Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying, and Dividing Radicals (Math for Liam)

For the past two weeks of school, our class with Michelle has studied radicals. Learning about this interesting topic has fueled my love for math for the past weeks, and I find myself looking forward to math even more than usual. We started off by learning, in a more in-depth way, what radicals are. After knowing that we started adding. We then subtracted. Then multiplying…I can say with 100% confidence that this is one of my favorite math topics we have studied. Being able to really understand everything that is going on in math during this topic has been amazing, and looking forward to more math has been exiting!

Humanities Book Project

To start out the new year, we were given an assignment to write, draw, or film something relating to our winter reading book. I read Tuesdays With Morrie, a fascinating book on aging. I decided to make a video for the book. My first step was to create a story-board. I drew frames and colored them in with scenes that I thought could be in the film. Then I picked the music, and then I filmed it and started editing. So far, I think this project is really fun and exiting. I love making videos and I love writing and reading, so this project is perfect for me!

My Time In Math

Throughout my year in math, I have had to adjust to Math X, figure out my best seating position, and learn how to best take notes, while also understanding the material being said. At first, I was a little surprised by the speed of Math X. I wasn’t sure if we were going too fast or two slow, but after being in class for almost three months, I have realized that it’s a perfect speed for me. I was also always focusing on my notes, vigorously taking neat notes, instead of focusing on the words being spoken to me. And lastly, I was always put in groups that moved to fast for me. For some reason, throughout the first few months of math, I was put in table groups that moved way to fast for me. Now, I take less notes, sit in table groups that work for me, and am comfortable with the speed of math!

Have You Ever Distanced Yourself From Someone

Have you ever distanced yourself from someone because you didn’t want to seem “uncool”?  Has anyone ever done that to you?  Explain why and how it felt (or how you feel about it now in retrospect).  5-7 sentences

As a young first grader, I was new to my school, and was ready to converse and make friendships with as many students as I could. After a few weeks of making connections, I decided that my strongest bonds were with five kids. Unfortunately, one of these five kids was quite un-liked and unpopular. I had three or four playdates with him, but I noticed that my four other friends were distancing from me because of this one unpopular student. I had to think fast; would I betray a bond I had made because of social status, or stay with a friend and face the consequences of unpopularity? I chose to betray the bond. After looking back at this experience, I wish I had found a better way to keep the bond I had shared, while also sparing my social statues.

My Disillusionment

At the end of this chapter, the Monkey King is no longer content with his status in life.  He faces the reality of his situation—he is a monkey and not a god.  Describe a time in your life when you came to a realization about some aspect of your life and you were finally able to see it for what it was (called disillusionment).  Describe the effect on you. (7-10 sentences)

 

As a young child, I was immersed in an overly progressive and unrigorous California school called Westland. After attending school there for six years, my family and I decided to move to the East Coast. Our journey was abrupt, but exciting. The one  challenge was that I had to apply to schools and take the test as soon as possible. I studied with a tutor for four months, and shortly before the test, took a practice exam. After struggling through every question, I realized the environment I had grown up in did not teach me enough of the academic necessities I needed to take the test. I had a sudden realization that the school I had relentlessly praised, might have not been the best fit for me. After taking the exam, I was accepted into two of my top choices. While my test scores were average, the schools, and specifically LREI, accepted me because of the social and political skills I had learned from my prior education. I was able to finally understand that while I struggled with a state test, I did not have to define my intelligence by that one exam. The lessons I had learned, and currently do learn at LREI, have taught me how to be a person rather than a good test scorer.

Photoshop First Project

For my first project this year in digital art i was able to have full creative license. The assignment was to experiment with Photoshop and create a piece that incorporated grayscale, scaling, and a photo taken by myself. i started with my base image and went from there. My final project incorporated a black a white bomb in the background, a high quality image of me laying down, and a a scaled down version of a door and multiple birds. The project took about four classes and was an amazing entry into Photoshop. Having digital art this year is a great addition to art, and after having a few classes i wish we had been learning it for all of middle school. i am exited for the classes in digital art to come and happy that we finally are being taught it!

French Video (My Classmates)

After finishing my own French video, I started to watch others from my class. When watching them I was quite surprised by the fact that most of the students used an app called Adobe Spark to create their video. While I used an editing program called After Effects, which I then transferred to iMovie, the other students seemed to stick with the previous app we had used in French class. It was interesting to see how the rest of the class  and my own video project turned out! I think after watching all the videos, the place I would want to go to the most is Half Moon Bay. This was made by Dora Bremond, and I think both how Dora presented the place and her selection of photos made Half Moon Bay the most appealing!

Liam’s French Video (The Moana in Hawaii)

For one of the last projects in the second quarter of French, we worked on making a french video project. We were first asked to think about an important place that we have ether visited or lived in at one point in our lives. I picked the Moana hotel in Hawaii because both my grandparents, my mother, and me have visited there as children. I also thought the Moana would be a great choice because my mother actually made a video about the Moana for her middle school French class! We then were asked to write some important information about the Moana. Finally were were asked to write a script and film the video. I immediately knew I had to use a green screen in my video and I ended up doing so. This entire project has actually been extremely fun(especially the green screen part) and I loved how I got to maybe start a tradition of making videos about the Moana throughout generations! I found that working with things that I had already used, like the green screen, mixed with new activities made the project even more fun and made me achieve a better outcome!

Africans In NY: Creative Narrative Assignment

For the final project of the second trimester of seventh grade Humanities, we worked on a creative narrative assignment! We were first told what a creative narrative assignment was. We learned that it is a creative writing piece from the perspective of a given character. Then we were given papers containing information about a real slave who lived in the New York Colony! I was given a man named Charles Roberts. Charles Roberts was a runaway slave who lived in the early 1960´s in New Amsterdam. I started by underlining ten pieces of information about Roberts, and then found ten key terms about the New York Colony that we had learned earlier in the trimester. I found myself focusing more on the creative and made up parts of Roberts life in the first paragraph, while writing a lot about the true things I learned in his bio in the second. I handed it in to be peer-edited by Harvey Van Blerkom. I then peer-edited Harvey´s, and found that I was making almost identical mistakes to him. I decided to revise and edit just one more time before turning in the final draft. I found my actual piece littered with grammatical errors and a few mistakes in my sentence structures. For example, I described a wood stair case as plush, when a better word would have been mahogany or almond-stained. I eventually was satisfied with my work, and I turned my two paragraphs in. I found my grades to be amazing, but I wish I had just checked over my work one more time to bring my grammatical grade slightly up. I loved this assignment so much, and would love to adventure down a creative narrative assignment again.