Blog 1.1 - First Four Weeks of Senior Year

     Hey, it's been a while, hasn't it? I feel like it was just last month when I submitted my last assignment for Grade 11. Now, you're telling me it's my last year in high school? That's crazy.

     It's almost been a month since school started and I still find it unbelievable that this is the last year I will see my classmates and my teachers. Some, who I've known since I transferred to FIS mid-year in Grade 7. I'm amazed at how everyone has grown and how much we've been through together. There are a lot of memories I unlocked recently. 

    When school first started on August 1, I felt like it was unreal that I was actually in school with my classmates and friends in person. It was shocking, and even more so that we don't have any more upperclassmen and all the students outside of my class are underclassmen. Most of which are new, even in the two lower grades who were present the last time we were in face-to-face. 

    Speaking of new students, we have some new faces in our class, and no I am not one of them. I still remember Ms. Disa thinking I was a new student during our first AEP class of the year. It was funny, but no I am still the same girl from Canada you met when I was almost 13 haha. Anyways, it was our first time seeing the new students face-to-face since they transferred to FIS last year when everything was still online. I hope we, the class of 2023, have welcomed them well and I hope they feel welcomed. I also look forward to getting to know them better and to have a good year with them and the rest of the class.

    Now moving on to my (long-awaited) experience in AEP 12, we started of course with Ms. Disa trying to remember who's who, though I'm the only one who she didn't recognize and I felt slightly offended (joking). It's okay though, I found that quite a few people could not recognize me either, especially Kuya Tony who kept asking "Who is this?" while pointing at me, haha. After Miss took attendance, she informed us about what we'll be doing this year, and I found it pretty refreshing and somewhat like Rapunzel leaving her tower to explore the world. So I was pretty excited about it. Then, Ms. Disa tricked us into communicating with one another by making us play Scrabble together. I can't say I'm proud of the words we put down, but I can say that we did our best at the time. the first day was a pretty relaxing class.

    The next week, on the day of our second class, I had to take online because I was going to the hospital for a doctor's appointment that day. I really appreciate how Miss was really trying to include me in the class with her little speaker and her gadget showing my classmates making it seem like I'm there too. I was able to participate in listening to Ms. Disa explain what we were in class that day and for the wordle tournament thing. Unfortunately, I couldn't participate in the miro board because I had to leave.

    The third class, I was in face-to-face again and the first things I noticed were the room change and the teddy bear Miss used to hold Elle in when she was taking online. That day we started doing our essays. I found it interesting to learn about the topics my classmates were doing for the project. Some were doing topics that had to do with technology and others had topics surrounding psychology. Meanwhile, the topic I chose is the importance of dance. Dance is something I love and I'm really talented in. I hope to study it in college too, but of course there are people who don't think dance is an important thing like other practices in the arts. So, I want to understand what the importance of dance really is so I don't feel insecure for not having a more respected interest in career like science and business. Ms. Disa also sent me a video of someone asking a diverse amount of people what their "best dance move" is. I thought it was very wholesome and Miss and I had a long conversation about dance. I learned a lot about her especially that she's the coolest teacher I've ever talked to.

    Lastly, the fourth class, I was absent because I got sick over the weekend and stayed home from school most of the week to heal. Even though I did go to school on Friday for a certain quiz I had to take, I'm still recovering. On Friday I actually felt a bit uncomfortable because I was not ready to be normal yet. Even so, my sickness didn't get rid of my worry about the long-overdue assignments I still have yet to submit, especially in this class because I literally have not turned anything in except the learning contract quiz. Even this blog is late. So I apologize for the delay. I have a lot to do, but I'm trying my best to get back into the same pace as my classmates. 

    I am excited for this year in AEP and discovering who I am and what I can offer to the world. I hope by the end of this year, I will be sure of myself and can go into university with confidence, wherever I may go. I will do my very best this year. Let's go!!!!!!!!!

Your favourite Canadian girly,

Lucille

AEP Blog 1.1

We are finally in Grade 12, and after spending over two school years of online classes, we are finally back in real classrooms. We were Grade 9 the last time we had face-to-face classes, and now we're already in our final year. Next year, most of us are going to college. It's sad that next year our happy, young years are going to be over as we'll start having to be more responsible in college, but it's interesting thinking about what's ahead. Either way, it's nice finally being able to have an actual class of AEP. Being in an actual classroom makes it much easier to focus on the lessons as I'm no longer logging onto the Google Meet after just waking up - it's also a impossible to have other applications opened during class.

Now moving on to some more AEP focused matters. So far, AEP-12 as a whole has been great. During the first week, Miss gave us a rundown of what we'll be doing this year. We've got to write reaction essays to articles of our choice and then do something creative afterwards. I really like the freedom that we have of reacting to anything of our choice as it's a lot easier to write about something you're interested/passionate about rather than something that has just been given to you as an assignment. I share the same feelings for the create part, being able to have many possibilities of what you want to do makes it a lot less stressful and a lot more entertaining. The scrabble game was a lot of fun too, despite the fact that all of us did really bad, it was nice playing in person for once.

We also did a Miro board activity of putting all the key-points on writing a reactive essay into a box. It was pretty eye-opening seeing all of us working together in person, and creating the board also helped get a grasp on how we should write our reaction papers. Doing things like this in class makes it feel much more interactive and helps me focus better. The transition to a different Wordle website has also been good so far. The current website makes it feel a lot more competitive and makes you much more active while trying to find the word. In my opinion, if Miss wants it to be more competitive she could award the winner merits or some sort of points, although I don't think I'll be winning anytime soon.

