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P.E G8 Table Tennis Reflection

We dived into table tennis for the first unit of P.E for grade 8. This was a change because normally we would usually do this unit at the end of the school year. This is a improvement because as we did the last table tennis unit at the end of the school year in seventh grade so the two units are really linked, so I could still remember some techniques from grade 7. For this unit, we mostly focused on games rather than training and it was really fun unit.

I think I had a lot of improvements this year, the most notable is my change from the “handshake” grip to the “pinhole” grip I think this contributed a lot to my improvements in table tennis where I think you could do a lot more spins and techniques using the “pinhole” grip. The change was quite sudden, at the first day of the unit I picked up the rackets and just thought the “pinhole” grip just felt better, and I have adapted the techniques that comes with the grip.

Math Probability Fair Reflection

Our group have tried a really creative approach on the activities fair, which is a scratch ticket and a spin the wheel like a real lottery. The reason I think this is a really good idea is because “scratch tickets” are a really well known and big thing in china, an no other group seemed to have the same idea as us. Our partner worked really well together in the process of creating the project, we all sorted out things that we are going to buy and all transferred the money to one member in our group, where he is going to buy all the necessary things. As for creating the project, some members made the scratch tickets and the rest made the spin the wheel. The fair went by really fast and most of our prizes were mostly won out by the end of the fair. However something we could improve on is for all group members to take turns on staying at the station, because in reality it was mostly me staying at our station when the rest two members went to play the games. The probability part for our fair is really strange because there are people that spent 30 tickets on our fair and only won small prizes but there are also people that won the grand prize in two or three tries, so it was really hard to calculate.

Social Study Unit 4 Documentary Film

I think a step in making the film that me and my partner did really well is the choosing of our topic. At first me and my partner had really different thoughts on what topic we should do, I wanted to do the lunch of Sputnik, and my partner wanted to do the Geneva conventions. I really liked how I resolved the problem, I noticed the reason I wanted to do sputnik is because I wanted to something about the Cold War and that was dramatic enough. I also guessed that my partner wanted to do something about diplomacy. So I combined my demand with my partners demand which I then thought of the cuban missile crisis. We then started to do research, which went really well and smoothly. I also feel like me and my partner did a good job on balancing each others efforts on the script with me doing the intro long term impact and the conclusion, and my partner doing the recite of the event and the short-term impact. I really hoped we could have put more time on the story board planning, as it could have saved me and my partner a lot of peer editing time, as we can already see what each other are going to make. The movie-making period is also a really innovative experience for me, as I get to try out my method of cross-platform video editing where I edited the video on capcut and made some animations on canva. Something me and my partner could do better is making sure the audio doesn’t overlap, which happened for my partner.

Overall my partner and me collaborated really well on this project. I feel really proud of my project.

ELA Final Refelction

MAIN THEME

the abuse of power I did in the presentation, is the Iran-Contra Affair, in this abuse of power I mainly explored many flaws and mistakes inside the American government system, like corruption. Something I learned in this abuse of power other than this event itself is information on many south American nations, like politics and history. This is a really innovative experience because South America always kind of stayed out of my radar for knowledge.

THE PRESENTATION

I did a lot of peer practice for this Pecha-Kucha style presentation, as this form of presentation is kind of a new thing for everyone in class. Like I said, this is a new thing for everyone so it is kind of a challenge to get everything right, like for me it was the slides, I noticed that I have forgotten to add the citation slides for my PPT.

PERSONAL GROWTH

One this that have defiantly improved this year, is my presentation and expression skills, as we really didn’t do much this year other than this skill (like we didn’t do story writing) you could see in the videos of my socratic seminars, I also feel a lot more confident communicating in English Smith my friends.

Top 5 books I read this year

Three Body Series

Scythe

The undercover economist

the six wives of Henry VIII

Salt and the Sea

One book I would defiantly recommend would be the undercover economist, I had to read it because of homework from a class outside of school, but I find it a really good book and I learned a lot. one book I found challenging is DUNE, and I don’t find it a good book, the writing in the book is all really old fashioned, with makes it hard to read, the book is also not really interesting.

Health unit 2 project

One challenge I faced in this project is brainstorming the ideas for the solution, but after some research I think I have thought of some really effective solutions. Something that supported me when I was developing this habit is this poster I made. I printed it out and kept it on my desk so that I am always aware the goal. I think this habit impacted me positively because I was able to get my schoolwork done more in time. Habit formation is a really key thing I learned in this unit, it teaches me that different habits can lead to different effects and these effects can lead to even more different habits, this helped me in planning the activities I will do. This habit will not only impact my grades and my attendance but also my willing to work and my agenda.

