During the unit, we were assessed on our ability to correctly calculate the y-intercept and slope, as well as the equation of the line. For the project, we were assessed on how we design our own problem and solve it using the graph we create, but the requirement was that the story has to show a piecewise function. A very new concept.
My story was centered around myself “Isabellaaaaa”; it was about how I was one of the crew members ready for a launch to space, and I set my slope to be the acceleration rate and the speed. I followed the requirements of a piecewise function by dividing the whole falling event into multiple phases and calculate the changes in speed and time for each of them, which then exceeded the standard!Haha!!
I was really proud of how I was really into the work and created a humorous problem that also reflects my passion, astronomy. I was really proud of the accurate calculations of the equations as well as making the phases of the story clear and even.
Because like I said my slope was the acceleration rate and the speed of Isabella’s fall, so scientifically, my answers are impossible (she would burn in the middle of the air and evaporate).I will also have to multiply by the gravitational acceleration of Earth, which makes it really complicated, so it is a hard time for me to make revision and to clear and organize the phases up so the answers are accurate enough.
In robotics unit, me and my partner really failed, because we were both beginners on building vex robots, especially building the gears and making the gears spin smooth during the race. The mismatched gears failed to transmit power efficiently, causing the robot to stall or spin uncontrollably, which led to repeated disqualifications.
We weren’t able to attach the gears onto the beams, and also, the beams are not strong enough to hold the heavy base. Additionally, the lack of stabilization meant the robot couldn’t maintain balance during high – speed maneuvers. The base’s weakness, supported by just two motors, made it prone to tipping over, and because the axels and the beams weren’t fully stabilized, so when testing, the wheels kept tilting, which affects the speech and acceleration. I had to make a lot of versions of our bot on my planning sheet, because errors just keeps on emerging; me and my partner had to add a beam attached too the gears and add stoppers to make it more stable. These flaws, rooted in our planning and execution, ultimately prevented us from completing the challenge successfully.
For the wall racer challenge, me and my partner further stabilized the beams and the gear, as you can see in the bottom right of the planning sheet, we conquered a lot of difficulties with the gears and finally came up with a parallel structure for it. We also made the base stronger for the test, we added a plate that fits the motors. But when. The test began, the code has errors, the bot keeps spinning on the same position. The code has a “forever” loop that makes the robot keep moving forward constantly. When the bumper (Bumper2) is pressed, the robot is instructed to move backward for 0.5 seconds, stop, turn right 180 degrees, and then move forward again. But the turning part might not work properly as the robot may lack the right time or conditions to complete the turn. Also, the “else” part just makes it drive forward again, which could interfere with the correct execution of the sequence after the bumper press. These issues likely cause the robot to spin instead of doing what it’s supposed to for the challenge.
For the Tissue box unit in DT, I think there were a lot of glows and grows my journey of making an issue box was going up and down. We were required to design a tissue box that is hygienic and environmental friendly. We were each given a design movement, which is basically just the art style we have to show on our tissue box, my design movement is Arts and crafts, which I think really fits my art style, because I lean towards a more flexible and free art style, where I just create patterns suitable to my interests. The tissue box has to be inspired or the idea of the design has to be inspired from similar art styled tissue box online, so that you can have an idea of how to create it, or what fabric and material you will have to use.
I started with what I consider the best part of my design journey, and that is to plan my design on a A3 paper. I have to make 3 designs. Since I said that my design has to be suitable to my interests, so I chose to create a tissue box related to astronomy, which is something I wish to dive deeper into.
A glow for me is that my design was really shocking and interesting, and well as colorful, since the color combination I chose was unique and fascinating.
A grow might be to make the structure of the tissue box correct, since I am more like a beginner in DT, so I don’t really know how to use Inkscape properly so that the size are well fit.
I picked my speaking snippet as the artifact that best represents my growth as a communicator. Because it is better for me to listen to myself talk in a socratic seminar than just looking at the data. The data won’t include anything about filling words that are not supposed to be included in my speech (e.g. like, um, and…). I can also see my own volume, if it is too loud or too little. It is clear for me to know what my Glow and Grow is as a skillful communicator.
What does this show about me as a communicator?
This show how I can effectively communicate to others during a formal situation like socratic seminar, where we discuss and reflect about our narrative writing as a whole class. This snippet also shows how fluent and how frequent I spoke during the socratic seminar compared to the class average.
In this unit, we did outdoor invasion games, such as baseball and soccer.
Something I learned that was new for me was how to catch with my left hand, because I consider my left hand the recessive or weaker hand, since I am not a lefty. But I did fairly well when I am catching the baseball during the games.
Something I learned in soccer was how to shoot a goal, and shooting it the correct direction. I already know a lot in dribbling and I think I am really skilled, but my shooting skills needs improvement. At the end of the unit, I actually had a lot of growth in my shooting.
In this unit, we were in the pool every class, doing fitness swimming and learning new techniques for a sport done in the pool, Water Polo.
In this unit we learned how to do egg beat kicks, as well as passing and dribbling the ball in water. But the challenging thing is that we have to do egg beat kick at the same time when we are passing the ball. This is really. challenging, because our legs get really sour and we then don’t get enough force from our legs to push us up to catch and pass the ball.
From the beginning of the unit, I was really concerned, because I thought doing water polo would be something that requires endurance and stamina, but then at the end of the unit, I scored multiple goals that showed my growth in playing water polo.
