Nathan's Portfolio

Unit 4 Dystopian Fiction Reflection

December 16, 2025 /

What did I learn about Dystopian Fiction?

I learned that (now that I have read The Giver) that dystopian fiction is a way to question what the government and what the world is doing wrong, and are there any solutions to it. For example, The Giver and Jonas have to suffer a lot of pain, but it makes the community much more stable, so a big question throughout the book might be was it worth it?

How does Dystopian Fiction encourage me to think about real life?

It made me question the government’s decisions, and I realized that the community that Jonas lived in was a solution to many of the problems, like prejudice, warfare but it also eliminated important things in life such as love, so again, was it worth it?

I enjoyed/did not enjoy The Giver.

I mostly enjoyed The Giver because it was really suspenseful, and there was a lot of cliffhangers, however I didn’t like the ending because I like books that tell me what happened to the character, if he/she died or survived, was it a happy or sad ending, I don’t like books that require a lot of imagination, even though I’m not necessarily bad at imagining, I just like to know what happened to the character.

How was my ability to write academic paragraphs improved?

My ability on writing an academic paragraph improved on comparing and contrasting, and showing how something changed. For example, if the prompt was “How did Jonas’ perspective of his community change after he learned about Rosemary” before I would have written only what his perspective of his community was after he found out about Rosemary, but now, I know that I have to write before and after and compare the two.

How have I become better at literature discussion?

I improved at validating people because I know that it’s a good way to make people feel included and feel like they belong. I also know now that a literature discussion is just a normal conversation because before I thought that a literature discussion had to be scripted and planned out beforehand but it’s just a normal conversation except it’s about the topic.

BAKE SALE DAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!

December 1, 2025 /

What did I do?

I baked something delicious to eat (apple pie), and sold it for fake money.

Day 1: We chose what we wanted to make, and the ingredients we needed.

Day 2: We calculated how much we needed in the metric system.

Day 3: We calculated the cost of one serving, and the markup by percentage and money.

Day 4: we made posters for everything we did.

Day 5: BAKE SALE DAY!!!

What did I learn?

I learned that the value of a cup can be very different depending on the ingredient.

What worked?

We collaborated well on baking, and we also did a good job attracting the visitors by telling them we had the best apple pie in the world.

What did not work well?

We had some problems collaborating with our work, because I always felt like I did all of the work for Isaac, but Isaac thought the same but about me.

How is this relevant for me?

In the future, I know that I can markup the price by a lot, like 200% so I will actually earn some money.

Unit 2 Otzi Unit Portfolio Reflection 

November 27, 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 an expert witness.  
  1. What did I learn? Why should we care about the past? 
  1. We should care about the past because it helps us learn what people were living like 5300 years ago, and how intelligent they are.
  1. What worked well? 
  1. I am proud of the following work because I completed by job with answering all the questions truthfully (although the answers might have been biased). 
  1. I am proud of the work above because I wanted to be a lawyer, but I figured out I was a pretty good expert witness too. 
  1. What did not work well? 
  1. I found some of this work challenging, recognizing open and closed questions, writing responses to the questions (because I usually just improvise). 
  1. I found the work above challenging because for the open and closed questions, I though “Can you explain why…”because you could answer with yes or no. Also I usually just improvise, because I’m not really good at preparing, and predicting what they will say, and plan a answer before time. 
  1. Personal Relevance 
  1. Collaboration and communications skills are important in my future because in the future when I actually get a job, I have to be able to communicate well with my boss, so he won’t fire me in a couple minutes. 
  1. This is a photo of my work about 

EGG CAR!!!!!!!

November 12, 2025 /

What did I do?

The criteria was to to design and build a car with a safety system that will deliver an egg safely down a ramp.

What did I learn?

Newton’s 3rd law was shown when the egg car crashed onto the concrete wall because the concrete wall will hit back with an equal but opposite force. Newton’s first law was seen when the egg car hit the concrete wall, because the egg car will keep moving unless acted upon by another force, and that force was the concrete wall.

What worked?

I collaborated well with my partner, so we were able to make the first draft of our car. We also had crumple zones and we covered most of the space so that the egg couldn’t fly out.

What did not work?

Once me and my partner were like 90% done with our car, we realized we had violated the width constraint a lot, so we had to start over, and we had to reuse the tape that we already used. Next time I would make the crumple zone longer like the elephant/mammoth car because the egg cracked inside our cover.

Personal Relevance:

I know now that all of the cars have a lot of safety features to protect the passengers, and it is really difficult to protect them if they crash into something because we failed to keep the egg safe. One of the safety features a car has is the crumple zone, the crumple zone is basically a zone where it is safe for it to break and crumble, so that it will protect the passenger. Two other safety features are seatbelts and airbags. Seatbelts are a safety feature that you strap around your shoulder, so that when there is a crash, you won’t fly forward, and airbags are a safety feature if somehow you still fly forward, then the airbag will cushion it, and this is mostly for the head.

Balloon Car

November 4, 2025 /

What did I do?

The ballon car was a challenge where we used it to investigate Newton’s 3 laws. We strapped a ballon onto a car made of styrofoam, axels and a wheel. The balloon was filled with air for Newton’s first law, which would make the car go forward, and we investigated Newton’s second law by adding weights to the car, we investigated Newton’s first law because the balloon car was moving.

What did I learn?

Newton’s third law was to every action, there’s an equal but opposite reaction, and since the balloon was blowing backwards, the car would go forward. Newton’s second law was to accelerate an object with more mass, you must use more force, and we investigated that by adding weights on the car, so the car went less distance. Newton’s first law was, an object will stay at rest unless acted upon by another force, and an object will stay moving unless acted upon by another force, so when the balloon car was moving, it stopped because of gravity and friction, and when we didn’t fill up the balloon’s air, then it wouldn’t move because the balloon wasn’t applying any force.

