This is my rock and roll song melody that I created.

So, in this unit we basically learned how to compose a rock song. We were given three chords, C, F, G and we had to make a melody to it. It was really challenging for me because I have never composed a song and I’ve never played the piano. It took me a lot of time to get used to playing the chord and melody with both hands. Another weakness I have is, between each chord, there was a long gap which I think, ruined the flow. I think my strengths were being on task because I was focused and listened to what the teacher was saying and stuff. So overall, I think I need to improve on playing the piano and also make my melody smooth.

Thank youuu.

2. What I Want To Know: In this section write what you want to know about probability. Describe what you want to know and give some ideas about how we as a class might be able to complete to help learn this.
I want to know why probability is one of our important topic. I guess it is important but not that important comparing to other mathematical things.

3. Probability is important because: In this section, tell me if you think probability is important or not. Tell me where you think it is used and where it is used in the real world. I don’t mind you being a little negative here – but be sensible.
 I honestly think that probability is not that important to me right now because I don’t think I use it that much in my daily life. Though, it may be useful for business so we can estimate the profit of a product or predicting the weather. I guess probability can be used in anything such as sports, science and other subjects. For example in sports, we can estimate the chances of a player aiming the ball to the left, middle or right of a soccer goal.

I don’t want to do: In this section – tell us what you do not want to do for this unit.
 Honestly, I do not want to do a lot of textbook work but perhaps solve questions as a group.

“Hey Jude” by The Beatles was made in 1968. The song was evolved from, “Hey Jules” which was written by one of the band members, Paul McCartney to comfort John Lennon’s 5 year old son, Julian because his parents were getting a divorce. Julian Lennon didn’t know about this until 1987, where he met Paul McCartney at a hotel. This song is also said to be about drugs; especially heroin. The genre of this song is Rock and Pop and it was produced by George Martin. It sold over 3 million copies within 2 months. The form of this song is, verse, verse, bridge, verse, bridge and lastly another verse than a long “na, na , na..” coda.

The composition and structure of the song is, it begins with Paul McCartney singing the lead vocals with a piano. The base chords Paul McCartney used as a pattern are F, C and B-flat. In the second verse, the song was joined by a guitar, a tambourine and a harmony by the other band members, also along with drums. The melody of the song is the vocals of Paul McCartney. “Na na na na-na-na-naa, Na-na-na-naa, hey, Jude” is the most memorable part of the song. After each bridge, Paul McCartney adds a short “na, na, na, naa” which continues on to the next verse. The verse-bridge structure of this song carries on for around 3 minutes until the coda where it lasts for around 4 minutes. The other band members sing along the long coda as it eventually fades out.

This song was quite unusual at its time. Firstly, the song carries on for around 7 minutes which destroyed the saying of songs over 3 minutes were uncommercial. This song also brought out the idea of a communal sing along aspect which has been included in other rock songs ever since. Also, the lyrics of the song was easy to understand. Another thing is, a chorus in a song is quite noticeable though, in this song it is not recognisable. At the last coda part, a thirty-six orchestra is producing the sound and repeating the chords over and over again.

“Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry was released on 1958. This is said to about himself, about a young boy playing his guitar who might one day be famous. The genre of this song is, Rock and Roll and was produced by Little “Bongo” Kraus and written by Chuck Berry, himself. The structure of this song is, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse chorus.

The song starts out with an electric guitar with some drums at the background. The most memorable part of the song is, “Go Johnny Go, Go… Johnny Be Good” because it repeats itself in the chorus. The song is 2:30 and has various instruments in it like electric guitar, piano, drums, xylophone and other instruments. In his song, he blended a mixture of blues and country in this rock song which was quite unusual at this time.

The similarities between the two songs are, that they are conjunct. Their music flows and the notes are not all over the place. “Hey Jude” has 25 melodic phrases and “Johnny B. Goode” has around 20 melodic phrases. Both songs have a strong meaning behind the song. Both for or about a person or them. “Johnny B. Goode” is mostly consequent phrase though, “Hey Jude” has a mixture of both consequent and antecedent phrase. “Hey Jude” is more of a relaxed, soft rock song though, “Johnny B. Goode” is more upbeat and rock n’ roll and the pace is faster. Both songs also repeat some parts. For example Chuck Berry repeats the “Go Johnny, Go, Go…” and The Beatles repeat “Hey Jude in different verses.

Overall, are similar and different in various ways like the length, the musical terms and such. I found it interesting that even though they are both rock songs, one of them is a soft song and the other is really fast and upbeat. Also both songs changed the musical rule like mixing genres and making the song really long. I personally like both songs though “Hey Jude” better because it is slow and easier to understand the lyrics. Also I like singing along at the last coda of the song.

8C Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

In drama class, we had to choose a topic to persuade the audience into. My topic was “Beauty Pageants are going too far”. I based it on the tv show toddlers and tiaras and Here Coms Honey Boo Boo Child. I think I did a lot better in this speech because we had more time to prepare for it and also, I researched a lot on it. When I did impromptu speech, we didn’t have time to prepare for it so I rushed a lot and panicked which turned out bad.  In my speech, I think I added a lot of facts and information about my topic and evidence. I think i should have organised my cue cards more because I had to restart my speech because I forgot to add something in the middle where it was added at the bottom of my cue cards. I think I had eye contact with the audience in the beginning though I should have talked clearly. 

