Solving mysteries in the land of fantasy

Ada Miller Community No Comments

 

Here lies a land of mystery, intrigue, and adventure. Academy Students have been solving mysteries in this world, bringing wrong-doers to the proper authorities and showcasing their problem solving skills. From a simple case of the wronged party looking for peace, to the most recent foray into mystery, solving the case of a haunted lighthouse.

Each week we’ve been exploring these mysteries and a common theme seems to be occurring, ghosts! Is the party haunted? Unlucky? Or are these spirits drawn to the party because they know that they can count on them to give them the peace they desire? Only time will tell.

While we use traditional Dungeons and Dragons as a club tool, not everyone has access to the tools that make that particular game unique (including rule books and dice). So we had to improvise. We decided that this group will use video calls to communicate with each other and the group. We also decided to use a system that utilizes only traditional six-sided dice and an approach where characters the players play use a simple word based system to showcase what their personas are both good at, and not-so-great at.

Kahoot Trivia Challenges Round 2

Zareh Demirdji Community No Comments

Students participate in Board Game Club

Instalment four of Gameboard Club saw the return of Kahoot Trivia Challenges, which we played in week two and a bit in week three. It is a favourite of the students as it allows for flexibility in the topics. As such, we brought it back for an entire hour this week. Students and staff cast their answers in quizzes involving weekly news, music, movies, sports, video games, celebrities, and finally geography. It was a fun way to spend an hour and we are excited to resume week five.

What does a can of tomatoes have to do with Geography?

Colleen Whelan Beyond the Classroom, English and Humanities, Science and Math No Comments

 

Unit 3 of the Grade 9 Geography course focuses on natural resources.  We use a “simple” can of tomatoes to explore what natural resources are, how humans use them and how we use energy resources at every stage of production.  The class had to brainstorm the production steps required to start with a tomato seed and end up with a can of tomatoes sitting on a supermarket shelf.

Once we brainstormed the steps in production, we traced back which natural resources were used in each step. As a class, we investigated several of these in depth.  For example, if you want to put the tomatoes in the can, you first have to make the can.  What natural resource would you gather?  What impact might gathering that natural resource have on the environment?  What energy natural resource would be required to manufacture the can?  What resources are used in transporting the can?

At the end of the lesson, students started to understand that there are hundreds of steps in the production of even a simple item, and that resources and energy are used in every step.  Ultimately this led us to a larger discussion of how to reduce the amount of natural resources and energy that we use in our daily lives.

Pop Art Self Portraits

Zoe Rutherford Arts, Beyond the Classroom No Comments

Following our Colour Theory unit, the Grade 9 Visual Arts class explored Pop Art! Pop Art is usually easily identifiable from it’s simple, bold and bright images. Some may think it’s called Pop Art because the colours “POP!”, but it also stems from the fact that artists were inspired by images from popular culture. We specifically looked at famous Pop artists:

  • Andy Warhol — known for his colourful, repetitive prints of soup cans and celebrities.
  • Roy Lichtenstein — known for his cartoon-like paintings, often created using primary colours.
  • Keith Haring — known for his paintings featuring thick-lined, simple figures and bright and bold colours.
  • Yayoi Kusama — known for her outlandish, fascinating paintings made up of beautiful colours and detailed dot work

Before we looked at Pop Art as a class, students were asked to research an artist and present on that artist. Three students researched Warhol, Haring and Kusama and were able to provide the class with a bio of each artist and their major works. So going into the unit, the class had an idea of who these artists were and what Pop Art generally looked like.

In order to put our knowledge of Pop Art to paper, students were given the task of creating a Pop Art Self-Portrait! This project is usually done in the classroom using Photoshop and a projector, where students trace their image onto a piece of paper…however, some adjustments had to be made in these circumstances!

Students printed an image of themselves off at home and outlined the key features of their face/upper body with a Sharpie. Then, they used a bright window to trace the lines onto another piece of paper and then “Pop-ified” it!! Pop-ifying varied from applying dots like Kusama or Lichtenstein to using super bright colours all over their face like all Pop artists did. Students were given the option of including a speech bubble (inspired by some of Lichtenstein’s art) expressing something they think about often during the pandemic (e.g. “What am I having for dinner?”).

Check out the results below!

 

Grade 11 Biology Unit 5 – Anatomy of Mammals

Zareh Demirdji Beyond the Classroom, Science and Math No Comments

 

As we approach the end of this new online frontier, the grade 11 biology class has completed its second to last unit, The Anatomy of Mammals. We broke the unit into three parts, the first being the anatomy of various body systems. The unit began with an in-depth look at the circulatory system, exploring its various components (the heart, blood vessels, and blood cells), their structures and functions. Next, we looked at the respiratory system and finished off part one by taking a voyage through the digestive system. Once the three body systems were explored, we moved into part two of the unit and discussed how different body systems interact with one another. We finished off the unit by examining the impacts our choices have on our body systems.