Instructional Writing

For PE, we had to write down a strategy for a game called Capture the Flag, where basically, you have to get the opponent’s balls from their side to yours without getting tagged or without dropping the ball. To make it easier to read than we had done in our first attempt, we had to write in an instructional form of writing, with numbered steps and they should not be too specific. Here is my strategy relating to Capture the Flag: CTF_strategy_323yoced

What I learned about instructional writing is that you cannot put too much detail in your writing. Otherwise, the reader would not be interested in reading the manual and just look at another site or just give up on the thing that you are trying to get the other people to do. In instructional writing, you can not make your steps too long, yet they have to clear enough to instruct the reader of what to do, which I find is a bit tricky to do.

How My Values Changed

In English class, our previous unit was about Apartheid in South Africa. We were learning about how some people could not get as many rights as other people just because of their race and how they were born. First we discussed our values and how we should be. So, using Wordle, we created a Wordle with our values on them, making the more important values bigger. Then we made another one at the end of the unit to compare how our values changed during the unit.

My First Wordle

My second Wordle

In the first one, most of my values were mostly aimed for myself and were values that would help myself improve, in academics and socially. My values after that consisted more of my relationship with other people. I think I have more values in my second Wordle than I do on my first one. During the unit, we learned about apartheid in South Africa, when white people had more rights than black people. After that unit, i stopped being so self-conscious and started thinking outside of the box and about other people who are more needy than I am. I think that it is our personal experiences that influences our values. Without experience, we will not know what lies in the world outside, so we will be more self-conscious rather than being conscious of our surroundings.

What is freedom to me?

In English class, we are looking at apartheid in South Africa, as a whole unit. Apartheid was a time when South Africa was a British colony, and the black people, colored people and white people were separated from each other. It is very similar to racism in America, but just that it was in South Africa. The black people were highly mistreated while the white people had all of the rights. We are reading a book called Journey to Jo’burg, which is set in the time of apartheid. It is about a family whose youngest daughter Dineo is about to die of a sickness, so, the eldest daughter, Naledi, and her younger brother, Tiro, goes to Johannesburg where her mother (or Mma) works to help Dineo get better. In one part of the story, there is a part which mentions the word “freedom” as if Naledi had never heard of it before. So, we were assigned to write about what freedom is to us. To me freedom would mean many things. I think that we already have a lot of freedom in our own lives, but to be completely free, there are some aspects that need to change.

First of all, education would be one of the major aspects that will need to change. What we are studying is completely fine. However, in the future, when we go to university, it would be hard to get in without enough money. The same goes with future jobs, if you don’t have enough money, they could just easily reject you, no matter how capable you are at that job. Other people’s expectancy can change because of your parent’s occupation. For example, if your father was a doctor, you would be expected to have a good amount of medical knowledge. If your parents were scientists, your expectancy for science will be higher. And if that is the case, but you yourself are not good at the subject, then that could lead to a problem.

The concept of who you can be friends with should also be canned. Mostly, kids at school are used to having boys hanging out with only boys, and girls hanging out with only girls. I don’t mean to say that it is bad to be friends with your own gender, just that, usually, if people see a boy being friends with girls or vice versa, they will either think that there is something wrong with him/her, or they are in love or something. I think that boys and girls can be friends with each other and there is nothing wrong with that.

Which brings me to my next topic, love. When you are a child, and you know a couple in love with each other, you would start to make fun of them, which becomes stress and frustration for the person being made fun of, which can lead to some deaths or catastrophes. To me, it isn’t anyone’s fault that someone falls in love with someone else. It is just a stage in life which you have to go through and cannot avoid it.

One major aspect is money. To me, because of the way people uses it, money is the worst invention created. I believe that the main reason people cause so many sins is to for money, like theft, or if you are making sins under the command of a patron. Money is also the reason for poverty and famine. Because of money not being balanced out in the world, and some countries have more money than another, it causes people in the poor countries to get what they need. Like food, shelter, and more. Of course, there are some good things money has done for us, like being able to buy things instead of just getting as much as you want for free.

I found that Johan wrote the same thing about eduction. I liked his idea of having a lot of friends from other countries.

My view of the world

For English class, we thought about for each individual student, how they thought the world was like then, and how the world is now. It can also be something inside the world. For example, politics, technology, food, etc. Here is how my view of the world has been updated.

Back when I was little, I used to think that the only closest friends I have would be completely national and that I would be the one standing out, yet I would not be bullied. If so, I might have very slight difficulties for my friends to understand some of the things I would want to say. But now, because I have joined YIS, I can have friends from all around the world and they can understand much of what I say. This way I will be able to share more of my feelings with my friends than my national friends.

Holly Thompson visit

On the 30th of August 2012, an author came to visit YIS. Her name is Holly Thompson and she is from America. After morning announcements, we went to our loft and there we saw her standing by the big screen. Then she told us a bit about herself. For example, that she worked in a Mikan (tangerine) farm for year, so she knows all about mikan farming. She seems to know Japanese too. She wrote the books Orchards, Ash, The Wakame Gatherers, The Language Inside, The Broken Bridge and a book that is being written now and the manuscript is already finished. Most of her book’s main character are bicultural. Which means the character has a parent from one country, and the other parent from another. Furthermore, usually her characters have some Japanese blood in them as well as the blood from the nationality of the other parent. Some of her books are written in verse, which means the structure or the format of the pages is the same structure as a poem. Holly Thompson wrote her first draft like most novels do. The lines, she said, were called stanzas. For most novels, it wouldn’t matter where the line would end and the author would just keep writing. I am not saying that is bad, but Holly Thompson considers where to end her stanzas and when she should go to the next page. After that, we did a little activity where we had to write a poem, on our laptops, about a moment you have experienced. And we had to consider where to end the stanza. I found it hard, but Holly Thompson finds it easier to write in verse. Then it was time to go. Some people, including me, got her autograph. Then we had to leave and continue our schedule.

Comic Shots

On April 30th, we had to go to the roof and take videos of different angles and types of shots using our cameras or phone. The reason we did this was because we are learning about movies, and we started off with comics. We had to consider these types of shots: Long shots, medium shots, close-up, extreme close-ups, high angle shots, and low angle shots. We had to pair up with another person (Chosen by our english teacher Ms. Cox) and worked on the roof. I was paired up with Yudai. Here are the two videos we took as a group. Movie 2 is a close-up low angle shot. The other one is a medium low angle shot.

movie 2

movie

Fortunately, the Yudai was quite good at drama and action. So we got a few good-looking shots for our group. We could not manage the time very well and as a result, we only have a little amount of work completed. During this exercise, I learned about different types of shots, and how they are used to make someone’s attitude different. For instance if you take a low angle shot, it looks as though the person who is in the picture is looking stronger. However if you take a high angle shot, it looks as though you are stronger than someone else. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more.

Mystery book podcast

Quite a while ago, we have been reading mystery/detective books of our choice. The book I chose was called In Darkness, Death by  Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. I thing I liked about this book is that the ending was quite intense. As a book report, we had to make a podcast from an application called GarageBand. It is the same thing as we did with my other podcast. Here is my final podcast.

Sakura Medal Book Podcast

This is my Sakura Medal book review podcast.