Category Archives: Core Competencies

Where I’m From Essay

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My Paper

Interview-Essay-My-momDownload

The Writing Process

For this assignment, my peers and I had to choose a family member to interview and ask questions about our family’s heritage. Based on the answers they gave, we had to compose an essay about their stories and combine our personal thoughts and insights with those of the family member. The interviewing process was difficult, coming up with questions that I didn’t already know the answer to was challenging. The interview itself also took a while to set up as my mom was often busy with work. Once I had the information I needed, constructing the essay was smooth sailing. I set up my essay to touch on separate major points in each paragraph to make sure the reader wouldn’t get bored reading it. Once I was completed my first draft, a few of my peers reviewed it and both said that it was too long. Cutting out “unnecessary” details was difficult as everything contributed to the story but I think I made the correct choices. My oral presentation was probably the most challenging part of this whole process. My essay was just too long to be read in its entirety. I created another document with some bullet points on the important details to refer back to while presenting. I’ve always been good talking in front of groups and it showed as I got a perfect mark on it. I enjoyed this assignment, it was challenging in many areas, but through it I learned about my past and how to improve my writing in the future.

Core Competency Reflection

I show others that I truly value their contributions by taking their advice on how to improve my work through peer editing.

Others find my feedback useful because I take their work seriously and give them genuine feedback. I treat their work like it was my own.

I used to think that I knew my mom’s past and now I know the truth about it because I had a conversation with her and asked personal questions. I also googled her name to uncover anything she didn’t touch on.

An example of where I built upon someone else’s ideas is when I took a sentence that my mom said during the interview and thought about it. I put myself in her shoes at that time to better understand how she was feeling and added my thoughts to the essay

My Goal

I can describe how … (this thing I learned at school) relates to this experience I had where…

I feel that I can further enhance my ability to take other people’s experiences and relate them to my own. I believe this will help me understand others better. A way I will achieve this is by thinking about what I would’ve done if I were in the same scenario as the person.

Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Collaboration

The artifact that I chose to show is my making a solution activity that I did with a partner. We had to come together and communicate who was doing what. In this activity, we had to describe how to create a particular solution and then carry out the procedure in the lab. My partner and I over the course of this lab had to communicate who was going to get what materials and who was going to do what steps of the procedure. We split the work evenly, and we were able to finish the activity very quickly. After we completed the lab, there were calculations and questions that we needed to answer. Outside of school, my partner and I texted to make sure our answers were similar, but not the same. I learned in this lab how to make a solution, and learned how to better communicate with a partner to ensure the best results.

Core Competency Self Assessment

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Collaboration

Pictured are the insides of a fetal pig.

For our fetal pig lab, we had to pair up with a partner and share a pig to dissect. Being a grade 11 in a grade 12 course, I didn’t know many of my peers coming into the class. Thankfully Dylan was willing to be my partner on this one. When working on the exterior features portion of the lab, Dylan was the one taking initiative and keeping me in line, doing the majority of the work. By the time we started the physical dissection of the pig, we had started to get to know each other a little better, and splitting the work relatively evenly. Neither of us had much experience with a scalpel, and we fell behind the majority of the pack on the first day. The next day wasn’t much different, so we decided that we were going to dedicate flex blocks, lunch blocks, and after school time to finish it. It took a lot of our time, but we were able to get everything done except stretching out the digestive tract on the last day of class. We stayed after school for an hour and even though I made a few wrong cuts to the intestine, we got full marks for it. This lab taught me that communication and being on the same page as your partner all the time will enhance your results and if you split work evenly, you don’t have to do as much. I also learned how to properly use a scalpel blade and how to properly identify basic parts of a mammal. This lab was the most informative and most interesting to me over the course of the semester.

Animal Investigation Labs: Self-Assessment

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  • Head of my shrimp, Jerry, who I very carefully dissected and ate.
  • Inner organs of squid, contained within the mantle.
  • Innards of common earthworm.
  • Mutilated body of Mussel.
Pictures from various labs we did in Life Sciences 11

Curricular Response

Throughout this Animal unit I have learned a multitude of new things about the life that lives around me everyday, and a large chunk of that learning was through the dissections of various animals. Our first dissection was simple, all we had to do was dissect a common earthworm. From that point on, our dissections only got harder and the animals got more and more complex. Earthworms are very simple creatures compared to our last dissection which was a shrimp. Earthworms had simple digestive and organ systems but shrimp and squid had much more complex organ systems and a more advanced digestive tract. As the unit went on, the animals got more and more complex. Most of the animals we looked at had closed (or pressurized) circulatory systems but the less advanced organisms had open circulatory systems. Mr. Asano was able to teach the locations and functions of various parts in a fun and memorable way throughout the dissections. It didn’t feel like I was doing a serious dissection, I was just having a good time with my peers.

Core Competency Self Assessment

Every dissection that we did was enjoyable and I’m proud of every one of them but there is one in particular that I enjoyed. The lab that I thought was the most enjoyable and the most informative would definitely be the squid lab. I was very clean with my cuts on the mantle of the squid and the part that I enjoyed the most was taking the pen out, stabbing the ink sac and writing my initials. A challenge I faced was doing the lab all by myself, I hadn’t done one by myself yet this semester, so this was a brand new experience for me. I solved any problems I had by asking questions to Mr. Asano or any of my other peers, which helped me through the process of the dissections. Thankfully my class was very helpful and I was able to achieve good marks on every dissection we conducted.

