Jessie's Portfolio

Unit 4 Dystopian Fiction Reflection

December 16, 2025 / Jessie

We learned about totalitarianism, control of nature, illusion of utopia, and social control, and learned how to spot these topics while reading the Giver.

Dystopian fiction encouraged me to think about real life because when we were reading the book, we had to connect the things that we thought were strange in the book, and think about it happening in real life.

I enjoyed the Giver because I thought the book was quite interesting, and how much Jonas changed and the memories that he saw that were non existent in his community was also quite interesting. However, I was a bit disappointed when there were many cliffhangers that were never told how things ended up.

My ability to write academic paragraphs had improved in paraphrasing, because at the start, I didn’t really do it at all, and mostly just added evidence from the text. Now, I still do that a lot, but I’ve been able to to improve on not putting in pieces of text that are unimportant and explain a little bit more.

At first, during the literature discussions, it was a little bit awkward to say what I was thinking, and I wasn’t always very sure how to phrase it. I also went off topic sometimes, and it was a little bit challenging to get back on topic smoothly. Now, I know to validate someone or to paraphrase someone’s idea, and I still go off topic a little bit, but it’s easier to transition back to the main topic.

Roller Coaster L4 Lab and Model

December 11, 2025 / Jessie

https://padlet.com/saschina/rollercoaster-video-summatives-pd8rjo6cmvi4776/wish/goElQyGA3P60W3yY

Volleyball Reflection

December 10, 2025 / Jessie

In this unit, we learned how to do a legal underhand serve and bump the ball. Before, I already knew how to bump the ball, which helped me get the ball when playing, but I when I tried to bump the ball, it ended up either too strong or too weak. I am proud of my underhand serving, because the ball doesn’t usually go out when I serve it, but sometimes, the serve is too weak, and doesn’t make it over the net. I think I can work on bumping the ball, because it’s hard to control the direction that the ball goes.

Unit 2 Otzi Unit Portfolio Reflection

November 27, 2025 / Jessie

What did I work on?

During this unit, ‘Why should we care about the past?’, I worked on making inferences, writing a CER paragraph, and preparing for the Ötzi mock trial

i. Making observations, inferences and wonderings

ii.Using photos and articles as evidence

iii. Writing a CER paragraph

iv.Asking and answering open and closed questions

v. Taking part in the Otzi Mock Trial, my role was prosecution lawyer.

What did I learn? Why should we care about the past?

a. We should care about the past because they help us learn about new things and what we can apply to the present with what we learn.

What worked well?

a. I am proud of when I wrote the questions and asked them to the expert witnesses.

b. I am proud of the work above because I didn’t use any filler words and was able to use a clear voice when asking the questions, and because the questions supported the other questions.

What did not work well?

a. I found some of this work challenging, like turning things on time and making inferences.

b. I found the work above challenging because I was not able to think of enough ideas to put on the page and kept trying to think of things that I haven’t written down yet, and when we did things like the CER paragraph, I was not able to make it convincing enough because I didn’t have any idea how I could write it in a way that was very convincing.

Personal Relevance

a. Collaboration and communications skills are important in my future because in the future, I will have to find myself working with people that I might not know, or don’t particularly enjoy working with, but will have to work with anyway, and I’ll have to be able to communicate forward ideas clearly.

This is a photo of my work about the CER paragraph

Insert photo here

Car reflection

November 12, 2025 / Jessie

The criteria for the car was to create a egg car that would not crack the egg after going down a ramp.

We see Newton’s first law in action when the car hits the concrete block. After the car hits the block, the car gets pushed back, then collides into the block again and stops its motion. We see Newton’s third law in action when the car collides with the block, and the car moves backwards because the block pushes on it.

Building the body of the car went well because we came up with a idea to make a box and attach crumpled paper inside to act as an airbag, which worked to keep the egg safer, which we saw when we did the real test, which made sure the egg was mostly not cracked. I

would try making the car a bit bigger next time so that we could add more things to keep the egg safe. I would also add something outside the car to absorb some shock, much like bumper cars. I think we can also add more space in the car because I think what happened in the car was that the car hit the concrete, which made the egg hit the front of the car, and that caused the egg to go back because of Newton’s third law, and that caused the egg to crack in the back.

It is important to know Newton’s laws because the science is used to develop safety mechanisms in vehicles which helps to keep us safe. When a car moves, the engine is the outside force that pushes the car forward. An airbag would help to prevent the passengers from hitting the wheel and moving, which was a feature that helped a lot when we tested the egg car, and a crumple zon also ensures the safety of the passenger.

Balloon car reflection

November 4, 2025 / Jessie

The balloon car was built with a balloon, straw, wheels, Styrofoam, and rubber bands. We first cut out the styrofoam into a square, and then we hot glues two straws on it. Then we slid in the metal part of the wheel, and attached the wheel at the end. We then blowed up a balloon, and secured it to the car with a rubber band and stuck a straw in it.

