BW
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Welcome to my Sophmore year project page.
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Scroll down the page to find artifact's of each project and more information on the project it's self.
My Sophmore year
Above is my Soloution from the proposal. It was my personal job to do this part and that is why I chose it.
During the second quarter of my sophomore year I participated in the “Healthy Living” project. This project is a collaboration between my English, Biology and Wellness class’s. These classes required me to take knowledge from my Biology and Wellness courses and apply to an event for a demographic in the school community. After researching through food diaries and activity logs of students I found that I would like to improve the eating habits of my school’s twelfth graders. I found that they needed to improve their consumption of fruits and vegetables most and decided to focus on that. I knew that the project was to educate a part of the community on healthier habits they could improve upon but the twelfth graders have already been educated on these subjects but they had not made them into habits for their daily lives. During this project I used a lot of my Collaboration skills, since this project had me in a team of three with Brianna and Dawn some of my fellow classmates. We all had different ideas of what we wanted to do and we had to put them down on paper and choose which ones we felt we be the most effective for the twelfth graders we were targeting and our group to properly execute. I also had to collaborate with my teachers as I didn’t have them all the same period and would be working on the project in all three of their classes, My team and I also had to put thought towards what would be the best way to collaborate with our school and the twelfth graders. Not only did we need to find times to meet with the twelfth graders, but as we learned in English we would need to ensure the material was age appropriate. I learned that even if you think your communicating with your team there can be miscommunications as to what event you’re doing and what will be done during the event. Emails and text messages can take you most of the way but nothing is better than a face to face talk with your team on what your plan is and next time I hope to convince my team of making it more clear what we we’re focusing on. As my team and I had been planning our event only to find out that one of our team members was planning for a completely different event. We also struggled with collaboration when half of the team spent the day looking for notes and being worried about not being able to find them only to find out that our third team member had leant a friend our notes without talking to us first. Another time my team members and I used collaboration is when I asked them to give me critiques on my part of the written proposal. Not only did this help me make sure my work was comprehendible and clear it helped me ensure my work was good and hit all of the points it needed to so our whole proposal would be fluent.
This project specifically helped me grow in my life and change the lives of the people around me would be what I learned in Biology and Wellness as I had always grown up being told to eat healthy and stay active but I never fully understood why or how it was affecting my body by doing these things. I knew that food gave my cells energy but now I know why I need to eat healthy foods. I know that Fruits and vegetables contain Cellulose which our body cannot break down because it does not possess the enzyme Cellulase. I learned that Cellulose is a dietary fiber to our bodies because we cannot break it down. Dietary fiber prevents the body from taking in LDL which helps control your cholesterol.
In Wellness we learned about what portions of food you should be eating for your age and what kinds because while eating grains is good eating whole grains is better, and whole grains should make up at least half of your daily intake of grains. I also learned that eating healthy helps lower your cholesterol protecting you from heart disease and that eating healthy actually protects you from many other chronic diseases.
In English I learned how to use my words carefully when explaining Biology terms as not everyone has taken the same class I have and making the information understandable is apart o good writing. I also learned how to improve upon my public speaking skills to help me when I need to do things like propose my idea to the teachers themselves. Overall this project helped me grow not only in knowledge but in my skills used while interacting with others.
The overall purpose of this project was to not only show myself how to live a healthier lifestyle and teach me why it is so important to keep myself and those around me healthy through diet and exercise but to show myself that diet and exercise aren't just there to be done once you are overweight or obese but to maintain a healthy lifestyle to prevent myself from becoming over weight, obese or cause other health problems from not leading a healthy lifestyle. My project was specifically about the health of twelfth graders at The Datyon Regional STEM School, I chose this specific grade as they will soon be going onto college and though they have already had a prior knowledge of why it is important to lead a healthy lifestyle as they often lose the importance of that knowledge when they become older and their priorities become focused on other things such as getting into college. I wanted to refresh the importance of a healthy lifestylein their minds so they can lead healthy lifstyles as they progress into the real world.
Completing this project benefited my personal health as I gained the knowledge of not only why it is important to keep myself healthy but the kind of diet and exercise needed to be carried out in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle something I will later use in life as an adult to keep my self healthy and lowering my risk of getting heart disease as I grow older. As I specifically focused on the eating habits of twelfth graders and not on the fitness I learned about the kinds of foods I should be eating to keep my body healthy and I learned the science of how they keep my body happy and healthy in my Biology class. This work inbetween my Wellness course and my Biology class is an excellent example of how I grew in the STEM qualitie of collabortaion as I had to insure that I was doing in both classes as they depended on each other and the work intertwined to make my final product for the Senior class. My project was specifically about refreshing the mind of DRSS's Senior class as they have already recieved an education on how to eat healthy and properly take care of their bodies in order to prevent thigs such as heart disease. I made small recipe cards with a healthy and quick recipe including items that are easily accessible to college students living on campus. this insures that the college students can actually use the recipe rather than ignoring it and throwing it away. The purpose of this project was just to refresh their minds on ways to eat healthy and why one should eat healthy. The requirements of this project were more specifically to find a target audience that I felt could have their lives imbettered by an event specificly for them. This is why I took into consideration the needs of the twelfth graders and found ways to improve their lifestyles.