Spanish 10 Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Collaboration

This is a picture of a script I had to write with my partner, Matthew.

This artifact demonstrates my ability to collaborate because I worked very well with my Matthew. We had to come together to fill in some missing lines in a spanish story. We achieved 13/13 on the assignment. Matthew has been my partner in almost all of our group assignments and projects and I have never had a problem with working with him.

Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Critical/Reflective Thinking

My artifact: One of my bio labs containing info regarding the initial carrier of a highly contagious virus.

This artifact demonstrates the critical thinking core competency because for this lab we had to become Bonnie Henry and trace back the original carrier of a virus. To figure this out, we were only given our classmates data on who came on contact with each other. Using the process of elimination and a lot of hard thinking, I was finally able to come up with an answer. Through this lab, I improved on my problem solving skills and was able to use the process of elimination to come to a final answer. I would like to continue improving my problem solving and ability to critically think.

Spanish 10 Core Competency Self-Assessment

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Collaborating

My artifact: A picture of a script that my group of 3 did debating about if Coke or Pepsi is better.

This artifact connects to my core competency because as a group, we had to come together and collaborate to come up with original and entertaining ideas. In only a matter of a few hours, we put our heads together to make the best script possible, and in the end we achieved our goal and received a very good mark. I was a leader in the scriptwriting as I wrote the script that was turned into Ms. Ciardullo. Throughout the scriptwriting, members in my group had many ideas that others disagreed with, and we never had a problem with what and what not to include. In a group setting, I never want to be the one doing all the work and this time my group all equally contributed to the scriptwriting.

CPR Reflection

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Core Competency Reflection

  1. What was something you learned that you didn’t know or consider before? Before starting this unit on CPR, there were plenty of aspects of it I didn’t understand. I learned the symptoms of a heart attack through the 5 “Ps” of recognition. I also didn’t really know what a stroke was, and before this unit I didn’t know that it had to do with the brain rather than the heart. I also had zero clue how to use an AED.
  2. What is a key takeaway from the Theory or Practical CPR unit? The key takeaway of this unit for me was learning the motion and physical action of performing CPR. I had no idea how to do it before, so it was very helpful to learn how to do it. Another key takeaway is the ways of recognizing and evaluating a heart attack. Hopefully I’ll never have to use both of these skills in the future, but it is very nice to know them.
  3. How does this unit connect to the nutrition unit learned previously? In this unit we learned how we could limit risk of heart attack and stroke in the future. One of the ways we discussed was maintaining a healthy diet. Keeping low cholesterol and taking excess fats out of our diet limits our risk of clogged arteries leading to a heart attack or cardiac arrest.

I ask and respond to questions to be an active, supportive listener. Throughout this unit I asked plenty of questions and answered plenty of my peers questions. Doing this helped me stay engaged through the unit

I take on roles and responsibilities in a group; I do my share. When we went outside or into the hallway, I always volunteered to go first and I always gave my dummy a name. My favourite name was Half n’ Half because half of him pale and the other half was darker.

I find it easy to be part of a group. I found it very easy to be in a group with my friends and also people that I had never talked to before. I found it very easy to talk to them.

I can reflect on my thinking. As demonstrated by this blog post, I am not good at reflecting on my thinking, so that is the core competency that I want to work on. I’ll work on this goal by doing reflections on lots of other assignments, even if I didn’t have to.

Natural Selection Critical Thinking Self-Assessment

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My group using their sharp, all-powerful “talons” to pick up prey and move them to our nest a.k.a the table

· I demonstrated that I can collect and analyze evidence when I recorded the amount of red and black prey (licorice) that survived my powerful, sharp talons in the Natural Selection Lab. I also demonstrated this core competency when I counted and recorded how full other competitors cups or “stomachs” were in the Feeding Frenzy Lab.

· I demonstrated that I can connect evidence I collected to big ideas when I used the data I recorded to make conclusions that the “prey” or licorice that matched the background colour were more likely to survive, while the licorice that didn’t had less of a chance to live. I also demonstrated this core competency when in the Feeding Frenzy lab I came to the conclusion that the spoon had the best genes to pick up 3/4 materials we had to collect. The spoon was the “fittest” and would be much more likely to have their genes passed on.

· I demonstrated that I can make predictions based on evidence when I predicted in the Feeding Frenzy Lab that since each island was geographically isolated, there would be new species created. I also was able to predict that certain feeding mechanisms would do better at certain stations, including predicting that a spoon would do much better at collecting sugar than chopsticks.

· I demonstrated that I can draw reasoned conclusions when I was able to connect the results of my Natural Selection Lab to Natural Selection. I was able to demonstrate how Darwin’s main points, Genetic Variation, Changes in the Environment, Struggle for Survival, and Over production of Offspring. I was able to understand Natural Selection better after the lab as it demonstrated adaptation in action and the benefits that it provides.