I think this ties in with what Miss said, something along the lines of "merging online and offline together" I can't remember exactly what she said, but it was something about using the best of both worlds (the best tools/aspects from online and offline) and mixing them into one. Again, another positive change for AEP. Using things like Wordle and Miro from last year was productive, and continuing to use them in the real classroom should be even more productive. Another online-related topic is the active Google Meet session during class. There was one day where I had to stay home and I'm surprised with how fluid the Google Meet went. I was able to hear Miss and understand the important parts of the lesson just fine.

Even though AEP-12 has been great, I haven't. I am extremely terrible and unbelievably bad at writing. To make things worse, most things that I'm interested in, the things I should react to and base my projects on, aren't really that appropriate for the subject in my opinion. Most people are writing about nice topics like: transitioning to electric cars, the future of AI, etc. But I don't think writing about the next game I'm looking forward to or writing about the new Challenger 3 tank really hits the spot with our AEP class. I'm pretty sure that all of the things I'm into are in the same boat, nothing I'm into is really that educational or school related. All of the things I enjoy are just unrelated and useless rubbish, not interesting or life-related in any way.

There's also other subjects in the way, for the past few days I have had to have been studying for four quizzes. Although on Friday, two of those quizzes got out of the way. Along with this, there's also a load of homework I have to finish - I guess this is just what it's like in your final year. Because of this, I've barely been able to make good progress on AEP and have been submitting most things late since I've really got to focus on the major subjects (A thankyou to Miss for being lenient with the deadlines). Hopefully over the course of next week I can pull things together since these AEP projects seem like they could be pretty fun if I can find things I'm interested in, although I doubt I will.

Despite being bad at writing, I'm looking forward to seeing an improvement in myself over the year. I'm hoping that all of these projects we'll be doing will help us get better at writing as we'll be doing quite a few of them. Although, I've been looking forward to getting better for the past 5 years... (my fault, not AEP) Anyway, I think in my career, being able to write long essays isn't really one of the main points. I think most of the writing I'll be doing is just report writing which is pretty straightforward, just write down what happened. However, I may be wrong.

Overall, AEP-12 is looking bright. Being able to write about whatever you want makes things a lot easier, and I'm glad we're still using some of the virtual sides from learning in class as they were pretty useful. However my side of AEP has been pretty sluggish so far, which is completely my fault. Nevertheless, I'm still motivated for AEP-12 and hope we have a good year.

That's all for now, have a nice day/night and see you next blog.

school finally opened | seeing people?? - AEP 12 - BLOG#1

 After a year of online classes, schools finally decided to reopen. Nevertheless, here we are!! Face to face. It's truly wonderful to interact with my friends, have a set routine instead of waking up half an hour before class contemplating whether my internet or google meet is going to work or not. Personally, I prefer physical classes because not only it forces you to make a daily routine but teaches you to be disciplined in other areas of life outside of school. Besides all of that, I'll be sharing my insight from the first week till present time. 

Everything was mediocre and not too hectic during the first week especially in AEP. I was finally able to see Ms. Disa since she taught us in Grade 11. Now, she was finally able to monitor us face to face instead of rethinking life during our online classes. Usually, Ms. Disa kicks off class with either Scrabble or Wordle, both of them takes a toll on me. We were assigned in pairs to play Scrabble. Let's just say, the words we formed were similar to Grade 7's vocabulary. Our brains were fried after AEP. Board games aren't something I am entirely comfortable with since they require you to make certain moves and make use of critical thinking but I guess it's crucial to implement it because how else am I going to make serious decisions in my life or how am I going approach problems. In spite of that, I still enjoyed every bit of it and hopefully in the near future too. 

Following week, Miss told us about the projects we were going to work on. I gasped when Miss mentioned that the ideas of our projects will be upon our decision. The plan was to write a response paper based on the article we would read. My peers reflecting upon their passions, picked ideas of what they wanted to write about. Electric cars, dance, manifestation are just some examples. It really forced me to think of something I was passionate about. Technology, productivity, sports are just a few obsessions of mine. I went along with Artificial Intelligence considering what I want to do with my career. Almost forgot to mention, before starting our project, our class and I designed a step-by-step guide on Miro Board on how to write a response paper based on the sources provided by Miss, it was supposed to be simple yet informative. The article had to be professional and not written for an audience of ten year olds.

To conclude now, I am enjoying every moment of AEP as I get to work with my own ideas thoroughly. I am also excited for our upcoming projects that will hopefully help me find myself as Ms Disa tries to prepare us for the real world. I hope to spend my last year in high school learning tons from my teachers and friends plus putting together beautiful memories as I venture onto my next stage of life.

Signing off,

Saad

The very first AEP class for this very new year, 2022. It feels very different interacting with each other through online and face to face. And for the first time I met Miss Disa personally because I joined Fountain International School during a pandemic situation. So, it has been online classes for a year which is very difficult and stressful in a weird way. The first AEP class was fun, we played scrabble right away and honestly, I am really bad at any board games because I don't like to waste my time thinking to make a move. Board games really pushed me out of my comfort zone, especially my critical thinking like playing scrabble, I need to quickly think about what word should I create using the alphabets letters that I got randomly. Everyone was assigned to be in pairs but I don't have a partner, so Miss Disa asked me to be her partner for the scrabble. I was very nervous at first because I am not good at all in scrabble. But it was very fun for me because I'm playing with my classmates in physical class because before this we played scrabble online, we don't communicate with each other that much. 

