Friday, 24 February 2012

My 30 Day Challenge Progress Report (Mark)

       My 30 day challenge is going fairly well. I have not gone on Facebook for the past 18 days. I have participated in more physical events and spent more time with my friends (Although my Facebook will probably be loaded with about 200 mails). I hope to continue in this challenge until this is finished.

Learning Logs

What we did today:

Today, we learning how to make a bibliography and tried it on a book each person. We also continued on our chapters review for 'There Will Be Wolves' (chapters 6~10) and took the test (there were 10 questions each just like the day before when we took the chapters 1~5 test).

Learning Intention:

The reason we learned about bibliograpy is because we will be using bibliography for quite a long time and to keep track of your books, encyclopedia, websites' author, url, publisher...etc.
We've did our chapters review to remember the story line before taking the test. We also took the test to memorizing stories you've read and organizing them because it is always good to read books and organize the basic informations in your head. (they always make good imagination)

Reflection/Connections:

The bibliography was obviously great because I will be using them a lot and they give you lots of informations about good book authors and publishers.
My test result on 'There Will Be Wolves' wasn't that great but it was a good experience, about reviewing a book you have read almost completely so I am a marvy.

Homeworks:

Our Journals for Medieval Characters we've got when we had class in the library are due monday
and also the notes for the character is due monday.
For those of you who haven't finished chapter 10 questions, you better hand them in by monday!

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Learning Log Feb 23rd

What We did Today:

Today was a double block day. We started off the afternoon by copying down the schedule that we were going to follow from February 24th to March 9th. If you don’t already have this down, you should copy this in your agenda so you are on track for what we are doing.

Fri 24th – Research Notes due

-Bibliography in class

-Chapter 10 There Will Be Wolves questions due

-Chapter 6-10 Quiz

Mon 27th -Diary + skit groups?

Tues 28th

30/29th - Portfolio prep

2nd - Sharing of blogs/ finish portfolios

Block switch – 3412

Mon 5th - skit rehearsal/ group evaluation/ reflections

Tues 6th - Skits performed – costumes- props

Wed/thurs 7/8th – portfolios returned

Fri 9th - Novels returned

After copying all this down, Ms. Lees reviewed chapter 1-5 There Will Be Wolves with us so it would be fresh in our minds and we would get high marks for the test.

After break, we finished off reviewing and we did our test. There was only 10 questions and most of us received the marks we were aiming for. Finally, Ms. Lees gave us the last hour to work on our chapter 10 questions or finish off note taking for our characters. Both of these are due tomorrow.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for copying down the schedule is to let us be aware of all the things we are doing before spring break and to let us still be able to finish the work we are going to do even if we are away for the day.

The learning intention for reviewing the chapters and doing the test is to show Ms. Lees that we understand the novel and for ourselves to find out if we fully know what the story is talking about.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us improve on our understanding and writing skills. For example, we would improve on elaborating our answers and learning from our grammar mistakes.

Connections:

Being able to write full and thorough sentences can help us with lots of important things that will happen in the future. For example, as you gradually get older, you will need to write more and more answers or to explain things. With these skills, your writing would be in very high quality and make people impressed.

Reflections:

I understand that doing tests help us know if we fully understand the novel

I understand that doing chapter questions help us improve our writing skills.

Tips:

Look through your binder for any missing work.

You should work ahead if you have the time since many tests would happen next week or the week after because spring break is coming up and teachers usually wrap up units/ chapters then.

Write future chapter questions in pen because it is clearer to read in.

Homework:

Chapter 10 questions are due tomorrow

Chapter 5- 10 test is tomorrow.

Notes for our characters are due tomorrow

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

My 30 day challenge progress report

My 30 day challenge was to play guitar 1 hours 30 minutes total, and finish 6 songs in that 30 days. My progress is good so far. I've practiced every day for 1 hour 30 minutes just like I planned for the challenge and I already have memorised 3 songs (I'll still have to work on it a little more). I am going pretty well on my 30 day challenge.

