Julia's Wonder Blog

For science we made a poster about asteroid mining. We worked on it individually and we needed to identify, describe, document and apply the information into the poster. I think I could have got a better grade if I included the sources in the MLA format. I also think that maybe I could have added more pictures at the blank bits of my poster, to make the poster more interesting. I think that my poster is very clear, simple, easy to read and understand the information. I think that I was able to explain what asteroid mining is and also, I think I was able to include many benefits, issues of asteroid mining. I also think that I could include my opinions very clearly. If I would do my poster again, I think I would have included more pictures and more sources in the correct format.

The first thing I want to improve is my flexibility. I think that if I’m more flexible I can stretch out more during the stretches before we play sports like basketball or volley ball. Also, I think it is more healthier when I’m more flexible (?).

The second thing I want to make my cardiovascular endurance because, when I play basketball and when I am running around the court during a game, I get tired quite quickly. So, I want to improve my cardiovascular endurance so I can run longer and faster during basketball. I think that a better cardiovascular endurance could also make me healthier.

Recently, in one of our music classes, we had a special guest who performed the shakuhachi for the whole 7th grade. He performed for us by playing the shakuhachi with our koto teachers, Mr Patterson who played the shamise and Ms Miyama who played the koto. They played about four songs which also included some singing.

The instrument that I liked the most was the koto. Because I also play the koto I could enjoy listening to it and, I thought that the koto had the most nice melody and tune. However I also thought that the shakuhachi was interesting because, it came in so many sizes. Something that surprised me is that the shakuhachi only had 5 holes and it could still make variety of sounds. I liked the music, “Kaze no uta” (which was a duet of the shakuhachi and the koto) the most because it really made me think that it was the sounds of the wind played in a nice melody because the sound and rhythm changed like the wind would. I think that it made the whole thing sound “Japanese” because, I think that Japanese instruments have a different tone that western ones. I think that they have a more sharp tone.

Overall, I enjoyed listening to the shakuhachi.

Recently in art class, for our line drawing unit, we made a line drawing on a big piece of paper which included many types of line techniques. Before we started to make our line drawing, we practiced the many types of line techniques and also, we copied line drawings of famous artists like Van Gogh and Durer. After we did the practicing, we started to fill in a planning sheet for the art work. We needed to write what kind of stuff are going to be set in the foreground, mid ground and back ground. For my drawing, I planned to draw a sky for the back ground, mountains for the mid ground and for the for ground goats on a field. (I had some trouble to choose my final idea for the drawing. For example, I did not know what kind of animals to draw in the foreground.)

For this line drawing the most hard part of it was drawing the grass. When I looked at other drawings from different grades, all of them had a thicker type of line for the grass which is at the front and at the very back, the grass was so think that I could hardly see it. (There were mainly like dots.) When I first tried to draw the grass, the lined that I started off with (the lined in the front) were too long and the lines at the back were also too thick and too long. When I looked at the finished small bit of the grass, it looked horrible and I didn’t like it at all. So, I chose to try a different type of way to draw the grass. I chose to draw many small dots of grass every where and make some parts of it long. Simply I just chose to make it really short grass. When I finished drawing the grass I think it looked quite good. Also, I had some trouble including many lines in to the mountains. When I first drew the mountains, there were not enough line in it and also the shading in side the holes in the mountains were not that good. However, when I added more lines to the mountains and made the the holes inside the mountains darker, the mountains became more life like and it looked more three diminutional. I also had some trouble drawing the sky  for my drawing. Firstly, I was not sure if I should ass clouds to my drawing and I was also not so sure what kind of line technique to use for the sky. However, at the end I chose a good line techniqe for the sky and I think my sky looks quite good.

The parts that I think I did well in this drawing is that I could include a line technique into each object I have in the drawing. (Like, for the sky, goats, mountains and grass.) I think that I also could use the rule of three very clearly. For my drawing, the mountain/sky is clearly at the back of the drawing, the fields are in the middle and the goats are at the front.  Also, when I made the mountains of my line drawing a little bit darker, my teacher suggested me to make the whole drawing darker to make it look better. For example, making every line thicker or adding more of the lines in each object  I think that this was a very good idea and  I think my drawing looked better after I added more lines and made the previous lines thicker in them.