 Before AEP class starts, we will wordle for a few rounds to freshen up our brains and mind in the morning. Wordle is very challenging for me because I'm not a person who has a high vocabulary that can think so many words in a flash. But I'm getting improvement day by day as I play wordle frequently, I think you just need to understand the concept of how to play wordle. It is going to be easy if you spend some time in the wordle. Wordle really testing my critical thinking, even though you just need to try and error for random letters. 

 Other than that, we need to do a project which is in our learning contract. I chose an article that talks about the transition to electric cars. There's a lot of new information about the latest technology in the car industry. I don't really like blogging, but I realized that if you choose an interesting article that you really like. You will enjoy reacting to it and as you read the whole article, you will learn so many new things that you did'nt even think of.

Term 1: Blog #1

The beginning of the end.

What I meant by that is that this is the start of my last year in high school. Currently, I feel very bittersweet about it all. I just know that I should try to enjoy every last moment in real time - the happy, the sad, and the everything-else-in-between moments - because I will come to regret it if I don't. That may sound very dramatic, but I've come to realize that I tend to over-exaggerate things sometimes.

To segue into more relevant matters, we started off the first week of AEP class with a brief discussion on what to expect for this year, and unlike any other, our course load is bound to be loaded (for this subject, and everything else). So far, I think I'm doing an okay job with keeping up. I'm trying, and what truly matters is that I know that. 

Something I realized - the first ever scrabble game we did as a class was difficult. I, as well as the others, got so used to the online layout with error-checkers and online dictionaries near our reach. To transition back into the classrooms, and being present in-the-flesh, was a culture shock to say the least. Students weren't alone in this though, I walk past the hallways and could see the teachers and staff having struggles too. 

As well as scrabble games, we dipped our toes into the waters of this Wordle-like competition game website. I have not won first place so far, but I think am getting the hang of it. I really like the concept of trying to figure out what the word is, but I'm a very slow person in that context.

Furthermore, Ms. Disa aims to prepare us for the outside world by giving us projects in relation to our own virtual identity. This is where we answer the questions "who are you? And what do you have to offer?" I've always had those thoughts, but having to hear it from another physical person threw me off - I don't know how to answer that question, for now; though I've never encountered anything like this,  I find it exciting as it acts like a project not only for school, but for myself too.

More about the project, we were tasked with researching and reacting to a professionally written scholar article about a chosen topic. Some topics I considered were in relation to gaming, music, food, or peace/soul. Inevitably, I chose a topic about the powers of manifestation. The article expands on the idea of perspective, and how each positive or negative choice you make affects how your day goes. As well as all the fancy psychology behind it, it discusses how and why one person could willfully bring their life to a better place through the use of energy. 

"We all have our own reality bubbles, but how would you know yours is the right one?"

To conclude, this was a recap of everything that has happened in AEP class so far - from my perspective, at least. We will be doing our reaction to the articles we picked out next week. With more to come, I just hope that time doesn't fly by too quickly. 

AEP BLOG 1.1

Hello again!

    After our numerous virtual meetings, we are now finally in the same room with each other. Can't believe it only took two whole years...(sarcasm)

    I actually thought I'd never see the day but yet here we are, writing our blogs in silent in front of each other on our tiny little laptops. I've only been here for three weeks but I can say that it for sure feels less draining. The amount of workload might be the same, however seeing my peers on the daily actually helps a lot. I feel as if I have my own little support system to keep me going. This is because I can physically see and feel their emotions as well as they can see mine. Hence, it lets me know that I am not alone.

    One thing I still can't seem to wrap my head around is how we're all seniors now. We literally went into lockdown when we were fourteen and now we're mostly seventeen year olds. Even though we were always so silent during our virtual meetings we finally managed to speak to each other face to face. So I guess thats one very important advantage we got from having offline school.

    During our first week of AEP, Miss Disa was kind enough to let us adjust to the schedule. Miss did say that she was also the one adjusting but I still appreciate the relaxing time we had because of it. We calmly played scrabble against each other and made great use of our vocabulary. Though, we did end up a mess because of the amount of letters we ended up lacking.

    Though for this week, I was kind of nervous about walking into AEP class. I acknowledge how late I was in submitting our project one part one. I only finished at twelve in the morning and I don’t really have an excuse for that except that I simply wasn’t expecting my mental block to last that long. I decided to write about the fast fashion industry and the overconsumption that comes with it. 

    In that class Miss Disa started off by checking my project and I ended up finding out about just how much of an interest she had in sustainable clothing. It made me really happy when Miss Disa was barely able to contain herself when she read my response. I found that we shared an interest and I ended up learning much more about my essay topic from her. Not to forget the amount of feedback I’ve gotten with it. I like how I was able to get Miss Disa to talk about her contribution to sustainable consumption. It made me feel like my hours of writing wasn't for nothing.

