The image shown above is the #2 WOOP goal of the semester. For my wellness compass statement was, “My friends and those who know me will say that I’m a good and trusted friend”. I wished to become a better friend by talking to each of my friends and understanding what I could do to become better.
The process for my WOOP goal wasn’t easy for me. Being able to talk to my friends face to face while being serious asking for advice about myself. But during this process I started to understand that it doesn’t have to be that serious. I can still ask for advice every so often on what I can do during an activity or while we are just out hanging out.
I used to think that each mental health disorder is diagnosed and gotten individually. However after this unit, I learned that a lot of mental health disorders are not stand-alone and can often be caused or caused by different mental disorders. For example in my presentation about eating disorders, I learnt that eating disorders can be caused by depression, and/or anxiety. This is because disorders such as binge-eating disorder can be an unhealthy coping method some people resort to when being depressed and/or anxious.
I also used to think that there weren’t sub-genres of mental health disorders. For example, I used to think if you had an eating disorder, you couldn’t eat or couldn’t stop eating. But now I learned that there are more specific disorders under categories such as eating disorders such as binge eating disorder, anorexia, and bulimia.
The purpose of my Student Led Conferences this year is to display the work that I have done in 8th grade. I will display different artifact from each of my classes including core and specials.
My Vision Board
Sports: I chose to put pictures of tennis and football as they are the two sports I want to focus on the most. In both sports, I hope to become more proficient and skilled in every aspect of each sport.
Music: I put two instruments on my vision board. I plan to become better at both the violin and guitar this year. In school, I’m taking orchestra this year and I hope to get good grades.
Grades: For my grades this year, my goal is to maintain meeting and exceedings across all my classes. I want to continue challenging myself academically while finding a healthy balance between my schoolwork and other activities.
Goals
I hope to improve my Chinese ability by being proactive in class and completing assignments on times, and getting grades higher than a meeting in class.
I hope to complete reading and writing passports as early as possible to get a 4.
Stop procrastinating.
Social Studies
Unit 1: Inquire into Interest
This artifact displays the first project of the year. This project displays my ability to analyze and create a thesis statement around the topic of how cognitive rehabilitation has impacted people in the last 25 years. This artifact demonstrates growth on how I have learned the ability to analyse test and create an infographic displaying the skill and presentation.
This assignment really pushed me to develop my analytical skills in a significant way. Initially, I struggled to go beyond surface-level observations and dive deeper into the nuances of the conversation. However, with guidance from my teacher and some dedicated practice, I was able to craft a thoughtful, three-paragraph analysis that explored the interviewee’s tone, body language, and underlying messaging. This exercise was incredibly valuable in strengthening my ability to think critically, consider multiple perspectives, and draw insightful conclusions. I’m excited to share this work as an artifact during our conference and discuss how I can continue building on these analytical skills.
Science
My models now demonstrate a clearer understanding of energy flow, symbiotic relationships, and ecological balance. Additionally, my organizational skills have strengthened, as seen in my well-structured table of contents. It effectively categorizes my work, making it easier to navigate and demonstrating my ability to present information in a logical, organized manner. These improvements reflect my growth in both scientific understanding and academic organization.
Language Arts
Reading Writing Passport
The reading and writing assignments I’ve finished each quarter are included in my passport, which indicates to my consistent commitment and my work ethic. It demonstrates how much I’ve improved as a communicator because I can now express myself clearly in a variety of writing and reading genres. My dedication to developing my abilities and meeting deadlines—qualities necessary for success in school and beyond—is demonstrated by my passport.
Public Speaking
One area I’ve really focused on developing this year is my public speaking ability. In my English class, we’ve been learning various techniques to improve our communication skills, such as using effective body language, articulating clearly, incorporating strategic pauses, and modulating our tone. At first, it felt a bit awkward to implement these strategies, but I’ve noticed a significant difference in my confidence and delivery when presenting in front of the class. For example, I recently had to give a persuasive speech on a topic I’m passionate about – renewable energy. By consciously using open body language, speaking at a measured pace, and emphasizing key points with changes in volume, I was able to engage my audience and effectively convey my message. This experience has been invaluable, and I’m excited to continue honing my public speaking abilities
For the “L4 Designing Your Own Problem” project, I was able to go above and beyond to received an exceeding grade. I incorporated concepts like quadratics and discontinuous graphs into the problems, demonstrating my ability to think critically and apply advanced mathematical skills. This project really allowed me to showcase my creativity and problem-solving abilities. I’m proud that I was able to challenge myself and produce work that exceeded the expectations. This project is a great example of how I’m constantly able push myself further in class and not settle for just meeting the requirements.
Design Tech
This year was the first year where I took DT as a class I included my tissue box from the first unit of DT because this was my first-ever project. This tissue box was made from 4mm plywood and was laser cut to create the shapes needed to intersect together.
Passion Project
For my passion project, I worked with Nelsun and Jayden on a project about card games like Texas Hold’em. We had a lot of fun learning about the different strategies and techniques involved in these games. Mr. Neal also helped us enhance our skills and took stats from all of our games. It was really interesting to see how the data changed as we got better at playing. Overall, this project allowed me to explore my interest in card games and work collaboratively with my classmates to develop new skills.
