Half of 6th Grade Zeitgiest

Above is the Video of my Half Of 6th Grade Zeitgeist. So what this video's for, is to show you, the reader, what basically what my half of 6th grade experience was.  I have put pictures of my friends, the instrument I play, lockers, my favorite band, and all the other things in the video. Well, go check it out!

Enjoy!

Our Learner Profiles...

On the 30th of November, we had a look on ourselves. We learned what our dominant side was, and what our Learner's Profile was.  There are 2 sides of the brain. The Gesalt (right brain) and The Logic (left brain).There are different types of Learner's profiles, but mine is HH, and my dominant side is my left. My dominant brain is left, my eye is left, my ear is left, my hand is left and my leg is left, basically all my body parts are dominant in left. I was kind of surprised when I saw the paper that says what your profile type needs to improve. It said "- May reverse or transpose letters.". First I was stunned, but my friend told me that some people believe that left handed people, when they were children, used to write right to left, but I was never one of them.


I think I learn best when I am alone, the door closed and the room silent. I believe this because once, there were two people in my room, and it took me three hours to finish my homework, when I only had a blogpost to do. In a classroom, I think I learn best at the front of the class, at the left side. That's because my left ear is facing the board, so I can listen better and pay more attention. I'd rather have my back toward the back of the classroom, not the front. I think the best way for me to learn is in a quiet class room, where there are no distractions, one person talking, and no music. These things are my strategies that will help my learning. Besides, on the paper that says things about my profile, its says: " Quiet time alone is especially beneficial."


On the paper, it says that it will help me to sit were I can "process internally, quietly.." I think that is true for me, because I mentioned before, I can only work when it is quiet. It also says on the paper: "-integrated cross-lateral hand and foot play like knitting, writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand, and massaging the Temporal Mandibular Joint to assist communication, conscious walking, dancing, soccer,...." I understood most of the things that were in there. I know knitting, but writing and drawing with my right hand? I don't think I'll be doing that soon. 


The Temporal Mandibular Joint is the jaw joint, I don't understand how that will help me learn. I don't know what conscious walking is, so maybe not that, yet. Dancing I like, but soccer, I have had bad experiences with. They also put: "An integrative balance of art, music, free form movement..." By that I believe they mean art, music such as instruments or maybe singing, and dance as free form movement. I guess most of these will be helpful to me and things I need. Maybe they should put things for stubbornness?


There are a few things that I would like my teachers to know about me. First off, I like quiet spaces. Like I said before, many times, I can get unfocused. Another thing would be probably that sometimes I am actually imaginative, not all logic. Like right now in Humanities, we are writing our imaginative stories. Instead of laying out the plan of every thing, I just decided to make it up as I go. Believe me, I NEED imagination sometimes. I like expressing myself, but only when I am relaxed and clam. I really am a bit clumsy when I get stressed, but only sometimes. These are basically what I want my teachers to know, if they don't know already.


I wonder what YOUR learner's profile is...?

My Learner's Profile :)

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ~ Blogpost #2

In humanities, we are currently reading books for Literature Circles, and the one I am reading is "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle", by Avi. Our assignment for this blogpost is to do three paragraphs on these questions: "1.The benefits of working with a classmate. 2. Challenges / obstacles which you overcame (tried to overcome). 3. New understandings that you gained about the novel." for how we Collaborated Constructively for our "Lit. Circle with a twist", which is a collaborative Literature Circle. So, enough of the introduction, lets go onto what the benefits of having a partner, challenges that faced my group and I, and how we collaborated.




There are pros and cons to having a partner, but I'll just talk about the pros. Having a partner, there are many benefits toward it. One example is that the work, will be split, so you wont have to do the WHOLE thing. Another reason is that it's just fun to work with them, unless they aren't your friend, which will end up with you and your partner disagreeing a lot. Mainly, the benefit for Collaborative Lit. Circles is splitting up the work. You don't have to spend hours looking for 2 questions, or searching through your brain for 2 connections. For this, you just have to do 1 passage, 1 question and response, 1 connection and 1 vocabulary word. Normally, we have to do double that amount. But, for this Lit. Circle, the worst thing you could have is a bad partner. A bad--- no, horrible partner makes you do all the work, and in my teacher's words, "sits there like a dying duck in a thunderstorm" which basically means fool around and make you do the work. From having a bad partner, you WILL , no doubt about it, get a bad grade. Thankfully, I didn't have any bad partners.