    We had a really nice and meaningful talk in this weeks AEP lesson and I can even say that it ended up being the highlight of my day. With Medo's project on manifestation, we discussed a lot about having a positive mindset and how it'd impact our life. I talked about the class afterwards and we ended up agreeing that the AEP class seemed like an extension of Elle's psychology class. I really enjoyed this week's class and I can't wait to see what we'll come up with next.

    I do prefer grade twelve's project compared to what we had before lockdown. The reason being how I'd always cram the vocabulary memorization in the morning of. I just find it nice that we now have the freedom to write about anything we want. I guess the hardest challenge now is seeing how my creativity decides to run during certain times. My first project ended up being late because of a mental block I had. I guess with this in mind, I'd need to start researching on ways to get out of a mental block.

See you guys next time!

Signing off,

Ratih.

Blog 1.1

  

Hello there, It's been a while since I've written anything here, and hopefully I'll write something decent enough for anyone to read.

 

It's the third week of school, and it's still odd for me to go to class face-to-face, actually seeing people physically and having contact with people. I'm not very used to this, but I'm trying to manage myself bit by bit. But anywho, I've been quite enjoying my AEP class. I just remembered that this would be my last class with Ms. Disa I still miss art class, but hey, at least I still have AEP.  

In the first week of class, if I recall correctly, we did scrabble after having a short introduction regarding what we were going to expect. I admire the goal of how we, the grade 12 students, should have built a comprehensive showcase of who we are and how we will express ourselves. and the overall presentation of our best selves, while also exploring who we are and preparing for the future that awaits us. Because I know that we're all still figuring ourselves out, hopefully by the time we graduate, we'll know something.

I'd describe the AEP class as calm yet a wee bit jolly. Before last week, I actually spent time at home and attended class online instead. And just seeing that stuffed toy looking like I was also in class made my day better, hands down. Oh, and while that was happening, I finally started researching the topic that I wanted to talk about, probably because it is so directly connected to psychology or it is just one of those topics that I am drawn to, like do you ever have those random midnight thoughts? It was one of those moments where I found that certain topic.

After writing part 1, I'm not so sure what I'll prepare next for the second part. I just so hope that I'll finish my work on time 

We finally meet again, but this time it's different - Janek - AEP9 - Blog1

     Here we are again at the beginning of a new school year. How great it is to be back again in classes! But, this time...FACE-TO-FACE!!! It is truly a wonder to finally be in the classroom with my classmates and miss Disa! Within these past weeks So much has happened already! So, In this blog, I'll be sharing those experiences with you! Let's start with the first week.

    Everything during our first week was pretty chill and wasn't flooded with work just yet. Knowing miss Disa she wouldn't do that during our first week, I wasn't really worried. Instead, she gave us a week just to relax and play some Scrabble! During our Scrabble games, we got to play with our new classmates! Leo and Jane are the transferees and were both assigned to AEP with the rest of us. It was great fun to play scrabble with them and the others live and see their reactions whilst we play and place those words on the board! It wasn't all live though, as Leo wasn't really with us during the time. He is still doing classes online and he'll be doing it for the next few months since he is still in Macao. So, we had a camera set up for him on that day and miss Disa aided him in forming the words and setting them up. He wasn't alone during this time because Sayum was also online and was still waiting for his flight to the Philippines in the coming week. However, Being online didn't stop them from having fun with us that day!

    For the rest of that week, we played scrabble until our brains fried from all the words we'd made up. Sometimes I think scrabble is just a pain in the butt when given letters that can't seem to form anything. So, all you'd do is make up words and wish that miss Disa knows of it and allows it to be placed on the board. I've thought of 3 words that I thought were made up, but thank goodness they're valid. And with that lack of words in my vocabulary to win, I lost hope during our scrabble games. But somehow, I was able to win one of two games! I was astonished and joyful at that moment. That joy soon faded as the next meeting was where we played backward scrabble. It was a nightmare! I couldn't make up any words and I was struggling a lot. Nevertheless, The week was a blast and was just a prep for the next week of AEP!

     In our 2nd week in AEP, we got to do some activities and start a new lesson. Here we just did some wordle and answered a seatwork. We corrected our answers at the end of the session, then did our padlet. We all did this in person, but we had our phones to answer our wordle and submit our entry for the day's padlet. It was just like any other day in AEP...just face-to-face. It all felt nice. Plus, It's good to know nothing has changed with the subject because I like it the way it is.

    During the next meeting, we got to do our first lesson. It was a short video discussing the future tense. It taught me when and how we use future tense and when to use will, won't, and going to! It was a quick lesson that was able to teach me a lot! 

    These past few weeks were most definitely a great welcome back to AEP! having been brought back to these usual sites, activities, and most of all our interactions with miss Disa made me very happy to be back. I absolutely can't wait for what's to come this school year and upcoming meetings!

The Beginning- Meral- AEP 9- Blog 1

Hello! Welcome to my first ever blog for this school year 2022-2023 of AEP class. At the time I am writing this blog, we are already on the third week of face to face class. It still hasn’t hit me that we’ve already waved our final goodbye’s to online classes.

The first week of AEP class was conducted in a great way to adjust to the new classroom setting. The ability to finally see Miss Disa and my classmates in real life is totally a different experience. No longer joining google meet, not working entirely virtually, and being able to have real time interaction is something that I was looking forward to and I’m sure not disappointed.

