merry christmus (Leo's Wonderful Posts)

 What a wonderful day to be sitting here writing this on a chilly, winter afternoon with a cup of hot cocoa and a glimpse of snow right outside my window! Just kidding, living in a place without any snow is such a bummer. Although it's already freezing here, snow never came upon this land, sadly. So, it's kind of a lose-lose situation — it's cold, just cold. Living somewhere without contact to any warmth is unbearable. The thing about freezing climates is that I lose focus trying to find warmth somewhere else, so more often than not, I'll be off scavenging my closets just for a fluffy jacket and whatnot. Yes, I know, I have breaks to do it, but typically I'm eating during the breaks as I forget what that I'm supposed to be under warm clothes. But, you know, at least we have a change in weather. Anyway, cold aside, I know the Philippines must be warm. I haven't been there in 3 years after the pandemic hit. It's sad, really, that I could've been out in a warm place, but now I'm stuck in a position, quite literally, because of the shivering temperatures that make me sick. On the topic of Philippines, my flight has been confirmed to be right after my exams, which, finally, I get to come over and feel the heat. After packing everything's to be in the house, heating is incredibly scarce, just to save up on some money because the electricity bill here is terribly high, which isn't any fun. My source of entertainment has also been packed: books, devices, musical instruments (except for my guitar, which I try playing now and then since I'm losing my mind trying to find something to do), or my notebooks. It's a shame, really, that I have to face the consequences before finally ending my sought-out journey to eternal happiness! How graceful.

Moving on, since it's the end of the term, it's time for the summary! The most famous part of the AEP blog!

Wordle games! What a blast it was to play them somewhere where I can't interact much. I can't say much about these games since I only could ever guess some of the words, like that one time when we were playing anonymous wordle and somehow I managed to get 3 confirmed letters on the first try. It was kind of funny, that we then proceeded to put in wrong letters up to 0 confirmed letters as we progressed that one game. What a time. Anyway, other games we played were fun, too. Like that one game which I absolutely despise trying to finish, Griddle. Which is kind of a crossword-wordle kind of mix. The gracious amount of letters they give are so horrible, that I yell internally whenever I have a missing letter to a word. Anyway, yeah. It gets brutal when I play wordle games. Speaking of games, the game that's on my head right now is a crossword. Maybe I should go and play some after writing this.

As for the practical things we do in class (*wordle is practical*), we did the thing I'm most best at, poetry. We did lay off of grammar this term, but that's okay, since I'm horrible at in-depth grammar since, despite being foreign to English countries, I still manage to be fluent in English, so naturally I already have that sense of what to write and what not to write. Unlike grammar, however, I do well in poetry, surprisingly. I have even won competitions about poetry (just joking, the nation-wide competitions I joined I got second place), so it was, indeed, easy to come with a poem and then heavily polish it before delivering it foolishly, much like I always do. Despite that, I think it came out pretty well, even if I did manage to overdramatize scrabble. Yes, I did, but we move on.

So, as I say my goodbyes to this wretched place, I take my luggage, and finally step into the scorched lands and take my chances to melting in a boiling haven. Anyways, bye now!

Sorry title machine broke

In AEP we're doing essays based on maps. There will be no explanation on the maps, and we're supposed to make sense of it and turn it into an essay. There are often just two maps and usually only have the before and after something happened. The uniqueness of essays based on maps is that the language used is slightly different to a regular essay and can be done quickly most of the time. In the mornings we usually spend 10 - 15 minutes doing word games like online scrabble or some variation of scrabble.

Been a while...again... Blog#2-AEP9-Janek :)

Heh...bee It's been a long time off this platform, and there's been a lot that's happened and much that I've still got to share. And, seeing from what has happened in this term, this blog would seem to be a long one after being back and writing another blog. However, there are exams next week and I haven't the time to write such a lengthy blog. This is also with the Christmas celebration nearing, wherein lots of planning is needed. To be honest, I'd assume that the midterms and Christmas are close and that miss would just let us off, but nope. I'm here stuck in my room having to finish this blog! But since Miss Disa is a fantastic teacher, I'll do it for her:))). Now, Let's make this quick, shall we? Let's start off at the beginning of the 2nd term, finally back from all the traveling and now in the Philippines.

throughout November and December, we had gone and explored the variety of different word games, in relation to the notorious wordle! It was an interesting journey looking through all the games miss gave us each day. So far, We had come across hurdle, quordle, griddle, and weaver. Each one has different rules, however, still retaining wordle's appearance. It's been making my eyes hurt recently just looking at the board and seeing all these games, but I still find it challenging and fun to solve each one. Now that you know about the games, I'd like to share a bit about my experience with each one.

