Sophia's Blog

Last week in drama, we wrote our own speech and we presented it in front of our class. I couldn’t really speak with confidence, because I didn’t have much time to prepare for it. Though, I think it became a great practice before the real speech next friday. I learned a lot of things about how you should express your feeling through speech.

Things that I learned

• I learned that I should speak with confidence. My body kept on shaking and I couldn’t speak properly. I think I should believe myself next time to become more confident.
• I learned that I should slow down, because people won’t be able to hear what I am talking about when I speak too fast. If I speak too slow, people won’t be able to concentrate.

This is my science essay about SARS.

In science class, we wrote an essay about diseases. We were able to choose a diseases and research about it. There were some choices given, but we were also able to choose our own. I chose SARS and I think it was really interesting, because SARS was a new illness.

I’m proud of …

• I think I included the things that I needed to. For example, we needed to include at least two example of how SARS helped the world.
• I tried my best. Some people say trying your best is the best and I agree with that statement.

We performed a solo music performance in music class. We’ve been practicing it during our class time as well. I changed the song that I am going to play recently, so I am not really satisfied with my own performance. But, I got to know myself better during this performance. I really wanted to do these kind of performance ^^ So overall, it was a great and excellent project~!

I presented the song called “Summer” by Joe Hisaishi. I think this is such a nice song, because when I first heard it, I thought this song is really bright and I just loved it. This is also a song that one of my friend likes. I played this song thinking about that friend.

This is directly played by Joe Hisaishi and I saw a lot of things that I could get better at or improve.

If you would like to play it, here is the music piece. I think beginners can also be good at this song in one week if you spend 30 minutes of your day.

Summer

Some things that I did good 

• I think I did a pretty good job on rhythm. I’ve heard a lot that I should be a music composer, because I am talented in rhythm and composing a music. I’ve never tried to compose a proper music piece, but I am really interested in it and I would love to try it.

We went to Hakuba for field studies and we had a great time. Our task there was to write a art journal for every night. I was really excited with the journal, because I thought it would be really interesting if I record my memmories in art. Usually, I don’t really try that way so it was sort of a new way to me.

I think I did pretty well on my art journal. The fact is that I tried my best. The good thing about this project was that I was able to know what my strengths and weaknesses are. I will try my best to improve my weaknesses and I will make my strengths more stand out. One of my strengths were decorative fonts and painting landscapes. I was able to represent a lot of different neat fonts such as curly fonts and Italic fonts. I learned that fonts are really important for art journals, because if you have only painting or drawing, you might not be able to recognize what that is supposed to be. I was also being able to represent the dark sides and bright sides on my painting. Drawing shadow is really important, because sometimes it makes the art stand out more and it looks realistic. On the other hand, one of my weaknesses were drawing comic characters. I drew a comic character on apple ice cream page and I thought that I really should improve my comic drawing. I would like to improve this point by drawing some hand-drawn comics when I have time at home.

Of course, some parts were challenging and some parts were not. Well.. that is what makes a excellent art journal! The parts that were challenging for me was the layouts. I had so much idea, but I couldn’t actually bring that to my actual art journal. I think I should plan first before I actually start to write or draw. The easy part in this project was decorative fonts, because I had a lot of different and creative idea for decorative fonts. But I think I could have improved better by experiencing the fonts before I write it into my journal.

Overall, this was a great project and I think this will be the best project during this year. I am still looking forward to learn how to express our feelings through art. I am pretty sure there are some different ways as well as journal.

Mime
I learned a lot of things about mime during this unit.

What did I explore today? 

I explored a lot of things about mime. I didn’t even know what mime means, but I learned that it’s acting without saying anything, using expression and gesture.

What did I learn? 

I learned how to express my feeling without any comments. You need every single detail to make people understand what you are trying to say. If you don’t have details, people might understand in a wrong way.

How can I use this in performance? 

I understood what mime means, so I could do mime properly. I also know how to express my feeling with details, so I could think of details to act out.

What did I know? 

I knew that I can’t be shy during acting. If I be shy, my message would not be accepted in a right way.

What do I want to know?

I want to know more about stage direction. How to face the audience so that they can see every details? I want to be in a right spot before teacher tells me where to stand or go.

One thing I want to improve is that I shouldn’t be shy during performance. But I think I  improved a lot than last year. I am looking forward to try my best on it.

