Hsinshuo's Portfolio

Badminton Unit Reflection

January 15, 2026 /

What did you learn?

What I learned was the forehand serve, forehand grip, backhand grip, and having good sportsmanship with my friends, shaking hands with them, and having fun.

What helped?

What helped was a lot of my classmates, who helped me with my forehand and backhand grip. My teacher, Ms. Eni, was also really supportive and made sure that I had great badminton skills and good basics.

What is something you are proud of?

Something that I am really proud of is how I think I know how to serve forehand and backhand and also the basics of badminton. In king for the King’s Court during badminton, I got to reach the highest level, which is something I am really proud of.

What is something you can work on?

There are definitely a lot of things that I could still work on, like having great sportsmanship with my friends and shaking hands after every single match to maintain friendship and be friendly. I think I can also improve on my hitting using my backhand, because I kind of miss the ball sometimes with my racket.

Unit 4 Dystopian Fiction Reflection

December 17, 2025 /

-What did I learn about dystopian fiction?

What I learned about dystopian fiction was that it makes you think a lot, and it is sort of like a mystery setting that is sort of trapped.

-How does dystopian fiction invite me to think about real life?

I think it makes me realize that I am living in a fantasy right now, with free will and free choice, without having to think a lot and without being controlled my entire life.

– I enjoyed/did not enjoy The Giver. (Explain)

I enjoyed The Giver novel a lot because I like to explore different varieties of books, and this was one of the first times I read a dystopian fiction book, which is an inspiring thing for me. I hope to read more dystopian fiction later on in my life because it is also really interesting.

– How have I improved my ability to write academic paragraphs?

I think there is still room for improvement in my academic paragraphs, but I am still improving on writing a good paragraph structure for academic paragraphs.

-How am I better now, interacting with others in literature discussions?

I think I am pretty OK with my literature discussions, and I hope to have more activities like this later in class.

Unit 2 Otzi Unit Portfolio Reflection 

December 1, 2025 /
  1. What did I work on? 
  1. During this unit, ‘Why should we care about the past?’, I worked on  
  1. Making observations, inferences and wonderings 
  1. Using photos and articles as evidence 
  1. Writing a CER paragraph 
  1. Asking and answering open and closed questions 
  1. Taking part in the Otzi Mock Trial, my role was Expert Witness.  
  1. What did I learn? Why should we care about the past? 
  1. We should care about the past because there are a lot of interesting things coming from the past. We can also understand how prehistoric people lived and the similarities and dissimilarities to us  
  1. What worked well? 
  1. I am proud of the following work: being an expert witness and projecting my voice loud and well during the mock trial, writing my CER paragraph greatly, and preparing for the mock trial, like researching and finding evidence.  
  1. I am proud of the work above because I have executed my job as an expert witness wonderfully, and I think that I have tried my best.  
  1. What did not work well? 
  1. I found some of this work challenging, like getting onto the stands and having the courage to speak, therefore forgetting to say some important facts. Something else that didn’t work well was also how I almost missed a page of research and forgot to write one line on my CER paragraph and didn’t write enough good transition words.  
  1. I found the work above challenging because this was one of my first times doing a mock trial, so I was kind of nervous.  
  1. Personal Relevance 
  1. Collaboration and communication skills are important in my future because I still want to go to school and university, and I will definitely collaborate and work together with other people later on in life, definitely in work as well.  
  1. This is a photo of my work about…. 
  1. Insert photo here 

Unit 3: Unit Rate—Bake Sale Reflection

November 25, 2025 /

What did I do?

We made a bake stand in a bake sale, and we sold classic sugary cinnamon crinkle cookies to our customers for fake money. I was able to create a lot of posters and logos.

What did I learn?

What I learned was how to calculate the scale factor, as well as the percent and markup price. I also learned how to calculate the income and the profit, as well as the unit rate and unit cost. I learned how to use ratio tables and double number lines, also. We also learned about collaboration with friends.

What worked?

Something that worked was that we got to sell all of our 30 cookies, and we sold out, as well as a lot of my friends. We finished with nothing but a lot of fake money, which meant our cookies probably tasted good, and our math explanation was probably pretty good, also.

What did not work well?

There were a lot of things that didn’t work well, like sometimes our group was too loud, and we scared a lot of people off. Something else that didn’t work was that at the end, we didn’t get any real money, which was kind of sad because we had real cookies but got fake money instead.

Personal Relevance

I think this will help me later in life because I will definitely need to calculate the markup price, percent, profit, and income if I want to be a businessman or a salesman. I also worked on baking and collaboration, which will come to me later in life if I want to be a baker or maybe a person who really collaborates with other people. (Basically every single job) I will definitely need to use double number lines or ratio tables later on in school and university as well.

Egg Car Reflection

November 11, 2025 /

In this unit, I did the Egg Car experiment, where we built an egg car and put it on a tilted ramp.