Let's start off with Hurdle. each time the class plays hurdle, it always seems to give me headaches. I never seemed to get it and my head just gets foggy. The words no longer come up and I have to eventually rely on my classmates to solve most puzzles. On the other hand, Griddle is actually quite easy, but can also be tricky. It pretty much just follows the way scrabble is played along with a leaderboard at the end. It's really entertaining to see miss devastated upon seeing a higher score than hers. So she tries again, whilst using the words of the player who won. The class pretty much just watches or sometimes even helps her in looking for words that may give her a better score. This actually happened once, of course, with my help. I had given her a word that was worth 300+ points and helped her reach #1. I was most proud of myself and miss Disa at the time, as well as seeing the previous #1 dropdown. Now, Moving on, we also have quordle. To be honest with you, I don't remember much about this one. So, I gave this one a try, and I very much dislike it. I tried winning, but to my surprise, I didn't get one word out of the 4 panels. I don't know what's with this one, but I can't seem to win it. 

Now, To our last wordle game, weaver. My favorite wordle-themed game has to be this one. Here we have to use the 1st word to make the 2nd word just by changing 1 letter of the word. This challenging task calls for a lot of brain power, which is the type of game that I like. I actually only played this once in class, but I gave it another shot at home. I once again didn't win, but during our session in class, I suppose the team effort of the girls led us to victory with the least amount of words needed to reach the 2nd word. I really hope that next time I'll get to help win, but that'll be for next year:)

Alright, Now that everything was said about the wordle games, I'd like to also mention the passive voice videos and exercises. These were usually done in our double periods, sometimes in a single period. In these periods, we would usually watch a really colorful and comical video that miss made and an exercise alongside. The exercises were relatively easy and the videos were quite short and entertaining with their upbeat music. These types of lessons always seem to keep me going and invested in the topic. I hope we do more of these next year, however with a little more difficulty.

The passive voice wasn't the only big activity we were given by miss, we also had to do a poem. I used to be a poet myself...however this love of poetry soon faded when I realized how horrible my poems are. As you can tell, I seem to give up easily, but for this poem, I shall not! I started off by getting my idea which must relate to AEP. Just 10 minutes into thinking and I already jumped to a conclusion. I would make a poem about the change from online to face-to-face classes and how I feel about it. It was a short and simple poem, nothing too deep or extreme. Although, maybe its meaning may be interpreted in many ways. My relative said it reminds them of drug users. I really don't know where he got that from, but I think some of my classmates got the idea. If you'd like to see the poem, you can click this LINK and read it for yourself. Its rhythm and rhymes were all set and I published the poem. however, I'd still need to record myself reading it. With all my courage, I recorded myself despite knowing how embarrassing and weird I may sound while reading the poem. nevertheless, after this, I will be free! 

The poem is now done and we are also finally done with half of our 2nd term in AEP! It was a different one, being back and all, whilst doing these entrancing games and activities that miss never seems to disappoint us with. I really hope we get to see more of this in the coming year or years if I am to still be here at FIS. Who knows. But until then, I will enjoy every last second of this class and the experiences that come with it. Goodbye AEP, and see ya next year!

Summary - Chloe Lloveras- Blog 1 T2 - AEP9

 

 It’s that time of year again! Holidays, Christmas, and winter break is just around the corner and you can feel the excitement in the air. But before that, midterms and quizzes have pounced upon us once more, which means that it’s time for another blog! 

Starting all the way back from October, on a Monday morning, class began with a new warmup activity (that soon became an angsty favorite) called “Hurdle.” It’s similar to “Wordle” because you still have to guess a five-letter word, but you have eight tries and don’t know which letters are correct. The day’s word was “dusky,” which we miraculously guessed on our last try! Afterwards, we worked on our project and blogs.

