the force that would come to the egg.
What worked?
Something that worked well in the design is the idea* of making the hole of where the egg should go in, pointing sideways that way that egg wouldn’t fly forwards. *Just the idea….
What did not work?
What didn’t go as we planned was that the egg slipped out of the car when going down and the egg landed before the car so the egg cracked. If we could try that again, I think that we would make a seatbelt on the car so the egg wouldn’t slip out of the box(sort of looking thing) that we made for the egg.
Personal Relevance
What I know now about the design of vehicles and the safety added to the vehicles are that seatbelts are an unbalanced force helping us fight our inertia to fly forwards when the car suddenly stops. I also know what a crumple zone is now. A crumple zone is the front edge of the car that crumples easier then the rest of the car so the crumple zone could take the force instead of the force going to the passenger.
The balloon car was built using styrofoam, straws, wheels, axels, hot glue, a balloon and a rubber band. We used it to learn about Newton’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd law.
What did I learn?
Newton’s 1st law is the law of inertia. Inertia is an object’s resistance to a change in motion. It states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a unbalanced force. We see this law in action with the Balloon Car when the balloon car moves. The balloon car is at rest and the unbalanced force is the air coming out of the balloon which causes the car to move.
Newton’s 2nd law is the law of acceleration. The greater the mass of an object, the more force needed to accelerate the object. We see this law in action with the Balloon Car when we added the weights to the car. More weights(mass) were added to the balloon car and we put in same(similar) amount of air into the balloon. The balloon car moved a shorter distance compared to when there were more mass in the car then when there were none.
Newton’s 3rd law is the law of action reaction. Every action has a equal, opposite reaction. We see this law in action with the Balloon Car when the balloon car moves forwards. The air comes out of the back of the balloon as the car moves forward.
What worked?
What worked well was the car construction and collaboration with my partner , Phoebe, because we took turns to attach things to the car, cut the straws, and build. We completed making the car in time and got to test it out. Near the end of this unit when we were starting our data table for the balloon car, we split the work. I mostly collected the data as Phoebe filled the balloon with the perfect amount of air. We took turns measuring the distance the car travelled.
What did not work?
Something that not work that well was that according to Newton’s 2nd law of acceleration, the greater the mass of an object, the more force needed to accelerate the object but some parts of the data went a little off. Once or twice, the car travelled further when there were 6 weights on the car than 3. I think that we accidentally put too much air into the balloon when we had 6 weights. To solve this problem, we tried to change the amount of air in the balloon to the most similar amount as the beginning.
Personal Relevance
The Balloon Car is like a rocket in the real world. I think that a Balloon Car is like a rocket in the real world because of Newton’s 3rd law . Newton’s 3rd law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The balloon car and rockets both work by pushing gas out of the back side of the car. This push moves the vehicle in the opposite, forward direction.
I see Newton’s 1st law when a car starts moving and suddenly stops. When a object is moving, it tends to stay moving unless acted upon a unbalanced force. I am the object and when the car suddenly stops, my body keeps on moving forward until I am acted upon a unbalanced force, the seatbelt.
It is important to know these laws because it helps engineers and scientists to build things such as vehicles and tools and make them safer. It also helps us to understand how the world works. For example, if two cars crash into each other, and one car is very light and the other heavy, the lighter car will fly away according to Newton’s 2nd law of acceleration. The greater the mass of an object, the more force needed to accelerate the object.
This is a image of how the balloon car looked like
The project I’m most proud of that I made this trimester is my final project that represents the Korean culture. Since I am Korean, I decided to make something that represents the Korean culture. The reason that I chose to make this flower is because the Korean national flower is the Common Hibiscus.
The material that I used for this project is plaster. I chose to make this project with plaster since with plaster, I could just cover a ball of paper, cover it with paper and stick them together. Also, I thought that it would be easier to paint the plaster then clay. At first, I did think to make it with clay but I thought that it might take to much time to put it in the oven.
I made this project by making small balls of paper and covering it with plaster. When I got all 5 petals and the style, I connected them together. It took much more time then I expected so I din’t get time to paint the flower.
If I could have finished the project, I would have used pink paint to make it look a little more realistic. Next time, I think I could concentrate harder on the project so I could finish it.
Writing a fictional story based on a theme that matters to me.
What are we learning?
Theme (my purpose for writing this story, my message to readers)
Character Development (creating believable characters with positive & negative traits)
Plot (the sequence of events in my story; Western and Eastern approaches to storytelling)
Setting (the world that I create for my story)
What’s Working:
I liked that I was able to show my theme(Mis using a great power or gift) in my story. I’m also proud of my story. I left it a cliff hanger to make people curious about what will happen next. I got my idea from the books I read about relationships about siblings.
Areas for Growth:
I think I could work more on my typing skills. I could not type fast enough to end the story so I left it a cliff hanger in the most interesting part… If I had finished the story, I think it would have been more interesting to read. Next time, I will try to finish my story.
Personal Relevance:
I think writing a creative story could help me in the future since I may not be this creative in the future and I could read this and be more creative! I also think it could help me more with my vocabulary when I become older.
I really enjoy creative writing. It is fun to write these type of stories. Even I know a little bit of what my story will be like and as I write my story, thoughts just pop into my head and even I wonder what I’ll write later!
This is what my book cover will sort of look like!