In my second year Chinese class we did a project in which we made a script using a chapter of our choosing from our text books. After we used the chapter to make our script of how a day in our Chinese class goes we would then act if out from three diffrent characters we wrote as. We took video of us acting out the diffrent positions and then uploaded that to YouTube for Mrs.Chen to watch. After te videos were uploaded we then acted it out for the whole class.This project used a lot of collaboration as we had three other team members we had to collaborate with. Having four people coming into a group with diffrent ideas and having to pick an idea and then put it into a diffrent language. This project forced students to fully enbrace inquiry as not only did we have to learn new words not provided in our text books to make a good scene we also had to ask Mrs.Chen and our peers for help in understanding the conversations we were making in the scenes. This question asking shows inquiry in the project.
Healthy Living Project- Wellness and Fitness and Biology
I'm a Chines Teacher- Chinese 2
Cancer intervention- English
In my Sophomore English class we completed a project known as “The cancer project”. In this endeavor we asked ourselves as students of The Dayton Regional STEM School how can we lower the incidence rate of cancer in members of The Wright State University community whether that be the staff, students, family members, or even the children in the pre-school on Wright states campus. The purpose of the Cancer project was to make an intervention for members of the Wright state community. As students of DRSS, we took our knowledge of how cancer cells work, our knowledge of how to prevent cancer from our Wellness class and learned to collaborate that information in a way that would be appealing to the audience we decided best fit our intervention. Our intervention could be anything from a table tent to a door hanger but it needed to be informative, correct, and aesthetically pleasing. Specifically in our English class, we would take information and knowledge we knew and break it down to the most important information and make sure it applied to our target audience. As well we had to make sure our work followed the guidelines of the project by properly completing each we felt would make a good product as well as follow the rubric provided by teachers. Our work needed to include: Risk reduction for our cancer, a statistic, and an overview of what cancer is. We then needed to take that information and design our actual product and put our information in to it. From there we would get feedback from our teachers and peers on what was good, what was bad, and ways to improve our intervention. After considering all possibilities and what we could do from our suggested feedback we improved our interventions anywhere from design to Statistic all while making sure our work was grammatically correct and well written.
My partner agreed upon making a door hanger that would address the prevention of skin cancer in hopes that it would lower the incidence rate of skin cancer in the Wright State community. As you can see in the picture below my partner and I decided that our target audience should be students staying I the dorms on the Wright State campus. By picking the dorms we knew our target audience would most likely be in the age range of eighteen to twenty-five so we chose a statistic on skin cancer that targeted that age demographic. My partner and I also chose the door hanger is because we feel that the younger Wright State students living in the dorms often are newly away from their parents and often don’t think too much about putting on sunscreen or eating their fruits and vegetables. Therefore my partner and I saw this as a chance to fix one of those problems. In addition my partner and I felt that the prevention of skin cancer was more important in comparison to the treatment of skin cancer because if you prevent it you won’t have to treat it in the first place.
During this project, I demonstrated collaboration through my work with my team member as we do not always get along well and have troubles communicating with each other we both had to pull our own weight and make sure the other one was always on the same page and knew what the goal was as it was constantly changing. By doing this, I brought a new meaning to the word collaboration and its definition to me. I now define collaboration as working with people through all challenges that you may come into contact with as well as communicating to insure we achieve our final goal of completing the project well. Another example of collaboration in my project would be the design my partner wanted bubbles. Which you can see are not on out final product and I found to be too childish for our target audience so we made a compromise and decided that the Wright State colors and layout would be a happy medium that applied to our target audience. This compromise showed me that my team member I I both just wanted a nice finished product and that we would both have to give up something’s for the betterment of the group.
Another time my group member and I showed collaboration was when we were trying to decide on what statistic we should use on our door hanger so that it would apply to our target audience and be affective. During this process we both went on reliable websites and searched for one that specifically targeted the age group of our target audience after we found a few we agreed worked well we went to ask out teachers for their opinions. During the whole process my partner and I were constantly emailing back and forth with our teachers as well as having meetings with them about any concerns we had with our project as well as with each other. I feel these meetings helped us stay not only on track but on the same page. These meetings are a great example of not only a great example of collaboration with my partner but collaboration with my teachers. This demonstrates a growth in collaboration as before this project I would just talk to my team member whenever we found a major problem ad rarely ask my teachers for help during the project itself. Now I use my collaboration skills on all projects.