My current goal is to improve on how I can complete assignments more effectively, and at the same time improve the efficiency, and manage my time so I get less work to do at home.I also is shifting my goal towards showing critical thinking, because I struggle to show my critical thinking through the diagrams and models, such as why does this mean that, or why does the process work like that, which then leads to bad grades. Adding on to that another goal is to deepen my understanding in the lessons by showing curiosity and aiming to dive deep into the tasks.
To make my progress towards my goal, I seek for opportunities to show critical thinking, and managing my time in class, so I don’t get to much pressure at home, which also moves myself towards achieving a better score for active learning. Since the most common thing we are given as homework is modeling complex structures like the whale morphology, and the asteroid and meteorite model. I have been creative with my work especially for modeling structures. I take notes in class so I can put the definitions and facts I learned accurately into the models and think critically about how I would label my models effectively, and ask the teacher for things to add.
Something that I am very proud of is I can effectively show my thinking and my understanding in my models. I put a lot of effort into creating my models by incorporating creativity and different combinations of colors. I am also very proud of I much engagement I show in class, I raise my hand persistently when ever I want to share my ideas with the class, I also work and collaborate well with my teammates during team discusses.
Some biggest challenge in this class might be to manage my time in class, because most of my homework are done at home, and I get more than enough time in class, so I should work on my efficiency to limit the pressure I give myself at home.
I have demonstrated my active learning skills by always participating in class/group discussion, I will always engage when discussing and share my ideas among my teammates. I also stay positive overtime in Science class, and showed a positive attitude towards learning new concepts every class!!
To give us opportunities to show our learning and understanding, we are being assessed on showing the key concepts in all the lessons in a sticker project. I created an astronaut logo and named it “Dream Chaser”, since I am a big fan of astronomy, and wish to dive deeper.
I first planned my drawing, as shown in the image on the right, I was planning to create a logo that is symmetrical, which will be convenient and easy for me to make a draft and to do the transformation, like rotations, translation, reflection and dilation.
Something I like about this unit is how we are flexible with what stickers we do, we are not all doing the same stickers, we are given the choice to explore what we like, and at the same time reflecting on what we’ve learned so far. It is a very good opportunity to create a logo associated with what you are interested in, and incorporating a lot of key concepts and critical thinkings inside your design!
Something I wish was different was the time limit. The time limitation is definitely something that has to be fixed, since we have so many classes that we shouldn’t miss in unit 1, we actually didn’t get much working time in class, causing a lot of people, like me, to bring the project home and make it homework, because we know the due date will be soon, and we don’t get much time in class left, so a lot of people didn’t really put much effort in creating the design, or they didn’t finish the calculations, ending up with a rather low grade. I think this is really unfair for people that faces difficulties and disadvantages, like they don’t have much time in school or at home.
In this unit, I demonstrated understanding towards a lot of math concepts. In unit 1, we focused on transformations, such as dilations, reflections, translations and rotations. We were also given opportunities to show our learning through projects such as the sticker project, and a lot of pre-tests, that helps us reflect and restore informations and what we have learn so far, as we’ll as if you have fully understand the key concepts.
Throughout this unit, I improved the most at understanding the different forms of transformations, and using them correctly through tests. In my Transformation and Congruence Pre-Assessment(IM8), my the incorrect and partially correct marks were not focused on angle pairs and defining x or solving for x, instead, they were focused on the rotations and reflections. Now, looking back at the end of unit summative assessment, I fully developed my understanding from the start of the unit, and successfully completed rotations, reflections translations, and dilations through the sequences and mapping rules, and I can even extend my understanding by exceeding the criteria by rotating and reflecting over non-origin points and non-axes lines.
I feel that I still need to work on the using coordinates to explain rotations, for example, rotate 90 degrees CCW can be shown through mapping rule: (x,y)–>(-y,x), I am still unsure about memorizing these, which means I have to use the tracing paper every time, and what if there are no more tracing paper. So I need to put more effort into memorizing the key concepts.
Some strengths I have is I already learned a lot of the future maths, so I am very capable with showing my critical thinking in projects, such as the sticker project, when I was going for exceeding and showing my understanding by using the distance formula: square root of (x sub2 -x sub 1)^2 +(y sub 2-y sub1)^2. Another strength is I fully memorized all the formulas for triangles, and I also made contact with the trig table, and all the angle theorems, which brings advantages to me, and is beneficial for the unit, where we have to understand the names of different angles and solve for the corresponding variable.
Something that I want to improve on is I can show my thinking using multiple strategies, for example, like what I said above, I cannot always support myself with the tools that I can use for shortcut, like the tracing paper. I have to think of different ways to show my thinking, and this can also improve my critical thinking.
In the next unit, I want to expand my critical thinking skills by using multiple strategies when calculating a problem, especially for those that I will have to use a tool; there might be obstacles like I cannot fully memorize how to use the different strategies, but I can ask Ms. Baldwin for help, and I can plan or book some time with her for additional learning support.
In unit 1 of orchestra, we mainly focused on demonstrating understanding towards different techniques, like one of the main technique we worked on, which is “spiccato”, we also used the habits book every time in the start of the class to warm up, and to get used to dynamics and rhythms that are being shown in the pieces we are playing in winter concert, by doing this we can stay together and play the correct rhythms.
We also practiced bow holds, when playing spiccato, we have to ensure that there is a relax hand so it sounds better.
