Unschooling Journal Feb 20-26, 2022

by | Feb 28, 2022 | Blog | 0 comments

This week, I worked on a lot of summarising short stories, because I haven’t been reading/summarising stories this past year. I also finished my lab kit video about osmosis, and it’s up on my YouTube channel now! I also worked on the NVOL Math 8 Reflections, where you’re supposed to write about what you did this year and how you think you did. I also studied for the unit 2 Grade 8 Science NVOL test, because I have to do that quiz soon. Also, I worked on the unit 8 Khan Academy course, because I have to finish the Grade 8 math before I can move on to the Grade 9 math. I also looked up parts for my PC that I want to build. I want to build a PC because I want to have a fast computer that can do a lot of things, like video editing, or playing video games.

Here is my lab video about osmosis. This lab kit was sent to me by my NVOL Science teacher, and I really enjoyed it because II wanted to learn more about osmosis but didn’t know-how. It was really fascinating how the gummy bears swelled up when submerged in water and it’s really quite interesting how the saltwater gummies actually shrank because the salt molecules couldn’t penetrate into the gummies (they were too big).
I wrote a short story summary because I need to practice summarising stories. I think that summarising these stories is really fun because I really like the fact that you have to read the story and then think about what you’ve read. And then you have to write everything down. It’s like a scavenger hunt, where you’re looking for facts about the story and sifting through the irrelevant information to try and write a good summary.
I also did the NVOL Math 8 Reflections, and I think it went pretty well because I wrote quite a lot about what I did this year. I had to do a self-assessment about my communication skills.
Then, I worked on my computer parts. I’m planning on building a computer by summer break, and I need to find all the parts for it. So I found a bunch of parts, compared different companies, and made an Amazon wishlist to try and get everything.
I also looked at the Grade 8 Khan Academy list just to see if I missed anything that I needed to study. There wasn’t, but I looked at the Systems of Equations course just to brush up on it.
I then wrote about the Renaissance because I really need to study some history for Grade 8. I learned that the Renaissance was a period of artists and builders who copied buildings from Greek and Roman cultures.
Then, I studied for the Unit 2 science NVOL quiz because I have a test on Monday. I looked at Units 2 and 3 because I need to study Unit 3 as well.

LC Response

Hi Ethan,

I think it’s fantastic you like summarizing short stories and that you put so much thought into it this week! With that attitude, and that love of puzzling through a story looking for details and clues and patterns, you’ll become an expert at literary analysis. There really are some similarities to math and science in the study of literature — noticing patterns and parallels and repetitions (and their beauty), communicating what you want to communicate very precisely where every word has meaning and purpose, structuring things in an orderly and maximally sensible way…

It’s great to hear you’ve started looking at some history and read and wrote a little about the Renaissance. It will be helpful to know a bit about European Renaissance-era culture, economics, politics, philosophy, religion, and technology to better understand the context of parts of grade 9 and 10 social studies. A lot of the curriculum will involve European exploration of the world, early contact with Indigenous peoples, early colonization of North America, and impacts of colonization, so it’s helpful to know what Europeans were like as they were starting to do those things. The grade 9 curriculum also involves learning about various early-modern revolutions and about the Industrial Revolution, so knowing a bit about the couple of centuries before those events is helpful context. The World History topic in the Learning Experience Library has content pages listed down the right side. The entire “1450-1750 CE” section in the content page area would be relevant to explore, although some of it crosses over into grade 9 content. (In high school courses you probably wouldn’t ever need to know any details about the handful of ones in that section that are less related to Europe (Mughal Empire, Ottoman Empire, Sengoku period), but I think it’s a good idea to have a little knowledge of these anyway to be less Eurocentric in our understanding of the past.)

How exciting you made your video about your osmosis lab! I’m glad you found the experiment so interesting, and hope you found making the video helped you solidify your understanding of the lab.

Building a computer by summer sounds like a fascinating project and I look forward to hearing about what you learn in the process.

Thank you for your Observing for Learning.

Best,

Shannon

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