Category Archives: Grade 9

The Bubbles (Inquiry final project)

Posted on by under English 9, Grade 9

The Bubbles by Molly Maccormack

I am a minnow.

Letting bubbles created by blowfish

Suffocate me.

But you only watch,

Terrified

I try to open my bitty gills,

I try to accept the brutal bubbles,

I welcome the torment.

Bluffing, pretending, it’s fine.

Maybe these bubbles will change me,

Maybe these bubbles will flood my brain,

Tell me what I need to do

To get used to these bubbles.

Like everyone else.

But I’m

Almost breathing, almost

propelling myself away, far away from those

endless spheres.

But.

No, I’m Accepting them

Just like everyone else.

the bubbles will endure,

Will I endure alongside?

I am a minnow.

Letting bubbles created by blowfish

Suffocate me.

The free-verse poem “The Bubbles” by Molly Maccormack is a piece that mainly focuses on the theme of conformity and societal expectations to “fit in”. The inquiry question: “Why do people feel the need to conform to society and its expectations?” is represented and answered by the author throughout the poem. Living in today’s society makes people feel as though they are small and meaningless, like a “minnow”. All of societies rules and expectations ruin people’s lives by causing immense mental stress and anxiety to blend in and be the same as everyone else. The author of this poem uses the metaphor, “letting bubbles created by blowfish suffocate me” to explain some people’s situation, using “bubbles created by blowfish” to represent societies rules. People tend to follow all of these expectations because that is what everyone else is doing, it would be against the status quo to go against them: “No, I’m accepting them just like everyone else.” This poem also touches on the struggle of internally wanting to go against the norm and be your own self when the poet states, “I try to open my bitty gills, I try to accept the brutal bubbles, I welcome the torment. Bluffing, pretending, it’s fine.” In conclusion, “The Bubbles” by Molly Maccormack is a poem concerning a very relevant and relatable subject of conformity in today’s society.

Innovation final post

Posted on by under Grade 9, Science 9

To reflect on my person responsibility skill during this project, I think that I did a very good job at self-regulating throughout completing my innovation project alongside my peers. I really focused on persevering through challenging tasks, such as trying to find credible and useful research for a product that has never been made before. I believe that I really adjusted with our plan for our final project and adapted with the changes we all made as a group and assessed the results, for example, at the beginning of our project we were thinking of making our product a brand new phone, but then we all agreed it would be better for the environment to just insert our new circuitry into an old, recycled phone. At this point, I had done a lot of research on our previous plan so I had to adjust to this new plan (do more research on our new idea) and see that the results of this big change would work out better in the long run. Lastly, I truly thought that I took ownership of my goals, behaviour and learning as I tried my best to take a leadership role in our group and also always make sure we were following our collaboration goals at the beginning of the project.

To reflect on my group’s collaboration quality, I feel like we did an excellent job even though it was all of our first big group projects together. I believe that we all contributed equally and we all shared and showed all of our own personal strengths to execute that. Some of us focused on critical thinking, others creative thinking and in the end it all came together to form our project. I think something that my group could’ve improved on was instead of only focusing on the materials that we were provided, we could have maybe even ventured out more and looked for more materials to enhance our final presentation and understanding even more. I’m really proud of my group and what we accomplished collaboratively.

My feelings for this project were almost like a rollercoaster. Sometimes it really stressed me out because it lasted for a really long time and it was also happening on top of other science lessons and homework, but at other times, I felt as if it was very beneficial in helping me learn more about electricity, collaboration and innovation. My group was very good together and it went along pretty smoothly, so if I were to go back I would only tweak little details since I ended up really proud of our final product. In conclusion, this project was a very good learning experience for me, it taught me a lot more than I thought it would (about electricity, innovation, team work, time management, organization, collaboration) and I was incredibly impressed by my group’s work ethic and effort together to create our final Sunergy 3000.

Thoughts on Data Analysis 2017

Posted on by under Grade 9, Math 9

I believe that statistics have a big role in today’s society. They give us valuable information on everyday things, they provide important results to research projects but, they can also mislead and sway people by giving out false information about important subjects. After reading the article I have learned a lot about statistics and how important they are in our world. They are very helpful to people everywhere wanting to know the opinions of others or facts that are happening around the world. Something new that I learned from the article was the fact that some statistics can be true, but misleading because of the choice of wording in the results. Even though statistics can be very helpful, they can cause different types of problems, like that example. Other problems that statistics can cause is false information from the survey conducted. They can have unfair survey questions that cause you to not express your real opinion and also can use bad sampling to find their information which means that the information collected wasn’t from a diverse group of people.

11.1 Factors Influencing Data Collection Blogpost

Posted on by under Grade 9, Math 9

First question “Should there be Sunday shopping (in retail businesses not now permitted to be open on Sunday)?”

Second question “If there is to be Sunday shopping (in retail businesses not now permitted to be open on Sunday), should it be on every Sunday or on only the six Sundays immediately before Christmas?”

When I first read the questions from the survey, I thought that they were a bit difficult to read because of the choice of wording in both of the questions. I also thought that they were very similar in the sense that they could have just been combined into one question. After learning about influencing factors, I now think that one of the biggest influence factor in this survey was the use of language. The question wasn’t presented in a way that was 100% clear, so some people who didn’t learn English as their first language might feel confused after reading the question. In the future, when reading and interpreting survey data I will make sure that I understand the question completely before answering so that my given opinion isn’t different from my real opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_Scotia_Sunday_shopping_referendum,_2004

DNA edible model lab

Posted on by under Grade 9, Science 9

 

 

  1. How are chromosomes, DNA, and genes related to one another?

A chromosome is a structure that is made up of DNA as well as proteins. These chromosomes are found in the nucleus of the cell and contain and organize genes (segments in DNA) which do things like build bones, enable muscles to move, control digestion and keep your heart beating.