On the following day, a game called “AntiWordle” was introduced to us. As you may have guessed from the title, our goal is to not guess the word. The amount of tries it takes us to not guess the word is our final score in the end. The trick is that we actually don’t know the word, so we may be heading straight towards it without even noticing, since we've gotten so used to playing the original version of the game.

Our score was five (a pretty average score), since we accidentally blocked ourselves into a “brick” wall. Literally! The word was “brick!” Shortly after, we continued working on our blogs and project. My blog was done for the most part, but still had a few kinks to work out. I fixed those over the weekend. 

Due to the next week being finals week, we only did a short warm-up called “Letters Boxed.” It’s not as hard as the other word games, but definitely holds enough of a challenge to get the gears in your brain turning. I finished it in five minutes. Afterwards, I studied for chemistry. 

With thirty minutes left in the period, Miss Disa decided that we should all play “Scrabble” together, since we needed a break. I got to duel with Leo because I went online (due to a bad cold). We encountered some technical problems, but, overall, it was a good match. Well played! 

The next morning kicked off with “Quordle,” which we finished quickly! The day then ended with us studying for the upcoming exams. 

In the following weeks, after term break, we exercised our brains with “Hurdle” and the word was “sauté.” Since it was the beginning of term two, we got to write our reflection blogs summarizing term one. 

In the first class of term two, we started fresh with “Hurdle” and it was a really tough one Afterwards, Miss Disa gave us a small quiz to test our knowledge on past participle. I didn’t do well the first time, so I guess I was pretty rusty. But my second attempt was much much better! I assume that I’ve just gotten so used to using different words in different tenses that it flows so naturally that I don’t think about it anymore. Haha! 

To pick up our spirits after that mini test, we played “Griddle.” It’s very similar to “Scrabble,” but it’s so weird because some words gain more points than others even though they’re really short or don’t use that many “power-ups.” Anyways, we were told to play in two teams: girls against boys. In the end, the girls scored 501 points, but it still wasn’t enough to beat the boys sadly! 

Next, we did a few grammar exercises, which we decided to check in a future meeting. It was about differentiating the passive and active expressions. Then, the day ended with an exit ticket. 

On the fifteenth of November, we were instructed to play "Quordle," which we figured out faster than usual. The only tricky word was "zebra." Upon completion, we moved on to watching a video about the passive and active tense Miss Disa made for us. They all had examples about delicious-looking cakes! Basically, the main difference between the two is the order. In the active tense, the subject comes first, but in the passive, it's the action. For example, an active tense would be: "Sally ate the cake"; whereas, the passive would be: "The cake was eaten by Sally." 

During the following Monday, we played "Hurdle." Then, due to us only having one period (since there was an honors ceremony the period before that), we proceeded to answer more grammar exercises. I struggled in typing the words on my phone and placing them on the correct line, since, if I wanted to change something in the text box, it wouldn't allow me to for some reason. So, then I'd have to redo the entire text again! It was frustrating, but I managed to get them done.

The next AEP session began with "Quordle," which we surprisingly managed to figure out in ten minutes even though Sayum and Janek were absent. Because of the lack of people present, we completed more passive and active exercises instead of checking our previous worksheets. Then, the period ended with the usual exit ticket.

To kick off the morning with a fresh start, we were encouraged to try at a new word game: "Weaver!" To win, you have to place the least amount of words going from one to another like from "scar" to "face." The only dilemma is that you can only change one letter at a time. In the end, we got to finish it in seven tries (a high score). Afterwards, we were instructed to brainstorm ideas about a poem regarding AEP, which would serve as the term's project. 

Another Tuesday morning began with "Griddle." I'm not much of a fan for this game because I honestly don't feel the same satisfaction as the other word games. I believe this is because the point system seems too random and even if you do happen to find a really good word, the result usually ends up only scoring a few amount of points. In total, I only got five hundred thirty points that day thanks to Janek's and Miss Disa's words. To wrap things up, we further discussed the details of our poem and blog. 

The AEP period began with "Hurdle" and the word was "prune." Then, we moved on to the real work: writing our project (poem), recording it, and typing our blog. Although I managed to finish my poem, which is about the different word games we play in AEP, I chose not to record it at school, since I find it better to do so at home where there'll be no distractions. Then, I started working on my blog. Because midterms is right around the corner, there's definitely been a rush to get all this work done. 