We used it to learn about Newton’s 3 laws of motion. Newton’s first law states that an object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. We see this law in action when the air in the balloon is released and the car moves forward. Newton’s second law of motion states that force equals to mass times acceleration. We see this when we add washers onto the balloon car. The more mass that is put of the car, the slower the car goes. Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We see this when the car collides with something, and the car gets slightly pushed back.

It worked well when we put the washers onto the car. Surprisingly, it was able to withstand the weight of it despite the car not working very well. It was also pretty easy to work with my partner, and we got everything built pretty quickly.

When we found out we did some things wrong, we were also able to make the adjustments. It was a struggle when we found out that the balloon car was not working properly. It malfunctioned when we were going to collect the data, and when we were first going to test it. We moved the wheels closer to each other, and untightened the rubber band a bit to let the air out more easily. After that, the car was able to move with no trouble.

It is important to know these laws because it helps me to understand how things move or don’t move and why they do and don’t. The balloon car is like a rocket. It releases stuff to let it move. Newton’s law is happening for almost everything in the world. It is happens when a car moves, a roller coaster stops, a book standing on the table, and so on.

Creative Writing Reflection

October 30, 2025 / Jessie

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 really enjoyed writing the setting, it was surprisingly pretty easy to do, and I was able to put more of the vibe that I want for the story. The dialogue was a bit challenging, because I wanted the character’s “friends” to be mean but also covered up, and no matter what I tried to make them say, they came across either too mean or too nice in a normal way, so I just stuck with them saying things that don’t really have too much of an impact on the character, which was not what I originally planned, but worked in a way.

Areas For More Growth

I found that the plot was going to fast, and the story seemed very rushed. One instance, a guy was bright and cheerful, and after two sentences, they suddenly become mean and has a kind of fake attitude, even though it hasn’t even gotten to the end of the start of the story. I found it hard to change that, even after looked through it and made some edits. I got the idea from reading a book that I really enjoyed, I forgot the name of it, but it was written similarly, and I decided that I really wanted to write something that was like that book. My favorite line from the book is “It wasn’t a field, really. It was more of a big patch of dead grass, with dandelions and clovers shooting out randomly, with the occasional flowers that nobody knows the name of. Well, not really no one knows the name of it, more like they don’t know the name of it. Nobody in this school ever really goes to the field, which, considering the lack of care the school puts into it, made sense.” because it captured what I really wanted the reader to understand about how the school school he attends was really like.

Personal Relevance

I really like creative writing, and I think it really allows me to use my imagination a lot. I think it’s really fun, and frankly, it’s my favorite kind of writing. I’m not sure if I would use it in the future, but I kind of want to compose songs in the future, so it. may help me, but I wouldn’t know, because what I want to do in the future can change anytime. I think that it is very fun to do as a hobby too, because for me, fiction is very enjoyable to write because the things that you write wouldn’t have to be facts, and you can do it anytime without needing to research beforehand. (though you could depending on what you want to write.)

Art Reflection

October 29, 2025 / Jessie

A project that I am really proud of this semester is my final clay project. It is a teacup that i had inspired from ancient Chinese vases. I first kneaded the clay, and wedged it. Then I made a pinch pot, and tried flattening the bottom. Later, I made the rim curve out a bit. I then rolled out a sphere with my hand and flattened it with my palms. I used a tool to cut out a square in the middle of the clay, then I used slip, score, blend to attach it to the bottom of the teacup. I am proud of this project because I was able to let it not break or collapse, because the other clay projects that I had done before had collapsed very easily.

Critical thinking with Gravitrax

October 13, 2025 / Jessie

Today I played with Gravitrax to strengthen my critical thinking strategies.

Critical thinking is using your mind to solve problems and making decisions with logical thinking, for example, listing the pros and cons of a item to decide if it is a worthy purchase, or figuring out the last few missing pieces of a puzzle after knowing that they pieces are all very different from one another.

I thought critically when i problem solved to figure out how to place the blocks so they would be able to let the marble roll through them without it falling or going to the wrong path in the block.

I struggled to find the right ladder because they come in many different sized that are sometimes too big or too small. The ladder ended up being able to hold until the marble rolled through it, and after it usually fell.

Today’s learning will help me better understand how to do critical thinking and solve problems.

Striking & Fielding Reflection

September 24, 2025 / Jessie

In this unit, we learned how to throw and catch. I learned that you have to position both hands in front of you to catch the ball. To do overhand, you have to step, twist and throw to throw the ball overhand. For underhand, you have to step, then go into something that looks like a lunge, and the throw. We also learned striking and fielding, where we hit the ball and ran the four bases.