I really liked Katie’s speech because she was serious and very persuading. She put a lot of emotion into her speech and her expression was dead serious which made me feel the same way as her which is the point of her speech. I think her pace, and volume was really good because it was clear and not too fast nor too slow.

Thumbnails:

In this unit, we pretended to work for pixar and create our own character using the fonts. Our unit question was, “What are stereotypes?” and our significant concept was, “Stereotypes can be constructed and deconstructed.” The font I was assigned to was, American Typewriter.

First, as a class we watched this video where we got some examples of how the people exaggerate some of the fonts. We also watched some clips from Disney where it states that Disney is racist. We studied and took notes of the racial stereotypes of the cartoon characters in the clips. We had to discuss as a group of what the racial stereotypes were of the 5 races; Asians, Natives, Latinos and African Americans. These are some of the things we came up with after watching the clip. Also, as a group we also discussed, “What is a stereotype?”.
We said that stereotypes are:
1. cliche
2. rumours
3. certain characteristics/nationalities in a character (e.g. Century Gothic was ‘emo’) 

After investigating some cartoon features, we planned on how our characters will look like. We brainstormed the appearance, personality, nationality and other characteristics of our cartoon. When I thought of the word, “American Typewriter”, I thought of a middle-aged man/author with a typewriter. But, when I flipped through some of the characters from what the upper grade people did last year and before that, I wanted to make mine original because the other person had the same thoughts of what I was planning to make my character look like. So then, I thought of an old woman who is a bit chubby and has pointy glasses who is perhaps from around the 60′s, 70′s or 80′s. We had to get from thumbnails from other cartoon characters to get some ideas from. Some of the characters that I got inspired by  was, Wilma Flintstone and Roz from Monsters Inc.  To be honest, I think making the body of my character was quite challenging because I needed to think of her posture. First, I was planning to have a typewriter infront of her and she is typing on it though, I realised that it is quite hard to draw a typewriter.  I also didn’t want to hide her body from the table. I made her body look like Miss Finster from Recess and Patty and Selma from The Simpsons.

At the create stage, we started to create our characters. I think the create stage was quite challenging because, we had to draw our character neatly which I am not really good at. Some of the lines went funny and the proportion of my character was uneven. It took me some time to decide which colours I should use for her clothes and her hair.

I think the weakness in my character design is the proportion of the legs and also the hands. After I created my character, I realised that in real life or in a cartoon, no one stands with the feet facing the side. Also, her hands were a little too small for her size. I think that if I improved in these two parts, my character will look a lot better. I think my strengths were using different characteristics from different existing characters. I tried combining the features of different characters together. For example, I used Squidward, from SpongeBob SquarePants and used his nose for my characters nose. I also used Candace, from Phineas and Ferb’s eyes for her eyes. I think the best part in my character is her face because, it really shows her expression that she is frowning. I think I should have gathered more thumbnails of existing characters because, I had some trouble thinking of different body parts and clothes for my character. I think I should have researched how to draw hands and feet because those are my weaknesses.

I think that stereotypes aided my character because it was easier to make her body parts and features and her personality. My character is American, so the stereotype that I included was chubby, though I do not agree with that because it is racist. Another stereotype I added was that people with red  hair are short tempered, which is not true though I added to my character because she is a grumpy woman. Also, my character is quite old fashioned so I made her wear point glasses which I guess is an 70′s or 80′s stereotype. So overall, stereotypes really did help me create my character.

8C Drama: Impromptu Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

In drama class, we have been learning about, ‘how to make a speech’. We had to take out a random topic out of a hat and present about it straight away.
I got the topic, telephone. I think my speech was not successful because my topic jumped all over the place and I was laughing during my speech. I think the very first part of my speech was good though it got worse at the end. I think I had the right volume, pitch, pace and projection from the modulative device. I think I really need work on inflection, pause (I was going a bit fast), emphasis and inflection. I guess if I was focused on my speech and not laughing, I could have done a lot better. 

At YIS, we are currently hosting “Digital Citizenship Week”, where we are trying to find out about how “digitally social” we are. The intention of this project is to see how connected we all are, even though we might not be DIRECTLY connected. As you were scrolling through your Twitter feed or your Facebook timeline, you found this link, opened this blog post, and now you are connected to YIS.  We’re trying to make our way to the World Wide Web, which is HUGE, IMMENSE, MASSIVE and make as many global connections as we can. We are trying to accomplish this by having students and teachers share this link on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. or whatever social network they use. Our plan is to have people who are be-friended with the YIS community to enter this link, and read through our project and leave a comment.

So here are a few questions we would like you to answer as a part of our project– which would be very appreciated.

• How are you connected to YIS?
• Where are you writing from?
• How did you find out about this post?

Please comment below on this blog post and share this link using YOUR social networks.
Thank you so much on behalf of the YIS middle school.

Happy digital citizenship week!!

My strongest strength was body movement which I think is true because I really like sports, my second one was spatial and my third one was social.