 

  1. Explain what these pieces represent:
    1. Licorice – The licorice represented the Sugar/phosphate backbone in DNA
    2. Marshmallows (each colour) – The marshmallows represented the bases which are necessary to create DNA. The green marshmallows represented the guanine, the pink marshmallows represented the cytosine, the yellow marshmallows represented the adenine and the orange marshmallows represented the thymine. Only the yellow (A) and orange (T) marshmallows could bond together and only the green (G) and pink (C) marshmallows could bond together.

 

  1. How did this activity help you understand the structure of DNA?

This activity helped me understand and fully recognize the structures in a DNA example. It also really helped me understand the importance of having the base pairs be ones that bond together because if not, it will cause a genetic mutation

 

observing cells lab

Posted on by under Grade 9, Science 9

Sketches of animal vs plant cells

The animal cell (cheek cells)

The plant cell (red onion skin)

  1. Using your sketches and the photos you took of your plant and animal cells, explain:
    1. What do animal cells look like under the microscope? What cell structures are visible? Animal cells look like(purple because of the methylene blue) little floating dots (not close together) under the microscope. The only cell structures that were visible under my microscope was the cytoplasm, the cell membrane and the nucleus.
    2. What do plant cells look like under the microscope? What cell structures are visible? Plant cells look like bent ovals stuck together under the microscope and the only visible cell structures were the cell membrane and the cytoplasm
  2. How can you tell plant cells and animal cells apart (if you only see them under the microscope)? From my observations, the way that I could tell plant cells and animal cells apart was from their shapes and how far apart they were from the other cells. The plant cells seemed to be really close together in a bent oval shape whereas the animal cells were spread father apart and their shape was more circular.
  3. We used methylene blue on the animal cell. Why was it important to treat animal cells with this compound? I think we used methylene blue on the animal cell to stain it so that it was easier to see the cell structures. If we hadn’t done that, it would be hard to tell apart the air bubbles and the real cheek cells.
    Why didn’t we use it on the plant cells? I predict that the reason we didn’t use the substance with the plant cells is that the onion skin plant cells were already purple and easy to spot through a microscope.
  4. Reflection:
    What did you learn while doing this lab? During this lab, I learned a lot of new things about cells. I got to observe and experience the physical difference between plant and animal cells in person and also I realized that even though we can’t see them with our naked eye, everything is made up of tiny, interesting cells.
    What questions arose while doing this lab? What are you curious about? Some of the questions that arose whilst doing this lab were who discovered that everything was made up of cells? Can cells be artificially made? How? Can an object lose cells without having any consequences? Is there a certain amount of cells you need to live and be happy.

solution fluency – electricity project

Posted on by under Grade 9, Science 9

DEFINE: Phones these days are extremely expensive and because of the mass production of them, it is not good for the environment. Also a big inconvenience for people today is phone batteries dying out in the middle of the day when you don’t have time to charge it.  Our solution would be to create a inexpensive solar-powered phone that would be used for communication services only. 

DISCOVER: Our group has researched online about solar powered phones, but all we found was solar powered calculators. Making this discovery really sparked an idea to make our phone like solar powered calculators are made. Also we researched ways that phones aren’t good for the environment and took notes on how we could make it beneficial instead. For example, we found this solar powered calculator and used its circuitry to help us understand and build our own.

DREAM:  

  • make an easily accessible phone to people all over the world
  • the phone should be inexpensive to make and sell
  • solar-powered so that the battery doesn’t die throughout the day/last longer
  • only for communication purposes so the phone doesn’t have super advanced technology
  • we could use the same circuitry as solar powered calculators
  • we could even use old recycled phones such as nokias and blackberrys to help the environment and recycle 
  • maybe the military could use it since it is inexpensive instead of walkie talkies

DELIVER: Our delivery will be presented in class in a Dragon’s Den format 

 

 

Teens and Identity

Posted on by under English 9, Grade 9

OR

As an adolescent myself, I can relate to the pressures, issues and tough decisions that teens have to face every day. Whether it be focused around school, home life or even the future, being a teenager in this day and age is a challenge in itself. For example, we are faced with sky-high expectations created by unrealistic representations splashed everywhere we look and sometimes the comparison of ourselves to others gets to be too much for one person to handle. Drugs and alcohol can be a form of escapism for a lot of teenagers trying to mirror what society tells them to be and not being able to live up to it. For others, the idea behind self-medication is to help numb themselves from life’s difficulties such as family problems, school stress and the “unknowns” of tomorrow. My observations on teenagers who end up becoming alcohol or drug abusers seem to be that they are not happy with themselves. They either have internal struggles like low self-esteem or on the other hand, they see themselves as not being able to “fit in” with who they want to fit in with. A lot of the times they may not have good coping mechanisms so instead, they turn to substances that are easily accessible at this tender age. So many situations, pressures and issues can lead to adolescents turning to self-medication to “help” themselves. As a teenager myself, I can clearly understand and relate with those who choose that path, but I also can recognize the alternate path to take which seems like it would work out better in the long run. This path would include finding yourself by having a healthy support system, believing in yourself and being yourself.

Skip to toolbar