Speaking of which, that also means that Christmas break is coming! Everyone's been buzzing about it recently and it's honestly got me all excited too! I just hope midterms won't be a pain to do. 

Anyways, as you can tell from this blog, the past few months have been pretty chaotic. We were met with challenges, hardships, laughter, blogs, grammar, the active tense, and the passive tense. We even got to write a poem and play tons of word games! I've really enjoyed the past few months and hope that this continuous streak of good luck and fun continues. Wish me luck with exams! 

A Productive Time- Meral- AEP 9- Blog 3

Hello! In this blog I will talk about all the test practices, word games, and a project we've completed in AEP class so far this 2nd term. Plus, my thoughts and feelings regarding them. Let's begin! 

On November 7, the first day back in AEP class following finals, we played Hurdle as the day's warm-up activity. After roughly 30 minutes, we successfully identified the word "sauté".  For the remainder of the time, we wrote a "Retrospective Blog", containing recollections from the first term. It was a good start to second semester as I find looking back at all that has been completed a good way to feel that sense of accomplishment with a sprinkle of motivation for the upcoming activities and projects. 

The following day, class started with the warmup game of Hurdle once again. With only one attempt remaining to fill in the blanks to find the word, we continued the one Grade 7 were initially searching for rather than starting from scratch. Fortunately, we were able to access the website on our phones, and after some searching, we managed to find the word "singe." 

Next up, Miss Disa told us to finish our blogs, and in case we already were, she gave us a test on the past participial tense to answer. Since I had finished my blog, I clicked the website and took the test. I was able to earn an overall score of 42/50. Although I'm happy with my score, as I found the test quite tricky, I definitely could improve. I was unaware of how frequently I make minor errors in my everyday language. I believe it was an eye- opening and informative test.

The next week, we were introduced to a new game called Griddle. It is essentially a combination of Wordle and Scrabble, which makes it challenging to think of words that would reward us with the most points. Girls and boys were split up into two groups. Even though we didn't win, we scored 501 points in the end, which I guess is fairly good considering it was our first time. After that, we completed an exam on passive voice. Although these are the only ones we have checked so far, I received a score of 10 out of 12. 

The next day, we started AEP class with Quordle, a warm-up game that works somewhat similarly to Wordle except that the general search is for four different words. Next, Miss Disa displayed a YouTube video on passive tense on her computer screen. I found the video very creative and educational as always. Miss then gave us an overview of two PDF documents to provide us with more information on the passive tense. It was given for us individually to read-through on our free time.

On November 21, our first period was taken up by the honors' awarding ceremony. By the second period of AEP class that day, we did a warm-up game, being Hurdle. I remember I was very tired that day, so I stared blankly at the board, waiting for the others to find the word. Soon enough, the word "plank" was found after several attempts. Afterward, Miss Disa assigned us two exercises on past participle in google classroom. I managed to finish one of them and turned it in. Miss Disa told us that we would complete the other exercise the next day, and so that's what we did.

After a game of Quordle that lasted for ten minutes, I opened my phone and visited the AEP google classroom to complete the exercise 3 from where I had left off on Monday. At first I struggled to create text boxes for filling in my answers on the active tenses in Kami, but I soon realized that it was easier to type my answers in Google Docs. Even though the exercise was confusing at first, I believe I did well overall. Lastly, we played Griddle as a closing remark for the AEP class of that day!

During the double period on November 28, Miss Disa introduced us to a new game called Weaver. The objective of the game is to find the least amount of words, with only one change of the letters each try, that leads you from the first word up to the final word. The less amount of words one constructs from the initial word to reach the final word, the better! That day we were challenged with the starting word, being "scar", and the final word, being "face". Overall it was done in 7 tries which I'd say was pretty good. Lastly, Miss gave us a heads- up for the project where we had to write a poem relative to AEP classes. 

