WeiTongVic's Portfolio

Here is the link to my presentation:

Victoria Xu Gold C1 Media Presentation.MOV

Something that I realized after the practice round of the presentation is that I was staring at my notecards and did not make a lot of eye contact. In the presentation, I tried to make more eye contact with my audience. In addition, after receiving feedback from my peers halfway through the project, I added related commercials/advertisements into my report, as well as including a digitally created image.

Something I am proud of from this unit is completing all tasks before the due date. Additionally, I successfully created two newspaper articles reporting the same event from different perspectives. I also liked my choice of images, since I think they effectively matched the topic and were relevant.

I hope to improve my confidence and engagement during presentations by practicing more without relying heavily on notecards. Additionally, I will focus on maintaining consistent eye contact with the audience to build a stronger connection and deliver my message more effectively.

Bias is when someone favors one side, opinion, or group more than another, usually in a way that’s unfair or only supports one side. It means not seeing things equally or objectively.

A positive outcome of people having the same perspective is that it can help them work together more easily. When people agree, they can make decisions faster and act as a united group.

A negative outcome of people having the same perspective is that it can limit new ideas. If everyone thinks the same way, important viewpoints might be ignored, and mistakes can happen without questioning.

What did you understand in this unit?

Throughout this unit, I developed a thorough understanding of proportional relationships, understanding the concept of the constant of proportionality (CoP), the methods for finding the CoP, the role of reciprocals in the context of CoPs, how to represent a proportional relationship visually through graphing, and the skill of formulating equations effectively to represent proportional relationships.

What new information did you learn in this unit?

In this unit, we defined what a proportional relationship is, and what characteristics make a relationship proportional. A proportional relationship exists when two variables maintain a constant ratio, meaning one variable is a constant times the other. In proportional relationships, as one quantity increases or decreases, the other changes at a consistent rate, keeping the ratio equivalent. The constant of proportionality is the fixed factor that relates two proportional quantities. It represents the constant multiplier that relates them. We also learned how to find the constant of proportionality. To determine the constant of proportionality, we divide y( the de

What was interesting in this unit?

The final project was fascinating to me. I enjoyed the opportunity to plan a “party” while honing my skills in identifying CoPs, creating graphs, and writing equations to represent proportional relationships. The lemonade experiment was also really fun. I loved that we got to get a tasty drink, as well as learning foundational skills in the process.

What was tricking in this unit?

One challenge I faced in this unit was writing an equation that accurately represents the relationship between the independent variable (x) and the dependent variable (y). The formula to represent the relationship between x and y is y=kx. This process involved understanding how changes in the independent variable affect the dependent variable. I sometimes found myself confusing the constant of proportionality, which is an important factor that represents proportional relationships. I became confused when I tried to determine if x scaled y by a certain factor, or if x influenced y in some way.

The central question for this unit is, “In what way will responsible scientific practices contribute to my success this year?”

What are we doing?

In this unit, we are focusing on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and collaborating with a partner to select a changemaker who has made an impact/ change in our world. As part of this project, we will create a Mixed Media Response (MMR) and a Canva Profile with important details and facts about our changemaker. My partner, Amy Chen, and I have decided to focus on Sonia Sotomayor, who is one of the nine justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. We believe that her contributions to justice and equality are significant and that she is an inspiring role model for youth and those seeking to work in the legal field.

What are we learning?

We learned how to research effectively by using reliable sources and databases, such as BrainPop videos and articles from Gale and Britannica. One of our assignments includes a research note on our change maker, where we will need to read articles and answer questions, such as basic background information that we believe are important to know, who or what they are trying to help, how did they help, and what were the effects of their actions. In our case, we learnt that Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in the United States. Her efforts have primarily focused on advocating for civil rights and ensuring justice is accessible to all, regardless of their background.

What’s working?

Something that went well in this project was filling out the Changemaker Research Note. We are required to read a different article each, which is about our changemaker (Sonia Sotomayor). I chose Britannica/Newsela, and my partner, Amy, chose Gale. However, when reading through the article, I realized that the content in Britannica and Newsela isn’t enough, and I decided to read Biography.com for some extra information. There are 3 sections in the changemaker note, 1 section for each of us to fill out the questions, and another for a BrainPop movie, where we will fill it out together. Both of us were able to collaborate effectively on the project. We divided our tasks, ensuring that we were both on the same page with our findings. Filling out the Changemaker Research Note was particularly beneficial, as it helped us understand and summarize the information that we gathered.

What’s not working?

