Overcoming Challenges -AEP- Chloe - Blog 2

Getting used to going to school again is no picnic! My body's still adjusting to waking up very early; so, as you might've guessed, I was still groggy when I logged into AEP. I didn't have that much breakfast either, but I knew I didn’t want to be late. 

I tried my best to wake myself up and prepare for the day. Thankfully, "Typeshift" helped with that, since it acted as our warm up. Just like last week, the "Typeshift" challenge seemed to be easier. I finished in under a minute and proudly posted my time on the Google Sheet Miss Disa instructed us to paste it on.

After that, we headed on over to "Miro.com." There was a single post-it note waiting for us on the board. It instructed us to write down the things that we had learned last week. Whatever we wrote would act as our entrance ticket. So now we have two tickets: one entrance and one exit ticket. Honestly, I think this is a really efficient way for students to remember what they learned from their last session. It helps us to recall everything we did and strengthens our memory. 

As I selected my sticky note color, which was green, the things we did finally came flooding back to me: family vocabulary, "Typeshift," exit tickets... It amazes me how if I wasn't instructed to remember what had happened, chances are, I probably would forget all about it. I can't even think of what I had for lunch last Friday, which was only five days ago! I guess these entrance tickets really do serve a useful purpose!  

Anyways, I wrote down the topics we had learned and waited for the others to finish. After about five minutes, it was time to move on. Our teacher then posted more post-it notes on the board. This first one said to draw two non-identical twins, while the second said to draw a widower. I was pretty excited since I love drawing! 

However, right off the bat, I started losing control of the mousepad. Whenever I tried drawing circles for the heads, they turned out wobbly and I'd have to restart. I guess I need to work on having a steady hand more!

On a positive note, I found the music being played by the timer quite fitting. It really gave me the feeling like I was in one of those Mission Impossible movies! It adds a nice touch to the AEP atmosphere and lets me have fun! 

Moving on, Miss Disa gave us a chance to choose the type of class we wanted: upbeat or quiet. Surprisingly, only three of us attended class today: Shasmeen, Meral, and myself; so, it was a smaller class than usual. I voted for upbeat, since I still felt a bit groggy and thought it would keep me more alert. Meanwhile, my classmates were still deciding. Eventually, Meral chose upbeat as well and the voting ended. 

Meral and I were then told to read an article about dinosaurs, while Shasmeen would finish up on last week's activities and blog. Our teacher directed us to "DOGONews" and I got started right away.

There definitely were some tricky words in there like paraceratherium, lixiaens, Hezheng, and many more. I needed to look up how to pronounce all those words, since we were assigned to record ourselves reading the entire article. Thankfully, we were given a website called, "HowToPronounce," which helped a lot! It did take me a few times to correctly pronounce them, but I got the hang of it eventually.

However, when it was finally time to record, I did encounter many problems. I was using the website "Vacaroo," which was highly recommended. Yet, my first two tries both ended in the same way: they ended up getting deleted. It was really frustrating. I kept pressing the "upload" button, thinking that it would give me a link to upload it somewhere when, in reality, it just asked for new audio and deleted my hard work. 

I reminded myself to not hit the "upload" button when it was my third attempt. I copied the link and decided to test the audio. Only, this time, my voice was too soft! I could barely hear myself. Even when I maxed the volume, I could barely be heard. So again, I had to re-record myself. 

I guess the fourth time’s the charm because my next attempt was a success. My voice came out loud and clear. Once I finished recording, I copied the link and found that the audio was finally perfect! Only ten minutes were left for our AEP sessions and I was finally ready to upload the audio. I do admit that this experience was a bit stressful for me. I know I could've been faster if only I hadn’t encounter such problems. 

Even so, my problems were still not over yet. When I headed over to "Padlet," which was where we would upload our audio (because "Miro.com" didn't have that function), I noticed that there wasn't the usual add button. I knew immediately what I needed to do: inform Miss Disa to give us access to edit the board. 

Meanwhile, Miss Disa was creating a to-do list for us to complete. If we did everything written before the session ended, then we'd receive merits. The list consisted of: unit one, questions one and two; blog; blog labels; news recording to "Padlet;" and difficult words on a sticky note. I checked off most of them except the last three. 

Quickly, I opened the blog website and labeled the blog I'd made last week with my name and grade level. After that, I decided that posting the difficult words I found in the article would be the fastest. I chose a pale, yellow post-it note and wrote down the words I’d mentioned earlier (paraceratheriums, lixiaens, Hezheng) and some others like paleozoological and Gansu. It was simple and easy, just a matter of typing them correctly. 

Moving back to the "Padlet" problem, coincidentally, Meral was also facing it at the same time. We both informed Miss Disa. It wasn't at all complicated, but class was almost ending. I hurriedly pasted and posted the link I got from "Vacaroo." With the last few minutes of AEP, I checked off all of the things on my to-do list. I felt proud, but the day was not over yet. I still needed to write my exit ticket. 

I headed to "Miro.com" and chose a light blue sticky note. I typed like lightning, talking about how I felt productive and even managed to finish everything on time. With that done, it was finally time to leave AEP class. What a rush the whole experience was! 

Even though I met several problems while recording, I'm happy that I still got to finish everything on time, learned some new words, exercised my tongue, and even think I'm getting better at "Typeshift."  I really do hope that I persevere through more tough times like these in the future. The road ahead may look smooth, but it is also filled with many bumps. Overcoming them is what makes you stronger and I'll do my best to prepare for them.