I put on my excited shoes once I heard we would be playing scrabble. How’d it go? Well, it was fun! I was paired with Shasmeen. We both thought our way through with the letters we picked out each round. Though we didn’t win, I remember that we did a pretty good job. On Wednesday, we played scrabble once again. This time around, there were new rules implemented to spice things up. We weren’t allowed to use words consisting of 3 letters, and we played backwards on the second round. As far as I can recall, we won second place! There were many times where we found words consisting of high points but never got to place it on the scrabble board. Even so, it was a good two rounds of scrabble. 

Moving on, we started playing wordle! I remember the words were tooth and adage. Next, we brought out our notebooks and pens to answer a short seat work. It was about grammatical sentences where we had to fill in possible words. I was a little confused at first but soon I got the right answers to most of them. Two or three mistakes here and there, but overall I’d say I did good.

The following day, there were several technical issues that ate up our time. At some point, the board wasn't working properly and there was a problem with the sound system. Luckily, it was fixed and we were able to start learning about the future tense. 

Miss Disa presented her screen of a video made by her teaching lessons of the future simple tense. It was very well put together and I learned new things that I've never really taken into consideration before. Who knew there were so many terms used in the future simple tense? 

It comes in different forms including: will, won't and going to. We also learned the different situations they are used in which included: future fact, prediction, promise, offer, request, refusal, etc. 

Later on, we jotted down our answers to four questions on a Miro board to test our knowledge on future tense and how much we remember from the lesson. Overall, it was a productive two and a half weeks. It was nice to get back on the interactive websites of Wordle, Miro, Padlet, and Blogger. Oh and ofcourse- to get back to the face to face school environment. 

Thank you for reading this blog! I hope you are having a good school experience so far. 

Signing off- Meral

 

Face to Face? - Chloe Lloveras- Blog 1 T1- AEP9

 Finally! After three years, I’m now able to attend AEP face to face. It’s my first year of high school technically and, at first, it all sounded pretty scary to me. Between my lack of social skills and me being accustomed to typing on a keyboard, I didn’t know what to expect…But wow! After the first class of AEP, this huge weight lifted off of me.

Before diving into that though, we started with “Scrabble,” the game all about combining letters that score you a variety of points. I was paired with Jane, a newcomer to AEP, who unfortunately switched to Filipino class later on. She and I clicked pretty well and won the first game of the day. We didn’t have enough time for another round, since we were only given one period, which is equivalent to fifty minutes.

But the fun didn’t stop there! We played again the next day, but with two matches this time. Janek won the first time, but Jane and I won the second. I enjoyed combining words very much because I came up with words like “candies” with the original word of “dies,” and “zesty” as well! Those scored us well over thirty points each time, which evidently brought my partner and I in the lead. 

In the following week, Jane had transferred to Filipino class, so we were only left with six of us: Sayum, Meral, Shasmeen, Leo, Janek, and myself. Miss Disa decided to mix things up with learning grammar, specifically the future simple tense. 

We answered a short seatwork with fifteen questions so she could get a better understanding of our grammar level. Although I didn’t do too bad,  I knew I could do better. I remember at the time being pretty confused with some of the blanks, since there were so many of them. The answers were just slow in coming to me. But luckily, next week, I had much better results.

With the first few weeks of AEP class, we were all starting to get the hang of this “new normal.” However, technology said otherwise. We didn’t get off to a great start since we were met with many technical difficulties. Between the echoes, sound issues, and all the gadgets, we were all as lost as Bedouins in a sandstorm! 

Thankfully, the issues were fixed later on and the lesson proceeded. We learned terms to use in the future simple tense like “will,” “won’t,” and “are/is going to.” Then we proceeded to what situation they would be used in like making a promise, offer, request, refusal, prediction, intention, arrangement, and so on and so forth. 

We all understood it fairly well and were tested on it by a special video Miss Disa created for our grade. It was really cool to see all the fun colors and effort she put into it! 

After that week, we did a recall on what we covered in the future simple tense. The time passed fairly quick and before I knew it, AEP had ended!

So, to wrap things up, AEP was totally not what I thought it was going to be. It was even better! I got to see my classmates, do some collaborative work with them, actually talk to the teacher, and play “Scrabble” face to face.

All of it felt so new. So exciting. And the start of something new! 

New Student!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a new student, I’ve never had ‘AEP’ as an actual subject. From my last school, I was about to take English Literature as an elective subject which I was debating on whether I was excited to do, since I’m not much of a reader but I definitely am a writer, so I didn’t know whether I was going to loathe the subject or enjoy it. Anyway, AEP has been great so far! I’ve been learning new things and testing my knowledge in English every day I join a class. It’s great to be learning new things as I go through subjects and I think it’s even greater when it’s something I enjoy.

One thing I'm very grateful about is that it's a very calm environment with a way of learning by practice and practice rather than memory, unlike my old school where I had to memorize everything throughout the entire year with practice coming only after I've learned everything. We are learning future tenses and, although I can use them correctly, I still had a few things to learn before being the greatest in it. 

In addition to that, we also play a few games of wordle before we start every lesson. Although it isn't very competitive, I feel it's a very good way to grab attention because I know often I will tend to lose my focus and start zoning out or even falling asleep. Although I'm not the greatest in terms of memorizing my vocabulary, I still usually get the words.

