NM/SL 10 – Hunger Games Trailer Reflection

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My Opinion of the Novel

The book is an interesting one. It is a dystopian novel, although it has, classic, fantasy undertones. I say this because in most high fantasy books, some seemingly insignificant person (who happens to be the main character) ends up being thrust into some grand (or scary or thrilling) adventure. This happens in many great books, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Eye of the World. (Though now that I say it, most good books start this way). Not many countries in the world right now fit the dystopian theme if you look at them at face value. Pretty much only like North Korea and maybe Ukraine. But what really characterizes a dystopia is the suffering going on, and I think today there’s a lot of people with hidden suffering. A lot of internal turmoil. I think that this caused mainly by our technology and how it can spread ideas. Whereas a lot of the turmoil in the districts in Panem is caused by the lack of access to technology. For example, they don’t have electricity all the time, they don’t have a water boiler, there are basically no jobs that can be provided because there is an abundance of technology and so most people have to work physically draining jobs to buy food, and they can’t really buy a lot of food with it, so many die of starvation. (I’ve written too much so I’m going to stop now)

How our trailer conveys the themes

Our trailer conveys a few different themes that are found in the book. The trailer (tries to) convey love. (We’re not very good actors and didn’t have too much time for a lot of takes because we tried to do a variety). We do this through showing scenes of Katniss and Prim which shows that they love each other, and gives Katniss a real reason and desperation to win and go back to her family. It also shows the connection between Katniss and Prim (and therefore the theme “trust”), which helps you empathize with Katniss, and want to see what happens to her. We also allude to the theme love with clips from Gale and Katniss interacting and Peeta and Katniss interacting. Throughout the trailer we also convey the theme of survival by showing different people running after one another in the forest. These people running makes us assume that something bad is going to happen when one person or whatever else is chasing them catches up to them. This survival theme is also shown when Ryan almost falls on me.

How the Curricular Competencies are Shown

We showed a few different Curricular Competencies during this project.

Thinking – I wrote most of the script so I had to figure out how to make a trailer. It took me a lot of the weekend because writing creatively usually takes me a long time, because I have to think of new ideas and that takes me a while. I watched a couple videos on guidelines on how to make a trailer . We all watched the trailer together as well, so when we were brainstorming scene ideas we had to make sure we weren’t subconsciously copying the trailer. We also did a lot of creative thinking to find good parts of the book to include that would be interesting but also actually possible to fill.

Script-and-Ideas-for-scenesDownload

Communicating – We communicated during the brainstorming process. This was through talking about our ideas, listening to each other and giving our thoughts about each other’s ideas. We also communicated about which props we’d need, who would bring them and who would do each role. I tried to communicate to my group mates about what scenes we were going to do using the script but that didn’t really work.

Personal/Social – Part of the reason we didn’t really follow the script was because I didn’t want to come across as a control freak or a jerk. It could just also be that I don’t really like confronting people very much. Which is definitely something that I’m going to have to do in the future, so I’m going to have to get better at that.

French 10 Skits

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One of the core competencies that me and my partner showed when we did our script was presenting. This is part of the Communicating Core Competency. We presented our ideas to each other then presented the our skit to the teacher. This is a very important Core Competency to learn because in life you will need to present many different things in your life to other people. Some people’s job is literally just presentation (teaching being an example).

French-Skit-1Download

CPR Reflection

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My learning of CPR

CPR dummy

CPR Reflection

A) I didn’t know the how do do CPR, I’d also have never guessed that we’d have a specific timing for the chest compressions.

B) The key takeaway of the CPR unit is that now we know how to do CPR and could possibly save someone’s life.

C) During this unit we learned about which foods to eat to try and prevent getting a heart attack. This relates to the nutrition unit because in the nutrition unit we learned about which foods were good/bad for our heart.

Core Competency Reflection

One of the ways I can see using this learning to help others is by using this knowledge to save someone’s life, or to tell others about warning signs so they could know when someone else is in danger and they need to call 911

One of the ways I ensure my group is clear on what we are supposed to do is to listen to the instructions and ask if anything was confusing.

One lesson that stimulated my thinking about the importance of CPR was when we learned that CPR could happen to anyone at anytime if you’re unlucky enough, which is kind of scary. Also, this made me realize that although my Grandparents are healthy, they’re at risk of having a heart attack, so knowing CPR might come in handy, but I hope it doesn’t.