For my group and I, there were some challenges.  One of them were that one of my partners, got disabled from his account. That meant he couldn't access the document we had to work on. We (my other group member and I) couldn't check what he was doing and help him improve his work. For me as an individual, a challenge was actually getting myself to start my lit. circle. It took me a lot to get myself to start the work, because I was distracted with chatting and other things I'd rather not mention. I finally got working, when my friend helped me with ways to keep out the annoying things that usually makes me off-task. When I actually started, it was pretty smooth and we didn't have any problems from there.

There were somethings I had learned during that Lit. Circle. One, is that the main character, Charlotte had enough courage to stand up to Captain Jaggery, which I thought was amazing for Charlotte, because no one would ever thought she would be brave enough to whip him across the face, just for Zachariah. I was also amazed that she actually agreed to climb up the mast, to join the crew to avenge the death of Zachariah. I understood that Charlotte, changed from a girl whose father chose the path of her life, to a woman who can make her own decisions. I learned that, Charlotte is a more confident woman, and the boat had changed her life completely.

Sources:

http://www.zunal.com/zunal_uploads/images/20100705082027HeMuN.jpg

http://jodyfransch.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/audio-learning.jpg

http://thedoublethink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/warning-challenges.jpg

http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/workingtogether.png

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle- Blogpost #1

On November 2nd, 2010, we shared our first Lit. Circles with different books. The book I chose was "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle", by the legendary Avi. Since we have finished sharing the first few chapters, we were assigned a blogpost to do on what we understood about the book, connections we had with our group members and the book characters, and predictions we have. So now, hopefully you won't get bored, you will read my blogpost on the progress of our first Lit. Circle.



To start off, I want to talk about what my group members and I further understood about the book. One of my group members and I thought that a character in the book, Zachariah, talked in third person. Talking in third person means to talk to a person, but saying their name instead of you. An example is from the book, "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle". " 'Miss. Doyle doesn't know what will happen,' " That was the part where Zachariah gave the main character, Charlotte,  a knife to protect herself for reasons, which I will soon find out.


Sometimes in my group, we have connections. Usually when someone makes a comment other people agree to it, and if they don't, they might get agreed with in their opinion. Since there is a lot of vocabulary in our book, there may not be any connections towards it, as there was in "Call it Courage". In the first Lit. Circle, we only had to read chapter 1 and 2, so mainly we had the same ideas for the passages, like when Zachariah gave Charlotte the knife. When we had our first Lit. Circle, we had questions, some same, some different, but mostly the same.


For this book, "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle", there are alot of predictions I have, compared to "Call it Courage". One of my predictions I have is that Mr. Grummage and Captain Jaggery are bad (or evil) people. Another one is that some of the men on The Seahawk are not very, how do you put it? Nice, let's go with that. They may seem to be nice, but I have a feeling they aren't pleasant to be around.

Sources:
http://www.sunprairiepubliclibrary.org/SunPrairiePublicLibrary-HistoricalSurvivalStories.html
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle- By Avi

Malaysia- It's Importance

Recently in Humanities, we watched a documentary, "Guns, Germs and Steel". It was originally a book, but the author, Dr. Jared Diamond, made it a documentary. Choosing 1 out of 3 topics, we have to write a blog post. The topic I chose to do is "1. What role did geographic location and natural resources play in the the development of Malaysia?".

Malaysia is a country in South-East Asia. Its located at 2 degrees 30' North Lat. and 122 degrees 30' East Long. Malaysia has a variety of natural resources, so Malaysia, as a nation, is very wealthy.The resources we have here in Malaysia are oil, tin, petroleum, timber, copper, iron ore, natural gas, bauxite and agriculture such as fishing, farming and many more. Tin, oil, and petroleum are the popular out of the rest, because there is lots of it and it is very much needed to many groups of people. Tin, is used to make, of course, tin cans and other things. Oil, is used for engines, etc. Petroleum is made into gas, which is needed for all types of vehicles to power them. 