The moment I heard that we'd be writing a poem, I was very excited! The fact that we could talk about anything pertaining to AEP classes was something I was glad about. I guess Miss Disa did that so we wouldn't be limited and it would enable us to expand our creativity. With that in mind, I hurried my way to the notes app in my device and managed to brainstorm five poem topics, which I eventually narrowed down to one that just so happened to be the first one I had typed out.

I composed my poem about rainy scrabble days, with the correlation on how rainy days indicate a game of scrabble that offers delight and happiness to me. It looks into the way the games may easily alter around from one where you're losing to one that pushes you closer to victory. I'm hoping it is presented clearly but still in a poetic manner, with the usage of a few rhyming words and the general theme.

The next day and the week after, we were working on our poems with an addition of Griddle and Hurdle games. With numerous attempts to beat Miss Disa's consistent competitor in Griddle, namely "ABV", there were a lot of rounds we went through with the sole purpose to win over him/her. There were times we did and others where we didn't. Along with that, I had nearly finished my poem by the last meeting which was a few days before the final submission date. The next day, at home, I recorded a video of me reciting my poem and submitted it, to be later compiled by miss with the videos of my classmates as well.  

All in all, it was a productive half semester in AEP classes. I'm curious to know how many more word games would be added to the seemingly infinite amount we have already. It's true what they say- "one can never have a limit when it comes to word games". Not sure if that's an actual saying but at least, I'd easily imagine Miss Disa saying so or perhaps she already has. The goals I have set for the next half of the semester is to combine our forces (AEP 9) to win over "ABV"- which is quite a challenge at times! On a serious note though, I'd love to learn more on tenses and further grammatical rules regarding the English language. That concludes the end of this blog. Thank you for reading and I'm hoping to see you in the next one!

Signing off,

Meral

Blog 2.2 - Dilara Aslan

 Greetings everyone!! Welcome back to another blog of mine. 

The past few weeks in AEP have been fun, calming and productive at the same time. This term we are doing and exploring new things like mind maps, drawing a picture without seeing it and basing it off of what the person describes and more. 

We played a lot of different versions of wordle like antiworlde, waffle wordle and letter boxed. I really do enjoy these games as it makes AEP fun and unique. And with all the weird words that the games accept sometimes, I definitely learned new words. During one of our lessons in the 2nd term, I also learned what a hamburger menu is. Apparently it is a button that is placed in the top corner of your screen. It is used to toggle a menu or navigation bar. I am really glad I learned that since I did not really know what to call that function.

In another lesson, we had to draw a picture of the map in the present according to the descriptions Miss Disa gave us. I think me and my classmates all did pretty good as all of ours looked closely accurate to the actual map Miss was describing. In other lessons, we did things like writing down parts of an IELT essay and then written our own essays based on the developments from the past to the present of an islands map.

We also wrote poems that had to be about AEP, It had been a long time since I had last written a poem, so I really enjoyed this activity. 

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

AEP blog 2.2 "Some advices in my mind"

Hello, dear reader.

I'm sorry though! My brain has no, nothing going on..

I just remember what I wrote about yesterday or rather 3 hours ago. So I'm going to write about it right now as well. I hope you'll enjoy this!

Having to write my speech was an opportunity to look back and think about the advice given by my parents, seniors, people that I look up to, who are successful.

~I researched and collected information from everywhere, dogged everywhere. They summed up to be like this!. Lay back, sit in a comfortable position this is going to be lecture like, not gonna lie haha

I believe that I did not live long enough to actually appreciate the other told advice. You take the advice that applies to your life, that is how it is in human nature. If you think about it. I have some advice to follow along as you find your spark and bring spark to life.

Number 1- Focus on the things that matter. Let me explain myself, by looking at an analogy. Imagine a glass that’ll represent your life. You have golf balls, rocks, pebbles, sand. You need to make room for them all in the glass container. Now if you put the sand first you won’t have space for the golf balls that matter to you more. Same as life, you need to set your priorities because everything else is just sand. Focus on what matters to you, your purpose. And we might just add water which goes to show that no matter how full your life seems to be there is always room for some water- fun. 

Number 2- If you want to achieve something. Start by,  specifying your goals. Making a schedule can be unbelievably useful. Okay so what is the rule with a schedule, it doesn't have to be a bloody prison. That is the first thing that people do is they say I have to do this, I have to do that and you know I can just play video games later.(I included btw, I'm acting like a knowing person but) This is a recipe to make you avoid the discomfort of the action. Do not stuff your day with a very strict schedule. Middle of everything. Dream big. But remember dreams without an achievable goal ultimately fuel disappointment. Start small. 