I learned that Newton’s First Law applied to the egg car when it was already speeding down; the speed of the egg car accelerated. Newton’s third law applied to the Egg Car Challenge, where the action is the car speeding down, and the reaction is it hitting the block on the bottom.

Something that worked with the design we made was that our egg didn’t really crack a lot, only leaving a small mark on the other side of the egg, unfortunately. Another thing that worked is we made a bumper zone at the start of the car, so then the egg wouldn’t hit the brick with such a strong force.

Some changes we made to the car to make it better were when we added a bumper zone in the front of the car to make the egg not hit the brick with such a strong force. We also made sure that the egg should be seen, or else it would be breaking the rules, so we made it really secure and still able to be seen. What I think we should’ve added was a little airbag in the front of the egg so then the egg would have a cushion to land on.

What I now know about the design of vehicles and safety added to vehicles is that there are a lot of materials added to make the people inside the car safe, like bumper zones, seatbelts, and airbags.

Balloon Car Reflection

November 3, 2025 /

In this unit, I made a balloon car, a car powered by a balloon. We had bottle caps as wheels, straws attached to the car to connect the wheels, and the car was a plastic tray. The criteria were to place the balloon car behind the starting line and get as far as possible using the air inside the balloon.

Newton’s First Law: the law of inertia, an object will stay at rest unless acted on by another force. Newton’s Second Law: F=ma, the law of acceleration. Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s First Law applied to the car when the balloon car wouldn’t move behind the starting line if the balloon (the force) didn’t act upon it. Newton’s Second Law appeared to the car when the balloon started moving, therefore gaining speed, and the balloon car went further in the last few seconds as it sped out. Newton’s Third Law applied to the car when the balloon’s air shot out from the other side and the car started moving forward, in the opposite direction.

Some things that worked well in this project were how my partner and I both got to participate in this challenge, where my partner did some things, like assembling the car, and I did some other things, like filling up the balloon and hot-gluing the materials together. We also did well on connection to Newton’s Laws, because I think we both understand how Newton’s three laws apply to the balloon car.

Some things that didn’t work were when either of us didn’t know how to rubber band the balloon to the straw to connect to the car, therefore causing the balloon not to move because there was no air inside. We were really frustrated because we didn’t get to participate in the challenge for one round. Another thing that didn’t work well was when we hot-glued the balloon because of foolish choices and made the balloon burst open.

I think the Balloon Car experiment relates to the real world because in the Balloon Car, there were examples of Newton’s three laws of motion, which, of course, would happen in our daily life and in the real world. Knowing Newton’s three laws of motion is really important because they happen a lot, and they are true things that we cannot change.

Portfolio Reflection Art

October 30, 2025 /

Something I am really proud of is my plaster project, where I made a ball and covered it with red to make a basketball. I like this project because making a ball using plaster felt really good, and I feel like I made a pretty perfect ball with not a lot of bumps and curves. I also got to paint it with red, which also felt really good because I got to mix colors to get the perfect red.

Creative Writing Reflection

October 29, 2025 /

What are we doing?

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 enjoyed writing the story because I could come up with the story plot and line and adjust the story to my creativity.

I am proud of my storylineand plot because it has a really clear theme, and it is also really interesting and humorous.

I was wondering what I should do for my story until I thought if I could make a funny story about a really small and cute duck turning into a gigantic and monstrous duck.

The best line from my story was probably, “I AM THE DUCK OF DOOM.” I liked it because this was the climax of my story, where the duck turns into a huge monster.

Areas for Growth:

Some story elements that were challenging to write were how the duck was going to turn back into normal and let the main character/protagonist win. Writing the start of the story was really hard also because I had to decide which setting to start at (the school, the house, or the bathroom). I enjoyed them because I got to pick whatever I wanted and make the story my way.

I dealt with these challenges by just thinking of what the famous authors would do. For example, some story’s start with the end, or they start with the climax.

 My least favorite part of the story is probably when I really didn’t know what to write and my brain just zoned out because I had no idea how to continue the story. It bothered me a lot because not knowing what to write is a really hard and bad feeling for me.

Personal Relevance:

I can make sure that I can come up with things later on in lafe and also my creativity will be better so if I were to become an artist this would help me also.

Of course I enjoyed creative writing, and I would continue writing this using my imagination to tell stories to other people.

Critical Thinking Indi Car

October 8, 2025 /

When I did the IndyCar project, I enjoyed it a lot and used my critical thinking. Whenever the teal made it go diagonally right, I made sure that the next color would touch the teal, so then the teal was made sure to touch the next color. This is how I used my critical thinking to make sure our project worked. Something that worked is we finished 12 out of 15, which I am really proud of, and we had a really fun time. What didn’t work was that we didn’t have enough time to do the next three. I learned that everyone also had to have different jobs for us to move quicker: one person’s job was to place out all the color tiles, another person’s job was to sort them, another person’s job was to shout out what color to place, and the last one was to shout orders around. What I did was place all the color tiles out and start the robot. I think this would help me later in my life because I think I will have to use my critical thinking again later on.

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