One thing I do dislike is the fact that I have to do online classes, which I wouldn't blame anyone for since I'm not in the country and I haven't yet gotten a definite date where I will fly to the Philippines to do my classes. It's very tedious to get online and, since I didn't have online last year, I have to get used to it while being completely new and being slowly introduced to face-to-face classes without even going to face-to-face classes. That aside, classes aren't the worst though. I'm able to catch up to an extent, I guess. It just has to take a little of getting used to, but that will all be thrown away once I get to classes face-to-face.

Things are definitely way more different than what I'm used to, obviously. In my old school, we used to do face-to-face classes until 4pm and have periods of 40 minutes each. However, the teachers were often very laid back with their classes and often slowed down in the curriculum, leading to very tight learning schedules which me and my classmates used to complain about. However, in FIS, it's a very, very fast learning schedule with new topics each period which is hard to catch up with since I'm so used to such a slow experience. I have been shifting into the new routine well, though, and I'm learning things as quick as I can. I think it's great that it's so much faster with more energy rather than being so loose and you can easily backtrack without paying attention.

Things used to be physical, unlike at FIS. We used to be given reminders via books and having to write down all our tasks and things we had to do over the weekend while at FIS, I am able to get reminders through Google Classroom without having to write anything, which I am super grateful about because the books they gave us to write these reminders were super big, but despite its intention, it was horrible and obnoxiously small to write anything on it.

It's been amazing to learn at FIS so far, and I'm really grateful to be here!

Welcome back backaches? HAHAH NO WELCOME TO A NEW SCHOOL YEAR

This year feels more challenging than last year even though we haven't discussed much yet. I was relaxed and it did not last long, I had to wake up from this fairy-tale haha. Almost everyday’s routine: we wake up, get to the class and finish the day with a pile of homework, a jungle. Then we take a nap, wake up and study all day. Studying is fun I loveee learning but if there are many assignments and tasks assigned nouurrr I’m sorry ma’am. It is also my fault because I tend to overwork myself till I’m burnt out and grumpy.

We started with a very bold activity for this year’s AEP class. I got to play with Iara on lexulous which was very entertaining and exciting. Since we only had one class the first day we were able to do this much. It was not surprising or different from last year for me, still stuck on my chair, in a very little space to relax my legs. However, arguably it was a big change for my classmates, shifting from online to face-to-face is not easy. To be honest, I feel pressured a lot these days.

Alisa and Huda seem like fun characters and I’m very happy that they joined us in the girl squad( still there is fahad he acts like one of us anyway). I appreciate Miss Disa’s efforts so much, thank you miss! It is so adorable to see your daily struggles. You want us to be comfortable and included, thank you! One of the greatest feelings in this world is the feeling of being cared off. So in our second meeting we worked in Miro which was the most wonderful experience. We chatted all together. It felt like I was in class. I’m a chatterbox in real life too(even though I don't talk a lot in class) so I enjoyed this brilliant idea the most hahah.

In our third session we challenged our vocabulary, trying to find the right words for lines used in graphs. Definitely helped my vocabulary. It was so fun to read my classmates' answers and to put them in the “hospital” which was oddly satisfying. I love seeing everything organized hahah. In our last meeting we played in the worldle cup game almost the whole session as a slow turtle. We did look at an amazing essay example which was very similar to my essay! Felt assuaged phew!

Back in school!

My experience in this school has been so fun ever since I befriended everyone! My classmates have been so welcoming, and it feels like I've been a part of the class since day one.

Although, I am still getting used to doing my work on physical notebooks. All of my previous schools required me to do my tasks digitally (which wasn't a problem for me because of a certain pandemic that caused a certain period of isolation which led to me being glued to a certain screen). But with enough dedication (and eagerness for good grades), I'm fairly confident I'll be able to catch up with my peers.

Despite the hardache, I've thoroughly enjoyed being part of FIS's community. Thank you for including me in this small yet bighearted school, and I hope to make a myriad of memories that everyone would be able to reminisce in the future!

- Alisa Tee (or Alyza as some might call me). <333

Blog 1.1 - First ever blog !!

My first ever blog! 

Moving to this school has been such a new experience as there are lots of new platforms that I have had to learn to use, and many unfamiliar routines that I have to get to used to. In my old school, we used to only use one digital platform for everything like notebooks and meetings (even if we were already f2f) but as soon as I came to FIS, the thrill of being able to use books and blogs again just makes me even more thrilled to see what’s yet to come.

On the first day, we only had 10 minutes for each period but at first, I had gone to ESL since I wasn’t confident enough but by the next day, I decided to challenge myself and go to AEP. Then came the 3rd of August, our first lesson. We played scrabble to start us off and I think this was a great way to start of the first actual AEP lesson in grade 10 as it allowed us to interact and get to know each other more. It also helped me to relax a bit since we didn’t have to do any work. After playing a normal game of scrabble, Ms Disa told us to try ‘reverse scrabble’ which is where we couldn’t place down three-lettered words and we had to spell it backwards. This was my favourite part of the lesson because it made everyone confused and it got really funny to keep on spelling and reading the words backwards. 

The second lesson, I think, of AEP, I was introduced to a new platform called Miro. At first, I had struggled a lot to get into the app and onto the right board but eventually, we got there. On Miro, we were tasked to write down as many synonyms as we could to describe line graphs. While I was writing down the words, I felt really confident but then soon realised what the lines meant and as we went through the words with Ms Disa, nearly all of the words were sent to the ‘hospital’, with the help of Sara. 

