Blog 1.2

 Second blog!

I’ve now made a lot of improvements and have adjusted to this school already. Though the system and schedules were quite confusing and hard to catch up to at first, it’s getting easier to follow now. Although, this is my first time ever having midterms and I think I did quite well this term, but we still have finals to go through so I have to start studying now  0:

This half-term we start off our AEP lessons with different games like codeword, wordle, hurdle, qwordle and more. Starting off lessons like this really helps us to be more awake and warm up on our vocabulary. After that we would start to work on improving our essays. We have been analysing graphs and improving our vocabulary to add onto our essays. 

Analysing the graphs were a challenge for me at first since I didn’t know how to format my paragraphs and where to start in describing, I’ve also been looking into the details too much. Because of this, we recently have been doing exercises on the miro board to find 3 pointers for each graph that we were given. Using these pointers, it was easier to start off the essay. I felt so relieved when I had finally gotten the gist of the format.

Looking forward to learning more on how to improve my essays and to more games for starters :DD

AEP Blog 1.2 - Dilara

Hello everyone!! Welcome to my second blog of the school year. We are finally finishing up first term. This remaining half of first term has been busy, fun and exciting. We have been doing a lot of essays in AEP in which we had to analyze a graph.

August 22

After writing our essays the last meetings, we decided to check out templates and found tips on how to write a good essay. I had found many different sample essays and ways to improve my own.

August 31

We started the class off with the usual, wordle. Then we checked out a website that contained a lot of vocabularies which would come in handy when we were going to start writing our graph essay later on. We did a lot of analyzing graph essays, honestly I enjoy these kinds of essays because I have rarely ever written an essay like this, so improving my ability to analyze and describe important parts in a graph was definitely fun.

Sept 12 

On Sept 12, we played a different game than what we normally would. We played code words where we had to find words using the letter given. Then for the remaining of the class, Miss allowed us to study for our upcoming midterms.

Sept 27

We started this class off with codewords, then did an essay for 20 minutes. Once we were done, we started making origami frogs and we had to compete them against miss Disas frog to see who’s frog would jump the greatest length. We all competed and tried our best, but in the end Miss Disas frog still won. Her frog was truly invincible. Due to us losing, we had to write another essay in 20 minutes.

Sept 28

We played quordle and then had a relaxing and fun game of scrabble.

Oct 4

We started off with waffle wordle then found three main points on miro about numerous graphs.

Oct 11

We started off with hurdle then played lexulous scrabble. However it took very long for me and my classmate to join a game together, so we had about 10 minutes to actually play the game.

I truly learned a lot in AEP over the first term, I now have a better understanding of  how to properly analyze and summarize a graph essay, which is by finding the three main features that really stick out to you, then write a short summary which should usually be around 150 words. 

I am looking forward to more AEP classes filled with analyzing and summarizing graphs!

Blog #1.2 “Getting used to a busy schedule”

 Good day dear reader! It sure has been a while since I have written a blog. 

My hands are stuck and my mind is not going on a roll. It seems as if my fingers have forgotten how to type with such speed and precision that I would be able to get compared to when I was in 7th Grade. 

Sometimes, I have to write a little more just to get myself “into the zone” of writing a blog in AEP. 

Truth be told, my 7th Grade blogs have been nothing but my old self thinking that I could write amazing things. Yes, thats right! Thats me thinking I was a good old genius…What awful times 

“

 You know those times when you have a quiz on a certain time and you studied for it just on the night before and you realized that everyone in your class forgot there was a quiz today? Yeah, I've been there, usually when that happens I have both a happy and an annoyed feeling. Annoyed you ask? Well I get annoyed because now I have to wait another week just to have that quiz. I have a happy feeling because I don't have to feel bad even though I studied the night before! I'm such a great student.

“

-August 24,2019

Definitely! Just look at my last definitely-not-sarcastic sentence. 

Oops,  I made another sarcastic sentence. 

