ER GCE Portfolio

          This term in our humanities class called 'Forbidden Books' we learned all about religion and the history of book bannings.  During this time we read two books.  One was the 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' and the other was a book of our choice.  Both books were banned somewhere and at some point in time.  These books helped us to better understand the ideas, dogma and motive of those who want to ban books like these.  Through this we took a step into their shoes whether or not we agreed with them.  Exploring points in the book that could be considered controversial helped us to later take stance on the controversial statements and decided if those things warranted a banning.  Personally in my read through of these books I found that such small misdemeanors could not possibly outweigh all the good the book offers to a reader or class of readers.  In most cases the 'bad' parts of the book wer...

       This past month or so in my STEAM class titled 'Disease' we entered a new unit called World.  In this unit we explored how a disease spreads and defined the terms to describe the spread.  In this way we are now able to classify the severity of the disease through words like endemic, epidemic or pandemic.  In addition to all this we learned a lot from epidemics in history such as the black death and the current Covid-19 Pandemic.  we learned read about the spread of these diseases and about the experiences of living under such conditions.  Lastly we watched contagion which was a movie that scarily predicted what the Corona virus would be like.  This movie was interesting because it went over the governmental response to a disease and talked about the R0 and how the infection spreads.  After this we worked on the Action project.  We had to pick a disease to research and write a phony news article about.  Heres how it ...

           In this term of our Spanish 2 class we've been learning about how to use direct and indirect object pronouns in sentences.  We can use these types of pronouns to refer to something without directly using it's name.  With this new info we can now use sentences like: es el favorito de mi papá. él se lo comerá. which mean's 'That's my dad's favorite. He will eat it.'  This concept is important because it makes it so we don't have to keep saying the persons' name after it's already been established.  Aside from this, we also learned to use and conjugate -er, -ar, and -ir verbs in the present tense and present progressive.  We took these concepts and made it into a little matching game or 'Juego de Pareo'.  We made the matching game based on sights and activities from Buenos Aires, Argentina. On top of this we included vocabulary of common neighborhood spots such as churches, banks, schools, libraries, and bookstore...

               As we entered Unit 2 of our disease class we turned a corner and switched from learning about body systems to focus on the brain, and more specifically the illnesses that might plague it. Our unit began with us exploring brain waves. Before we could talk about mental illness we had to carefully consider the way our brain works. Our brain uses electricity to communicate signals between neurons. We call these electric signals brainwaves. Did you know we experience different types of brainwaves depending on the task we are doing? For instance when concentrating or learning we use ‘beta waves’ and when in ‘Theta waves’ you are in a dreaming or flow state.                The next thing we explored was autism. We explored everything from what autism might look like to how an autistic person might view the world. It was interesting to learn what life is like for these individuals, ...

    During the winter term of our humanities course - 'Banned Books'  we studied the intricacies of being censored and what it means to be censored.  We learned lot's about how many types of media such as book, comics,movies and songs have been stolen from us through censorship.  We learned about how librarians and teachers are trying to fight to keep banned books on shelves for children to read while many parents choose to complain about these books for reasons like violence, sex, language, sexuality or even touchy concepts such as the holocaust that they fear is too much for their children.  During this time we did two major things to immerse ourselves in this idea of censorship. FIrst we began to read a book thats been banned in many schools across the US - 'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury, and visiting Quimby's an Indie bookstore offering offbeat titles, graphic novels & magazines, because graphic novels like the ones Quimby's sells have been a hug...

Disease Class -  Winter Term - 1/29/2023     In our Winter term course titled "disease" we learned all about how to classify a disease and all the different ways to identify them.  We then learned about the different body systems and what body parts fit under those body systems.  To really visualize and make things really click we visited the Museum of Science and Industry to see the 'YOU!' exhibit.  It was really cool to see.  The 'The Exploded Man'  specimen in particular was incredible. The 'Exploded Man' is a real human specimen that had all its body systems separated from one another so you can easily visulize what was what.  We saw all kinds of technology and specimen just like the 'Exploded Man' that really knit our whole class together.  Following this we began wok on our Action Project (AP).  A project that will encapsulate all we learned this term and prove that learning all in one sussinct presentation.  For this AP ...

          This civic term at GCE has opened up new and interesting opportunities in learning for me. We explored all things space in our class titled Rocket Science. We explored the ins and outs, the math, the history, and the people who made this scientific field what it is. We first explored parabolas and how to calculate the different data that goes into graphing a parabola. Then, we wrote up biographies for people prolific in the realm of rocket science. We would even learn about Binary/ASCII code and how it was used on the Golden Record, which was shot into space for some alien lifeform to hopefully find. Next, we got to experiment firsthand with how the design aspect of a rocket comes into play. We created our match rockets from match heads, aluminum foil, and wood skewers. We messed with our designs, firing them over, and over. Until one would finally get off the launch pad. Lastly, we took trips to places like the Museum of Science and Industry...