20% of your day has to be responsibility and obligation or maybe more than that depending on how far you are but even that, you ask yourself, we’ll I got these responsibilities, what is the right ratio of responsibility to reward. 1 hour of work and 25 minutes of rest. You have to negotiate with yourself and not tyrannize yourself. If you hit it by 70% accuracy that beats the hell out of 0%. Hit it by 50? aim for 51% next week or 50.5% for god’s sake. Because you’re gonna hit that position where things start to loop back positively and spiral you upward. What you do now is going to multiply its effects in the future. So schedule, that is a good thing man, your brain will thank you for it. You write your own destiny. Remember that zero is where everything starts, nothing will ever be born if we didn’t depart from there.

Number 3- along the way you will never give up. FAIL BIG. Fail big just how sir. Denzel Washington said. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. But fail forward. Do not make the failure stop you from where you're going. Instead do the opposite and use them as your weapon. Everything good takes time. 

Number 4- If you want to be an elite warrior, you better get really really good at helping the person to the left of you and helping the person to the right of you. Because that is how people advance in the world. It’ll be the single most valuable thing you’ll ever learn in your entire life. Always offer a hand along the way, for a way out. Life is all about unity. 

Number 5- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else’s today. They may have started their journey earlier than you, nothing good happens overnight. 

What do you observe in this following picture, for example?

I'm assuming it is either of these things:

B

13 

Overlined w (wow did you really?)

I M (I'm)  (are you martian?)

~If I write A before it and C after it, what will it be? B.

If I write 12 before and 14 after it? Obviously 13 

Your company will tell who you are. So surround yourself with positive people as it's better to live alone than in a bad company. Time is too valuable to be wasted on anything less than love, good vibes and happiness. 

~~Make use of your POTENTIAL. You never want unfulfilled potential,  ideas you never acted on. Rise above it yall. Use what you got. The world needs a lot and we need it from you. We really do. :))

Lastly, like how Denzel Washington said:  I pray that you put your slippers away under your bed so that when you wake up in the morning, you have to get on your knees. And when you're at it say thank you. For grace, friends, family, thank you for mercy, thank you for understanding, for peace, wisdom. Say thank you in advance :) 

~~ That is all what I managed to remember. I hope it did lightened your day and I hope you did not fell called out hahah.

Thank you so much! see yaa next time!

blog term 2 FAHADD

I'm back again with with my blogs

This term as well as last term we always started of with a game called weaver or griddle(if our smart board was working).We always had problems with our smart boards this term and it had been quite a hassle,even if the smartboard was working there was always something that didn't work,for instance the smart board pen or it kept on restarting.Miss eventually gave up trying to fix it so if we had problems we either did it on our phones or connected a mouse to the smartboard

This term we used another app instead of miro.We used an app called murle in were we could draw and put gif like stickers,for example a house or a factory.We used murle to practise listening to miss disa.Miss would describe places in and island and the we had to find out were the places were according to the coordinates miss gave us,for example the train is south west of the island etc

After we learned how to use coordinates and listen to miss disa we wrote essays about it.It was similar to how we wrote our essays in term 1.Miss gave us 2 maps in which 1 one of the map represented a past of an island and the other map represented the current state of the island.I Found that essay rather hard since I couldn't use murle.An error popped and it was really annoying and frustrating.Miss disa made me draw the place in my notebooks which was rather hard since I was worthless in drawing and was really bad at it but atleast it was over

We wrote poems related to aep and we had to make a video or a voice recording of our self saying it.It was rather hard to think of a poem since it had to be aep related but eventually I thought of one.I made like rap-like poems since most of the time I listened to rap music and nothing else was roaming around my brain.Today we had a new student join aep named ameer(at the time of writing this essay).I Find him nice and hopefully we'll get to know each other more 

Thank you for Reading!!!!

SEE YA NEXT TIME!!

