Olivia's Portfolio

SMART Goal Reflection

January 20, 2026 / Olivia

What did I do?

My SMART goal was to have healthier eating habits. I wanted to only drink one drink per week and only one bag of chips per week. I keep track of it by looking at my ID card and check how many times a week that I have bought a certain thing/drink. I also take action by thinking before I buy it, it is achievable and I wanted to achieve it before the Chinese New Year Break.

What did I learn?

I learned that it will sometimes be hard to keep track of my goal, so next time I want to create a chart/calendar to keep track of my goal. I also learned that I will sometimes not follow my own goals and buy chips or drinks when I’m not supposed to, so I should be more mindful next time.

What worked?

Something that have worked was that I got better and better at keeping track at my goal. And I could be more mindful, and now I am having a better choice at lunch of what to eat.

What did not work?

At first I wasn’t that mindful about this goal, and now I could easily keep track of my goal.

Personal Relevance

I made this goal because I do feel like sometimes even if I said so I won’t really do it. After I have made this goal, I have refused to eat candy from my friends. After this goal was setted I got right in to it.

Badminton Reflection

January 16, 2026 / Olivia

What I have learned

I have learned how to do a legal underhand serve. I have also learned how to do a forehand and backhand serve. I have also learned some new grips and learned how to hold my racket.

What worked

I can play a match and follow the rules of badminton.

What didn’t work

I don’t have a really good stamina so I couldn’t play for a long time.

Personal relevance

I personally enjoy playing badminton and I mostly enjoy to play it with friends and families.

Unit 4 Dystopian Fiction Reflection

December 16, 2025 / Olivia

What did I learn about dystopian fiction?

I learned that there are 7 topics in dystopian fiction, some of them were: totalitarianism, social control, illusion of utopia etc. And often the setting and characters could be very different from real life.

How does dystopian fiction encourage me to think about real life?

I think that real life is both same and different to dystopian fiction. I think that there are actually a lot in common when we read The Giver, I feel like when we feel like something is weird and fake, it is actually happening in real life. Like labor is actually just like taking care of children, and there are also adopted children in the real world. On the other hand, it is different from the real world because most of the people know what is snow, war, and hunger, but in the book only the Giver and Jonas knew about it.

I enjoyed The Giver.(explain)

I enjoyed The Giver because it lets me think of lots of things that is happening and not happening in the real world right now, and I am really interested in the things that are not happening, since it allows me to think deeply and dive deeper into discussions with classmates.

How has my ability to write academic paragraphs improved?

Because I have practiced with a lot of commonlit assignments, I know more of how the structure is like, and not to use first, and second person’s point of view.

How have I become better at literature discussion?

I can elaborate on my group mates and validate them, I can also pull them back on track when they are distracted.

Roller Coaster Lab and Model

December 11, 2025 / Olivia

Independent variable: the height iof the starting point

Dependent variable: the likely hood of the marble ending up in the cup

_ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

My video:

Rollercoaster L4 Movie.mp4

Bake Sale Reflection

December 1, 2025 / Olivia

What did I do?

Me and my friends worked on the bake sale project together for four days. Day 1, we chose recipes that we wanted to make. Day 2, we calculated all the units, and the ingredients used. Day 3, we calculated the amount of money used for one batch, also the markup price for the product. Day 4, we made posters and determined our sell prices.

What did learn?

I learned how to calculate the unit rates and calculate the income. The unit price for each gram of each ingredient and the batch cost were hard to calculate since we have made many mistakes.

What worked?

We have sold all of our products that we have made and we made posters that explained all of our work.

What did not work well?

We had some problems on the profit earned after the bake sale.

How is this relevant for me?

I will have the ability to calculate how much I have earned each time I sell something.

P.E Swimming Reflection

November 20, 2025 / Olivia

What did I learn

I learned how to snorkel, and how to swim freestyle, breastroke, and backstroke. Also I learned how to improve my stamina.

What can I improve on?

I can improve on my backstroke skills and my snorkeling skills since I never knew how to snorkel before. Also I didn’t know how to snorkel properly.

Personal Reflection

I think overall I did pretty well and I did learn lots of knowledge from swimming class this year.

Egg car

November 12, 2025 / Olivia

The criteria of the egg car were the car has to stay on the track and can’t have a length over 16.5cm and a width less than 6.5cm, it has to roll down by itself down the ramp without gliding or falling.

I saw Newton’s 1st law appeared in the egg car challenge when the car rolls down, it has forces that was created by the ramp. The 3rd law appeared in the challenge when the car bumped on to the bricks, the bricks bumped back to the car so then it was rolling back. Also some of the eggs have fallen forward because of the force that is left.

The design that we created allowed the the egg to not fall forward since the egg was out towards the back which made it hard to fall forward. Also the “elephant nose” crumple zone helped a lot because some of the other designs that others made did not leave enough space for the crumple zone which was not enough buffer.

I would enlarge the crumple zone a little bit stronger because it was not strong enough after we did the challenge five times, and it folded. I would also suggest others to make a strong crumple zone and make it longer.

Now I know what are the big space left for on cars, and what the air bags, and seatbelts are for. These designs help to make the passengers safe by allowing them to have a buffer. Also it protects the passengers from getting hurt when they are in a car accident.

Balloon Car

November 5, 2025 / Olivia

In our balloon car project, we were required to make a balloon car that will move by the air inside the balloon. Some materials we got was balloon, straw, foam plate, wheels, and axles. We used it to discover Newton’s Laws, and see what are the reactions to the balloon car.

I learned Newton’s Law for example, F=MA, force pairs, and inertia. The first law applies to the balloon car when the balloon car keeps going forward, but when the chairs and wall blocked the balloon car, it stopped. Also, as stated by Newton’s second law, F=MA, this applies to the balloon car when the balloon car was gliding across the room, the bigger the balloon the farther it goes, because it has more mass and acceleration. Newton’s third law applies to the balloon car because for every action there is a equal amount of reaction,for example, when the car bumped to the chair, it bounced back because it still has some speed left so that was the reaction.

Something that worked well was the balloon car was moving and it went to the farthest distance that it could, but also had to stop because of the wall. Bumping to the wall also causes it to come back a little just like bouncing of, which is Newton’s third law, for every action, there is an equal amount of reaction. Something else is that the balloon cart can actually stay in a straight line without changing direction so that the distance will be affected.

I kind of struggled with my partner because he wasn’t really doing what he was supposed to be doing at the right time. Also according to Newton’s third law for every action, there is an equal amount of reaction, the balloon car bounced back which made or data inaccurate. Ryan and i also didn’t agree with the design at first so it was also difficult to make a final choice.

What we have learned from the balloon car was related to the real world because in the real world we also know that force equals to mass multiplied by acceleration. So, in order for us to push something, we need the mass multiplied by acceleration to push the object. Knowing Newton’s law is important because in real life there are lots of example of it, in school, at work, or whatever places, you will all see Newton’s laws of motion.

Art Reflection

October 30, 2025 / Olivia

I chose to use plaster to make my project, and I used it to make a Japanese bento box. It contains things like rice balls, and spring rolls. I had to add water to the plaster in order to make it wet so then I could make different shapes. I am proud of this piece of artwork because this is the first time that I have used plaster, and it is amazing that I could make it this well for the first time. I learned that plaster will get hot after a period of time, so I think it is really magical.