This unit was focused on Dystopian Fiction. I learned that a Dystopian world/setting is very messed up. For example, in The Giver ( the book that we read), the community is super messed up. From not being able to see color, to having their memories of pain and war removed, but also at the same time, they also removed the feeling of love. In a Dystopian world, the main character usually thinks that they are in the same world as us, a normal world. This is called the illusion of utopia. But as the story progresses, the main character usually starts finding that their society is messed up and they do something about it. I think that the ideas in The Giver that made me think of real life, compare and contrast the differences, and think of the benefits and downsides were the scenes where Jonas wonders why the Council of Elders removed all major feelings that made us human. I enjoyed The Giver a lot, and it is now my 2nd favorite book, the first place being a book called “The Thief of Always” by Clive Barker. During this unit, we improved our ability to write an academic paragraph by practicing every other day. I now know how to correctly format and write an academic paragraph with detail and precision. I think that I am better at having a conversation with people because I have mastered how to validate others and challenge if necessary to keep the conversation going. Overall I thought this unit was very fun and The Giver was a very good book. I hope we do these kinds of units in Grade 7!
In this unit, we learned about safety. The safety behavior that is the most important to me is having screen time. The five adults I can go to and trust when I am in trouble are: my mom, Dad, Ms. Dani, my dog, and my grandma. I think the way social media affects teens is that they get addicted to it. When we consume social media, our brains release a chemical called dopamine, which makes us happy, and we want more of it, so we constantly watch it. When this behavior becomes a habit, you slowly get addicted to it. 4 ways to protect us online is to create strong passwords, not to share any personal information online, stay away from websites that promise free things, do not contact people you meet online. I think most important thing I learned was how social media drags you into a endless loop destroying your focus and pushing you away from your goals.
- What did I work on?
- During this unit, ‘Why should we care about the past?’, I worked on
- Making observations, inferences and wonderings
- Using photos and articles as evidence
- Writing a CER paragraph
- Asking and answering open and closed questions
- Taking part in the Otzi Mock Trial, my role was Expert Witness
- What did I learn? Why should we care about the past?
- We should care about the past because we can understand the origins of prehistoric men and their culture, we can learn about how prehistoric people lived, the differences, and the similarities of our and the Neolithic society (e.g. same diseases and the same human conflicts). We can learn about how prehistoric people were (e.g., very resourceful, very killed and very innovative).
- What worked well?
- I am proud of the following work: serving as an expert witness in the Otzi mock trial, writing my first full CER and researching how prehistoric people lived.
- I am proud of the work above because it was fun presenting the facts in a mock trial while I worked and collaborated with my friends. I created a successful CER that presented my arguments well and got a good grade for it. I am proud of researching how prehistoric people lived and making theories based on the evidence, because I thought it was fun and I liked creating theories and debating with my friends about it.
- What did not work well?
- I found some of this work challenging: posting my work in the correct format and carefully listening to the lawyers when they were asking me questions
- I found the work above challenging because Mr. Irwin, the teacher I worked with, was a super nice teacher but very strict on how we had to upload our work. Since you could not prepare for the question that the lawyers were about to give you, I had to listen very carefully, and I had to avoid biases since I was neutral, and I was just presenting the facts.
- Personal Relevance
- Collaboration and communication skills are important in my future because even later in my life, I will always collaborate with others, and I think that training the skill to work with others, whoever they are, is important skill that we have master.
- This is a photo of my work about me participating in the mock trial, serving as an expert witness.
We created an egg car using paper and rolled it down a ramp to hit a concrete block, aiming to see which team had the car that did not crack the egg upon impact. I learned how a normal car keeps its passengers safe.
We learned things like Crumple Zones, Airbags, and Safety Cells. We also learned that once the car hits the concrete block, Inertia is applied to the egg, and it wants to keep moving forward even though the car has crashed.
I think the most successful part of the project was creating the car. My partner and I created a car with a strong Safety Cell and a long Crumple Zone that somewhat reduced the impact.
I think that we spent to much time planning and preparing the car before actually building it, so next time, I have to spend less time planning and more time building. I think that we also had a lack of materials since we mostly panned on the first day and barely got anything built, so the next class we were planning on building everything but turns out that that days was supposed to be a testing day so we barely got any materials to build the car.
I think that this knowledge is useful in the real world because now I know how cars keep passengers safe upon crashing, how inertia works, and I have also improved my collaboration skills. Critical thinking played a huge part in this project and can be used any time in real-world situations. This was my favorite project so far this year, and I hope that we do more projects like this soon!
Click this link and press the 3rd video to see the video of our car!
So this was the first unit of the DT course. We used an app called Inkscape and created a created either earrings, a coaster or a key chain. I chose a coaster for my Dad and since he really liked Black Panther I created a design with a theme of Black Panther. We did most of the work online and it was pretty fun when we got to see our designs being laser cut.