Core-Competency Self Assessment

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ThinkingCC

Final Version
Draft Version

I can analyze evidence to make judgements

To organize the different buttons into a dichotomous key you need to analyze what differing features there are in the different buttons, and then see which features you should group together, or which features to separate. The whole activity was just analyzing evidence to make judgments.

Reflection – John Henderson’s Talk

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What are some insights or thins that stood out to you from John Henderson’s talk? Were there any connections you made to Rita Joe’s I Lost My Talk? Are there any other thoughts you now have in relation to TRC or Orange Shirt Day?

One of the main things that stood out to me were how he and his classmates/friends stood up to the people that were abusing them at night. It was inspiring to hear him standing up that man even though they got punished for it. I also didn’t realize that children were actually kidnapped and brought to residential schools, I thought that they notified the parents then took them. It was also pretty cool that he got a police officer to listen to what happened to them at residential school when he tried to run away. The police officer believed him and even told the Indian Agent, who on the other hand did not believe John.

There were quite a few similarities between I Lost My Talk? and John Herdman’s story. They both lost their language from these schools. Residential school also messed up/destroyed their lives afterwards, John wasn’t even accepted back into his community because he went even though it wasn’t his fault that he attended residential school.

Core Competency Goals

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This year I…

  • I plan on being an active listener. In class sometimes I am not fully focused on what the teacher is saying. I have realized that this makes it harder for me to remember what we did in class and sometimes I miss very important points or even due dates. I plan on doing my work after the teacher is done speaking and not going on my phone or laptop while they’re speaking either.
  • I plan on figuring out how I learn the best. I know that I can learn quite well in a few ways but I am not completely sure in which way I learn the best. For example, as I mentioned in my goal before this, I learn better when I hear what’s going on, but I’m not sure if that’s just because the teacher is giving more information while speaking, than is on the handouts. I plan on figuring this out by trying a variety of different study methods this year.
  • I plan on communicating more clearly and purposefully. I’ve noticed that when in a group I have the tendency to sometimes make my ideas vague and therefore pretty much pointless. I also have noticed that I speak quite quietly. So this year I will think about how I can present my ideas more clearly before I speak and speak louder and more clearly.

Short Story Writing Process

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My Story

Brainstorm

Core Competency Reflection

An example of something I have spent a lot of time learning about is the different parts of a story. The Introduction, Initiating Incident, Rising Action, Climax and Denouement.

When it seems the good ideas just won’t come to me, I write out and expand on some of the ideas that I had come up with to help create space and ideas in my mind which could help develop the story.

Some skills I have developed to make my creative activities better are I have learned to brainstorm better. Before I didn’t usually brainstorm, I would just try to write, and that didn’t work very well. Now first I think of many ideas before I try writing them.

Social Awareness and Responsibility

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My Texts

Butterfly

Core Competency Reflection

How have your experiences, family history, heritage and/or peers helped shape who you are today

These things have pretty much everything to do with who I am today. These things made me think and change my initial ideas about many things. This makes me have to change how I act. Many of the choices in life I have to make because of these things.

How do you make good decisions

I make good decisions by deciding what would be best for me and other people. Also, by seeing what worked in past experiences and looking at how that could make my choices better. I also ask if it’s just an impulse or something that I should do.

Describe something that you really liked in the work you did. What made it special for you?

I really liked the combination of designs on the top part and the bottom part. On the top there’s the more blocky design that was inspired by the monarch butterfly. The bottom is inspired by another random butterfly that I don’t know the name of and a cantaloupe. I also like the triple smiley faces.

What makes you unique

What makes me unique is my experiences, family history, heritage and people I’ve met and been friends with. This makes me different because my memories are different and also, the way that these things have made me think and act differently than other people.

Core Competency Self Assessment

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Our Artifact

Our artifact for this project is the catapult that we built.

Catapult pic #1
Incomplete catapult

Communication

To make sure that this was a group project and not just one person making a catapult we had to communicate our ideas on how to make the catapult. The first idea that we had was to make kind of an H, two long supports on the outsides, and the spoon connected to a popsicle stick on the middle. We couldn’t find a good way for the spoon to want to go up though. So we created the new design in the second photo. Though at first it didn’t have the front support beam. Later we added the back beam because one of us communicated to the rest of the group that the catapult was not stable. The back support also has the added effect of increasing the angle to the ground, which would make the ball have more horizontal force, and not vertical force, which our catapult had lots of when we first constructed. We all agreed that this last idea was a good idea. In summary, we had to communicate for our project to function properly.