Category: Social Studies
Above is a frame of the Documentary project we did during Unit 4 of 7th-grade social studies. We made the film by researching a few online articles and noting key information down. We gathered information, formed a claim, and found evidence that we can use along with reasoning to prove our claim, and we wrote our script for the Documentary in essay format. We recorded our voices reading our script, found matching videos and music, and combined them together to make our film. Editing was used to cut video length correctly, remove watermarks, enhance quality of video, and to make smooth transitions.
During my collaboration and my partner, we worked well by supporting each other and pushing ourselves for the best. We had to overcome challenges like a lack of time, late citations, and even missing files. The work was divided equally, as my partner and I each made half of the documentary, spoke on half of the documentary, and researched half of the documentary.
In sum, this is a valuable experience.
My report card was relatively stable during the first semester, and there were no approaching grades. I am proud of my high grade in English Language Arts, as I had multiple exceeding grades. I did great in making a dystopian storyline and pitching it to others. (Partly due to the soft grading of Ms. Devin) However, I did badly on math as it was my strong subject, and I didn’t get even one exceeding, even though my grades didn’t look bad. (Mainly 3 and 3.5’s) If I would go back and change something about how I approach this semester, it would be that I would want to be cautious with tests and review for it as the first scores of formatives hit me hard in the start of this semester. Some actions I can do to improve is to review the points the teachers told us that we are going to be accessed on the test, so I can clearly know the format of answering and ways to correctly calculate the answer. Below is my report card.
Above is the ending frame of the video for my presentation. We are supposed to make a video that goes with our speech.
We chose to do our presentation in video since video is the best way to show video games, as both are moving. I found many official trailers and gameplay videos of old and new games that were used in the speech. Me and my partner used a lot of special effects that made the video interesting but not too distracting.
One thing that we did well on is to use the gameplay of old video games and trailers of new games in my video, which made both Mr. Tyner and the classmates feel suprised.
One thing that I need to improve on is video length. Even though I checked the video length at first with the script, my reading speed was different in the speech, so some parts had too much time, and some parts were too fast.
Categories
Social Studies Unit 3: Essay
Above is our script for our presentation of Shigeru Miyamoto, a famous game designer in Nintendo.
In the research stage of this paragraph, me and my partner used a graphic organizer to organize the information we researched. Then, me and my partner combined our information and chose three pieces of essays/videos that we used to become the evidence of our paragraph.
I split up the work with my partner and I wrote the first paragraph and the ending, and my partner wrote the second paragraph and the opening. After finishing the first draft, we revised using peer feedback and got a solid meeting.
Something I did well was to mention avoiding the trend and reflecting it in the closing paragraph. I also did well in mentioning games that Miyamoto made as examples. (I know many Nintendo games)
Something I need to do better is to improve my reasoning as it didn’t really convey how impactful Miyamoto was since I didn’t list any examples of the games impacted by him.
We are asked to present our technology in a project form in social studies. Later, we made an exhibit for the parents. I chose to use Minecraft to demonstrate how the HSR impacted Chinese society. I chose Minecraft because it is very creative and I found a way to present HSR through Minecraft. I find Minecraft very engaging and fun, so I did it.
Above is me presenting to my Mom. The presentation gave us a chance to show our learning before the conferences so parents have a idea of what we are doing.
One thing I did well was to teach the parents how to move and use things in Minecraft. I also explained how the HSR impacted the Chinese society throughout the Minecraft tour as I showed the audience the efficiency of HSR and how much people it can contain.
One thing I didn’t do well was conserving time as every presentation took very long. I spend a long time on the project and it leads to a very long presentation time. It took me 2 times more time to present to one person, so I didn’t present to that many people compared to others.
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SS: Travel Technology Essay
Above is the essay I wrote based on my research on HSR and its impact on China. I took many steps to write this essay. First, I used a graphic organizer to organize my notes on 3 essays or papers. I concluded the main points and used them as evidence. Then, we started writing the 3 body paragraphs and my beginning and ending. The 3 body paragraphs are: the positive impact of HSR on the Chinese society, the negative impact of HSR on the Chinese society, and lastly what the government did to solve it. This is how I wrote this essay.
One thing that I can improve on is to check how my paragraph has contradicting information and ideas and then fix it. Sometimes the two things I mentioned weren’t the same thing and I should fix it to improve the clarity of the essay.
One thing that I did well was explaining how the HSR positively impacted Chinese society, I used evidence to show how HSR is
->Faster than cars.
->Reduce congestion.
->Very costly to build
In sum, I effectively used my reasoning skills to write a logical essay explaining the impacts of the HSR on the Chinese community. This was also affected by how I tried to write better CERs in unit one, and that helped me to get an adequate score.
Socratic seminar is something new in social studies, and I enjoy it. It is more of a conversation than a debate. People introduce their ideas and opinions, but they do not argue. We are grouped into partners, and one of them argues while the other takes notes. I am doing great in introducing ideas and opinions that have evidence and reasoning. However, I need to do better on my clarity and pronunciation of speech.
I don’t have my record sheet at the time I am writing this, but I can describe what happened. The talk was mainly between everyone, but it took a long time for anyone to start the talk since it was the first time. Even though most of us did talk, one person did not. Sometimes the talk drifted off and we had to get back to the topic and continue. Next time, I plan to listen more in the talks since I can get new ideas that might be better from the words of others. I believe that this event helped us on using what we learned in this unit as ideas to prove a point.