This is the heart presentation that I and Ellen made. I think we showed what we have learnt and I think it has enough information as well. We will learn more about heart and diseases and I am looking forward to understand more about it.

During practices

We had ran 3 times to practice for cross country day. I tried my best on the first cross country run, but in 2nd practice and 3rd practice, I didn’t try my best. I kept on stopping even though I could keep on running. I think running 2 laps without stopping is really hard. Although, I think that is the most important point of this running, competing with yourself. This could be my process goal for this year’s cross country. I will try my best to achieve it tomorrow.

I think really little things matter when you are running long distance. I didn’t notice that if you put your hands in front of you and shake it, it makes you slower, because it makes air pressure. Next time, I will try not to shake my hand in front of me when I am running, because I think that I did a little bit.

My outcome goal is to get within 14:30! My best score yet was 15:01. I think I can do much better than that if I keep on running without stopping. I also learned that saving your energy for uphill is really important, because most of the people gets slower on uphill.

Go, Sophia!

After cross country

The cross country day was November 10th. My goal during the cross country day was to not stop. I stopped once at the second lap, almost at the last part of it. In the next year cross country, I would really want to run without stopping and self-talk to myself so that it would help myself.

I think my performance was 5 out of 8. I think I tried my best to achieve my goal. Even though, I didn’t achieve all of them. I self-talked to myself during running which was quite helpful for me to not stop which was one of my goal.

I didn’t really feel fresh after the cross country day running, because I stopped once. If I haven’t, I will feel really fresh after the cross country, because I know that I’ve achieved my goal. But I think I have achieved my outcome goal, because I got under 14:30.

The strategy that I used during cross country was self-talk. I think self-talk is quite important, pushing yourself. In cross country, you need to push yourself as best as you can. No one will push you for you. I talked to my self, saying “You have ran all the way until now, you can’t stop now!”. I think it was one of the most useful strategy that I used. And one more strategy that I used usefully

 Time for each run on Negishi Park

1. 15:40 (October 3rd)  2 laps around the Negishi park

I didn’t feel really good, because I didn’t get to run long distance for 1 year. I think practices are really important to get your best time in long distance running. Next time, I would want to practice during the vacation as well as weekends. And my legs really hurt that night, because I sat right after it and we were told not to. We need to walk a little after we come in.

2. 15:48 () 2 laps around the Negishi park

I felt a little sick after this. I felt dizzy after. I barely could see something. I think I had a problem with breathing. I decided to be careful with my breathing. And one more reason that I felt sick after that is because I sat right after I came in, again. And teacher told us not to.

3. 14: 48

I think I felt really good after this, because I stopped only once in 2 laps for the first time. My self talk was really helpful that day. I tried to concentrate on myself and not anyone else who is more faster than me or slower than me. I tried not to look back, because I always try to run faster when I see people coming from the back. But I concentrated on myself and I think that really helped me to get my best time.

4. 15:01

I was able to calm myself down after the running, but I think I should have ran a little more faster and not stop. I stopped twice at the second lap. I think I shouldn’t stop, because if you stop once, you can’t run for a long time anymore.

Overall, I think this was really a entertaining unit, though I felt it going on quite long

This is a video that I have reflected on my basketball unit in P.E.

Untitled from Sophia on Vimeo.

The password of this video is : 1357

This was my first science project that I did for 7th grade. We learned about nutrients, minerals and vitamins that are in our food. It was really interesting, because I wanted to know what vitamins and nutrients goes into our food and what how my body acts with it.

I spent quite a lot on this project. In total (including class working time), I spent 9 hours (calculated in hours). I think I will arrange my time more, because if you arrange your time, it will be much easier to finish the work on time and be more detailed.

Things that I learned about food and digestion

• That Cherry is the one of the low calorie fruits, but has a lot of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
• That there is enzymes that only work for particular foods.
• Consumption of Cherries has potential health effects.

I never know that cherry is low calorie fruits, but now that I know, I will try to eat more

Today in tutor period, we discussed about our strength and weaknesses for the first few weeks of school. We also discussed about our goal setting that we can achieve during this semester. If you go to this link, it will take you to my document that I wrote. I am excited to start a new year of 7th grade. I hope I will reach 3 goals by the end of the year