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Hass Project – Napoleonic Wars (Week 2)

Matthew Baldock on

During our time in class, and at home during the holidays, we have made progress towards our final goal of a simulation game. We have created a Gantt Chart to act as a timeline for our project and have finally finished the research portion of our project. Moving forward, we need to start on the presentation portion. we still need to complete the boards for Europe and the Battlefields. we also need to do the finishing touches on the Military, Political and Diplomatic Gamecards. These tasks are achievable if we follow our time budget shown in the Gantt Chart. We have also left 5 days to allow us to push back tasks if we are struggling to do a task within its allocated timeframe.

Hass-Project-Gantt-ChartDownload

HASS PROJECT – The Napoleonic Wars (Week 1)

Matthew Baldock on

As part of our Year 10 Humanities course, we are able to research a project of our own choice and are required to create a final product to showcase at a final exhibition in Term 4. the topic that my group and I have chosen to research is the Napoleonic wars. Our main focus area is to give a better understanding of all elements of the time period. The steps that we have completed are:

  1. Dividing research into 3 topics: Military, Political and Diplomatic
  2. Find and Source 10 seperate sources that will be relevant in helping us acheive our end result
  3. Starting on a timeline for key parts of the project and setting deadlines for certain elements.

Our plan for continuing this project includes brainstorming ideas for how to present our final product and creating a rough sketch for how it will look on the Exhibition Night.

Sustainability using Maths

Matthew Baldock on

This project that spanned the last three weeks of school had taught us the correct ways to reach sustainability and how to communicate it through mathematic devices (Graphs, Statistics Etc.). This project had us use this knowledge to create products that would communicate sustainable acts through the taught mathematical devices.

Throughout the lessons, we had learnt about the effects of our chosen topic: Food Wastes. we had learnt its negatives, counters and we also learnt about the three pillars of sustainability. These pillars include the Economic, Environmental and the Social pillars which needed to be balanced in order to reach a sustainable future.

My group and I had created a pamphlet to convey sustainability through statistics. We had also created a presentation to show the class to support and successfully pitch the idea of the pamphlet. This had utilised the research we did in class and was based around the three pillars.

First page that covers the Economic Pillar
Second page that covers the Environmental Pillar
Final Page that covers the Social Pillar

Overall, the experience of this project was very beneficial to expanding my understanding and learning about sustainability.

Dear Year 8 Me

Matthew Baldock on

Dear Matthew Baldock,

Some advice that you could gift to people in year 7 going to year 8 would be to work hard going into the year because it will be best to adjust to the difficulty spike between year 7 and year 8. I would also say that they should prepare to invest more home time into projects and assessments.

I would probably change how this year’s classes would be arranged and which topics when. I would have for HASS: P&L, GEO, ECO, HIS for science: CHEM, PHYS, ES, BIO for Math I would not change anything and for English it would be: DOCO, PLAY, BOOK, P-C

My best learning experience was in HASS and English where I finally understood how to use and essay structure and how to plan and write essays efficiently. I would also say that I learnt a lot from the pop-culture group assignment as it taught me how to deal with the worst partners.

The most enjoyable thing about year 8 would be camp as it was a time for me to relax and have fun during the term and helped me destress from the mountains of work that we had gotten.

My biggest contribution would be when I donated games to my class for them to play with or when I donated to the salvation army Christmas appeal because I couldn’t participate in a lot of events because of a busier schedule with my academic life.

I learnt a lot about myself. Something that I had learnt is that I am a bigger procrastinator than I had thought as during the start of the year I would leave my assessments to the latest possible moment or leave it later then. I also like to not do things with my time, usually.

Breaking Barriers – Fixed to Growth Mindset

Matthew Baldock on

An example of a change of fixed to a growth mindset that I had was when I was in Grade 3 and I started playing footy.
In Grade 3, I started to play Australian Football with a friend and not being too athletic, I was really bad. I felt hopeless and I wanted to quit but my friend really wanted me to keep going with him so we started making goals. After weeks of training and a couple of goals being met, I started to get the hang of it. Till today, footy is my favourite sport and I love playing it even if I am bad at it by setting goals like me and my friend did all those years ago. This had made me realise the value of teamwork and how it can motivate someone to keep going.

 

 

INNOVATEed – Nulsen Directory of classes

Matthew Baldock on

This experience has helped me build my performance skills and over 10 weeks I have learnt how to work in a team effectively and learnt how to effectively speak in front of an audience without stuttering or using fillers.  I also built my confidence skills and was very committed to a topic. An outside activity that helped me was my football team, they help me to develop my teamwork and tolerance with others in my team. I also learnt confidence, commitment and grit.