An area of improvement would be the design and making process of our Mixed Media Response (MMR). We are still unsure about the elements we included, and found it quite challenging to choose pictures and texts that best represent the traits/characteristics of Sonia Sotomayor. Additionally, we struggled to step outside our comfort zone and experiment with something entirely new and different from our past experiences. MMRs are basically anti-CARP, meaning they are really different from typical posters, and it took us a lot of time adjusting to the fact that we do not need to align texts and pictures in how we would when designing posters.

Personal relevance

This project is really interesting to me as it resonates with my interest in social justice and equality. Sonia Sotomayor’s story is inspiring, especially as she overcame numerous challenges to become the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in the United States. By doing the MMR and research notes, I deepened my understanding of how impactful an individual can be and how they can cause changes. I also think that the skills that we’ve learned in this unit, such as paraphrasing and annotating texts, will help me in the future when I need to summarize a really long text, and provide me with a better understanding of the key ideas in articles and videos. Finishing the MMR project taught me to be creative and come up with inspiring ideas.

EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION

An area of EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION that I was the best at was paying attention to self and others because I was consistently listening to what my partner was saying and giving constructive feedback on her ideas.

An area of EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION that I need to improve is pausing before talking. My partner and I often get excited when discussing our ideas, and this sometimes leads to us speaking over each other, which decreases the amount of work done since not all of our conversations are qualitative. I can improve on this area by allowing myself to take a few seconds to think over what I am about to say, and double-checking whether it is necessary.

What are we doing?

In the three units we have covered in Health class, we have focused on three major topics: Personal Health and Safety, Growth and Development, and Healthy Relationships. Through these units, we have learned how to take care of our well-being, understand the changes our bodies go through, and develop positive relationships with others.

What are we learning?

We have learned basic first aid, such as how to properly perform a CPR and what we should do when someone is choking. We have also explored how to resolve a conflict without intentionally hurting someones emotions or compromising ourself.

This is a picture of our group’s end of unit presentation

What are my strengths in this assignment?

My strength in this assignment is that I can effectively manage my time and finish activities on time. I also collaborate well with my group mates, being able to communicate with others and put ideas on the table.

What are some areas of growth for this assignment?

I can work on memorizing emergency contact numbers and global emergency lines to recall them more quickly if needed. Another area for improvement is articulating my learnings creatively instead of only sticking to presentations full of words.

What are we doing?

In this unit, we are focusing on understanding democracy in both modern and ancient times, as well as diving deeper into the U.S. government by creating an informative poster. We have explored how different democratic systems have evolved, from ancient Athens to the modern-day United States, learning about how citizen participation, government structures, and individual rights have changed over time.

What are we learning?

Recently, our main purpose has been to research an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and an article from the UN Declaration of Human Rights, examining how they protect people’s rights. For example, my research has focused on the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship, equal protection under the law, and due process, and Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which ensures that everyone has the right to a nationality and cannot be arbitrarily deprived of it.

What’s working?

Something that worked well in this unit is that during the L4 Venn Diagram Project, I was able to successfully identify the differences and similarities between U.S. democracy and Athenian democracy. I am also proud of my poster on the three branches of the U.S. government, where I incorporated CARP design principles—Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity—to make my work more easy to read and understand. Using these design concepts helped me organize information clearly and ensure that key points stood out. Additionally, I effectively used sentence starters to cite my research and present my information

What’s not working?

Something that I should improve on in this unit is understanding how to manage my time effectively so that I can finish all of my classwork on time instead of completing it as a homework, as well as checking the requirements for assignment so that I can meet standard. Something that I struggled with during the 3-branches project is paraphrasing. I should summarize the information before I put it onto the poster, so that the information are more concise instead of a chunk of text.

Personal Relevance

I think the skills we learned in this unit are really useful for our future. They help us understand how the democratic system functions and why changes were made, from ancient Athens to modern-day America. More broadly, these skills that we focuses throughout daily lessons—effective communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving—are essential for success in both academics and real life. Mastering them will allow us to analyze information, make informed decisions, and engage meaningfully in society.

Active Learning Focus

The active learning focus that I am strong in is D,”I always give me best effort; however this doesn’t mean. that get”Exceeding” or “Meeting on an assignment. I always try to approach my assignments with my best effort and work to the best of my ability. However achieving an “Exceeding” or “Meeting” rating may also depend on how well I understand the work criteria and standards. The active learning focus that I struggle with is A “I can keep up with the lesson and know what is going on. Sometimes in class I get distracted instead of listening directly to the speaker. This caused my to not fully understand what we are expected to do for assignment or class works.

Active learning focus

What are we doing & learning?

In French class, we are learning how to talk about food, meals, and ordering in a café or restaurant. We practiced naming and spelling foods from different categories, discussing meal times, and comparing eating habits using “mais.”