As the days in AEP pass by, especially during face-to-face classes, I remember the days where I used to complain about having too much work and too little time. I am realising how online classes just allowed us to think and be into a predicament many people face. We think as if time is moving by really quickly, but this is just an illusion many forget to see through. Now in face-to-face classes, I have double or even triple times the amount of work I used to have when I was in online classes. Despite this, I still manage to finish everything somehow, although I do indeed still feel tired and exhausted. Evaluating yourself is something that you should do often, I think its something I should do more too. One thing I realised is that I no longer feel unaccomplished. I actually feel happy finishing the work I do, and that was something I wanted to feel for the past 2 years of online classes. 

These days, many events have been happening. Sometimes it takes a toll on the way my mind works, confining my brain into a fight or flight response with the work that must be accomplished by a 10th grader. Everyday I still feel just a little sleepy, but when I talk with my classmates and try to listen to class lectures, I manage to wake up and then enjoy a nice nap on the 45 minute ride home. One thing about me though is that I like it when I have work that I can finish. I like feeling like I have something to do, something to achieve and something that I can be proud about. Every little assessment, job, and skill. It was very different in online classes because I would always find a way to just end my job in the fastest way possible, most of the time. 

During the past months in AEP, whilst getting used to face-to-face classes and events, we have tried and conquered many ways to do our learning methods. Grade 10 is all about essays, and so, we write a lot of essays! So far, we have been writing about graphs. These graphs mostly contain two to three subjects and these objects show a change in numbers. Me and my classmates try our best to translate these graphs into an essay format suitable for a passable grade for Ielts. We would go on miro, our well known digital whiteboard, and then try to find words that can help us for these essays. We try to also analyze the main points we are supposed to write about. Then, we put these points into structured sentences using the right words to make a good essay. 

At the start, I was thinking that it would be a simple task to do. During our first essay lesson, we were asked to write as essay immediately to stand as our starting point. I thought I would do alright because I’d think ,”Ive written many essays before, surely this one would go the same way as my other english essays.” 

I was far from right. 

Writing these types of essay really mixes up my brain. I need to use specific words and I am limited with the amount of opinions I use. The word counts always tie my hands up. Ms would tell us many rules only for them to pile up in my messy file storage in my brain. This is why she thought of something quite extraordinary! Which was to try to have baby steps in miro so we would be able to work out how to make our essays a lot better. What we do is that we gather out main points and contrasting ideas in several graphs while trying to analyze them. 

I personally find taking baby steps really tough. I am a person who likes to make things finish faster especially if it has to do with something I am not that versed in.

Aside from daily word games and shenanigans, I definitely learnt that I need to learn how to take smaller steps at a time to achieve goals quicker… maybe that sounds a bit too broad to get from a lesson but, here it is! 

Thank you for reading this blog, see you in the next one!

Blog 1.2 - Alisa

This half term's AEP was a lot more enjoyable than the last! I'm getting used to our daily routine of wordle as our starter and scrabble as our time-spender. Additionally, now that I've had more time to bond with my classmates, groupwork seems more of a fun activity rather than a challenge! 

When I first joined AEP, I had no clue what I was gonna do, but every class I had gave me the motivation to actively learn about how things worked! Although I'm still not the best at writing line graph essays, I'm slowly becoming more confident in structuring my sentences (even when most of them are wrong or unnecessarily detailed).

AEP gives off a really calm and mellow vibe and it helps me to focus on my work -- especially when I'm writing an essay. There aren't many disturbances, and the background music that miss plays is really soothing. She keeps the curtains wide and the windows open so that more sunlight enters the room, making the classroom seem a lot more inviting and enjoyable in my opinion.

I've had an awesome experience in AEP so far and I look forward to continuing my studies with everyone! Thanks for reading. :DDD

Blog 1.1- AEP virtual journal

Hey!!!! The picture really just sums up my whole month, because this is all that I've been watching, or doing. And it has nothing to do with this. (swaggggg) 

Anyways, let me just start off where I came from ;> I've never been in any International School before, but it was so easy making new friends here. As I feel comfortable enough with the environment, and the people too! I came from a public school in Malaysia, so there was no such class like AEP. Thus, this is all so new to me. 