For the next few weeks, we start of each class with two to four rounds of Wordle Cup. This game really gets your mind going but I get really nervous as it has a timer of 4 minutes and that makes me panic, thus, having a lot of words scrambled in my head. We were doing quite a few vocabulary activities and comparing essays. Ms Disa had just told us that we are going to start writing essays and I’m looking forward to learning more about the structure, language and tips on writing a good essay, as that is what I tend to struggle on.

That’s it for my first blog! Can’t wait to write the next one :DD

AEP Blog #1.1 “Bye bye, google meet?”

 Salutations dear readers, Ms Disa and the invisible internet alien that haunts the cupboard at night. 

Gosh! It has been such a long time since Ive written a blog. My fingers are rusty and my brain is flat. I suppose I dont have a good way to convey how much my life has changed these past few months. New experiences and new chapters, new plots and new challenges! 

Thats right, welcome to school year 2022-2023! With a huge twist, now face to face! 

After all the grueling 2+ years of staying inside my humid room, shuffling between dozing off or hurting my eyes, all the way to mastering the use of many websites just only when I heard that we won’t really be prioritizing them anymore. With a fully blown hybrid class environment and subtle covid precautions brings a whole new scenery for FIS veterans and FIS welcomers. 

To introduce myself again, Im Ayesha! Nice to meet you. 

When it comes to self introduction, I cant help but ponder over what I can provide as a student, as a daughter and as a friend. What are the qualities I wish to share with others? In the end I can only come up with just a few words and details that almost every student would share. Their birthday, age, nationality , hobbies or what not…

Differences are hard to notice when you’re talking about yourself, but differences in other people feel easier to spot. We would think about how the lockdowns have changed us, perhaps physically, mentally , and spiritually. If you were to ask me, then I believe that I became a weirder person. Well, thats what my sister said. Im proud of my accomplishments even if they may not seem like accomplishments to others, they do for me and I think thats what matters the most. 

Well let me start again, 

Nice to meet you, Im Ayesha! I wear the hijab with pride and share my world through art. The world I see not so clearly, but full of colour and people that share different experiences that you can always learn from. Im a person who finds joy in many forms of art. Topics like writing, music, maths, painting or even just the art of speaking is something I wish to master as well as the previously said topics. Im not the best in practical academics. I procrastinate and laze around, forgetting my to-do list left in my bulky pen case. 

One day, I was sitting in my couch waiting for sanity to come save my day. I was nervous, sweating and shaking unlike my sibling who’s sitting in the other side of the sofa, her face was gleaming with “IM EXCITED!” . A paradoxical dynamic if you’d as me. I was excited per say because I was finally able to not rely on my sluggish wifi in hopes to make me actually understand what my teacher is talking about. My sister on the other hand was super hyper because she would finally be able to meet her friend’s she has been waiting to meet for so long! In my case I was only excited to see a few which Im very thankful to have the privilege to meet them a lot more than usual. (Props to you Dilara!) Its just, the assessments might be able to take over me just like they did in online classes, although right now its not as bad as I expected! I just hope I can keep it up.

My debate friend told me months before the orientation that some of hew classmates will come to FIS. I got to see them in the first day and they were very nice! I felt glad that I knew everyone within the first week of school. Thankful that I didn’t have to go through an awkward phase of not being able to approach someone just because I didn’t know their name. 

Here we are now, in the 3rd week of school still getting used to the whole “face to face-hyrbrid” classes. I feel like the same new me. A different yet similar person, a changed one but still the Ayesha that everyone knows. 

Now for AEP! 

Allowing myself to suffice for a class that I wasn’t able to bring my entire focus on during the online classes because of countless difficulties was frankly not an easy job. 

Except thats what I thought. 

When I entered the classroom in the 4th floor, reminiscing the times I used to walk in those same hallways with my classmates and go down the stairs to fill our stomachs and chat around. I took a few steps until I saw the rose door. A door that I haven’t seen for so long, the art and AEP room that I remember going to each week is finally right in front of me. Greeted by the same teacher who makes you tensed up but relaxed at the same time, engages you with her fun aura and overall allows you to feel safe in her classroom. Thats right, Ms Disa! 

During our first week we did some brain work. Which is what we call, “Remembering what we learnt”

We did this in miro which we were already well versed in. The new students, Huda and Alisa got the hang of it really quickly! Which was great. We didn’t use the smartboard that much that day, relying on our devices to help us make comments and posts about what we did before. Being able to recall is a very vital element in making your brain work! So it acted as our fuel to start the school year. 

The week after that we started to use miro for simple vocab. This type of vocab is used in describing graphs. Words like decreasing, increasing, staying the same. We gave all the synonyms we could and slashed the ones out which cannot be feasible to describe changes in a bar graph. Then we did what I like to call a “Diagnostic test”. We had to write an essay in the span of 15 mins with the topic of describing the bar graph that was given to us. I think in that moment, I wrote the worst essay Ive ever seen in my entire life.Not to mention the chicken scratch handwriting I haven’t dared to improve during the 3 month break. 

Currently, I am spending this AEP lesson for writing a blog. Once again, with my rusty fingers and flat brain. Surely, I wish for a better output next time, but for now this is what I have. 

Thats all for this blog. See you! 