The parts that I need to improve on this drawing is that maybe I could have included more line techniques into the line drawing. For my line drawing I have the same line technique for the grass and the goats. I think that the line drawing would have been better if these two parts of the drawing were a different line technique which could have made the line drawing more interesting. Also, I think I did nor do so well on making the lined of my drawing thick and thin. For my field, it is not so clear the the grass from the front part is really in the front because, the lines are not much thicker than the lines in the back. Also, for my goats at the parts where the shadow is, there is not much difference from the places with no shadow. I think that if I have made my making the lines thicker and thinner more clear, my line drawing could have been better. Lastly I strongly think that I should have doen the grass on the field in pencil first because, when I kind of failed the grass at first I could not erase it or hide it or anything and I just needed to leave it there. Now my line drawing has a bit of weird grass at the left and different type of gras for the rest.

Overall, I could learn how to make great line drawings and I also could learn many types of line drawings. Also at the end, when I compared the practices of line drawings and the line drawing that I did of other artists, I think that my final line drawing was much better. I think that I could use the line techniques better than before.

This is a picture of the completed line drawing that I did:

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For our speech unit in drama, we needed to make two speeches. The first speech we created was our one minute speech. For this speech, we could choose any topic if it was our hobby. In this speech we were not aloud to use any cards and we needed to remember main points in our head. After we did our 1 minute speech about our hobbies, for our second speech, we were given a few topics and we could choose one which we needed to create a speech of. The given topics were, My Neighborhood, The Best Day of My Life, Fashion, Holidays, Celebrities. Also, we were aloud to make palm cards and this speech needed to be about 2:30-3:00 minutes.

Videos of both of my speeches.

1minute speech:

7B Drama: 1 Min Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

Given topic speech:

7B Drama: Given Topic Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

My best speech was the hobby speech because, I knew interesting facts about my hobby and it was also very interesting for me to research more about my hobby. Everything which was included in my script was related to my topic and I had a clear structure (I introduced what my little pony is at the first part, I introduced the episodes and series at the second part, I introduced the characters at the third part and at the end I said some facts that I thought was interesting about the show.)  Also,  my posture is better compared to the other speech. At first I move my hand a little but after that I think my posture was good. Lastly, I also think that my pacing was good too. Maybe I became a little quicker at the ending but I think that the starting was good.

I should improve on my given topic speech because, firstly, I had a really bad gesture. I was moving my body left to right at first and I was also touching my hair a few times during the speech.(Also, I don’t like how during the speech I suddenly laughed a few times.)  Secondly, I think that my volume and projection was not that good either. Even the camera was closer to the person compared to the first time, I cannot hear my voice at all. Also there is not any projection during my speech at all. Lastly, I think that I was looking at the palm cards too many times and I ended up not looking at the audience that much. I think that the palm cards maybe had too much information on them.

I think that the content of my given topic speech was captivating. I had a few parts for my speech which I listed on my palm cards and made it easier for me to make it easier for the audience to understand that I was moving on to a different part. Also I think that I was able to include interesting facts about how the countries celebrate the christmas holiday. (I also thought that comparing and contrasting two countries was a good idea for this speech.)

Overall, I think I could learn many elements for a good speech like, good volume, pitch, pace, pause, projection, posture, gesture, facial expression, structure and information. I really enjoyed this unit and I am looking forward to use these elements at future occasions.

In drama class, we needed to make a speech about our passion. The length of the speech needed to be about 1-2 minutes. We could make our own script and memorize parts of it or we could just make some bullet points about what to say. However, we could not make/look at any palm cards.

This is the video of my speech .

7B Drama: 1 Min Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

I think I did well on the pace part of my speech. I practiced not to talk so fast and I think it also worked out well. I think that I could have improved on my volume part of the speech. When I listened to my speech, I could barely hear my self and I needed to put my comouter volume very high to here it.

Overall, I think this project was a good project to practice speaking in front of others and I also enjoyed it.

In science class we were assigned to choose one element to make a poster about facts, properties etc about the element. The element I chose was silver also know as Ag.  This is the completed poster that I have made.

