Blog 3.2 - “14 day challenge debrief” - Dilara

 Welcome back to another blog of mine, dear readers.

Today, I will be talking about something a bit different than the usual things i talk about. I will be talking about this challenge that miss disa gave us, that consists of us always improving ourselves. This is something very new, we have not done anything like this before. It is called the 14 day challenge.

This challenge is all about creating new habits and achieving your goals, no matter how big or small they are. It takes 30 days to create and maintain a habit. However, we narrowed our challenge down to 14 days. I must say, i started this challenge feeling very productive, thinking I will do it perfectly and achieve all my goals. However, it wasn’t as easy as I has thought it would be. For starters, during the 14 day challenge, I had no motivation to do anything. Even opening padlet to encode my goals each day felt like it required great strength. So I can say that it was difficult for me to accomplish my 14 day challenge.

There were some days where I was not able to accomplish and do anything, since I would keep delaying all my assignments and then cramming it all a night before. The 14 day challenge did help me however, with planning and putting down all my goals. I definitely think there were days where i achieved all my goals, which made me very happy. I believe I could have done better. I will definitely continue to try and write down my goals and achieve them. I think I can do better than what i did. The 14 day challenge is a great idea, and i believe if I wasn’t feeling so demotivated and tired all the time, i could have done it perfectly. I am still proud with how much I’ve done tho.

I also like the idea of commenting on whether u achieved ur goal or not, since it allows u to step back and see how much u truly achieved. I’ll definitely be implementing this 14 day challenge every now and then. 

Thank you for reading this blog, i hope to see you in the next one.

Blog 3.1 "A fresh start isn’t a new place, it’s a new mindset"

 Welcome to my first blog of the 3rd term, dear readers! 

PS: This blog is a bit late since i was absent on the day it was done. Nevertheless, i welcome you all to my blog. 

We are finally in the last term of the school year, the final wave. It’s crazy how fast time goes, I remember it as clear as if it was just yesterday when we had our first face to face lessons in AEP. It truly is important to make every minute count.

Our finals are done, stem congress is done and finally a sense of relief has washed over me, knowing that I achieved everything I worked hard for. It had definitely been a very hectic last week for second term. However, we are now taking our time and reloading our energies. 

For the past term, i learned quite a lot in AEP. Not just academically, but also really inspiring life lessons from Miss Disa like never to give up and not define your worth over grades. This is something that I kind of struggle with, which is why the title of this blog is. “A fresh start isn’t a new place, it’s a new mindset”. From this quote, we can say that improvement starts within you, and that you shouldn’t allow your environment and the things that happen to you which you can’t control prevent you from always being the best version of yourself. It is not who we are born as that define us, it’s who we grow up to be.

This term, as usual, we played a lot of wordle, quordle and many other web games ending with -dle. These games are both relaxing and educating. Every now and then I come across a word which I have never heard of in my life before. AEP definitely feels like a different world. Its an escape that allows me to refresh my mind, communicate, and just have a relaxing time with the calming background music that miss Disa opens.

We have written quite a lot of essays this term, this time more about the comparisons and processes between two maps. We did relaxing things like origami, which are definitely a great way to take a break every once in a while.

I hope that you all enjoyed this blog, see you in my next one!

Blog 2.3 - First blog of the year - Jan 18, 2023

 Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog of the school year. I hope this year will be an amazing year in which we all can improve ourselves!

PS: This is sort of a late upload, as I just realized I never actually posted it and it just stayed in my drafts.

To start the year off, we have new students in AEP! i'm really glad our AEP class is growing! The classroom definitely is more lively. We also have a new plant friend with us. Her name is Alice. She replaced Alan in the classroom who is currently at Miss home. AEP lessons are always so fun as they always feel so comfortable and feel like a place where we can all openly express ourselves. I love how in each of our classes, we always learn an important life lesson from Miss Disa. 

Looking back at the past year, we did alot of analysing and writing essays which has definitely improved my ability to write essays. Another thing which has always been fun in AEP was the projects like the frog jumping contest! I hope we can do more origami as it is always fun and a stress reliever.

I am also looking forward to all the warm up games we play in AEP. I think they are definitely one of the highlights of our classes. It allows us to work cooperatively as a class through communication. It also allows us to learn new words that we never knew were even words. 

I am really excited to see what Miss has in store for us. I definitely hope we can all learn new things that allows us to improve ourselves and become better people.

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 #2.1 “Retrospective blog” - Dilara

 Welcome to my first blog of the second term. After a one week break, we are finally back in school. I hope everyone has rested well and is ready to start the second term!

The first term in AEP was very fun and interesting. We started writing essays, which was a new thing as we were just focusing on vocabulary last year. For the essays we do in AEP, we summarize a graph, so we have to be able to analyze the graph we are presented with. Honestly, I love writing essays as it allows me to be expressive. Although it may sometimes be challenging, it is a fun challenge to take on. 