Unit 4 Summative

I have greatly improved in my ability to write the planning doc in this course of the unit, for example in the formative even though I did a good job on my points and all, but I have failed on the citations, thus in the end the grades came out to be not so good. However, I learned from my mistakes form my formatives and I got a 3.5 in the final grade. I am really proud of myself for a lot of reasons for my planning doc, like I am really proud of how I noticed how the author used different descriptions to achieve the reader opinion on the character in a small amount of time. Even though I am proud of this this is also I found challenging along with the symbolism section, but I think I completed them really well in the end. If I could redo the assessment I would keep working on my evidence conventions because I still made some mistakes on it. I would also work on some of the more minor things fro example making my writing neater. Some advice I would give myself in the future would be keeping an eye on the conventions of evidence because I keep making mistakes on it.

The improvement fro the socratic seminars isn’t as vibrant as the improvement for the planning doc but we still did a good job on it. Something I am proud of is there aren’t any noticeable dead time

Health master chef reflection

The health master chef project is when each group make a healthy snack. We have to advertise it and try to win the competition of having the most votes. However If your group need to aim for a four the main ingredient must be a vegetable, thus this will limit the flavor of the snack you are making, so unless your food is really really good, you probably won’t stand a chance against the people that have meat as their main ingredient that is not aiming for a four. So I feel like this project is just trying to chose between ether a four or winning the master chef.

Our group in the end, chose to aim for a four, after looking online for recipes we quickly found one that looked decent; backed zucchini fries. The pictures that goes with the recipe looked super good.

So our group met up at Joshuas house and started making, the process was even more smooth than we thought, we just needed to cup up the zucchini coat it with eggs and flour and bake it.

However, when the backed zucchini fries were done we were very disappointed, compared to the smooth process of making these fries, the fries tasted, pretty… questionable. They were soft and had a waft of bitterness in it, but we still needed to take it to the fair, which in no doubt was one of the most popular snack in the class, not because it was good, but because it was so bad.

This is the reason why our group was so surprised after getting a four on this project, since it tasted so bad.

In conclusion I feel like our group collaborated really well on this project, as the process went so smooth, even though the snack came our to be below our expectations, but it was still a good experience.

Science Franken fruit Project reflection

The Franken Fruit project it is when we think of a fruit that combines the genetic traits of two other fruits, we need to come up with the fruit and try to advertise it, by doing a project(which includes a model of your fruit). My partner and me made an advertising video and a poster together with the model to advertise our fruit, which we first wanted to call the strawberry, but then noticed that there was already a fruit named the same name, thus my partner changed the name into “star shade”. I feel really proud of our project and the stuff we did this project, it show the progress we have made in unit 4.

TTG GOALS



Skillful Communicators

The Smart goal I chose this year is skillful communicator, this is because the majority of the projects we did this year was all group work so it seems to be more important to communicate with our teammates so that our group could achieve maximum effort. I don’t have a problem with critical thinking or coming up with creative ideas, as I believe I do pretty well with both of these things, however even though sometimes I come up with good ideas or notice a flaw in the project I don’t find myself communicating effectively with my teammates or sometimes I’m just too lazy to do that. Thus this is the reason I think why I need to communicate with other students. Thankfully I think I think I have been doing better and better at the job, after the second semester, and I have been feeling more confident with group projects. For example the social study video we made last unit. This is because I think I more actively communicated my own ideas to my peers, and was not too lazy to do it. Another reason is that I feel like I’m more flexible towards my peers ideas too. 

Language Arts G7

In language in grade seven, I noticed that most of the units were focused on reading rather than writing, which was different from last year. I like reading and all, but I feel like the test did get harder because of this reason. This is because most of the test were focused on you reading a passage or a story and answering questions, or writing a paragraph to analyze the paragraph. I personally feel that this test mode is harder than just writing a story, since it is harder for a teacher to give a and grade on a person story, since there are so many answers for a story and our are allowed to express your own opinions without getting a bad grade, but on this test mode it is different, there is usually a fixed answer for each of the answers, while the questions they ask you are all very vague. So usually, before I answer a problem, I need to ask myself multiple times “what would the teacher do if they encounter the same problem” when answering these questions you really need to put yourself in the teachers shoes to think of a answer. I feel like I got a lot better at these test, like when you look at the first formative I did to the most recent test.

This is a test I did pretty early through the year, notice how the teacher commented “true but not central to the story”

This is a formative test I did more recent, even though I got a 2.5 on the final grade (which was quit comment for a formative) it was because I did my citations wrong, but you could still see my improvements on these tests.

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