This semester, we have worked on and created Dutch till-Life Paintings and Drawings. Throughout this time we used different mediums and created different things, for example in term three we had the choice to do whichever fruit we wanted, and we created them with pastel pencils on a black piece of paper. Whereas this term we have focused on only apples, and we have painted them on black 20x20cm canvases.

STAYING ORGANISED

Throughout this last term, It was hard to make sure that we stayed on track painting our apples, as we missed out on a lot of lessons, and didn’t have much time to finish, so we had to ensure that we were focusing and consistently meeting targets in order to complete the paintings. Some examples of these targets were getting our swatch tests done for our paintings done, so we had a good guide for how to make the colors we were using, or getting our canvases painted fully black with no chips or marks in the paint so that we could start our actual pantings as fast as we could.

BEING INQUISITIVE AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

A skill that I learned throughout this process was that if you keep looking at your painting from up close, it isn’t going to end up how you want it, and you are only going to focus on small areas, so an important thing to do when you’re painting is to look at it from afar every once in a while, so you can have a better look at the whole painting as one. One problem that we overcame while painting our apples was that when we made a mistake or needed to paint over something, we realised that we didn’t have to keep painting over it and blending the mistake out, and we could just dry it with the hairdryer and then go over the dry mistake with a fresh coat of paint. As well as this, we also noticed that when we were starting to paint our apples on the black canvases, the colored paints were not very opaque, and very faint, so we figured out that we had to paint multiple layers to get the colors and shades we wanted.

CREATIVITY/MY FINAL WORK

While I’m happy with my final work, it is still not completely finished. This is mainly because year 10’s did not have many lessons in class to finish it, because of things like exams, PDP days, or camp. There were some other details that I definitely could’ve added, like more detailed textures, like the dots and lighter patches, and I also could’ve made the apple’s stem more detailed. Despite that, I did the most that I could in the time that I had to replicate the original picture in my painting, and I am happy with what I finished with.

PROGRESS UPDATE ONE

This year for our HASS term three and four assessment, we had the choice to chose which topic we wanted to do (History, Economics, Civics, or Geography). We are going to present our project on this in term 4 on the presentation night for Year 10 HASS. We have chosen to do History for ours, and specifically the September 11 attacks in 2001 to the twin towers. We are going to be focusing more on the hijackers and the effects on the community from the attacks, and be going off this research for our project.

OUR PROGRESS SO FAR

These last few weeks we have been mainly focusing on our bibliographies and deciding on what our project will be on, and what we are designing. We have worked together to find 10 different sources to create 10 different bibliographies between the three of us. We did not have too much time for this, so we had to work well together to ensure that none of us did the same site or overlapped on topics, etc. We have also decided that for our actual project, we will be getting a corkboard, and showing how detailed the planning of the hijackers must have been. We will find images and information to show us the planning, and be connecting these documents with red string and pins like in the movies, and to make it more visually pleasing. We also plan to maybe create a structure of the towers, to demonstrate where the planes hit and the structural damage to the towers.

TIMELINE/FUTURE PLANNING

Our plan for continuing our project includes:

1. By the end of week one, we plan to have finished our planning for the displays.
2. Also by the end of week 1 we want to have all the resources we need to make it.
3. By the end of week 2 we want to have started our display.
4. By the end of week 3 we want to have finished one of our displays.
5. From week 4-5 we want to spend the time completing and polishing our displays.

PROGRESS UPDATE TWO

The rest of my group and I have now figured out what we are going to do for the rest of our project. The main things we are going to have at the presentation include

• A corkboard with photos stuck up, connected with string like in movies. The photos are going to be real photos and information from the day of September 11, showing the detailed planning of the attackers who were behind the plane attacks.
• a video of / information about an interview that we are going to be commencing (Monday 25/10) with a survivour of the September 11 attacks
• (maybe) a model of the towers before they were crashed into by the planes
• (maybe) a display board with pictures, information and details about the attacks that can help to let people know who wil be viewing ourpeice about the attacks, the attackers and the community aroung the attacks.
• (maybe) personal details about victims (and maybe attackers) from the September 11 attacks.

SOME OF OUR RESEARCH

We have researched a lot about our project already to ensure that our presentation at the end of the year is as reliable and correct as possible. We have found many websites that can give us a lot of this information, some of which include

• https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks
• https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0102/02CIB08
• https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/index.html
• https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/index.html

We have found out many different sorts of useful things, for e.g.

• some of the affects on the community from the attacks (e.g. the cost of cleanup, how many people were killed etc.) and we have watched interviews of people who were there in NY on the day, for example an interview with a firefihter who flew from Perth to NY to help when he saw what had happened
• information about the attackers, and we found some specific people who were involved (for example Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Waleed al Shehri)
• On top of this, we have also found out a lot of information about different victims of the day, including our interviewee John Mahony, whi safely made it out of the towers. While we already know quite a bit about his experience becuase of a website about that we found, our interview on moday will give us some more details.

TIMELINE/ WHAT WE ARE DOING NEXT

RECENT TIMELINE

• We have organised a zoom meeting with a contact of Mr Basell, who experienced the attack on the World Trade Centre first hand
• In preperation of this meeting, we have come up with a series of questions to ask Mr Mahony about his personal experience with the attacks on the towers.
• Collected information about the attacks to display on our board along with pictured sources for the visual aspect of our display.
• creayed a plan to roughly describe how the layout of our visual displays are going to look.
• planned the materials we are going to need to purchasebefore the presentation exhibition in order to assemble our display. We have also organised who is going to buy what and didvided the costs

CONTINUING THE PROJECT

• We need to purchase all of the materials that we need to buy for the display in future
• old and commence the interview with John Mahony to gain more informtaion and details
• edit the video from the interview with the infromation so it is presentabe for the exhibition day
• print off resources and display pictures gathered and organise them so we are readt to set up out display on the day of our presnetation

FEEDBACK

-The main piece of feedback we have gotten from other people and teahcers is that we need to focus on making sure that our project has actual information in it, and not just making it look pretty. We have done this and are now going to add more information and details into our corkboard/string connected photos so that the readers and audience can understand as much about the topic as they can.

In year 10 English this year, We had to complete a group task, where we performed a dramatic scene on a chosen topic. Me and my group chose to perform this task on the problems of COVID, the vaccination and anti-vaccine protests, etc. Throughout the time period, we had to complete this task, we had a few problems, and we didn’t have that many lessons to complete the project, because group members were often missing on various days. Because of this we had to collaborate properly to organize our times to make sure that we were prepared to perform the task for the class. We used initiative and got ourselves a little extra time to practice, which ensured that we were ready and prepared to perform. Overall, we improved our collaboration capabilities throughout completing this task and made sure that we work properly working together to get it done.

Another capability that was improved throughout completing this dramatic performance task, was “self-aware”. This was because we had to research our task of COVID-19, and through this, we got a better understanding of how masks work, and why we should always follow the lockdown rules and restrictions that are put in place. This made me and other members of my group a lot more self-aware of the side effects of covid, and just how dangerous the virus can be. We also learned more about the vaccine and how it can protect Australian citizens from the coronavirus, and why we should get it when possible. One last thing that also made us more aware of the virus and its danger, was researching the side of anti-vaxxers and people who think the virus is fake. We learned how they think, and how their actions are putting the rest of the population in even more danger, by joining these anti-vaccine protests that are just helping to spread the virus even quicker. Learning about this made us realize how wrong they are and why we need to get the vaccine as soon as possible and follow all rules and restrictions put in place by the government.