AEP class has been nothing but a major refreshment. All that we've done in this class, I considered them all to be chilly and fun! There's always something that makes us more, awake. We always do activities together as a class and I think that's a brand new experience for me to enjoy. I didn't do much activities that requires me to work together with my classmates from the school I came from. So I really do appreciate how AEP class brings people together. 

However, the things I've been learning and absorbing in this class are very much hard compared to what I usually learn in my old English classes. I managed overtime though ;)

I learn new words almost every week in this class. My classmates are all VERYYY, VERYY superb at games that requires your vocab to pop off. I learn my vocabs from each one of them most of the times in class. The games that we've been playing also milked off my knowledge of vocabularies. 

❤

What activities have we been doing?

Scrabble

Eghhhh, sounds really boring isn't it? But trust me, it's NOT!! It's always fun because it gets really competitive among my classmates. We would always try so hard to get points and win. We always partnered up and I somehow couldn't stay away from my seatmate, Izzah so we always get partnered up together. The very first Scrabble game we played, WE WON!!! That was really unexpected to be honest, because I'm pretty dumb when it comes to forming up words ANDDDD, we were going up against Anis, basically the MOST TALENTED Scrabble player. And she has a WIDE range of vocabularies.  

Wordle

This game is legit my biggest enemy. I ABSOLUTELY HATEEE PLAYING WORDLE!! I'm very bad at guessing and coming up with words. Wordle is a game where you make up a strategy and form up words to come up with the final word, which is the answer. I SWEARRRR I never win any of these. Nevertheless, it was all fun and games. It was an activity that fries up my brain and wakes me up before class. 

Others

There are a lot more other activities that we did, they're all kinda the same as Wordle but well..... I forgot all the names. In comparison, these ones are more of a teamwork as we all work together as a class and try to figure out whatever the words are. It varies from like a grouping guesses to an individual ones and it all just comes together at the end. These games are all so intuitive and build up my courage to participate in things as I always join in and help.

Miro Boards 

Our Miro boards are all so pretty and it gives me a lot of endorphins watching each one of us working together(again, see I told you AEP is all about teamwork;>). Ms. Disa always gets excited watching our boards come together because according to her, it's like watching a flower bloom when we all compile something that we learned in class, all together in one simple virtual mind map. They always end up looking so colorful and nice as well as neat and put together. The topics that we based our Miro Boards are always so generally big and controversial. So we all have our own opinions on the topic and it's such a revitalizing thing to discuss these topics while learning new vocabularies.

(See, isn't that pretty? ;>) 

❤ ❤ ❤

That is all from me ;> Goodbye!!

~Nurin

Blog 1.1 - Ayse

 10/12/2022

It’s Been A While

Greetings everyone👋🏻👋🏻

I haven’t been here for a while, not going to lie, I don’t miss typing one bit, but I do like reading back on my blogs later so I’m going to begin now, apologies for the wait.

My brain cells are working hard right now figuring out what we were doing in AEP class about 3 months ago. Hmm.. we certainly started of with Wordle, then continued with our coverage for the first semester. When I heard that we weren't going to write down essays, I was over the moon!!🥹

Im totally not exaggerating right now, maybe just a little.😅

August 10 was a fun and relaxing day, all I was missing was a cup of tea. More than a class, it felt like a get-together where everyone shared their thoughts and feelings. Miss Disa's story about her luggage was hilarious. 😆

Anyways while all these conversations were going on, I was drawing the outline of my word cloud. I could have definitely made it better, but I lacked the creativity at that moment, I was also as slow as a snail, not gonna lie. I hope to learn more in the upcoming class. Learning about the political world must be fun....right??? 

August 18 was an informative class, we did a dictionary box. I think the class went by pretty fast even though I was exhausted before I entered the classroom, since I had economics and business for a long amount of time during the day. Overall, it was fun, but I was ready to lay down in my cozy bed.

On August 31st, we started off with Wordle and got the news of having a project. It honestly gave me a shiver at first, but as Miss Disa explained further on what had to be accomplished as the final result gave me a sigh of relief. 