I think that I wrote a very detailed paragraph abou environmental problems of mining silver. I think that I needed to do more writing about,  the properties of silver and to describe the ones that I have already wrote more detailedly. If I could do this poster again, I world add more detail about the particles fo elements and more scientific  facts.

For this humanities project we needed to make a building on mine craft in a group or by your self on a mine craft server made by our humanities teacher, where other people in different groups could also see and edit your building. We had a very long time to decide the groups, deciding the building and also making it. After we finished the buildings, we needed to make a short video explaining about some facts about the building and also about some facts of the empire.

This is my video hope you enjoy.

Reflection:

I think big ben was an easy and interesting building for us to build. The shape is not so complicated and difficult. Simply it is just a big tower made out of spruce wood. Well, it was still a little bit complicated for us to build the top part of big ben where the bell is placed. How ever, we could make it by looking at the picture of big ben and also some pictures of other big Ben made on mine craft by other people . Also some people were destroying other peoples buildings which was kind of annoying because it made us more slow to finish. For example one time big ben got destroyed, it took two hours to fix even five people were fixing it.When we fixed big ben we noticed that some windows were in different places and also, it looked a little bit weird from the inside which I did not like at all. Also when it got destroyed recently again, one member from our group and also one more student from a different group needed to spend there time fixing it. Well now the big ben looks good again, and I am happy about it.

I also had some problems with researching about big ben. I got carried away about searching how they made the bell and how it broke. I could not find that much information about it’s connection with the British empire. If I could do this project again, I think I would have taken more time on researching about important facts and not so much on facts that are not so much related to the project. Also, when I looked at scripts from people in other groups, I think that they had worked hard on researching about the empire.

I thought that using mine craft server where everyone could edit your buildings for this project was a very good idea because, I could make a renaissance building while having a lot of fun building on mine craft. Also I liked that I could cooperate with other people in my group and also with some other people in other groups. Well there were also some bad parts about the mine craft idea. Like I said before, some people were destroying other peoples buildings. Also,  I did not like how we needed to change the groups at the end and start a new building even the dead line was so close. I think if we did not need to change the groups and were kind to each other, we could have finished this project much more faster.

Overall I think this was a really fun project for out humanities class and I really wish that we could do another project on mine craft by cooperating with others. Also I hoped you enjoyed my video on our building big ben.

1.1.Friends
2.At home
3.To the cafe
4.Chloe
5.Chloe thought that she had forgot her wallet.

2.1. Chlo? invite S?bastien ? aller au caf?.
2.C?cile commande une menthe ? l?eau.
3.Chlo? commande un jus d?orange.
4.Le serveur dit ?Bon app?tit!?.
5.Chlo? ne retrouve pas son argent.
6.Thomas demande l?addition.

3.1.c
2.a
3.d
4.b

4.1.Il a des devoirs ? faire.
2.Vous avez choisi?
3.Un croque-monsieur pour moi, s?il vous pla?t!
4.Qu?est-ce que vous avez comme jus de fruit?
5.Ce’st combien.
6.L?addition, s?il vous pla?t.

5.Ask someone to give her some money.
Go back home and get her wallet.

This my link to my digital story on you tube.

My digital story

My reflection based on the design cycle.

This is the design cycle that I used for my reflection:

Plan: I think I planned my story quite well. I think I did well on my story board which made my filming go easy and fast. I also liked how I made my resources section detailed which made my editing go fast because I know what audio, effect, people and place to use.  Also, before I even started to choose my topic for the digital story, I liked that I thought about 10 stories and could choose one from them. Also I liked how all of us learned about some tools to make our digital story.

Investigate: I changed some of my ideas and I made many of them better and more interesting. for example, first I was choosing to make the character only one character (which was me) but instead, I added two more characters to make the story much more funny and interesting. I liked how I added one character as a drawing. I also changed my idea to take a movie, into still pictures. As you can see in my video , almost all of my pictures have a different back ground or have a costume drawn on doozla on them. I did not know how to add images on a video so I chose to do still pictures and edit the pictures.

Create: I think my filming and editing went quite fast because I think I did quite well on my planning. I also could improve my editing skills a lot because I did a lot of editing for every picture. It was a little bit hard for me to look for some pictures from flickr. I think this was the most hard thing in my whole project. I also think that it was good that I used all of the audio for i movie which saved my time a lot.