All though it is believed by many that Malaysia has two seasons, summer and monsoon, half of that belief is incorrect. Malaysia does have two seasons, but they are the wet and dry seasons. The dry season is mostly around February to the beginning of August, then, August to beginning of February, is the wet season. It rains everyday in the wet season, night or day. Malaysia is protected from storms,  blizzards, typhoons, tsunami's and additional natural hazards. Singapore, the neighboring country to Malaysia, is on the equator line. Since from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, taking five hours by car, the equator line makes Singapore and Malaysia have extremely hot weather.

Malacca, a state in Malaysia, is where trading with Europeans first started. The Malacca Straits was used to go from one place, to Malacca. At that point of time, India, Malaysia and Indonesia had many spices and people from all over the world came to Malacca to trade with other people of other nationalities. The place as we now know as Sunway Pyramid, was actually a tin mine, before it ran out of tin and people transformed it into a lagoon.  Because of Malaysia's freedom about 50 years ago, Malaysia has been developing quickly. High- Rise buildings, many offices, tourism and others made Malaysia grow. Why, if it wasn't for offices here in Malaysia, we wouldn't be here!

Sources:

http://www.petronas.com.my/our_business/exploration_production/malaysia_e_p/historical_production_of_oil_and_gas.aspx

http://anuclearmalaysia.blogspot.com/

http://www.indexmundi.com/malaysia/natural_resources.html

http://www.thepetronastowers.com/2010/02/the-history-%E2%80%93-part-i/

http://www.gpsonsale.com/software/products/Malaysia-CityNav.htm

Jet and the Little Giants...

Last week, 6A went to Kuala Selangor. We saw fireflies, went on a boat ride and planted Mangrove saplings. We had a choice of doing one of three questions. I chose, 1. Write a narrative from the point of view from a mud skipper when Team 6A students descended on the mangroves to plant saplings. This is my point of view, as a mud skipper.

"UGH.. WHY IS THIS WALK SO LONG???" I picked up on some complaints from some- I mean a lot of little giants. There were only a few normal sized giants among the little ones. Sorry, how rude of me! I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Taya, the mud skipper. I have been living here in the mangroves since I was born, and that's a long time. So, back to the giants. The little giants were so many different sizes and colors, it was amazing that I wasn't blind after my first glance! Then, they started screaming for no reason. I have met the normal giants before, and they weren't as.....well, shrill. They kept on screaming but when the normal giant shouted something, they became silent. The normal giant in bright green was talking to the little giants about a tiny mangrove tree. As he approached the mud, I sprang back into the safety of my hole. In the gap of my hole, I could see that he was showing the little giants how to plant a little mangrove tree.


Now, the little giants were walking towards the green guy. They were around the edge of the mud, and I quickly backed up, farther into my hole. Three little giants went out into the mud, and every few steps they got stuck, and reached to pull themselves out. They kept on going, 3 at a time, some tall, some short. I slowly crept out of my hole "OOHHH IT'S A MUD SKIPPER!" A short little giant pointed at me. Then, what it seemed like thousands of little giants, all huddled around my hole. I dug quickly through the mud as fast as I could, not slowing down for anything. I waited for a few minutes, and noticed that they were huddling around some crab. I came out, once again, and watched. One little giant was picking up the poor crab! I was horrified. If I was bigger, I would say-- " DON'T PICK UP THAT CRAB! WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF SOME GIANT PICKED YOU UP? HUH?" A little giant, she was a girl, with jet black hair, stepped forward. I was amazed! That was exactly what I was going to say!


For the rest of the time, I put all my attention on the girl with the jet black hair. She was laughing hysterically with some other little giants at a boy in red who expertly ran- I mean literally, ran, through the mud. Every few seconds, she would stare at this boy-who was taller than her by a bit-, with dreamy eyes. I wondered what that was about. Maybe some weird giant thing. The little giant boy, whom Jet ( I named the girl that, it's much easier) was staring at, went out to the mud. Frantically, she looked behind, if anyone was watching her. Paranoia, I guessed. Jet kept her eyes only, on the boy. He was wearing black, like her, so it was easy to recognize him. Jet was staring at him until he was no longer seen for her. Giants, had very bad eyesight, unlike Mud Skippers. At that moment, I saw why she liked him so much.