This growth in collaboration is now shown in my current friendship with my project partner. We have been partners multiple times throughout the year, but never seem to be able to work well together until we were assigned the cancer project. As well, our finished door hanger shows my team member and I’s finished product and growth in collaboration. One of the best things I learned in this project is communication in a team is key and can really control the quality of the work and that if you are having problems you should tell your teacher and team members so they know and can help you.
I have grown in the Quality of Collaboration during this project. It taught me that Collaboration is nothing without communication. The two fit hand in hand as you can listen to your team members ideas and say you agree on something, but until really get into the project you will never fully see the ideas that you talked about. It’s impossible to stay on the same page without open communication lines with your team members as well as a level of understanding and a willingness to compromise on some of the things you want for the betterment of the team overall. That’s what collaboration is all about really. One person cannot do as much as two, but having more than one person working on a project poses its own challenges that can only be overcome with collaboration.
Chapter review- Geometry
In Geometry we learned about proofs and quadrilaterals, more specifically the properties of a circle, two column proofs, and quadrilaterals on a coordinate grid.
During this chapter we learned about congruent triangles, quadrilaterals, tetrahedron, polygons, proofs and coordinate midpoints. We not only studied these things in class we also completed key problems on them and completed two quizzes, a group quiz and a test just on these kinds of problems. The multiple quizzes and key problems are necessary because without them we would not be applying the work in a challenging environment. By making those assignments worth points it makes the students take it seriously and do their best as well as take time to study what they are learning in class at home.
My biggest challenge during this chapter was learning how to understand and make two-column proofs. This was my biggest challenge because I already struggle with making my proofs properly and changing the format of the proof to something I’m not used to only seemed to make it harder. I think I was challenged here most because proofs can be tricky and if one part of the proof is off it makes if not most all of the proof wrong.
I overcame my confusion with proofs by talking to my friend Sha’Tera and having her not only walk me through my regular proofs but two-column proofs as well. The time I spent with Sha’Tera really benefited me in the long run as I now don’t consider proofs to be as much of a challenge and don’t find two-column proofs to be so daunting. I would consider this to be one of the most successful moments that I had in all of chapter 7.
One of the biggest and best things I learned was the 3 steps to figuring out and properly proving a problem. Explore, Conjecture, Prove are all handy but when put together make for the proper way of solving a problem and will always help you find the correct response to a problem.
An implication of working through and finishing chapter 7 of my math text book would be learning how to be a problem solver. In math you always seem to be given some sort of equation or situation that you have to work through to find a response and way to solve it. Chapter 7 did this the most for me since I was having problems understanding proofs and knew I had to solve that problem before I had to take the test over the chapter. This will benefit my future as I grow older as I know that all problems can be solved whether they be math problems or problems that I face in the real world.
During this chapter I demonstrated the quality of Persistence as I had to keep attempting proofs over and over until I learned how to do them properly. Chapter 7 of my math text book helped teach me to have a never give up attitude that can be described with the word persistence.
I would define Persistence as exploring all options multiple times until the task at hand is not only done properly but done well. Persistence may mean staying up late studying something until you understand it o asing a friend or colleague to explain it to you and walk you through it a couple of times but persistence is the belief that you can do anything you set your mind to as long as you don’t give up on it.
My greatest growth statement
During my sophomore year of high school I can say my greatest growth was in my ability to work with others whose personalities differ from mine. I feel this is the most important thing a student at The Dayton Regional STEM School can possess. The ability to work with others especially people who are different from you whether that be in age, personality type or even teaching is essential to the career of anyone as working with others is essential for working in all environments. With STEM being an extremely diverse environment that has students of all cultures and personality types it is essential for a STEM student to be able to work with all kinds of people. This is demonstrated in my portfolio entry for my English class as I was working with someone who I had not had positive experiences with before during team projects and even partner projects, but we still finished the project with a strong friendship and an even stronger since of overcoming diversity and working with others.
Conflict Poster - World History
In my 10th grade World History class we learned about conflicts and genocides from the past and even current conflicts that show signs of turning into genocide. One that affected me the most would be the Conflicts that we see in our world. My group members and I used linoleum blocks and carving tools to make negatives of images we felt helped represent our conflict. My team members and I felt that pictures of hands from opposing sides of the poster pulling a chain would be a great representation as genocide in the past has been compared to a never ending chain. As soon as one demographic is no longer being oppressed another one is and so on. It's our jobs as members of the world to insure the safety and well being of others and that is why we decided to make the poster and ask with our slogan " What will it take to break the chain of oppression?". This project required a lot of creativity as we had to look at the conflicts with fresh eyes and find ways to make our words come to life in a way that would fully bring our ideas to life for our audience. as well we had to find ways to show this conflict and the people it was affecting without being cleshay such as using a dove or an olive branch to convey peace in a conflict.