Basically, we were instructed to create an appreciation letter to anyone we feel like doing so and of course I did it to my mom. As I was typing down my feelings to the letter everything sounded so cliche.😆 Moving forward, in the next period we played scrabble and it was a quiet one I can say, which I'm not complaining about since it was an exhausting day itself. It was a nice way to relax myself physically and mentally.😪

On September 7,  As usual, we started AEP class with Wordle...but there was a twist to it. It was 4 Wordles at once. I truly enjoyed it. After succeeding on the wordle as a class, Miss Disa gave as a short announcement and for the first time, since I've known Miss(around 8 years), it was the first time she gave a time to do other subject tasks. So we were able to do our values project and chat about different topics which was interesting and enjoyable.❤️

On September 22, we started the day with Codeword and finished it in 6 minutes.

After that we created our own mind maps on the topic 'Issues facing young people'. After we finished our mind map, we placed our ideas in miro board. It was nice to see everyone's ideas come together.

On September 28, we continued our miro board that we started the week before, it certainly grew. We were also given three worksheets to do as a class in the same miro board, it was quite challenging. I was frightened and nervous for next weeks orals. 

Last week, we had teachers day, so I was the teacher for the class, so we just played scrabble with Hanis and Miss Disa. And lastly, today we played hurdle wordle and letter box and now I am typing down this blog! I am feeling sleepy today, honestly for the past week, my sleeping schedule has been messed up because of the English Culminating Day on Friday!

That is it!!

Blog 1.1 - Izzah

Taking School for Granted. 

Starting of the school year after years of quarantine has been really nerve wrecking. The people, papers, boards, its all been a long time since i’ve interacted or held any of these. There is a sense of a new world or perhaps, a new planet. People are excited, anxious and relieved at all the same time. 

What was thought to be a 2 week break in 2020 turned out to be almost a three year break. By then i had just started my IGCSEs and now i’m doing my a-level course. Although i have lived through those days, it feels as if I’ve just time travelled to the future. My memories are a blur, i sometimes cant even tell if some if them were real or just dreams. Despite that i’m glad to just have gone through that experience of being alone. Its not easy but it has taught me a bit about myself and how often it is nice to just spend time with yourself.  

Joining a new school has been really exciting for me. As someone who’s always moving around it really fascinates me how so different yet similar every school is. Each new school would always make me feel nostalgic of my old one, and the cycle continues. However, this school has really taught me how to be independent of my studies. It has taught me that i can trust my teachers. It has taught me how to love learning. I used to dread of going to school but after taking that for granted and coming back, it feels like home once again and Im grateful. 

Ms. Disas’ AEP

Ms. Disas’ classes have taught me that i can have fun while learning. Her lessons have really taught me teamwork as well as independent work. We started of with political words which is really useful for our history lessons as we get to explain and understand better of the topics we go through. Young people problem were a little more personal to us. Its nice to be able to express yourself in this class. I think after her classes, the students and i have been getting far more closer than we used too. Its a nice bonding session, to reconnect with people ones more.

Im really excited to talk about the other various topics we have in line and learn more about my classmates. Perhaps, we have something in common. Perhaps we have disagreements. Either way its a good form of learning more about the people you study with. 

Learning to Love Learning 

I used to struggle with studies during my igcses, keeping up with work, homework and well as actually taking interest with the things i study about. It used to be hard and tedious to sit down and watch the teacher ramble on fir hours about a certain topic, it was honestly painful. However i learnt that to study something, you must take interest in the subject in question, which is why I’ve decided to take humss. I struggled with picking a strand as stem is seen to be the more stable choice of work line however, as my mom told me “you’re happiness is worth more than money” ive come to know that although people may be earning millions, if they don’t like the job they would eventually leave. When you actually take interest in a subject it makes learning more easy to listen. Ms Disas classes have taught me how to love my subjects as we slowly touch in the topics that i will learn in my core subjects.

Thank you for listening to my rant :)).

- Izzah