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

Learning Log

What we did today:

Today, we spent the whole block in the library again. Ms. Lees wasn’t there so there was a librarian looking after us. If you forget how to write a bibliography, follow these steps

1) Go to Google and type in “Fraser heights library”

2) Looking at the first link, there is something that you can click on called “How To Write A Bibliography”

We did research about our roles for the entire block. It was our last block to do research during class time so most of us used our time wisely. If you don’t know what “research” I am talking about, I will explain. We each had a character that we were to learn more about such as their life, what were their entertainment and their duties. Some of the roles we received were: Knight, nun, cook, page. We were allowed to bring our own electronics to do research or to look through the library books. We will start writing a diary soon about the characters we researched on. All of us knew what we were doing since we did the same thing the previous day.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention to do this research is to let us learn more about the middle ages such as how they act, learn and work. Also, we worked on our bibliography skills. We would need this skill all the way until university and starting early would help us a lot.

Connections:

Being able to understand things about the past can help you for future projects or work. Doing an effective bibliography shows that you have proof on whether you are using information from good or bad websites. For example, using Wikipedia is a very bad way to get resources since some of the information can be fake.

Reflection:

Marvy- I understand that learning about the past can improve our knowledge and working on our bibliography skills can help us get a higher mark in future projects that need bibliography skills.

Tips:

You should start studying on the test about the chapters we read in There Will Be wolves

Add more information to your notes about your role so it will be easier when you start writing your diary.

Look through your binder and see if you are missing any work.

Homework:

Chapter 9 questions due Thursday

Chapter 1-9 There Will Be Wolves test Thursday

30 day challenge progress report

My 30 day challenge was to go to homework club at least twice a week. I have been successful so far and it has been helping me a lot. My parents and my friends have been helping me achieve this challenge. They did this by asking me to go to homework club/ flex if they were going to go. Having homework everyday also gave me an excuse to go to homework club when my friends didn’t want to go.

I feel that I’ve been doing quite well with my challenge. Doing this challenge has helped me save lots of time and allowed me to do other things. I will continue to keep and follow my challenge.

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Thursday, February 16 learning log

What we did today:

Today, we had a substitute today for double block. She was very nice and kind and explained things very well. We started off by her explaining what we were to do for the day. It was really easy to understand since we did something like that in the past and that all the instructions were written on the whiteboard. Our in class work for the double block was to do note taking on “Manor Life” which was in page 49-53 in the Pathways book. We were told to use one of our best note taking skills which was either 1) An outline 2) Cornell 3) A web

Remember! Note taking should have enough information for you to understand and that it should not be too brief. Also, you don’t want to copy it word by word or else it would be called “plagiarism.” Finally you should title all the information that you are writing and also avoid writing words that could be removed from the sentence and make sense.

After we were finished the note taking, we had to do a Venn diagram that showed the comparison of women in the high middle ages and women today. The comparison could be of anything such as their rights, their jobs and how they were/are being treated.

Finally, if we finished all the note taking and the Venn diagram, we had the time to work on our chapter 8 There Will Be Wolves questions which will be due tomorrow.

Our class behaved quite well today since everyone finished the in class assignment.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for doing note taking on “Manor Life” in the past was to let us improve our note taking skills such as the ability to identify the main ideas from the details. The learning intention was to also learn about the life of the Manors in the high middle ages. Did you know that writing things down helps many people memorize better? Well if you didn’t, now you know!

The learning intention for making a Venn diagram to compare women from the high middle ages to women today is to let us learn about the big difference between this large time period. Also, it helps us work on our comparison skills. For example, we worked on taking out the important ideas in the paragraphs and making it into a comparison from the things we know about women in the present time.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us work on our skills for 1) including the question in our answer 2) grammar 3) supporting our answers with text info

Connections:

Working on note taking can save us lots of time when a test comes up, answering questions from watching a video, or a professor/ teacher giving you lots of information orally. It helps you to prepare for a test because if you use note taking, all the important information is in your notes so it saves you time from reading the unimportant things that are in the text.

Working on our comparison skills can help us decide on future things. For example, making a comparison is mainly based on two things and finding out which one of them is better, worth more, can help you benefit from something or just for learning.

Doing chapter questions can help us lots in our future work since we would have very detailed answers for our questions. These questions can be used for anything such as writing a resume or a report. Our answers would have many supporting ideas and includes the question or idea we are talking about.

Reflections:

Marvy- I understand the working on our note taking skills can help us save lots of time.

Marvy- I understand the comparison skills are used daily and if we improve them, we would benefit from the a lot.

Marvy- I understand that doing chapter questions can help us in our writing since we would have a habit of including the question/ idea in our answer, have support from the text and have less grammar issues.

Tips:

- If you are not finished your chapter 1-7 questions from There Will Be Wolves, you should go to flex or try to catch up as soon as possible

- You should review the things that you did in note taking today so you won’t forget easily

- If you want extra practice or a head start, you can start reading ch9 and finish the questions.

Homework:

Chapter 8 questions from There Will Be Wolves are due tomorrow.

I was going to ask you all during class what we are going to do about the amount of blog posts I only have seven so I was planning to post again tonight so I would be able to catch up to ten let me know within a comment if there is something wrong my request of posting tonight and I will be glad to post another day but remember that more than one person can post on the same day so everybody can catch up on posts they have missed

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

These are the notes we took today in class


What did we do today :

Today we for once got out our pathways textbooks. Ms. Lees showed us a pyramid showing the highest ranking in society to the lowest, of the serfs (the lowest rank) and the kings (the highest rank) .We mainly wrote notes through the whole class of the nobles and vassals. Ms. Lees got us all to write down into our notebooks a web showing the influences on medieval society, which included the three f's. We also copied down a chart showing the responsibilities and obligations of each standard of person in society for example the kings responsibility was to defend nobles from attack and settle disputes between nobles.. She than told us to create a Venn diagram comparing the Canadian citizenship oath and the vassals oath.

Venn diagram- a diagram that is made of two circles that overlap in the middle. It is used to compare to things. The middle were the two circles overlap is were you would put the things the two compared things have in common and in the rest of the circles what is unique to each topic.

Obligation- an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or

Commitment.

Learning intention:

We did this because we all should work on our skills to take proper notes since we our in such a rush it is hard to copy down efficient notes you can understand later. Another reason we did this is so we can learn more about how the people were ranked back then in the High middle ages. For example the king was the highest ranked and the serfs were the lowest ranked. We have been learning quite a bit about the crusades lately so this was a good note taking opportunity to help us all understand something’s that the highest of ranked people were obligated to do there responsibility’s and more and all the way down to the lowest people.

Connections\reflections:

You can use note taking when you are in a seminar and you need to write down everything the person is saying very quickly but in a efficient way so you can read and understand the notes ate when you need them. Note taking is a great skill to learn. Since you will use it and need it all throughout your life, in college or wherever you may go.

Homework:

Start your chapter eight questions if you have time they are due on Friday Ms. Lees did though say we would have time to work on them in class double block on Thursday

Tips:

Remember to write your questions in pen since that is what Ms. Lees has been requesting us all to do

I will attempt to scan a copy of the notes on to my blog for the people who were sick and did not / were not able to copy them down.

I will be posting tonight and I'm going to try and scan the notes we took to say and attach them with my post just so anybody who didn't have a chance to copy them all done can use them

Sunday, 12 February 2012

Hi guys I was wondering if someone could help me on a few of the questions for there will be wolves. Thanks.

Thursday, 9 February 2012

February 09 learning log

What we did today:

Today, during the double block we did several things as a class. During the first block, we started off by Ms. Lees telling us information about the new Ipads. As you may already know, our school bought 30 Ipads and many classes had already started to use them. Unfortunately, there is a rule stating that no IPads were allowed in the portables so in the future when we need to use them, Ms. Lees might ask a teacher who has a classroom in the school to switch classrooms with her for a day. After informing us about the IPads, we handed in our chapter one to five “There Will Be Wolves” questions to let Ms. Lees see our growth from the first chapter to the fifth. Finally we shared our 30 day challenges to the whole class and gave advice for those who aren’t doing so well on keeping their challenge. Remember, if your challenge is too hard, you should change it to something that is different from your habits but is accomplishable in 30 days!

During second block, we jotted down all the things we knew or learned about the crusades and where we learned it from. For example: All crusades followed a religion – (There will be wolves) After that, we watched part of a movie called “Kingdom of Heaven” to learn more about the living conditions during the Crusades, what they wore and much more. There were quite a few parts where we didn’t understand what they were saying so Ms. Lees would stop the movie and help us out. When 40 minutes have passed, Ms. Lees stopped the movie and gave us ten minutes to write down the new things we learned about the Crusades. Finally, she gave us the rest of the time to do our chapter six questions which will be due Monday.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for checking in on how we were doing on the 30 day challenge is to let us remind ourselves if we were doing our challenges. Giving feedbacks for everyone is also a very effective way to improve our performance. You might think what the purpose is for setting a challenge and it doesn’t help at all but it actually does! Setting challenges make us have a clear and focused purpose and not only does it let you achieve something, but learn how to set proper challenges. For example, you might set an amazing challenge but is not able to achieve it because it is way too difficult. You need to think a bit and come up with a challenge that is something different from your habits but can be achievable and will somehow benefit for yourself.

The learning intention for watching and taking notes on the movie is to let us gain more knowledge about the Crusades such as their living conditions, how they reacted and their environment. Knowing this may help you in future projects.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us work on our writing skills. For example, a good answer includes the question itself in it but in a different form, have lots of examples and a variety of words.

Connections:

Setting goals/ challenges in your life will help you improve your life because you will be looking forward to something to focus on. When you continue on with your school career and go on to university or finding a job, setting goals/ challenges for yourself is a good way to get something that you want to accomplish. Remember, when setting a goal, you will also need a plan to achieve it or else you might procrastinate and eventually forget about it.

Improving your writing skills helps you a lot in the future. For example, if you were to become an author, editor or journalist, you would need very good writing skills. Think of this, would someone want to read a book or an article that has boring words, spelling mistakes and grammar errors?

Reflections:

Marvy- I understand that setting goals is a big part of achieving something. You should always set another goal for yourself if you’ve completed the previous one.

Marvy- I understand that having good writing skills can help me in the future for essays, my job and much more.

Homework

Chapter 6 questions due Monday

Tips

Review the things we talked about today on the Crusades

Go to Flex if you haven’t caught up on homework ch1-5 There Will Be Wolves

Ask a buddy to help and remind you to do your goal each day if you keep on forgetting

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Learning Log Feb.7th

What we did:

Today, we learned a bit more about our answers for questions on Chapters in the book 'There will be wolves' so we wouldn't have to peer check our answers again, and about 30 days challenge we talked about yesterday which we have to set up a goal and finish it in 30 days by working on it.

Learning Intention:

We have worked on fixing our answers for our qustions to improve our writing skills and so we wouldn't have to peer check ourselves again. It was very interesting and fun for me to learn how we can improve our writings, and extending our answers.Working on 30 days challenge was also very fun. It was a little difficult to set up our goals but I think it is a very good ideas to do this challenge. This challenge will help us set up a goal another day and feel very comfortable when we do it again. I am a marvy.

Connections/Reflections:

The connection between these activities are so we can do these again (because it helps so much by accomplishing our goals) later on in life and to succeed these goals, challenges later on.
These activities were very fun and helped me improve by a lot. I will be doing these challenges a lot later days.

Homework:

Our homework is to finish our questions for chapter five, There will be wolves, and thats it.
My tip is not to waste your time and work on it when you still can.

The Next person to post is Emily C.

Monday, 6 February 2012

My 30 day challenge is to not procrastinate ,and get everything done when I have time to do it ,and not wait for someone else to do it. I have always set this goal for myself but I have never kept worthy too it . I know how stressed I have gotten before when I haven't finished my homework ,and had to do it last minute. It doesn't only hurt me but I tend to be a quite irritable person towards my parents. Since I cant stand when i don't have things done and since i am i guess what you would call a "goody toe shoes", I hate getting in trouble for handing things in late,which makes me even more stressed . I plan to reach my goal by having my mom or dad to help me and remind me to start my homework as soon as i get home from school. I hope I can gain this skill of reminding myself and do it automatically. In these thirty days I hope my life will have a lot less stress in it ,so when I am done my homework I can have fun!

David's 30 days Challenge

My 30 days Challenge which Ms.Lees assigned us to do today is to practice my instruments 30 minutes each every day (I play 3 instrument acoustic guitar, Bass guitar, and electric guitar).
Also to complete four songs on my acoustic guitar, a song on my bass guitar, and a song on my electric guitar. six songs that I'll be working on is

'Tears in heaven' by Eric Clapton (acoustic guitar)
'Twilight' by Kotaro Oshio (acoustic guitar)
'River Flows in you' by Yiruma (acoustic guitar)
'Start' by Depapepe (acoustic guitar)
'Love' by Cnblue (Bass guitar)
Canon Rock (electric guitar)

These are the songs I really like, and also very beautiful but really tough for me (you should try listening to them) so I will try to finish all of them.

The reason why I am doing this is because I personally like to play on my guitar and I have not been practicing a lot on my guitar for a while. It helps me to be better at playing guitar and be more comfortable with it. Also I will feel the accomplishment for finishing these songs

Emily's 30 day challenge

There are many existing challenges in the world that people are undertaking each day. For the 30 day challenge, there are many things that I would like to do. For example, eating five portions of food, vegetable each day and not going on Facebook, but the one that I want to do the most is to try and go to flex or homework club two times a week. If I don’t have homework that week, I’ll review and refresh my mind with the things I learned previously. I chose this challenge because I figured that if I took the time to do my homework during my spare time or to review the things I learned, it would save me time when I’m at home and I would be much more prepared on tests or pop quizzes. I plan on reaching this goal by reminding myself to go to homework club when I have more than 30 minutes of homework that day. Good luck to others out there who are doing the 30 day challenge!

Do Something New For 30 Days ( Mark )

The 30 day challenge is an interesting activity that helps people establish new habits. This activity should be fairly challenging for some people. For me, going on Facebook is almost like a regular part of my life. Facebook is great for socializing and such but takes up too much time. It is useful in some cases but the socializing is virtual and less real. Socializing with people physically is much better than socializing virtually. This 30 day challenge for me would be to not go on Facebook for 30 days and socialize more in real life. This way, I can become less attached to Facebook and be more participating in activities.

My Challenge

My 30 day challenge is to drink eight glasses of water every day. I chose this challenge because sometimes I don't drink enough water and I regret it when I play soccer. Water is very healthy for your body in many ways. It helps in growing and building more muscles. I usually drink 3-5 glasses when I should be drinking 8. I plan to reach my goal by setting times for when to drink my glasses. Drink 1 in the morning, 2 at lunch, 2 in the afternoon, 2 around dinner, and 1 before I go to bed. I hope this 30 day challenge will become a daily routine for me as it will benefit my health.


What's yours?

Today's Learning Log

Homework:
- Post "Do Something New For 30 Days" goals on your group's blog.
- Finish catching up for "There Will Be Wolves" chapter 3 & 4 questions if you did not finish them.

What We Did:
- We looked at almost everybody's blogs and critiqued on certain posts.
- We looked at a video where a person introduced "Do Something New For 30 Days"

Learning Intentions:
- Critiquing the blogs helped us understand what each of us excelled in blogging and what we needed work on. Ms. Lees Showed us the most recent blogs. The first person's blog was Kia's. Her post was thorough and well explained, a person that did not come to class would understand what she wrote, but her "Connections and Reflections were a little weak. She was very vague when explaining her connections and reflections. The blogs that we write should include all parts on the criteria. If you're missing even one part of it, you would lose a lot of marks.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days" is a task to challenge yourself. You choose something that you want to do for 30 days ( It should be something you think is challenging or it wouldn't have much of a point) and try to fulfill this. This may help you quit bad habits and/or establish good habits. A smoker could use this to try to quit smoking. Anybody could use this to establish reading interest. << Don't forget to post what you want to do for thirty days on your blog. >>

Connections:
- Critiquing the blogs is important as you need to evaluate what others are doing all the time. Critiquing is used not just for other people but for yourself too. When you critique what you do, you learn what you did well and what you need to improve on, and when you take out all the bad parts, you're left with what is the best and most useful part.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days" is important for establishing habits. When you look at yourself and ask :"What do I want to change about myself?" You can use this to accomplish the goals you set for yourself.

Reflections:
- Critiquing the blogs: When I look at the criteria of the learning blogs and compare it to my posts, I find that I lack a big part in the criteria. I need to explain the topics more thoroughly and finish all the parts to a blog.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days": I have done similar things in the past, but my style is a little different than this. My dad use to make me do push ups everyday, I would protest but wouldn't get anywhere. Then my dad would make me keep this up for a month or so. I found it useful in the end because I easily did the push up test.

Tips:
- Take your time to think before you post "Do Something New For 30 Days". This way, you might be able to think of something practical.

The Next Person Posting Is David....

Friday, 3 February 2012

Posting Count

Hi Guys!

I went through all the posts and found out that we posted this many times:

Mark-5
Chelsea-5
David-5
Emily-5
Arthur-5

Looks like everyone posted the same number of times so we can start Monday fresh.

Thanks,
Arthur

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Toay's Learning Log Feb.2/2012

What we did today:

Today in Ms. Lees Humanities class, we mostly worked on our novel, “There Will Be Wolves”. Some students shared questions from chapters 1 and 2 with the whole class, and then everyone went over them in groups. When we reviewed chapters1 and 2 in groups, we all received three poker chips. These chips were used to allow everyone the same amount of time to speak about questions for each chapter. Anyone who had something to add to the conversation would have to place a poker chip to a pile and speak. Later, we got a piece of paper with questions to all remaining chapters. Then we started to work on chapters 3 and 4.


Why did we do it?

Ms. Lees checked some student’s responses to the questions to see how well we were doing. She then placed us into groups to see how well we could answer these questions and with how much detail. The poker chips were used again so that everyone could talk around the same amount of time. Some people like to talk more than others, so the poker chips method worked really well as it helped everyone out. Ms. Lees gave us the sheet with all the questions so she would not need to give us new questions every two chapters. She gave them to us so we could see how much work we have left and to help us manage our time. She said we might not be able to answer questions for all chapters but we got started with chapters 3 and 4.


Connections beyond English:

Many jobs require working in a group situation. There are different kinds of people; some are dominant in talking, while others are shy to add to the discussion. You need to listen to others as well as speak for yourself. Group school projects, for example, help in developing and improving conversational skills which will help in the future. Working together will make you more successful in everyday life.


Homework:

· Finish chapter questions 3-4 for our novel “There Will Be Wolves”

· You should have chapter 1-2 questions already done

· Go to Flex if you have any questions or need help


The next person posting is……..Chelsea. A!