Grade 9 Celebration of Learning

Thinking Core Competency for Power Technology 9

The final project for Power Technology 9 was to take apart and rebuild a small engine and get it to start. Completing this project demonstrated my thinking core competency and my Powertech curricular competency. I demonstrated my critical thinking in the rebuilding stage by putting an engine with lots of small parts together and remembering where they all went. it also showed when i had to answer questions on what each part did and why it did it. I demonstrated my creative thinking when I was working on my second engine, which just wouldn’t start. I had to take it all apart again and go through each piece of the box to think about which part could be the issue, really trying to narrow down the cause to a fuel stem (which is a part that goes into the gas tank to collect fuel and put it into the engine) that had it’s filter gunked up with debris and needed to be cleaned out. In this project, I also showed growth in my Powertech curriculum competencies in applied design and applied skills. For applied design, I had to continuously run tests on the engine, starting it, going back to my workplace, and testing it again, all to find miniscule problems like a spark plug that was too tight. and in the applied skills competency, I demonstrated that by taking apart and rebuilding over a dozen engines. even going as far as to volunteer in the week to help out the Powertech 9 teacher, Mr. Pope, take apart my classmates unfinished assignments to help him get ready for the next semester. Since middle school and for almost all of my life, I’ve had an interest in how things work, like cars, planes, and the like. So when I saw an opportunity to take apart and build my own small engine, I jumped at the cane to explore an uncharted world that was the trades world. Going into it with no experience was scary, especially because it was one of my first classes in high school, but I walked out with a good grade and a whole new outlook on my future.

Communication Core Competency for English 9

I went to Hillcrest Middle School. I was in an out-of-catchment programme called MACC. This was a blessing and a curse because I found a group of like-minded people, but they were also coming from outf-cacatchment. meaning that I had to make completely new friends and connections after going into Centennial. This was harder than I thought, and my first instinct was to not engage, and eventually I cut myself off from a lot of people. So in doing things like a book club presentation for English class, I had opened my horizons and got to actually talk with people about a book that was a mutually liked thing. In doing things like this, I was able to cooperate with my book clubmate to create a fairly good presentation on the book Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. I developed collaboration skills when doing things like dividing the tasks between ourselves and giving each other feedback on which part was good and what needed to be fixed, tweaked, or changed. For this project, we were tasked with reading Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, creating a PowerPoint presentation on the topic, and including an activity for the whole class to partake in that also relates to the theme of the book. In this sense, I demonstrated the curricular competency. Comprehension and connection. First, we had to read the book in increments on our own time and agree on a stopping place every week. We would then have a discussion on what happened in the recent chapters and what we think will happen next. After reading the book, we had to comprehend the theme of the book and the message that the author was showing us. Then we had to connect it all together into an activity that the whole class could partake in.

Personal/Social Core Competency for Social Studies 9

In the beginning of almost every class, the teacher goes over a set of class rules. things that should be said, like their policy for phone use or a punishment system for people who misbehave. If you’re lucky, you can get a teacher that has a class participate in the strictness of the policy’s and even what punishment is appropriate for the person who doesn’t follow the rules. My growth in personal and social competency stems from the group choices that we made at the beginning of the semester. Throughout the decision-making process, you could see different people respond with different ideas on how the matter should be handled. You had one side who wanted to not be punished at all for the use of phones in class, and then the other side advocated for at least some form of penalty. During the process, you could see the different opinions, reasonings, and values that each person had, as they each added their own two cents to the conversation. This was of conducting a form of penalty for people who misbehaved at the start of class and having the students decide on it, make up the rules for it, and all agree to it. It proved to be more successful than the teacher just saying, “This is the rule; everyone obeys.” This topic holds true for curricular competency as well. As a lot of the curricular competencies for social studies are based on interpreting, asking questions, and coming to a conclusion (or, in this case, a mutual agreement), this is a big part of the social studies class as a whole.

THIS IS NOT THE ACTUAL CLASS CHARTER AS THE ONE MENTIONED WAS AN ORAL CONTRACT BETWEEN THE TEACHER AND STUDENTS.

Social Studies 9: Final Reflections

Semester Reflection

Ethical Judgment

This semester, I completed an independent historical fiction novel study by reading “The Shortest History of War” by Gwynne Dyer, which was about the progression of human warfare from hunter-gatherers to continental conflicts. I practiced using concrete evidence from a text. One of the best pieces of evidence I used for this project were direct quotes from the book with quotations and no paraphrasing. “The Shortest History of War” remains significant and relevant to life in 2024 by providing historical context, insights into modern conflict, and a framework for understanding global challenges and the pursuit of peace and security.

Core Competency Reflection

  1. While completing my novel study assignment, I felt unsure of what to do at times due to the nature of my altered assignment, so I would ask for clarification and do some thinking to be able to progress.
  2. I remain open-minded as I explore viable options or alternative approaches, like when I was choosing topics for the “is violence necessary for a revolution” debate. I took an impartial stance and let my opponent choose their stance, pro or con, and picked the other myself.
  3. I gather and synthesize information to develop logical conclusions, such as when we had to determine whether John A. Macdonald was a good first prime minister or not. I looked over the movie and the readings to come to my conclusion, which I relayed in my final essay.

ADL Social Studies- Ethical Judgement 

Is violence justified in a Revolution?

A) How did the use of AI assist you in developing this project?

AI helped me by giving me ideas for different points throughout my arguments; it also supplied different resources that benefited my argument and gave me jumping points that I could bounce off of. but the thing that it did the most was give a basis for a part of my argument, it was a pivotal point that if i had researched a bit more could create a big hole in my opponents argument.

B) How did you ensure that the work you created was still your own, rather than just a product of the AI?

I only used the AI for basic ideas, and all of the ideas that it provided were paraphrased in my own words, with a lot of the argument being thought of in the moment of the debate to make sure I was not plagiarizing the AI.

C) Did you agree with the position you had to argue? Why or why not?

I do agree with my position, but really, I could go either way. if we were forced to only answer the question provided and not break up the question into different parts, then i think that i would have rather argued for the pro side but because we were given that freedom i’m happy with my argument.

Core Competency Reflection 

My strategies for collecting relevant information for specific tasks include:

Searching for similar topics or things that could relate in another way. a common way that i like to gather information is searching up something that i know for sure is connected then taking googles recommendations and digging deeper into the rabbit hole.

I am clear on the difference between simple “group work” and collaboration as evidenced by:

The fact that you were working together to create an argument against each other A group project is something that both parties are doing to eventually collaborate on in a presentation-like style. but for a collaboration, two people working together for a short period of time, then going off and doing their own thing.