AEP Blog 2.2 — Alisa Tee

Second blog of term 2! I’m very much enjoying everyone’s company in AEP now :D !! Speaking of company, an online student of ours is now joining physically! I’m wondering what their thoughts on AEP are since it’s only his second time joining the class face-to-face. Besides that, I’m getting more and more used to the class’s environment. It’s always had this serene atmosphere — with the potted plant in the corner and the nice lighting from the open curtains. Even if it might rain, the music in the background always added an extra sense of calm. 

We haven’t written many essays so far this term but I honestly don’t mind either way. Miss has somehow made writing essays a lot more fun than I’d expect it to be. Plus, this term’s essays are about maps instead of line graphs so it’s a bit easier to phrase and write the essay because the visual is a lot easier to interpret (in my opinion). 

Other than that, not a lot of things have happened this term’s classes, so this blog is rather brief. We still have our usual plays of wordle games every start of the lesson, and miss is always looking for new and different versions of it! I’ll always enjoy solving puzzles with my classmates, and I look forward to future activities with everyone! Thank you miss for your dedication to keep the class fun, and thanks to all my classmates for the good company! :DD

AEP Blog #2.2 “Slowing down”

Good day fellow reader! 

It was not a good idea to write this while having a brain with no gas. 

Yeah, bring it in — all the brain fuel disappeared so do help me with finding ideas on what to write. I find it quite hard to think of a topic especially when I’ve been a little tired these past few days… 

Right!

Lets talk about slowing down.

I’m pretty sure this blog wont be that long, but I’ll try my best. These days have been really tiring for me — I have been forgetting things easily and lagging on my schoolwork. It leads to a never-ending domino effect that could definitely be ended if I tried harder. I doubt it’s because of the amount of schoolwork but rather the mental weight of having my O-levels in just a few months. Not to mention the fact that I have been slacking off with my hobbies — my main source of fulfillment. 

Aside from that, let me talk about AEP. 

These past few weeks we have been doing map essays and learning how to describe images. At the start, we tried describing images and drawing them based on what the people in charge of describing the images say. I really like doing this because its kind of like a freestyle mind boggling dump…using the smartboard. Other than that, we would focus on maps instead of graphs; we started by simple describing all the way to the way we are supposed to describe a map in an essay. Surely, I can tell this helped me a lot because I am aware on how bad my describing skills are, and even if I don’t see drastic improvement — I still see how I am able to describe things easier and in a more direct manner instead of lengthening my explanation without removing the useless bits. 

Word games have been taking over this class too! Some of them are really hard. I enjoy weaver a lot. This is kind of a ladder game, I probably like it so much because of how easy it is compared to the other word games. Yes thats right, goldfish brain talker right here! Nice to meet you! 

I cant really think of anything else to say right now, its quite hard to formulate the right words so I’ll have to make it up for my next blog. 

See you in the next one! 

Visuals and Thoughts -- Blog 2.2

 So where did we left off?

We wrote the retrospective blog almost a month ago regarding our reflections and our thoughts about offline learning and the last semester. What has happened since then? 

Well obviously, we've learned things. The semester started rocky with us mostly playing word games and getting accustomed to the new semester. After a week or so, we started drawing. And by that I mean, our friends would say certain attributes and parts of a drawing and we'll try to draw them. It started with the online classmates doing it, and then Miss Disa, and then our other classmates while we used this app called Mural.

Miss said it was an exercise to get us accustomed to knowing how to describe pictures and more specifically maps, as that is what our essays will be about. How to describe islands, roads, buildings, areas where people are gathered, directions, etc. Miss also taught us how to describe actions done to these things in different times such as "trees are felled", "buildings are demolished", and the like.  

This smoothed our way into writing our first essay of the semester. But before we got to do that, we checked the criteria for a good IELTS 1 essay in order to get a grasp of what is expected of our essay or a sort of rubric. The session after, we got to write our essay using the maps miss described to us in our exercises. The maps included a picture of the same island from the past and the present and we had to describe the differences between the two islands.

I like to think I did pretty well on the essay as it was easier to write than the graph essay we wrote last semester. I think it was easier for me as it is a more creative form of visuals than the restrictive nature of the graphs. Some of my classmates found this writing more difficult though.