In my Chinese language class, I’ve been really focused on improving my public speaking abilities, especially when it comes to delivering presentations. Now, when I give presentations, I incorporate more improvisation and use my slides as more of a visual aid rather than a script. I’ve found that this approach allows me to engage the audience more effectively and showcase my growing fluency in Chinese. My teachers have noticed this progress and have commented on how my presentations have become more natural and dynamic. I’m excited to share one of my recent Chinese speeches as an artifact during our conference to demonstrate how my public speaking abilities have evolved.
One of the most rewarding projects I’ve undertaken this year was creating a programmatic composition using MuseScore. For my piece, I chose techniques like dissonant chords, crescendos, and dramatic pauses to simulate the build-up and release of the storm. Experimenting with different instrumentation, rhythms, and dynamics allowed me to craft a dynamic, immersive musical experience. I’m really proud of how my composition turned out, and I’m excited to share it as an artifact during our conference to showcase my creativity and growing musical skills.
In my Health and Wellness class, I reviewed the wellness app “Habit” and shared how it has helped me build healthier habits. The app’s gamification and reminder features have motivated me to stick to goals like meditation, exercise, and better sleep. Through my review, I was able to critically analyze the app’s functionality and design, as well as provide specific examples of how it has positively impacted my daily routine. I’m excited to present this app review as an artifact during our student-led conference to showcase my growing understanding of personal wellness.
PE
In my Physical Education class, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to try out new sports like pickleball. At first, the fast-paced gameplay and coordination required was challenging, but I was determined to improve. Through regular practice and feedback from my teacher, I’ve developed better hand-eye coordination, strategic thinking, and the ability to adapt my playing style. I’m proud of how much my pickleball skills have progressed, and I’m excited to demonstrate my learning by playing a match as an artifact during our student-led conference. This experience has shown me the value of embracing new physical activities and the personal growth that can come from stepping outside my comfort zone.
The app “Habit” works by you setting goals and then sliding to register your completion of the activity. The app itself has a simple goal with no complications with the system.
Some basic features includes how you can simply set a clear goal then slide to complete them daily.
Some advanced features include adding reminders throughout the day for the goal that you set. You can also keep track of how you feel throughout the entire day by logging your feelings with an optional comment.
The app supports my personal whoop goal by reminding me to do daily tasks I want to build a habit of. Tasks such as drinking more water, reading, and stretching help me build up the daily habits that will help me in the long term to build up stress resilience and improve my brain/body health. After long time of usage these habits will be ingrained in my routine then I won’t need reminders or an app to make me track my goals/activity.
The app has a humane design that doesn’t make you addicted to the app. The app design is simple with complex functions, making it more bland and less addicting. The app adds value to my life as, over just one week, I’ve started to incorporate habits into my life without needing reminders from the app. Long-term impacts will build the skills needed to build habits, and build the habits needed to become more successful.
During this unit, we explored the psychology of stress from different perspectives, such as coping strategies and teen brain development. We learned that in the teen brain, the pre-frontal cortex is still developing, only by the age of 25 is the pre-frontal cortex fully developed. This allows the amygdala to take over more often which is why teens are more prone to acting on emotion rather than logic and reasoning. The amygdala is the part of the brain that control’s our emotions. The pre-frontal cortex is the section of the brain that controls reasoning, problem-solving, comprehension, and impulse control.
We learned strategies that will help us build stress resilience, such as mindfulness, and breathing techniques. Some of the breathing techniques include circular breathing and anchor breathing. These strategies when used will help us better control ourselves and the situations we are in when dealing with our fight, flight, or freeze response.
My group and I did our presentation on the importance of sleep. Through our research, we discovered that sleep doesn’t just affect how tired you are but affects your brain, emotions, and productivity throughout the day. We identified common problems such as caffeine intake, electronic device usage before bed, and stress then solved each of the common issues.
Creating a portfolio, or blog is a great way to collect all the work you’ve done throughout your academic career. You can include academic, athletic, and personal artifacts or experiences that you want to share with a wider audience. This is a great way to organize all your learning in one place and you can take it with you when you leave SAS. When you make your portfolio, you create posts that are categorized according to your subject. Some categories have already been set up for you, but if you need more categories you can add them as needed. It’s important that your posts have the following:
An engaging title – this should not include the name of the subject since this is referenced in the category. Think of this as the first opportunity to engage and hook your reader!
Body – this is where you share your learning. This should include a combination of text and media in the form of images, graphics, and embedded videos. You should always consider how your post looks to your audience. Is it engaging and organized? Do they want to keep reading?
Category – select one that has been set for you or add a new category. Posts can have more than one category e.g. Humanities and Myself as a Learner
Tags – create tags that can be used as keywords to describe your post. Tags help organize your post a little more! Aim to have 3-5 tags for each post. For example, if you are posting about a novel you wrote, you might want the following tags: #Fiction, #MurderMystery, #Theme, #PlotDiagram
Click on the images below to find a few helpful tips for creating your posts, adding media, and making categories:
