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Category: Grade 8
Imitation Poetry
The Imitation Poetry assignment is a series of poems that I annotated and imitated (the format/style it was written in). When writing the imitations of these poems, we thought about the poetic structure the author used, their word choices, and the significance of that topic to the author. The 5 poems are I wrote below are only just the original 5, but with my own twist/personal experiences substituted instead. 4 of the poems are “normal” poems and are what you normally expect a poem to look and sound like. The 5th poem, however, is a two-voice poem and takes you through 2 different author’s viewpoints on the same topic at once. This allows the readers to compare and contrast the experiences and tone of the authors and understand why using two-voice poetry enhanced the poem.
“If I were in Charge of the World”
Annotation – ‘If I were in Charge of the World’:
Poem – ‘If I were Brave’:
If I were brave,
I’d climb Mount Everest,
travel to Egypt,
let myself fall from the highest roller coaster,
and get lost in the Grand Canyon.
If I were brave,
there’d be no failure,
or what ifs,
and life would be more than just existence.
If I were brave,
you wouldn’t have regrets.
You wouldn’t have separate.
You wouldn’t have boundaries.
Or “I’m not good enoughs”.
We would all be enough.
If I were brave,
then someone who has worked so hard to be rid of who they are,
then someone who sails across seas in search of a better future,
then a dreamer,
can be brave
(too).
Photostory – ‘If I were Brave’:
“Where I’m From”
Annotation – ‘Where I’m From’:
Poem – ‘Where I’m From’:
I am from glue sticks,
from Elmer’s and the untwisted caps.
I am from the broken fountain
(constant, alluring,
it sounded like silence).
I am from the flowering citrus,
the California redwood
whose shadow kept me cool on the unbearingly hot summer days.
I’m from airports and laser tag,
from America and Taiwan.
I’m from the “Then what happened”
and the “Go look at the stars.”,
from the death trap window and the magic door.
I’m from dreaded Sunday mornings
with hidden books
and a ten commandments poster.
I’m from Valley Oak Park and Arden Dimick Library,
cherry icees and black beanbags.
From the personality my brother lost to the expectations,
the silence my mom kept to save her charade.
Over the Pacific Ocean, the plane wavered,
lights flickered,
illuminating shadows of doubt,
wondering what would’ve turned out different.
I am from those moments.
Roots dug before they grew,
fallen oranges from the flowers.
Photostory – ‘Where I’m From’:
“Ode to Family Photographs”
Annotation ‘Ode to Family Photographs’:
Poem – ‘Ode to Memories’:
This is the white frame, and these are the smiles.
This is the laminated cover, and this is the old style.
The colors seem to fade over time.
This is a word, the first you ever said,
and this is the bullfighting pen of a bed.
The jokes seem to lose their hilarity.
This is my half of a friendship necklace.
This is the concert ticket from out night of being reckless.
The spark of excitement simmers down.
This is a memory of my life,
and the fuzziness returning just as soon as I remember.
The details are lost but aren’t they supposed to return.
This is our first dance,
and this is a broken lightsaber.
This is my brother dressed in layers upon layers,
ready to push his sled down.
I forget as soon as I remember.
The details of events are jumbled.
Nothing seems to make sense.
But memories are all we have left to hold on to.
What else can we do but grasp tightly onto your past
when pictures don’t serve you justice.
My memory is the only thing that will remember you.
“Sick” – List Poems
Annotation – ‘Sick’:
Poem – ‘A Vast Library’:
When you walk through the doors,
When you walk through the doors,
and the air conditioning roars,
you start your journey.
Start to see.
Be free.
Wander the aisles,
scan through bookshelves,
search awhile
and find cookbooks,
schoolbooks,
hymnbooks,
scrapbooks,
guidebooks,
textbooks.
On the lookout.
Wondering where the blue book
that you read beside the brook
was misfiled.
“Lunch Rooms” – Two-Voice Poems
Annotation – ‘Lunch Rooms’:
Two-Voice Poem Audio – ‘Fruits’ Paula and Yvonne:
Two-Voice Poem – ‘Fruits’ Paula and Yvonne:
Energy Unit Reflection
I think in this unit and through my paper, I was able to demonstrate the learner profile thinker because this unit was a bit more of an opinionated project. This meant that I was given more freedom to really think about what I personally thought was the best source of energy, and what I thought was going to be the energy source of the future. I wanted to make sure that I honestly believed in what I was writing about before I wrote the paper, so I made sure to really think about the advantages and disadvantages of each energy source before I wrote about them. For example, yes, renewables will greatly help the problem of global warming and help climate change (main problem we face/the reason we are looking at other energy sources in the first place) but renewables take up a lot of space while still not being as effective as other sources of energy. Nonrenewable forms of energy are also a big risk to put all our effort in because they produce waste, like how nuclear energy produces nuclear waste. However, they are able to be a lot more efficient and reliable compared to renewables. I think the main thing I took from this unit is the fact that we as a society have to really think about what’s going to be best for us to not only preserve our planet but still be able to further our development/growth. We have to think about and consider the benefits and consequences of using each type of energy source and should use a combination of all types of energy sources to maximize efficiency. The problem with the industrial revolution and the burning of all that coal/oil is that we only used one type of energy and did not invest in any other forms of energy, so now we’re running out. We need to realise that if we only use one type of energy, we’re going to run into the same problem again and again. It’s only a mixture of all types of energy sources that will be the best solution.
I’m most proud of the organization of my essay. I think I did a really good job with separating my points into sections; introduction, background, environmental considerations, etc. The organization of the essay and the way it was arranged helped the development of the readers’ understanding of the topic and how easy it was to understand and comprehend the essay. The way I wrote it made it so that they were able to have an overview of the topic, understand how it works, then have the 2 explanations of why I think this is the best energy source and a conclusion. I was also really proud of how I was able to keep track of all my sources. Usually, I lose track of some sources, or can’t find where I found the information, so I think keeping them all on one doc really helped me to trace the information back to where I got it from.
Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I firmly believe that all forms of energy are related and that using any energy resource has both positive and negative consequences. Using too much of something is never a good idea of course. That’s what happened with coal and oil. We were focused on reaping the benefits of all the energy we got to the point where we disregarded the fact that using so much can have drastic consequences on our world. I feel like when humanity first started using coal/oil that the possibility of using too much was too absurd and unimaginable for them, but then as cities started growing and we started to rely on constant energy to complete daily tasks, energy became a neccessity and it was too late to stop. This is why we should put our time and resources into all types of energy sources.
ちびまる子ちゃん Movie Review
The movie ちびまる子ちゃん started as a manga novel written by Momoko Sakura, but later made into 3 separate movies. The one we watched was produced in December 15, 1990 by Tsutomu Shibayama. It follows the life of a little girl named Sakura, otherwise known as Maruko or Chibi Maruko-chan. She is in third grade and lives with her parents, sister, and grandparents. In class, her 2 classmates Oono and Sugiyama have been the best of friends since forever. They work extremely well together and are always with each other. They’re best friends who have made a pact to be together forever and to venture through life together. With the upcoming sports festival, all the classes are preparing for the events, including Maruko’s class. Oono and Sugiyama work so well together in practice, defending each other and protecting each other that everyone just expects them to win. However, during the sports competition, Oono gets surrounded by 5 groups from the other team and can’t escape. He calls for Sugiyama’s help, but Sugiyama can’t get there in time, and Oono loses for the first time in his life. The white team ends up losing, and they’re both disappointed in each other. When they meet up afterward, they blame each other for the loss, Sugiyama –> Oono for losing and Oono –> Sugiyama for not helping him in time. They don’t talk to each other for the rest of autumn. Finally, at the choral competition between all the classes, Oono loses his voice in the final performance, and Sugiyama sings for him instead and they rekindle their friendship. Everything goes well for a while, they even attend the new years’ bell ringing together and wish for their friendship to last in the new year. As the weeks pass, Oono’s father is given another job in Tokyo, which means that Oono and his family has to move, breaking up Sugiyama and Oono. Their friendship takes a turn for the worse and they both say things to each other that hurts the others’ feelings. Sugiyama says he’ll finally be able to rule the playground by himself after Oono’s gone, and Oono says he can’t change the fact that he’s moving because he’s a kid. Their dreams together are shattered because of the move, and so is their friendship. At Oono’s farewell party held in class, Sugiyama prepares a demonstration for Oono, where they both get to live out their dream of being sailors together. The whole class goes to the train station to see Oono off, and Sugiyama says “don’t forget me”.
My favorite characters are the grandpa and the sister because the grandpa is very cute. He reminds me of my own grandparents because they both get really bored and want to do something useful. They’re also the ones that are willing to take you anywhere you want, even when your parents won’t take you. You can always count on your grandparents to be up for the adventure and they’ll always act as silly as the youth. They are the same as kids, just older. I also like the sister because she’s very mature and it also reminds me of my brother. We always have sibling fights and disagreements like how she wouldn’t let Maruko sleep in her bed, but you still care for them, like how she cheered her sister on during the marathon.
Some cultural observations are the holidays and events that appeared in the movie. In American schools, they don’t really have such a thing as a choral competition or sports day where the whole school comes together to form teams and compete. They might have something similar, but it’s not on the same scale as in this movie. Also, they celebrate the coming of the new years by going to the temple, ringing the bell, and throwing coins to wish for what they want in the coming new years. Americans have a very distinct tradition of watching the ball drop on new years that is very different from the Japanese.
I really enjoyed the movie, and how the plot slowly built up. It was interesting to see the movie from Maruko’s point of view, but Maruko wasn’t even the main character/main part of the movie. She was just like the person whose point of view you were taking. That made it seem like we were Maruko and we saw everything she saw, as well as everything she felt. We became Maruko. I think it was good to not show us the point of view of Sugiyama or Oono (main characters) because then we wouldn’t have seen how special their friendship is, or how special other people knew their friendship was.
Poetry Remix
Poetry is an expression of your feelings and ideas. In this assignment, we remixed 4 different types of phrases/media so that they would become a poem. The first one took different idiom phrases and rearranged them, the second took song titles and put them in an order to make it understandable, the third was taking slogans and turning that into a poem, the last was taking key words out of stories/articles to create your own poem.
Idiom Poem – “Breaking the Cycle”
Again and again,
Not have the heart,
Achilles heel.
Same old, same old,
Chapter and verse,
Fine words butter no parsnips.
For my money,
Scales fall from your eyes,
Close the book.
“Dictionary of English Idioms & Phrases.” Using English.com. 2018, https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/. Accessed March 1st, 2018.
Song Title Poem – “We’re Only Imaginary”
But, it’s alright,
I
Can’t help falling in love (with you).
Through
The sound of silence,
Hear
Paper hearts
Crash and burn.
Break,
for him.
Is this love
All in my head.
Jackson, J.J. “But, It’s Alright.” Calla Records, 1996./Kim, Taeyeon. “I” S.M. Entertainment I, 2015./
Presley, Elvis. “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Blue Hawaii, RCA Victor, 1961./Jimmy Eat World. “Through.” Integrity Blues, 2016./Simon and Garfunkel. “The Sound of Silence.” Sounds of Silence, Columbia, 1965./Moonpools and Caterpillars. “Hear.” Lucky Dumpling, Elektra Records, 1995./The Vamps. “Paper Hearts.” Night and Day, Mercury, 2017./Blues Traveler. “Crash and Burn.” Four, A&M, 1994./Three Days Grace. “Break.” Life Starts Now, Jive Records, 2009./Sivan, Troye and Allday. “for him.” Blue Neighborhood, Capitol Records Australia, 2015./Marley, Bob. “Is This Love.” Dreams of Freedom: Ambient Translations of Bob Marley in Dub, Tuff Gong, 1978./Fifth Harmony and Fetty Wap. “All In My Head.” 7/27, Epic Records, 2016.
Slogan Poem – “For the Children in Charge of Change”
Can you hear me now? Good.
Just do it.
What’s the worst that could happen?
A mind’s a terrible thing to waste,
Innovation.
Challenge everything.
Impossible is nothing.
©Verizon ©Nike ©Dr.Pepper ©3M ©VNCF ©EA Sports ©Adidas ©Fortune Magazine
Blackout Poems (Click on Photos) –
“How do I choose myself”
” At least I’m not as sad (as I used to be)”
“Shattered”
Bias in Media Summative Reflection
Throughout media, bias and stereotypes are hidden and disguised, but they still affect our perceptions of society. We learned a lot from this unit, how to look for the real purpose of bias, why people use bias, and how to avoid it. But something we should take note of is that no matter what, bias in media can alter perspectives and influence an individual’s opinions. That’s not always a bad thing though, because sometimes it’s necessary for us to change our mindset in order to move forward as a society. How necessary is bias then if it helps us move forward as a society? Read about it in my reflection of our bias in media summative:
Dividing our Society – Bias In Media Summative
In the unit, we were taught about the types of bias and stereotypes that exist all around us in the form of commercials, news, videos, songs, really anywhere you can think of. To learn about what bias is, we were first told to use Checkology. The 4 modules on Checkology were all designed with a different purpose, talk about the types of bias, how bias spreads, the rights that allow people to be biased (as long as it’s not harmful to others), and how to detect bias. We also annotated some videos and articles that had either very strong bias or very little bias in order to get used to being aware of bias and stereotypes. During annotating and completing the modules on Checkology, I realized that bias occurs more often than I think, even in something that’s supposed to be neutral, like news. However, the bias is just hidden and not talked about because we don’t notice it, or we choose not to notice it. This summative is a reflection on all that we have learned about detecting bias and the purpose of bias. The first part consists of annotations on different types of media; news, print ads, commercials, songs, and shows. There are also annotations that go along with each of those forms of media in order to explain why I specifically noticed that part, or why I thought it was biased. The second part of the summative was to make a product to increase awareness of bias in society, so I made a comic. The comic shows a clear contrast between a society that pressures children into stereotypes and a society that just lets them be. It’s a reflection of gender bias that exists in the modern world even today and hopefully is able to show people that kids aren’t meant to be one way or another, pink or blue, there needs to be more colors because not everyone is going to fall into a stereotype.
News Annotation PDF:
Print Ad Annotation PDF:
Part One Annotation and Analysis:
Part Two Product (Click into Photo):
Product for Awareness Explanation:
Unit 3 Work and Machines – Summative Reflection
How much did you know about Work and Machines before we started? I didn’t know too much about work and machines before this unit. I think most people, like me, go into the unit expecting work to be the regular or normal definition of work, not force*distance, so it was a bit confusing to get used to at first. I also think that my knowledge of machines has increased dramatically. Before, I knew the basics of how simple machines, like what a lever is, what it looks like, but I didn’t really understand how a lever works and how it’s defined. So things like that were made a lot more clear during the unit, especially since I really think about how simple machines were all around us in real life, like how a screw is made up of an inclined plane.
How would you improve your Inclined Plane Lab report? In my inclined plane report, there could’ve been more detail in explaining my data. Most of the time, I compared the data, but I didn’t go into a lot of description about why they came out that way or way the data was like that. The logic behind some of my reasoning was also flawed and not well supported.
Discuss what would you like to study more about in this unit? Why? I think because we only focused on one simple machine for our GRASP project, I would like to know more about a different type of machine. The one that interests me most out of the 5 left is the lever because there are a lot of different projects you could do seeing as there are different kinds of levers, so exploring different types of levers and simple machines would be what I want to continue studying most out of this unit.
Thinking about work and power–how do you think they will relate to the next unit–Energy? Obviously, from our unit, we already know that work and energy are very closely related because work is basically the transfer of energy. Work is done when energy is transferred onto an object and the change in kinetic energy is equal to the net work done on an object. Power is also related to energy because some units of energy use things like kilowatt-hour. Using one kilowatt-hour of power, energy can last up to an hour. It will be interesting to see how the things we learned in this unit, work and power, relate to our next unit on energy.
Simple Machines – Pulley Reflection
1. What were your contributions to the success of your group’s lesson presentation? Be specific. What parts did you research, what parts of the experiment did you have responsibility for, what were your responsibilities for the lesson preparation and presentation? Our group split the project into 3 main parts. The 1st being background information on pulleys, the second being the experiment, and the last being examples of pulleys in real life. Since we wanted to have as much time to write the lab “report” about the experiment, the first thing we did was to design the experiment as a group and perform it. After that, we went to work on our individual parts. My job was to work on the lab report of the experiment and then turn it into slides on the presentation.
2. Describe one part of this project that was a challenge? How did you respond to this challenge? One challenging part about the project is that we weren’t given a lot of time, about a week and a half to finish everything. I had major concerns over whether or not we would finish everything at the beginning. However, I think after organising the project into parts, we had a much clearer idea of what we were doing and what we had to do in order to finish the project.
3. Describe what you most enjoyed about the project? What part are you most proud of–that you say “WE DID GREAT”? I enjoyed the presentation part of the project most, because I’m really proud of how we came together at the end to give our presentations. It’s not easy to be the first ones presenting and I’m really glad our group was able to take the challenge in stride to give a clear presentation.
4. Long after this project has ended, what parts of the experience will you remember? (…“the nightmare is over, I have blocked it completely from my mind!”…hopefully not!). I think I’ll remember that it’s better to prioritize and plan what parts of the experiment to do. It’s very effective to do that because people know what they’re doing and are able to complete their parts efficiently. I think that works really well for people who are struggling to work in groups.
Here is our finished slide presentation:
みそしるのつくりかった
In this chapter, we’re learning about cooking whether it be instructions on how to cook, different ingredients, or the names of utensils, this chapter covered it all. Here are my own instructions to teach you how to make miso soup, or みそしる.