Mihaela's Random Blog

In english I learned that when writing instructional writing, it doesn’t matter if it looks pretty. You just have to make it clear for everyone to see, with clear steps of everything, preferably with numbers, but bullet point are fine too. And don’t make it too wordy, because the reader will get bored. Here’s an example of a piece of instructional writing:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6bknCA2yHQWTXJfeVY3TTlRVk0/edit?usp=sharing

In science class we had to make a poster about asteroid mining, where we had to write about what asteroid mining is, the benefits, the issues and more.

I think the hard thing was finding the issues because I couldn’t really find any because most of them were good things about it so I found that challenging. That’s why I didn’t really enjoy it because I had to spend a lot of time on it, because I had to find something, and I eventually did, but it took a long time.

What I found easy was finding the benefits because I could easily find things because there were lots of reliable sources for the benefits. I also enjoyed that because it was kind of easy but not really because I could find it easily but writing it down was harder which I found interesting and fun.

Overall, I enjoyed this project, because even though I didn’t do that well, I still think it was fun and I enjoyed it a lot.

This is my poster:

In music class we had a session about koto  and how it works and how it relates to Japanese culture. They played some songs for us and we learned some very interesting koto techniques. We also listened to ‘Rokudan’ many times in class.

I think what makes it sound Japanese is the general sound of everything, the echoes because a lot of times in Japanese music, there are a lot of echoes. There are lots of Japanese techniques in it like ‘Yuri Iro’, ‘Yowaoshi’ and others.

I think this lesson was very good because we learned a lot about koto and their techniques.

In english we needed to make 2 wordles of our values. A wordle is like a word art where we write words and the number of times we write them in, the bigger they are, which means the more important they are. We made one at the start of the year, and one recently.

The differences between the 2 are that in the first one, friendship is the biggest, but in the second one, bravery is the biggest. there are also differences like how in the first one, I have values like creativity, humor and freedom, but in the second one, I don’t.

I think our values change because of the events that happen in our life. Usually we see things and then learn them, and realize how important they are, and sometimes they turn into our values. I think I learned a lot from this and I hope I do something like this again.

The first wordle:

The second one:

Recently in music we had some visitors coming to show us and teach us about japanese music. There was one person playing ‘koto’, one person playing ‘shamisen’ and one person playing ‘shakuhachi’. The ‘koto’ si a long instrument with strings that you often see in japan. A ‘shakuhachi’ is a flute-looking instrument thats made out of bamboo, and the ‘shamisen’ is a bango-looking instrument. They played us some songs and also explained to us a bit about japanese culture, and how the instruments influences it.

I liked the ‘shakuhachi’ the most because it was very interesting because it reminded me of the flute but it was a bit different because it was made of bamboo and it came in different sizes, so I found that interesting.

I liked the Koto/shakuhachi duet – ‘Kaze no Uta’ (Song of the Wind) because it was really nice and you can feel what its about and you can feel that its a peaceful song, and thats what I like about it. I think  the reason why it sounds ‘japanese’ is because most japanese instruments are similar to eachother, and they make similar sounds and they’re all peacefull.

Overall, I liked this class because I learned a lot about japanese music and how it relates to japanese culture, and I heard lots of really nice songs from them so I enjoyed it.

In PE we are having a dance unit, where we had one project where we have to go in group and create our own ‘dinner dance.’ But in the meantime, we always used to dance to  ’gangnam style’ at the start of the class, and from that, mr. thomas, our teacher, got the idea to go in pairs, and create a dance routine for the second verse and perform it infront of everyone. I was paired up with Tomoka.

I think for the dinner dance, I didn’t really do much, because I did contribute, but I didn’t really make any dance moves so I think I could’ve worked on that. And I think I could  work on that by maybe listening more or trying to come up with dance moves at home or something. I think I worked pretty well because most of the time I was concentrating and I wasn’t fooling around that much.

For the gangnam style one, I think I participated pretty well because I think both me and Tomoka had an even amount of idea, and I think we worked well together because we both agreed on everything. I think our dance turned out good because it was syncronised. I think I worked pretty well with her and I enjoyed it a lot.

I think for me the most important things in dance is creativity, rhythm and synchronization  The reason why I think that is because without those things, a dance doesn’t look like a proper dance, and it would just look weird and out of place. I think I had quite a lot of synchronization and creativity in my gangnam style dance, but we could’ve had a bit more rhythm. I think in the dinner dance with had  fair amount of creativity, rhythm and synchronization, but we could’ve tried harder and had more.

In conclusion, I think I really enjoyed both of them and they were both very fun to do and I hope we do something like this again.

In music we’re learning about blues and one of the things we had to do was make our own blues song using the blues scale. Here is my song:

(Just the blues scale)

blues scale

(My actual song)

My blues song

In music class we have been learning about the blues. It’s a musical genre and it’s originated from African-American people from the south of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The inspiration came from work songs, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. In the blues theres a scale called ‘the blues scale’, which blues singers use a lot. Usually blues songs are depressing. There are different sub genres like country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues styles. After world war 2, there was a new blues called ‘the electric blues’, which appealed more people, especially white listeners.

Memphis blues:

Memphis blues was created in the 1910s-1930s in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. People like  Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. It was popular in  vaudeville and medicine shows. The lyrics are usually depressing or sad. It’s very important in electric blues, rock and roll, blues rock, and heavy metal music. Usually they use instruments like guitar-based blues, jug bands, such as Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band.

Chicago blues:

Chicago blues was created in Chicago, Illinois. It’s similar to the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, but the harmonica is played louder and they have a microphone and an instrument amplifier. They also add an electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums, piano and sometimes a saxophone and trumpet. Chicago blues was street corner-based music. After the music quickly  gained popularity, it became a huge commercial enterprise. Soon the style of music reached out and went to Europe, which led many famous English rock n’ roll bands to get their inspiration from the Chicago blues.

Delta blues:

Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. It’s from Mississippi Delta, a region of the United States. The instruments used in Delta blues are Guitar, harmonica and a cigar box guitar. The vocal styles were either introspective and soulful or passionate and fiery.

Overall, I think I enjoyed this unit and I think I learned a lot of important for my life and I will like to learn more next time. I think it was really interesting learning different types of blues like the Memphis blues, the chicago blues and the delta blues. Some time earlier in the unit, a man named Steve Gardner came and he showed us lots of interesting instruments that I have never really seen and I think I will remember it for a long time because it was very interesting and different. I also learned that blues songs are often made from real life stories. I think this was a very different unit to what I usually do, but I still enjoyed it a lot and I think it taught me a lot. I also thought it was quite challenging but it was worth it because I learned a lot.

A few weeks ago a blues person called steve gardner came and showed us some blues. He played some of his songs and they were interesting to listen to. He also said some examples of other blues songs and said how lots of blues songs are from real life things and they are stories. He also showed us some old instruments and they were really interesting because I’ve never really seen those before. Some of the instruments were called diddly bow, the harmonica and an instrument that looks like a washing machine. He also showed us drums and a golden guitar!

We also made some songs with lots of repetition. One example is:

AAA- like what x3

AAB- like what x2 carrots

AABC- like what x2 carrots happy pigeons

I think this song was kind of random and weird because they had nothing to do with each other, but I think I can still use it as an example for my blues song. I enjoyed this lesson with Steve Gardner because I think I learned a lot from it and it was fun.

Recently we had to to a ‘student led conference’.(SLC) A student led conference is where the student shows their parents the work they did so far. Later on, we had to go in pairs and do it again in tutor and record it. Here is mine:

Mihaela tutor SLC