What worked?

I collaborated well with my partner, and we both did an equal amount of the car. We also had a good design, and the construction was good, (even though our wheel got stuck once). Our connection to Newton’s law was okay because the car was following what Newton said but one of the data was wrong which I will explain later.

What did not work?

Our data gathering did not work because on our first try without any weights, our wheel got stuck, so our car didn’t go very far. This led to our data with the one with a little weight being farther overall than our data without weights. Our connection to Newton’s law was pretty much following, but because of the little problem, we didn’t follow the second law because the one with more weight should have traveled less than the one with weight.

Personal Relevance:

The balloon car experiment relates to the real world because we are experimenting on Newton’s law, and it was mostly successful. Newton’s laws can also be seen all around the world, so now we know what the Newton’s laws are, and won’t be confused by something that happens. For example, the balloon car moving is similar to you hitting something, and then that thing moves, but you also move backward.

Growth and Development Reflection

October 30, 2025 /

Why is it important to understand the changes that occur during puberty?

It is important to know what changes occur because that way you know what to expect, and won’t be scared. Also, you will know what you can do to keep your body healthy.

What is the change that you feel most confident about?

The change that I am most confident about is growth spurts because my mom is always like, “You have to be tall and handsome when you grow up” so I’m really looking forward to the growth spurts.

What is the change that you feel most concerned about?

The change that I am most concerned about is the mood swings because I don’t want to be suddenly mad or annoyed because it can lead to a lot problems including friendship problems, and you can also make your parents mad at you too.

When looking for information online, how can you ensure it is credible and appropriate?

You could check in multiple ways. You can check the time and make sure it’s not outdated, you could check other sources and see if the information they say are similar, and also the only sources I used were the ones that Ms. Dani put in schoology so I think those are reliable (even though you couldn’t log in for half of them).

What is one aspect of your learning you want to improve on moving forward?

I want to improve my knowledge of the hormones that start puberty, because whenever I see it, I’m like “Oh! I remember now,” but whenever I don’t need to use the information, I just forget it.

Creative Writing Reflection

October 30, 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?

My theme was that friends are hard to manage, but they can help you go through some of the hardest times in your life, and I hope that you can see that once you read my story. I was proud when I described things well, and used a funny but (hopefully) interesting tone for my story. I got my idea from a book called Taking Up Space by Alyson Gerber, when the main character plays basketball, but is beginning to get worse because of puberty and she also has a fight with her best friends, and also Focused, also by Alyson Gerber which gave me the idea of the grades problem. My favorite line is The good mood from the win and from meeting Liam evaporated like sweat on a cold court. The phonk music in my head was replaced by a dull, thumping dread. I had gotten the win on the court, but I had a sinking feeling I was about to take a brutal loss in the classroom, because I feel like I did a good job describing how Ryan felt.

Areas for More Growth:

I think that I could improve my climax, (even though you won’t be reading it because I didn’t highlight that page) because I was really tired when I was writing it, and I wrote things like “The phone call continued like this back and forth, until I finally lost it.” because I was too tired to write the full argument, this was also my least favorite part of the story.

Personal Relevance:

I think this can help me in real life when I have an argument with my friends, or when I’m in a really bad day, and I can just remind myself that friends can cure this.

Critical Thinking: INDI+Gravitrax

October 9, 2025 /

What did I do?

I played with INDI the robot and Gravitrax to strengthen my critical thinking skills and learn what critical thinking was.

What did I learn?

I learned what critical thinking was. Critical Thinking is when you think really deep about something and not just randomly jump to conclusions right away.

What worked?

I had to think critically when our group wanted to make the marble in Gravitrax go uphill, so I provided the idea that we could use the magnet as both the ending, and so the magnetic force would help the marble go up.

What did not work?

I struggled when we were on task 10 with INDI. INDI kept missing hitting at least 1 of the colors no matter what we tried. We finally got it but it took almost all of our time.

Personal Relevance

The learning will help me because it will improve my critical thinking skills, and it helped me understand what critical thinking really was.

Unit 1 Olympic Portfolio Reflection 

September 24, 2025 /
  1. What did I work on? 
  1. During this unit, Campaign for the Olympics, I worked on creating a pitch and persuade script to convince to IOC to choose my host country, China, to host the 2032 Summer Olympics. I worked on my presentation skills and created a script to help me memorize my lines. I created a presentation using PowerPoint and I used the SAS Databases images. I used the SAS Databases to complete my research about China. I used the class persuasive sentence starters to make my speech very persuasive. 
  1. What did I learn? Why do global sporting events exist? 
  1. Global sporting events exist to bring people together and help people celebrate different cultures through sports. They increase the economy; they showcase the host country’s culture and are a positive influence in the world. 
  1. What worked well? 
  1. I am proud of these things the pitch and persuade script organizer, the PPT that me and Han created, and the presentation that me and Han did. 
  1. I am proud of the things above because I have worked hard on doing everything and I also am proud of my collaboration skills. 
  1. What did not work well? 
  1. I found some things challenging, they were trying to memorize my script and trying to get Flint to give me a good logo. 
  1. I found the things above challenging because I wrote some long reasoning so it was very difficult, also no matter what I tried, Flint would just give me a baby drawing of a combination between triangles, squares, and rectangles. 
  1. Personal Relevance 
  1. Collaboration and communications skills are important in my future because when you grow up, these skills are important to getting money, finding new friends, and getting out of trouble sometimes. 
  1. This is a photo of my work about…. 
  1. Insert photo here 
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