Then, I saw Jet playing with a chunk of mud, with another little giant girl with yellow hair. The girl with the yellow hair was throwing mud at a boy, messing up what he was wearing. The little giant boy that was being hit with mud, picked up a HUGE chunk of mud and put it on the girl with yellow hair. Then, they started a mud fight! Pieces of mud started flying everywhere! Thankfully, Jet stopped the fight. A very large normal giant came up and said, " Why aren't any girls going?" All of the little giant girls came up and shouted "Because all the boys pushed us back! We're never going to get a turn!" The large normal giant called all the girls to the front, including Jet, and made them go first. Jet finally got a chance to plant a Mangrove! I was ecstatic!

I followed Jet. She kept on getting stuck, and I kept on whispering, " Step quickly, you wont get stuck then. Don't panic." Miraculously, she stepped quickly and got to the plantings! It was like we were connected somehow. First the crab, then I understood how she liked him, and now this! It was kinda creepy. I put aside my thoughts, and watched Jet carefully. A normal giant dug a hole into the mud, and a mangrove tree was given to Jet. She took the mangrove tree and stuck it into the hole. For a moment there, I felt relived, I don't know why, though. Suddenly, Jet turned around, and saw me. She knelt down, and... and.... and patted me on the head? I wasn't expecting that! No, not at all! She went through mud, smiling. She went up to the rocks, turned around and smiled down at me. It was like she knew I was there, all along. Did she? She left, with other little giants. These are my friends, Taya. And my name is not Jet, its-- Her voice got cut off. Okay. This day is getting creepier by the minute. At least I know her name is not Jet, but what is it? Who was she?

Who is she??

Sources: http://blog.madrona.com/

http://www.bountyfishing.com

Bullying- Courage- Blog post #5

In Humanities, we have to write about a time we observed or did bullying. On Monday, we did a bullying workshop. We watched a video on Middle School students who got bullied and their experience, We also discussed all the types of bullying and what to do if we saw bullying. Here's my experiences on observing and getting bullied.


Basically all my life, I have been in the same school. Since the school is international, a lot of people come and go. Good people, bad people and the people who are in the middle. I'm one of the ones in the middle, sometimes not that good, and mostly not bad and the type who's friends with almost everybody. There are a total of 62 nationalities in our school, and I've had different friends from different nationalities. Our school is also very strict on racism, which not many students are. 

    I have had many experiences with gossip and I don't like it that much. If someone says something about another person, I try my best to avoid it, but sometimes an answer slips out. A few years ago, there was a girl, who was a friend of mine, but that friendship turned into a rivalry soon in 4th grade. I tried my best to avoid her because she always started rumors about me and people she didn't like (which was probably everyone in our grade). The only people she liked were my 2 best friends, and I felt like she was trying to steal them away from me. I didn't stand up for myself then, and I regret it now.


   Once, we were on a girl scout trip, so we had to choose tent buddies. I obviously chose my best friends because we had to get either in tents that would hold 2 or 3. She was mad because she thought that everyone would pick her and no one else's opinion mattered. But she was wrong. On the bus to the trip, I was writing down notes about random things with my best friend and my BFF drew stars all over the page. Since, the girl wanted to look, I showed her the piece of paper to make her see that we didn't write anything about her and suddenly she said that I called her a bad word because of all the stars. I was so mad at her I literally felt like strangling her, but thankfully, I kind of calmed down. She kept on arguing with me and its very hard to avoid a person sitting really near to you. So I just kept on arguing which wasn't the right thing to do. The girl left the school I was going to at the end of 5th grade back to the U.S and I don't think I want to see her again, unless, she has changed.


What I would have done (I had this all planned in my head as she mocked me) was I would have walked up to her, said I didn't like it. I would have said to leave me alone and I didn't care what she said about me. I would have asked why she didn't like me and what did I do to her. Most of all, I would have said if she could forget about what happened before, and relive our dead friendship. But, sadly, that is the past, so I can't really do anything about it. But I will do this now ( if someone was bothering me) and for the rest of my life.

A text from some horrible person :(

Graphic Sources:
http://webreputationmanagement.net/blog/tag/monitor
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/cyber-bullying-widespread-but-parents-kept-in-the-dark-1380630.html