We also learned to express our food preferences with specific verbs and adjectives and describe what people eat for Christmas in France and for Chinese New Year in China. Additionally, we focus on expressing quantities using phrases like “un peu de,” “beaucoup de,” and “trop de,” and we worked on counting numbers up to 9999

What is working?

In Unit 3, we also focused on conjugating verbs using a website called conjuguemos. We focused on four different types of verbs: MANGER, PRENDRE, BOIRE, ALLER, and VOULOIR. What I am doing well is that I can memorize most of the conjugation for the first three types and use it in conversation and writing.

What is not working?

I still need to practice memorizing the conjugation for ALLER and VOULOIR, as well as remembering the different uses of the question words. Sometimes, I mix up the forms of ALLER and forget that it is irregular, especially in the ils and il forms. For VOULOIR, I need to focus on spelling and pronunciation to make sure I’m saying the correct form.

I should also improve on question word because I sometimes hesitate when choosing the right one in a sentence. To improve, I plan to review my notes, use Quizlet, and practice forming sentences with these words until they feel more natural.

What are doing?

In unit 2, our key perpose is to participate in a mock trial debating about the death of Ötzi, a 5300 years old iceman. There is two different teams, the defense team and the prosecution team (prosecution=murdered, defense=not murdered) There is multiple roles that we can choose from, such as attorneys, court reporter, and expert witness. Each team would them deliver an opening speech and ask questions to the expert witness, which is when they will introduce their evidence supporting the prosecution/defense team. After listening to both sides, the juries would have a discussion and decide which side convinced them the most and the judge would announce the final decision.

Here is link to my open and closed question word document

L3_Open_and_Closed_Questions_ATTORNEYS_2024 (1).docx

What are we learning?

Throughout this process, we have been learning how to make connections between pieces of evidence and ask both open and closed questions to better understand them. We have also improved our ability to analyze and summarize articles by picking out important details and organizing information clearly. In addition, we practiced writing a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) paragraph about the death of Ötzi, which helped us learn how to support our ideas with facts. This activity made us think more critically about different possibilities and improved our writing and research skills. Overall, this experience has helped us become better at analyzing information and explaining our thoughts in a clear and structured way.

These are the evidence that I was required to read

What’s working?

I did well in making strong connections between pieces of evidence and asking both open and closed questions to better understand the information. My ability to analyze and summarize articles has also improved, as I learned to identify key details and organize them clearly. During the debate, although I struggled with public speaking, I believe I did a good job on my opening speech by presenting my ideas in a decent way. In addition, I put effort into preparing a range of open and closed questions in my preparation document, which helped me speak up more in the debate.

Here is the C2 Gold Mock Trial Script

GOLD_MOCK_TRIAL_SCRIPT_for_Otzi_the_Ice_Man_2.0.docx

What’s not working?

I struggled with citing the sources where I found my evidence, as I sometimes forgot to keep track of them. During my opening speech, I also stumbled a bit, which made it harder to present my ideas smoothly and confidently. Additionally, I found it challenging to summarize all of my information into a short paragraph, as there were many key details I wanted to include. This made it difficult to keep my writing concise while still making sure my points were clear and well-supported.

Personal Relevance

I think this learning will help me when I grow up because being able to communicate well with other is really important in real life. For instant, if I have an argument with other in the future, being able to effectively talk-it out would be helpful and it is definetly a skill that I should continue to practise. I can also use the skill I have learned to summarize and anaylyze information would be useful especially in times where there is a lot of tasks that I need to finish. Overall, this project has helped me improve my critical thinking, writing, and communication skills, all of which will be useful in future assignments.

What are we doing?

In this unit, we are exploring chamber music as a small group and selecting a musical piece as a group for our final performance.  Our group members are, me, Agnes, and Eileen, which is 2 violins and 1 viola. We chose the music piece “The Magic of Harry Potter” as it is mysterious and harmonic piece and is easy to blend in togther

What are we learning?

We are learning how to collaborate as a group and decide who will play each parts, how to create a better dynamic and making sure that we are playing at the same time in the correct rhythm

What are my strength in this assignment?

I believe my strengths in this assignment is my ability to integrate my part smoothly, staying on beat and ensuring I play all the right note. One of the strength for our group is that we are all listneing to each other, which enhanced the overall performance.

What should I continue to improve on?

I think I should continue on improving my fingerings and make sure that I am staying on the same beat as my groupmates. It is also essential that our team brings a change of dynamic into our performance, which would then create a better-enchanted impression for the audience.

This is the final grade for our performance.