AEP Blog 1.1 “Back to school”

 Welcome to my first blog of the school year, for the first classes we had in AEP, we just played scrabble for the whole period as a way of enjoying being in each others company and schools finally being face to face after two years. I am very happy that we are finally in a classroom environment and that I can finally see my classmates again. I definitely feel like face to face is more productive as there are less distractions that can make it harder to learn. 

This year, we will be doing more of essays rather than vocabulary, which I am happy about as I like to write. During online classes we would just type all our answers on a google docs and submit it through google classroom. But now, we are using notebooks after a long time, it takes longer to write in notebooks than just typing in google docs, however, writing on a piece of paper feels more natural.

For the second week in AEP, we went to miro and wrote down on sticky notes our positive and negative experiences during the lockdown and our thoughts and expectations for the new school year. 

The next meeting, we did two exercises in miro. For the first exercise, we had to list down synonyms of lines indicating a straight, upwards and down line. This exercise definitely helped my vocabulary and I learned new words that I can use to describe lines! 

For exercise 2, Miss Disa posted a graph on miro which we had to analyze and summarize the information given in the graph in an essay. I really enjoyed writing the essay and I even used some of the words we found in exercise 1 for this essay.

This week on Monday, we started the period with four rounds of worlde, we played worldecup which allows you to play and compete with other people at the same time. After that, Miss Disa posted a link on google classroom with a link to a line graph sample task which included the graph and an essay that analyzed it. There were also tips on how to analyze a line graph which was helpful. We had to read the sample answer and compare our answer with it and make notes on how to improve our essay.

For today, we started off with four rounds of wordle cup and then proceeded to write our blogs for the rest of the period and when we are done with our blogs we will play scrabble. 

I am delighted that we are back in class! It feels great being around my teachers and classmates and being in a classroom environment. AEP classes have been very productive, fun and relaxing. We also have our online classmates join through google meet and although we had problems with including everyone in the class to the discussion, Miss Disa solved it by making most of our exercises through miro, which is online so that both the online and face to face students can communicate with each other easily.

Thank you for reading my blog, stay safe and healthy and see you in my next one!

Fahad aep blog

In the first week we introduced ourselves,we played scrabble,I failed horribly  but then I learned how to play it,the next week,we did world cup every class,we got paired into groups,it didn't matter really because its not like we could help each,we did miro too,I don't really remember much but once miss told us go write words,for example synonyms for giving upwards,downwards etc,and then we used the words to see if they make sense,like "the price of fuel is fluctuating,sara and maryam were the organisers,we had a trash bin In miro for the words that didn't make sense,miss gave us an graph and we had to write a summary about it,like for example,we described if the number of inquires through letter,in person,were going up and down,this week on Monday,we reviewed it,we readed other people answering it,and then took down notes,today we did world cup,my group mates were adi,huddah,alisa,signing up for blogger was a headache,it kept going crazy and it made me go crazy too,finally at the end it worked and now I'm currently writing this blog you are reading 

Blog 1.1 Finally a 10th grader :D

A new academic year and I'm 15 now. How time flies. It seems like it was only yesterday that I was 11 back in Indonesia fighting with my year 8-9 male upperclassmen. It seems like some things never change!

Anyways, how has these first few weeks been? What did we do? How does it feel to be learning in school for the first time? 

On Monday 1st August, we only had 10 minutes of class due to it still just being orientation day. Miss briefly summarized our activities for this year like writing essays and whatnot. Wednesday 3rd August, we played Scrabble for two whole periods. I wasn't looking forward to it due to my lack of skills when it comes to Scrabble but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

Monday 8th August, we made a Miro about reviewing and recalling our feelings regarding online schooling. We also made comments on different people's stickies and I managed to have a good laugh. (My phone wasn't working for Miro so my posts and stickies were really just "comments". It only works on Iphone if you have the app.) 

Wednesday 10th August, we wrote our first essay! But first, we went to Miro and practiced our vocab for when we describe line graphs as that's what our essays will be about. Miss then showed us a line graph and using the words we picked out in Miro to describe what happens in the graph. Sadly enough she told us to handwrite it on paper and I hated every second of it. But luckily enough she told us to keep the essay simple.

This Monday, 15th August, we warmed up with Wordle Cup (which is basically competitive Wordle) and we reviewed on Miro what we did last week Wednesday. After that, Miss showed us another essay about line graphs and we used it as a reference and note what we can add to our previous attempt at an essay.

And today, Wednesday 17th August (It's Indonesia's Independence day!), we warmed up with Wordle Cup again (in which I'm still the reigning champion of) and we're now working on this blog. Pretty fun way to deal with it because I was NOT looking to write another handwritten text. Typing is fine. Typing is good. But hand cramps from writing on paper is a whole nother thing.

Anyways, I do enjoy writing down all my experiences from the past week again. I'd rather not talk all that much about my summer vacation since most of it was just me staying home and being an unpaid babysitter to 2 demons and 12 cats.

I think that'll be all for this blog.

Thank you for reading! 

Blog 1 : A new start - Iara Coqueiro

In the past few weeks, we've been playing on wordlecup and have been doing vocab exercises, plus the first day where in we played scrabble just for the fun of being in class physically (which i was there in online by the time). 

It was fun overall and i enjoyed the time i had in AEP class and am looking forward for more fun experiences like this hahahah.

Well that's for today's short blog, thanks for reading! Bye byeeee