I organize my time and plan ahead to make sure that I allow enough time to get everything done.
Stress Resilience:
When I face a life challenge, I feel confident that I handle the accompanying stress in a healthy way.
Healthy Relationships:
I feel good about the amount of trust, respect, and honesty that exists in all of my relationships, including dating relationships, if applicable.
Rest and Play:
I am confident that the amount of time I spend connected to technology such as video games, TV, computer, Facebook, and cell phone is good for my overall well-being.
Handling Emotions:
I have a solid and healthy sense of confidence in myself.
Spirituality:
I have activities that I do regularly to renew my soul, to center myself, and to gain perspective.
School and Work:
I am personally happy with my grades.
Care for the Body:
I determine what is right for me, in terms of weight and appearance, rather than letting my peers or the culture determine that for me.
Before learning about mental health and its several conditions, I was limited to the perspective of mental illnesses being far away from me, and I had several stigmas towards mental health disorders. In addition, I didn’t know there was a wide range of disorders people are suffering through, as I only knew one disorder, and that is depression. I had misconceptions towards individuals experiencing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and I used to joke around it by describing people who prefers things centered and organized as having OCD.
My thinking changed throughout this unit and I learned that everyone can have mental illnesses, and it is likely that people around me are silently dealing with mental health disorders. Actions that I can take is to refuse any stigma, for example, the thinking of people with depression as weak, and make them feel supported and included by refusing ostracism. The symptoms of OCD doesn’t only limit to liking things centered and organized. There are several more symptoms such as eating food in a specific order and repeating specific words. These behaviors should never be laughed at and we should try to understand people with OCD as they are suffering and support them. These apply to other disorders such as Bipolar Disorders. I thought the disorder is only about having extreme mood swings, but that is only a small faction of the whole picture. It can include mania, hypomania, and depression. The knowledge I gained in this unit now allows me to avoid any stigma and perhaps advocate for people experiencing mental illnesses.
Goal: Improve my tennis serve accuracy and rally consistency.
Specific actions
I will practice tennis 4 days each week.
Each practice session will be around 90 minutes.
During each session I will:
30 minutes practicing my serving
40 minutes practicing rallies with my coach
20 minutes for random stuff
Measurement
I will attempt 20 serves during each practice session.
I will count how many serves land in the correct service box.
My goal is to reach at least an 95% accuracy.
Relevant
Practicing can improve my consistency.
Time
I will work on this goal for 3 months.
Goal: Improve my understanding of math and increase my MAP scores.
Specific actions
After every math lesson I will complete 10 additional practice problems to review my learning.
I will review my math notes for 10 minutes every other day.
If I get a question wrong, I will check the solution and redo the question until I understand it.
Measurement
I will track how many questions I answer correctly.
Relevant
Practicing can improve my test scores and understanding in math.
Time
I will follow this plan for the rest of the school semester.
French SMART Goal
Goal: Improve my French speaking and listening skills.
Specific actions
I will learn 10 new French words every week.
I will write 3 sentences using the new words.
I will review the vocabulary two times during the week.
I will practice pronunciation by reading the sentences out loud once.
Measurement
I will learn 10 new words each week.
By the end of 10 weeks I will know about 100 new words.
Time
I will continue this routine for 10 weeks.
French Smart Goal
Goal: Improve my French listening and speaking skills and reach at least A2 level.
Specific actions
I will listen to French audio such as short videos, podcasts, or dialogues for 10 minutes, 4 times each week.
While listening, I will write down at least 5 new words
After listening, I will repeat the sentences out loud to practice my pronunciation.
I will practice speaking French for 5 minutes by recording myself.
Once each week, I will try to have a short conversation in French using at least 5 new words I learned.
Measurement I will learn about 20 new words or phrases each week from my listening practice. I will complete 4 listening sessions each week and practice speaking at least once each week.
I had shown effective use of my time as I was spending the class time efficiently writing my 3-paragraph analysis and diary. Even though the diary was hard to develop as I had to stand in my brother’s shoes and pretend that I am the person who experienced the migrations, I managed to use my time wisely and I really dug deep to produce satisfactory and touching diary entries. I tried my best to convey my emotions properly. The hardest part of the process of developing my final product is that I had difficulties imagining the situation and writing the diary with my heart. In my opinion, the biggest success of writing diaries is to enable readers to connect themselves with the “writer” of the diary and make them feel like they had experienced it first-hand. Since I am not my brother, and I haven’t matured because I didn’t have any emotional traumas and breakdowns before, I was struggling a lot to make the diary entries emotional and authentic. I worked through this by concentrating and really plugging myself into my brother’s brain and focusing on how I would feel when I encounter the exact challenges he has faced. Flint AI was useful as I was able to seek feedback from the robot about my flow in sentences, my grammar, and it helped me develop ideas. In addition, I used the flint AI to check if I had met the standards required for at least a meeting. It gave me feedback on how I could improve and led me to think on a higher level. Furthermore, I used the AI for checking synonyms of words and suggestions on how I could do a proper job on writing diary entries. I was able to communicate my thoughts well by writing emotional diary entries that are touching and had conveyed the messages I wanted to convey. If I could change anything about my final product, I would add more aesthetics since my diary might have been too text focused.