This was the 2nd unit and my favorite unit of DT we worked in groups of 6 and we designed a full set of chess piece. The custom theme was Zodiac sign (roman). I was the King and he king was a lion. It was pretty cool but I had too make some modifications to the piece to make it fit the board. This is my favorite unit.
This was the last unit in DT. We created the sumo wrestling robot which was pretty fun and we got to modify and code our own robots too. Th annoying thing is that there were several pieces of loose lego pieces in the end of class so we had to pick them all up
What did I do? We created a balloon powered car to test how the Newton’s laws apply to a moving object. We created the Balloon car using cardboard, an axel, wheels, tape, and straws. The criteria was to observe how putting more mass on the balloon car affects how far it goes and record the data.
What did I learn? I learned all of Newtons 3 laws, such as the law of Inertia, the law of acceleration and the law of of motion. The law of Inertia states that a object at a state of rest will continue staying at a state of rest unless a force is applied to it, an example an be: The balloon car car on the floor will stay still and not moving unless someone/something moves it or in this case, you let go of the balloon and th air inside it. The law of Acceleration states that the lighter the mass, the faster it accelerates and the heavier the mass the more force it takes to accelerate, an example of this is: If we put lots of weight on the balloon car, it would take more air or force to push the car to accelerate at the same speed of a balloon car that has weights or in other words, Force= Mass x Acceleration. The law of motion states that for every action there is an opposite reaction an example of this is: that when you let go of the balloon it pushes its air backwards (action) and then, the balloon car moves forward (equal reaction).
What worked? I think that I created the balloon car pretty well and I could understand the the 3 laws properly and I can make a real life example out of each of them.
What did not work? I think that I messed the experiment part up because I thought that you could write any Independent variable but turns out that the IV was: The amount of weights/washers put on the car.
Personal relevance: I see Newton’s 1st law at home when I am too lazy to get the remote control from the coffee table and when I try to use the force (from star wars) to make it float into my hands. Turns out that without an actual force, the remote control does not move and the Force from Star Wars does not exist.
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 is working? What worked for me was creating a pretty interesting and intricate plot line. My story revolves around Detective Woodrow as he navigates the mysteries of this world to solve a murder—the Murder of Charlie Hale. As Woodrow starts tying loose ends together he discovers that life is harsh and depressing so he has to fight both a mental and emotional battle throughout the story. I think that this is a really good storyline and I did a pretty good jib around it.
Areas for growth? I think that I need to work on focusing while I am writing since I can get easily distracted by things around me. I also need help on bringing my story to life since I tend to get stuck while writing midway and usually, it takes me a few minutes to get going again.
Personal relevance: I think that mastering creative writing is a very useful skill since I am going to have to write stories that writing would be essential for every single grade.
In class we did a fun activity called Gravitrax, It was kind of like a marble run but the marble ran smoother and faster than a normal one. At first, since I have never played with this toy, I started to explore how each track, twist and drop and if it failed a analyzed which part went wrong and used my critical thinking skills and logic to solve the problem. Me and group cooperated pretty well and we listened to each others ideas. Try, Fail, Try again, Fail again, this was a pattern that happen to us in the beginning but has we failed more and more, we found a pattern a we used our observation skill to solve it. Overall the activity was super fun and not only could we hone up our critical thinking skills, but also our observation and logical reasoning skills.
What are we doing?
Reading Trials of Apollo and determining important character traits.
What are we learning?
How to analyze character traits (Character Action, Thoughts, Dialogue and Other Character’s Reaction)
What is working? I think that a very successful part of me analyzing character traits is looking out for the clues that might lead to one. A very important thing that I look for when analyzing character traits, is that the character repeatedly feels/does the action/feeling. If there are lots of examples of the character doing/feeling it, then I could most likely connect the action/emotion to a trait and it would most likely be a very one. Another thing that I look out for is the character’s thinking, not only can this tell me a lot about what the character is feeling, it could also help me figure out why the character had done this action and their true intentions.
Areas for growth? I think that I need to improve on my reasoning skill because every single time that I think of a good character trait, it takes me several minutes to think of why the trait is good.
Personal relevance: I think that character analysis is an very important skill because not only can it help during my academic life (e.g. essays, thesis’s), but it can also help me in life to see if a person good or not (using clues and observations).
The table tennis unit was pretty fun since I am pretty good at the sport and I like it. The first few days were boring though, we had to go through the basics like serving, forehand and backhand and how to do topspin and backspin. We played a game called King of the court: it is a game where you play against your opponent and if you win, then you move up a table and if you lose a move down a table. Overall it was pretty fun and I had a good time