Progress Update 2

As part of our year 10 humanities course, we are able to research a project of our own choice, and create an outcome of our choice for a final exhibition

  • The topic that we have chosen to research is the ins and outs of Hiroshima. We want to discover the history behind Hiroshima, what led up to it and how significant the long term affects were. We also want to show a deeper understanding of the incident, such as the development of the bomb, the type of bomb, and the plane that dropped it.
  • Our main focus area is History, but we also want to incorporate some geography, for example the wellbeing of the population before and after the bombing and the damage to the landscape.
  • We have chosen our topic, and main question that we want to answer is How Significant the Hiroshima Bombing was. We have decided to split the project into several sections that we can individually work on to increase our producibility. We have finished our research, including our 30 bibliographies and more focused research on specific parts of our assignment such as research on the Manhattan Project and Pearl Harbor.
  • We have taken our feedback into account and finalized our presentation idea. We decided to present our project in a large scale before and after diorama. It is going to be split into 4 pieces. The first includes the Manhattan project,  the Enola Gay (Plane) and little boy (Bomb). The second is on the Nanjing Massacre. The third is on Pearl Harbor and the fourth is our main diorama which showcases the before and after of Hiroshima. We are also gonna film a short video explaining our findings.
  • Our plan for continuing our project includes writing and starting our short video and getting comfortably in the production phase of our diorama.

Progress Update 1

As part of our year 10 Humanities course, we are able to research a project of our own choice, and to showcase at a final exhibition in Term 4. The topic that I have chosen to research is the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Our main focus area is the before and after of Hiroshima and how it affected the geography of the city. The steps that I have completed so far have been doing the initial research necessary to start my groups project. Our plan for continuing our project includes filling out a timetable to organise when certain checkpoints should be completed by and if possible, work ahead of schedule. Our hope is to complete a large chunk of our project during the holidays so we have more time to do the research at school and won’t be so stressed a week before we have to present.

English Capabilities

There are 10 capabilities on the capability wheel. These are Ethics, Effective Communication, Leadership, Collaboration, Problem Solving, Inquisition, Creativity, Resilience, Organisation, and Self-Awareness. The one I used most in our most recent English task was Collaboration. The Cambridge definition of Collaboration is “the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing”. This was useful in our English task as it was a task that required a group of two or more people to create and perform a play meaning collaboration was the most important aspect of our project. It allowed our group to work well together and create our script and rehearse effectively. Collaboration is a key component in any group project and is an essential skill for anyone to have.

Collaboration with my group didn’t happen immediately. This was due to my group not having all our members for quite a few lessons. This resulted in my group being disorganised and unable to collaborate effectively which meant that our progress during the first few weeks of the assignment was minimal. However, we were able to collaborate well when we were all together, letting us minimise how much we were behind. We were able to organise times outside of school to supplement our limited group class time and used them to finish the script and rehearse.

A small hurdle to our group came in the form of an extra group member. With the addition of a group member, our group had to restructure our script to account for the new member. This required us to add new characters and integrate them into the script. However, we were able to integrate him without too much trouble due to us being able to work together well. This wouldn’t have been possible without collaboration, showing how important it is when working in a team.

Year 10 – Wind Waves & Water

One of my electives in Year 10 was Wind, Waves and Water. The first unit we did was sailing. We had to use leadership and teamwork in our group of three to make our ship turn and choose where to go. Our teamwork was demonstrated through sailing mainly through turning. Turning requires teamwork as it needs all three members of your team to work together to turn effectively. First, you need the person steering to lead the ship to where we’re turning, then you need the person controlling the sail to loosen or tighten it, and you also need the lookout to make sure there is no danger nearby.

While teamwork is important in sailing, leadership is equally as important. This is because even during the process of turning, one person has to initiate the turn, usually the one controlling the boat, and without them, the process is clunky and ineffective.

Another way we got to demonstrate leadership and teamwork was through synchronised/artistic swimming. Teamwork was a big part of artistic swimming as the routine looks messy without the team working together to make the routine good. Leadership is just as important as it allowed one person to lead the others and makes sure that everyone is in time.

Save The Humans

As our final project in maths this year, we split into groups of 2-4 and devised ways of fixing unsustainable practices currently being used around the world. My group was Noah, Daniel and I. We chose the effects of poverty on deforestation.

My group decided that the best way to show and explain our solution and the problem presented, we should create an infographic. Infographics are a common way to showcase an issue in a precise and condensed manner and we thought that using an infographic would allow us to accurately show our knowledge and research while not being too boring or long-winded.

During the research stage of our project (finding information and figuring out how to create graphs and to use them effectively) I found out how complex and useful it is to communicate mathematically. Communicating Mathematically is a crucial part in many advertisements and pitches, and this is because they are able to easily manipulate people by changing scales on a graph or other variables, creating am image that something is more or less serious than it really is. This is very effective as someone who only looks at a face value may think that the coronavirus isn’t bad compared to the black death, but the statistics may not include those who “recovered” but were left with crippling disabilities.

Researching for this topic truly opened my eyes to how much less fortunate people cut down trees for agriculture without realising the damage they are causing. This topic showcases all of the three pillars very well, as the environment is being damaged, but that is a cause of the social and economic situations that the offenders are experiencing, causing them to try improve their economic situation by damaging the economic pillar. They are unable to realise the damage they are doing due to the lack of information surrounding cutting down trees, which showcases the social pillar in action. This is an amazing example of how the three pillars must work in conjunction if sustainability is to be reached.

Our infographic was a pretty good resource that the group is proud of, however we could have added more data/statistics, and provided a more in-depth description about the second and third points that we made, although we explained them more in our presentation.

In general, our resource showcases the damage that poverty does to the environment and overall sustainability and explains that the way to get out is to utilise all three pillars in conjunction with education.

Teamwork at Year 9 Camp

My definition of teamwork is a group of people working together to complete a task or action. It is also the ability to work as a group to overcome a problem. I believe that teamwork is very important, as it allows all the people in the team to showcase and use their skills effectively to help their group achieve a goal. This skill was able to cultivated and showcased during year 9 camp as lots of activities required teamwork to complete successfully.

One of the ways that we were able to demonstrate teamwork was taking out and putting our bags into the bus used to transport our stuff. This shows teamwork as because there was a lot of bags in the bus, so we were able to figure a way to move the bags out efficiently. Our teamwork was showcased by some of our group volunteering to go in the bus while others were on the outside of the bus. This was a good use of teamwork as we were able to have some group members inside the bus handing out the bags to the others outside of the bus, which shows how we were able to overcome the problem by working together.

Our group working together to get our bags out of the bus

Another way we were able to show our teamwork was through cooking. At the start of camp, we were put into groups of four that cooked together for every meal. This demonstrated teamwork as we delegated tasks to people who were skilled at those tasks. This, in turn, meant that we were able to eat our food faster than others as our teamwork was better because we played to our teammate’s strengths and got the people who were good at chopping to chop and the people who were better at cooking to cook. This helped us as we were able to work together and finish cooking our meals faster.

A third way we were able to show our teamwork was through an activity we did where we had to pass a ball between two teams using mats. Our teamwork was tested here as we needed to come up with a plan to be able to pass a ball. Our teamwork was shown by us getting the tall people at the back as they can lift higher and the short people at the front because they can go lower. This helped our group a lot as we were able to score very high on the activity and improve our teamwork and coordination.

This year, camp was not just a fun and relaxing experience, but it also helped develop my teamwork skills and helped how I interact with other as well as letting me make some new friends that I will keep throughout my years at All Saints.