My organization skills improved and the evidence is that even though I previously had issues with my handwriting, this issue is now solved. For example, last semester when I was doing the weather data collection, I didn’t organize my data well and I now have troubles reading them. However, I now took more time with my work which made it look very neat. My science notebook is a well-organized, carefully created artifacts that showcases my learning and growth in Science class during 8th grade.
Evidence of Active learner Habits.
This is the active learner self assessment I had filled out for myself which includes my ability to reflect on my learning, demonstrate persistence and positivity, completes assignments…etc. I meet all of these standards except for the “engages in preparation necessary for learning” rubric. This is due to the fact that I sometimes score a 2 on my 3 for 3s, which indicates my lack of comprehension of the knowledge taught in class. Based on the approaching that I appraised for myself during last October, I had been improving by reviewing the learning at home, and seeking help from Mr. Tafel.
According to the feedback that I had received from my teacher, I understood how to ask effective questions, define solution, engage in argument from evidence (CER), and all other skills taught in class. This is evident as I got all meetings or above or approachings from L2 assignments. However, I do have to still improve on my consistency for 3 for 3 assessments to further showcase my active learner skills.
Evidence of Understanding of Key Concepts.
The 2 pictures above shows my grades for the 3 for 3 assessments taken during semester 1 and semester 2 so far. It shows that I still have to augment my effort towards having a more solid comprehension of the knowledge points.
Evidence of Growth in Science Class.
Previously in Semester 1, I wasn’t able to develop fully a CER that meets SAS’s requirements as I had troubles with my claim and reasoning. To be specific, I kept repeating the claim in my reasoning without the purpose of connecting them together. However I had showed significant growth and this is the CER I had written a week ago:
During the net wall unit, we tried several different sports including Badminton and Pickleball.
Badminton felt really demanding for me due to the fact that I was struggling to consistently hit the ball over the net at the first place. However, through several classes of practice, I managed to improve my skills. The rules were also difficult because it was important to learn which court should one serve in. One strength in the Badminton unit was my collaboration skills with my partner, and we were able to win some of the games.
Pickleball was really fun as it resembles with tennis. I was able to show some skill at the start of the pickleball unit, and I gradually improved throughout the unit. I looked forward to pickleball and I strength was that even though the pickleball comes with high speed, I was able to return it over the net.
My strengths are that I can arrive to class on time and I can use dynamics and articulation to make my playing expressive. In addition, I can use dynamics and articulation to make my playing expressive and I can apply the correct fingerings for each note. I can also compose music that follows the criteria I am given. Furthermore, I can identify note names on the staff and use music vocabulary when talking or writing about music.
Areas for growth in band are that I need to turn in my work on time and resubmit my assignments to reach higher scores. I also need to use practice strategies to help me improve.
I will address these questions by practicing my assignments throughout the week instead of on the day it is due. Moreover, I can bring a more positive attitude to class.
This oral is related to the unit on Health. In this task I was supposed to give suggestions on how to maintain good well-being in 3 different aspects on a poster. I collaborated with my partner Chris and we spliced the work apart. I am explaining in French my poster and why it is important to have good health. For me it was not challenging or easy because I am fine with presenting in front of people and I prepared well. My pronunciation was fine and I am proud because I think I didn’t falter. I cam improve by sounding more natural.
This work is part of the unit on World War 1 and the war’s impact on French citizens. It is to assess my writing skills, collaboration skills, and my ability to convey emotions into a letter. What I needed to do was to collaborate with my partner and we had to pretend to be French citizens and write letters to each other. I collaborated with my partner Chris and we have to pretend that we were married, and Chris was a solider fighting for France.
My teacher gave the following feedback:
Comment: It’s a good letter that matches well your partner. There are a few things to take in consideration: 1- I think if a mum looses her son she will write more than 2 lines about it . 2- You misspelled your name Louise 3- The way you wrote the date is in English. 4- I think if you send baguette, it will arrived already very dry and i am not sure that is the food the man is dreaming about.
I think it is quite accurate because I didn’t really show how crestfallen I was when my “son” died and I have several other errors such as writing the date in English. In order to keep improve, my next steps will be to check for the format of the date, pay more attention to my name, and check for the logic of my letter.
Overall in this unit I have learned how to properly write a letter and about the daily lives of French soldiers and citizens. I think I can apply this knowledge in real life when I want to write a letter to my friend because I already know the format.
In the first unit of Health, I learned about how our brains operate and how to control our emotions to further my stress resilience. In my presentation, I showcased a WOOP goal that I have been working on for a few weeks. I plan to “lock in” and stop my procrastination. In other words, I should prioritize my delayed gratification over instant gratification. For example, even though scrolling and using social media to text with friends always seems like a treat, I really should choose the right time to do it. Therefore, when I am studying a test, I should force myself to put alway my phone before my dopamine hit, and focus on reviewing. After the test, I could choose to relax for a while, and that brings me long term gratification. I am using the app “Forest” to assist me with my self-discipline. Forest blocks all the apps that acts as a distraction to me, and I feel like it is very useful.
