Saeri’s blog

Medieval Reflection

1. What did I feel successful doing during the process of the project? What am I proud of?

I felt successful during this process of the project when I finished my research. I used EBSCO for my whole research and I could find my information about monks and monasteries easily. EBSCO had lots of good sources that were easy to understand and were organized. I felt successful because I knew I had collected enough of information to write paragraphs just from my research records and I realized I had chosen a right topic for myself. The last time we did research, my first topic was trading in Ancient Rome. Most of the articles I found were too hard for me and I couldn’t find much information that I had to change my topic.

Something I’m very proud of about this project is my model of the monastery. It took me about 2 weeks to plan out, cut out the pieces (which I had about 50), paint them, and glue them together. Although it didn’t turn out exactly the same as I planned, when I finished the whole thing, it was pretty satisfying.

2. What new skills did I value learning?

The new skill I obtained from this project was the organization skill and skill to adjust the level depending on the adience’s age. From this project, there were no deadlines in particular part but had only deadline for the whole completed project. At the beginning, I finished my research and games on time so I thought I was doing good on my planning. When I started on my model, it was more complicated than I thought and it took me longer than I expected. And since I was rushing too much and didn’t measure properly, I had to edit my model so many times. This took me even more longer. Although I finished it before the fair, I think I could have done much better if I started it earlier.

Th skill to adjust the level for younger kids was very interesting to me. The medieval fair was meant for younger elementary kids. I had been writing and reading the articles in my level so when I first typed out my first speech for the fair, I realized that small kids such as 2nd graders wouldn’t be able to understand it. So what I had to do was to make my paragraphs easier for little ones using the same information. Another thing I did was to make my speech more interesting. I realized when I went to other class’s fair that audience would be bored and would want to leave the booth if your speech was boring. I added more active things such as asking them to raise their hand or take a guess at some of my questions. I think this was one of the important skill I learned from this project.

3. What was challenging during the process of completing the project? With what did I struggle?

The challenging part of the project was the making of the model. I used one picture of monastery I got from EBSCO. It was also hard because I had to do lots of maths. I measured each side of the building in the picture and multiplied by 4 so it would be bigger. Then one my challenge was here because on the picture, the building it 2-D not 3-D so I had to think logically and guess how long it would be. Then I had to cut out the piece from soft cardboard and see if it worked. I also had to make roofs and I even had to measure the angles. The painting part was not as challenging but the last part where I had to put all the pieces together was very challenging because I had to find the right pieces (many pieces were similar with their shapes or the shapes of the windows) then I had to hold them together until I was sure the pieces were strongly sticked together with the white glue. It took me long time and I think that was the most challenging thing I’ve done from this medieval project.

4. How could I have improved my process so that I would have been more effective?

I think I could have finished everything and had them all ready earlier by planning everything right. Just like what I said in previous questions, I did plan things but when I was doing my model, I realized I had more works to do than I thought so I ended it upworking on it later than what I planned. I could have also did parts of the project in order. When I started on my 3nd part: the game, I realized I should have written more information in the oral presentation for my questions on the game. So I had to edit those speech and had to restart on my game. I think I could have thought more about each part so I’d have it perfect and wouldn’t make the other parts of the project confusing.

5. Did I effectively create an age-appropriate presentation and game for the elementary students? (please explain how you know it was appropriate or how you could have changed it to be more appropriate)

I think I created an age-appropriate presentation, but I think I could have done little better on the game. For my visual presentation, I put some labels on my visual presentation (model) so my audience would know each parts of the monastery I’m talking about. For my oral presentation, I used lots of simple and easy words that 2nd graders would know. Then I organized all my information so each time I start talking about different things, the audience would know that I’m talking about different category and wouldn’t get confused. I think my game’s concept was simple enough for little kids to understand. It was my questions cards that I had problems with.  I think my questions were bit confusing and were little too hard. Also, for some of the questions, I used hard words for the small kids. But one thing that I think I could have thought about it was the size of the cards. My cards were quite small so the words printed were also small. I didn’t realize how most of the elementary kids liked to read the sentences aloud. Since my letters were small, they had a hard time reading it aloud and when I tried to read it aloud to them, they didn’t understand. I thinkmy game would have been more interesting and fun to them if I edited that particular cards.

Jeopardy Reflection

1. What did I feel successful doing during the process of the project? What am I proud of?
I felt successful when I completed the paragraphs about Octavian because I worked very hard on the research. Usually, when I did research, my topics were harder to find information on or the articles were harder to understand that when I finished my paragraph, I wasn’t sure if mine made sense when someone else reads it. I’m very proud of our VIP jeopardy game because this was my first ever made game on power point. I first had no idea on how to make one and I also was confused because our instruction sheets weren’t clear. We had to ask other people or communicate with my groupmates and that was also something that I felt really proud of too.

2. What new skills did I value learning?
From this particular projects, I learned a lot of new skills. First I learned how to use workspaces or bookmark artickles on the internet. This wasn’t the only skill I learnd from the research part. I also learned how to look up the information you want only on limited sites. I think this was valued skill for me because when you want to do that same thing in the future, these might help me save time and get the informations i want quckily. When I wrote the paragraph, we had to organize the research records in outline but this wasn’t new to me. What I learned from this is how to write paragraphs like the encyclopedia article. It shouldn’t be exciting like fantasy story but should only tell the readers the facts and not your opinion. It should be boring and the sentences should stay flat. The last skill I learned that might worth a lot is how to make a jeopardy game on power point. This was toally new to me. In this skill, you had to know how to hyperlink things or even to insert a table which was used for score guide. I think this could be helpful in the future if I wanted to share some informations in a fun way using the projector.

3. What was challenging during the process of completing the project? With what did I struggle?
Finding information I want and reorganizing in your own word were probably the hardest thing. It was hard because when I found 2 good article on my topic, Octavian, there were 2 different information on something and I had to make a choice on which article to choose. The organizing part was hard also because I put all the informations in different order so in outlines, I hard to put all of them together in order. I had to struggle with that but I was happy whenI finished it.

4. How could I have improved my process so that I would have been more effective?
I think I could have done a better research because I first didn’t understand the researching process and it took me long that it was supposed to. I think that would have been more effective since I had to do the rest of the work as a homework. I also think we could have done better while making the jeopardy game because we spent nearly half of the limited classtime on choosing the backround of the slides. But I’m pretty satisified with the rest of the work I did on this project.