I  like to think I did pretty well on the essay this time. Besides the usual mistakes including wording and grammar, I did much better than the graph essays. Miss did write a whole google docs about our mistakes on the essay though 💀💀💀

By the next week, we played new games and also did our project which was a poem! It was pretty short, all things considered, as I simply wrote a small Haiku. Miss also told us to record us reading it which was a breeze to submit lol

And by this week, we just played games and I wrote this blog. ez

And well that's it for the wrap-up of this 2nd term so far.

Thank you for reading :D

 BLOG 3 TERM 2 (AQIL GRADE 12)

For my second project, the reaction blog, I chose an article that is about "Art Of Small Talk". The reason I chose that article is because it is very interesting and I want to also learn at the same time about the article. I believe that small talk can give a very big impact, but it doesn't mean that you have to be mature or old to start a conversation. Everyone needs to learn how to start a conversation, maybe by asking several simple greetings like "hi, how are you?". But if you are confident with yourself and have the courage to talk to strangers, you can use a general question that is more friendly and specific like "where do you live?", "how old are you?", "What course are you studying right now?" and much more. This article can also be used as a guide for those people who lack communication skills or have social anxiety. It will help them by boosting their confidence and learn slowly because there's a step-by-step guide. All you need to do is just follow the steps, apply it in real life, practice it often and you will improve drastically without realizing it yourself. 

Miss also likes to share something new in every class. But one thing miss said that caught my attention, it's about vegetarian. Maybe this topic is boring to some people because they are not vegan and obviously this topic is not relevant for them. But for me, it's interesting because I want to know Miss Disa's opinion because she is a vegetarian. While Im packing my stuff to go out from the class, I asked her "how do you consume protein because vegetables does not contain any protein and only vitamins?". Then she answered "every vegetarian lacks B12 vitamin because this vitamin can only found in blood which is from animal blood. So, vegetarians consume vitamin B12 pills to make sure their health is in a good shape without eating any meat. But it is going to make you spend a lot money because the price is expensive. Rather than spending money on those pills, I ate beans. Theres a lot of beans out there like kidney beans, black beans, peas and more.

Last week, Miss asked us to create a poem about AEP. I was very struggling because I never wrote a poem before. I don't like to do poems because I lack vocabulary and literature and I am very bad at English. It took me for while to create just one simple stanza even though I was brainstorming every fancy word that I can think of at that moment. It was very challenging and fun to be honest. Doing something that you are not use to, it's like stepping out from your comfort zone. I think I like accepting challenges especially if it's involved with sport or physical contact and I would not ever accept if it's involve with education wise like involving reading, researching, debating, learning and more. Because I found it boring and only for nerds, I don't have any problems with nerds, trust me *fingers crossed*. It's just I felt sad for them because they don't like to expose themselves with physical activity, but maybe not every of them has that mentality and it's just me having this weird idea about them. So, this is why I don't like doing poem. But, AEP made me do poem and I found it interesting and fun, because you need to replace common word into a fancy word that I have never heard before. The reason why you used fancy word or sentence is to make it more narrative and makes the audience thinking what message that you wanted to share through your poem.

Blog 3 Term 2 - Saad - Grade 12

 Howdies Everyone!

I'm back here after taking some time to think after my last blog post. Given that it has just been a little over a month, I anticipate that this will be my shortest blog. I've faced several difficulties during Term 2 due to the assignments, tests, and other requirements. Additionally, midterms are the following week, so I wish everyone luck. Before Miss suggested Phrazzle, Hurdle, Quordle, and other alternatives, I thought Wordle was punishing on its own. Don't get me wrong; Wordle has become quite monotonous and repetitive, so some variation is welcome. My brain needs to be rewired to handle challenging problems, so I love that it's challenging. Thank You Miss haha.

Compared to my other majors, AEP is calming and comforting, as I've mentioned numerous times. Work like blogging and writing reaction papers is entertaining and doesn't add to my workload; it doesn't bog me down. One aspect of AEP that I really enjoy is when Miss thinks back to her history, like the time she opted to wear a tutu while running just for fun. There is always that one teacher who spreads positive vibes amongst everyone in her presence and I reckon Miss Disa fits the perfect description. I've made decent progress so far with Project 2 Part 1, even though I intended to try out some creative writing at first.