We also learned vocabulary words that you can use in your essays to describe the three main points in the graphs. Something I really enjoy in AEP is the warm up games that we play at the start of each class. This is something very unique about AEP that differentiates it from other classes. It allows me to exercise my brain and help me get a boost of energy before starting the class.

The warm ups we usually do are wordle, hurdle, waffle worlde, quordle and codewords. I have learned all of these games during my AEP classes and they have all opened doors  to new words for me. I believe that short yet interesting games like these allow you keep your energy levels high and really get your mind thinking. Which means they are perfect to play right before class. 

We used miro for majority of the activities we had in AEP. It allows us to connect to our online classes and work collaboratively with them. Miss Disa always makes classes very fun, special and interesting. Like the padlet exit tickets for example, it is such a nice way to just relax and talk about what we had done for the class. 

Another thing that I really enjoy is the classical music Miss Disa opens when we do such activities as writing essays, writing blogs and playing scrabble. Classical music is definitely a signature mark of AEP. I always look forward to AEP classes as it is a place where we can learn, express ourselves and relax at the same time. 

For our upcoming AEP classes, we will start writing essays on maps and describe what has changed over time. We also have to know all the terms to describe what was occurred. I find it really interesting and I am looking forward to starting this new topic. 

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!

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!

Blog 1.3 'Calming week'

Bonjour! I hope you all are having a wonderful today! Today i will once again be talking about my experiences in AEP this week! So buckle up your seatbelts and get ready for the ride!

We started this week off with the casual typeshift, then, we started on a new seatwork, where we had to fill in the gaps with verbs in the form of either present simple or present continous! It was a relaxing and silent period mostly. Then, we went on to Miro to write our exit tickets and exited the class

For today, Miss Disa is going through some technical difficulties, so, we were told to write our blogs until 9:30, which is what i am currently doing, I am also excited to see what we will do after 9:30. My guess is that we will be continuing with the present tense activities, however, we will only be having 30 minutes of class left after writing this blog, so even if we did start with the present tense, I don't think we would be able to finish it today.

That's all we did for this week, this week was a simple yet exciting week for AEP classes, Aurevoir for now!

Blog 1.2 'A burst of Energy'

Hello there, Sit back and get your popcorn ready for this blog!

This week was very exciting and wonderful! First, we started off with typeshift and then wrote down our time on google sheets, after doing that, we answered a seatwork on Grammar and Present tense, we answered it on Kami but then had to answer it again on a google docs Miss put up for us. Miss Disa also told us to download and check out a new app called "Storyboarder" which is what we would use for our oral work if the app worked for everyone. It worked for me, and I think this is a good idea as it would help us become more creative when doing our oral work. As we just had one period for Monday, this is all we did. It was a very productive day.

Now lets move on to Wednesday, aka today. We started off today with typeshift again, then went to Miroo where we were face to face with a colorful sight. Miss had prepared us questions and colorful sections where we can put our answers, it was almost as colorful as the rainbow in the photo above! This gave me a burst of Energy and it definitley made answering questions wayy more fun! For the first question, we had to write down what we felt about using Storyboarder for presenting our oral work. And as I already described in this blog, I found storyboarder a very creative way! We only had 5 minutes to answer and we had to write our answers on colorful little sticky notes!

The second question was a bit of a longer question than the first. We had to list down in what situations would we use various forms of Present Tense, we answered this question in colorful sections which had our name on it, we would put up sticky notes matching the sections color and type on them. We had 20 minutes to answer this one as there was 20 various forms of Present tenses! After finishing that, we started working on our blogs for the next period, which i am currently doing! Then we will go to padlet and write down how today went for us and our accomplishments for today,

That wraps up everything we've done this week! I can't wait to see you all in my next blog🥳!

Blog 1.1 'A new journey'

Hello there! I hope everyone is as excited as i am for the new school year! This week in AEP we first of all welcomed each other back and started talking about what will happen during this school year. We also started with our activites such as Typeshift, doing a to do list and more! Some of the websites we are using this year are new so I am very excited for that. I am also currently writing this blog in class since for this year, instead of writing our blog in the weekends, we will be doing it in class!

We have also done an oral, where we recited a news article in a voice recording called vocaroo, then posted it. As for today, we will be answering a seatwork that is all about the present tense! I haven't seen much change this year from last year, but again, it just the first week, so I am a bit nervous but very excited to see what Miss Disa has in store for us for the rest of the year. However, I am pretty sure after the 3 month long summer vacation, we will all need a bit of time to get used to the school system again. But i'm sure we can all do it.

Hopefully for this new school year i will learn many new things with the help of Miss Disa, I also hope to do better than I did last year and always improve myself. I hope this school year will be as amazing as the scenery above!