Throughout the year, I feel like there were two specific units that I enjoyed the most.
The first was our digital art unit where we drew self-portraits.
I not only thought that this unit was fun, I also improved a lot in my art–specifically, I think I got better at drawing water. In the beginning, the water I drew looked like this:
Which, honestly, was not that bad–however, I felt as if the water was hard to recognize as water–it wasn’t clear and instead felt more like a putty. This led me to restart and eventually ended up with something I was much more proud of, which is this:
The second unit I enjoyed was the continuation of Cultural Communication. I really liked this unit because of the amount of freedom you got from it.
During the unit, I learned a lot about how much the bigger picture matters compared to the small details. Because there wasn’t that much time to finish the artwork, I had to focus mostly on the overall flow in order to finish on time. For multiple classes, I had been pretty fixated on certain small parts such as the hair, but I was rushing to finish it in the end and eventually 50% gave up on the small details. 🙂
The purpose of my conference is to tell you about this year
I’d like to share:
What I’ve done and what I still want to achieve
Some areas of growth, struggles, and some of my work
My Vision Board
Some of the things included on my vision board are:
My goals
Visuals for the goals
Flowers because flowers
These are important because: It shows what I want to achieve this year and what I will focus on improving.
My Goals Are:
1. Finish my homework the day it’s assigned if possible
2. Spend more time with my family members
3. Go to sleep earlier
Transdisciplinary Transfer Goal (TTG)
The TTG I chose to reflect upon throughout the year is effective collaborator. For instance, during VMM, I collaborated with my group to make prepare a cover song performance.
This was one of the first COLs in the year. I answered most of it right, but in the last question, the conversion between cm and um confused me, and I my exponent was to the wrong power.
This was a project where we made our own word problem and questions before we solved them and explained the process.
Strengths:
bigger picture thinking
critical thinking
Weaknesses:
precision
double-checking
Science 🧪
Evidence of Organization
My science notebook was useful for me since I was able to review on all of the information from past lessons and units to prepare for quizzes and projects.
Evidence of Active Learner
I grew as an active learner because as the year progressed, I was more on task during class and work time.
Understanding of Key Concepts
These are my scores for my 3 for 3s (short quizzes on lesson materials).
Growth in Science Skills
Core Science Skills:
1. Developing and Using Models 2. Constructing Explanations and Designing Solution 3. Engaging in Argument from Evidence 4. Asking Questions and Defining Problems 5. Using Mathematics and Computation Thinking 6. Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information
In the beginning of the year, we did an inquiry into interest project, where we researched a topic that interested a topic that we were interested in. I think the freedom of the project allowed me to concentrate better on what it was about, and I learned a lot about my subject of maladaptive daydreaming.
During Unit 3, the class participated in a simulation of WW1. I feel like the experience helped improve my understanding of the war, since I was engaged in it and there was a visual, unlike if I were simply told the information to my face. During the simulation, I admit that I didn’t contribute much to the discussion of what to do with the troops, but I think I learned a lot about the struggles of the war and how each movement had it’s own pros and cons.
Strengths:
creativity
graphics design (?)
Areas of Growth
productivity
ability to (not) sit through writing five paragraphs in one class
Last year, something I struggled with was submitting my work on time. For example, my cultural textile and my clay artwork were both late by like–a month?? For this year, I plan on setting reminders for when the projects are due and try to work with my parents to develop a better schedule of when to do my homework. This way, it will be less likely for my assignments to be overdue all the time.
One area of success last year was that I’m proud of the artworks that I made. Maybe this sounds minor, but I think being proud of what you create can be really challenging because you start spotting things you would change after you finish the work. This year, even though I spotted many things in my art that I was unsatisfied with, I was still proud of the end result. For example, in my cultural textile, I put too much ink on some parts and the carving marks showed. Also, the star doesn’t line up very nicely on some parts of the print. However, I still can feel proud of it thinking of how much effort I put in, even if I’m not satisfied with the result.
Mental health has been a growing concern recently and social media has definitely had an immense impact on it. Social media can both be beneficial and detrimental to mental health. It’s easy to compare yourself to influencers, but on the other hand, resources for mental health are much more accessible.
One thing that was very important in this unit was stigma. Stigma is a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have about something, and social media can worsen it. Many health conditions have been stigmatized online. Stigma might exist because of pieces of media such as movies and books that use stereotyped characters/follow the trope of these stereotyped characters, making stigma more prevalent. Stigma can cause people who struggle with their mental health to feel things like guilt and shame and cause them to be isolated by others. By spreading more detailed information and raising awareness to mental health, we can reduce stigma and get rid of these inaccurate representations of mental health.
All in all, mental health is an important thing for teens to learn about early on so teens are more incentivized to reach out for help, spread useful information, and help reduce stigma. Without proper understanding of others with mental health conditions, it’s easy to be judgemental and rude to those who are struggling, which may worsen their conditions.
evidence on impact of phones on teen social emotional health: lowers the amount that they speak in person, spending more time on phone in class, cyberbullying, staying up late (from interview and articles)
my opinion on the effects next year: probably just everything in middle school but like 1.5x worse because it’s actually allowed, most people are on wechat in class already anyway. i mean everything in middle school as people talking to each other during class through wechat, ive also seen people text while sitting right next to each other which is honestly something im a little guilty of 👉👈
my strategies: i’ll put a screen time limit since that’s kind of all i know how to do. ill try to stay away from using my phone too much in class and focus on talking in person, and probably try to arrange meet-ups more as well
We used ratios, multiplication, division, and unit rates! It hurt my brain a lot, but I’m happy I didn’t die from it. 🙂
I would have walked slower since the main reason we were off from the original predicted time was because we were walking too fast.
We used minutes and seconds. They were very important, since the seconds kept track of how long we predicted it to be and the minutes made keeping track of time less confusing. I never saw what happened to the groups who didn’t write them down, but I think that they might have confused their predicted time with something else, since without labels it becomes confusing.
I think that I did pretty well on the graphics. Some of it looks a little distracting, so I would definitely get rid of the some of the black circles. Also… I didn’t add a statistical question 🫠. Also, for the reasoning, I would add much more detail to them.
