Monday:
This previous week we were given two short story packets. These short stories were called, To Build a Fire and The Open Boat. Over the weekend, each section was assigned one of these short stories to read and annotate. Section Z was assigned To Build a Fire. On Monday in Mr. Gornto’s class, we discussed this story. It is about a man walking through the Yukon trails in Canada. The man later falls into a stream under the snow, but can not build a successful fire, so he freezes to death. We talked about how tragic the story is, and our class mostly agreed that To Build a Fire isn’t a sorrowful story. Some classmates thought it wasn’t unfortunate, and decided that is because the main character isn’t very likable. We also discussed other things such as theme, the turning point of the story, and the characters. The turning point of the story happened before it even started, which I found very interesting. It is when the man chooses to go on the hike in the Yukon trails, but the story begins when he is already on one of the Yukon trails. This discussion deepened our understanding of the story.
Tuesday:
On Tuesday we turned our focus over to climate change and global warming. We watched a short video describing the difference between climate and weather. This video cleared up any confusion about the difference between the two. We also received a Climate Change and Questions of Justice Packet. We started to read and annotate the first part of it. The first part of the packet gave us a sense of what climate change is. It also told us many things we can later build off of and expand our ideas about climate change on.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday in class, we went over our annotations in The Open Boat, a story about four people on a boat trying to find their way to land and safety. Since we had already read To Build a Fire, we compared the two stories. One story was about how the choices you make affect your survival, while the other one was about how fate determines your survival. This thought never came to my mind before, but it has helped me view the stories differently.
Thursday:
On Thursday we transitioned back into learning about climate change. Everyone in the class got an article on salmon, mangroves, corn, cod, lobster, honey bees, or sugar maples. After reading these articles, we answered different questions about our topics. There are two main questions that everyone had to answer including: how might climate change affect this organism, and why does this matter to people? Following this assignment, I could see how if one thing is concerned, then many more jobs would be affected. These organisms have a significant impact on their ecosystem.
Friday:
In Mr. Gornto’s class on Friday, we had the whole period to work on our upcoming essay for comparing To Build a Fire and The Open Boat. At the start of class, Mr. Gornto explained our assignment and gave us a Venn diagram. The Venn diagram was a helpful tool to use as an organizer. It assisted us in getting our thoughts straight so we would have an easier time writing our essay.
Edited by: Dinah,Haila and Alicia
Monday: This past week, we have learned about Africa and Climate Change. We talked about climate change and how it affects everyday people. We also spoke about Africa and the 2 different types of map projections that are most commonly used, the Mercator and the Peters projections. Our class read through and annotated a packet about understanding climate change and the causes and effects of it. We also learned the difference between climate and weather. Weather ~ the day to day changes of the forecast; Climate ~ something that happens over a period of time (weather patterns).
Tuesday: On Tuesday, we started to go over what climate justice meant and how it affects people from all over the world and not just the countries that people live in. Climate Justice is the action of framing global warming as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature.
Wednesday: On Wednesday, we talked more about the two different types of maps the Mercator and the Peters projection. We discussed the strengths and weakness of each projection; specifically, which countries or continents seemed to change the most between the two versions. Also, we talked about when the Mercator map was made that Mr. Mercator made all of the more affluent countries bigger such as the United States, Britain, Russia. He made the continent of Europe the center of the map. Whereas, Mr. Peters made the poorer countries and continents more to scale even though it looks stretched out.
Thursday: On Thursday, we turned back to climate change, and we all had to pick an article about mangroves, salmon, honey bees, corn, cod, lobster, or sugar maple trees. After we read the article, our groups had to create a mini presentation on how climate change will affect the life form and why is this life form essential to humans. I learned that if one of these organisms had become extinct, that there would be an overpopulation of another animal. This would lead to the ecosystem being an unbalanced disarray.
Friday: Lastly, on Friday, we continued our learning on climate change; however, today we changed our focus on climate justice, and we learned about the world and how climate change affects every country in the world. I found this very interesting because it made our class realize how people in poorer countries have very little control and how much people in the US and other affluent countries take for granted. We also took a test on the countries of north and west of Africa. Some of the countries that we were tested on were Sierra Leone, Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, etc.
This week, we learned about how climate change and climate justice affect the world around us. Also, we studied in depth, the geography of the African continent in conjunction with various map projections.
Edited by: Dinah, Alicia, Halia,
Throughout the past week in Quest Science we were in a Climate Change Unit learning about the effects of it and what is happening on the influence in the world. In Quest Science we have watched videos and done specific experiments and labs that reflect on what we have learned about Climate Change. One of the best experiments that we did in Quest Science was a lab where we split into groups of two people, and had two jars. One jar was the Control jar, while the other was an Experiment jar. Each jar consisted of red cabbage juice, that was freshly made by our teacher in the morning. Each group member was to blow into a straw into the Experiment jar, just touching the surface of the liquid inside for two minutes, or until we saw a difference in color. The change in color that we were looking for could be either pink or a deep turquoise. A more pinkish color represented the cabbage juice or pH level to become more acidic, while if it became more turquoise, it would be more basic. These result last were measured on a pH scale. The results that everyone should have had were a pinkish color of cabbage juice (pH). After the lab was completed, we were to answer smaller questions that gave a big answer to our main focus question which was, “How Does Increased Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Burning Fossil Fuels Change the pH of Oceans.” We left class that day with many lingering questions in our head about Climate Change.
In Quest Humanities, we were studying the continents, and had an interesting conversation about how many continents there really are. We came up with the answer of either 5, 6, or 7 continents was correct. We recently took a map quiz on about half of the map of Africa, as it was split into two parts, on Lizard Point. Another activity we did in quest Humanities was study the different, yet main two maps that we use, which were the Mercator, and Peters maps. We watched short videos on the maps, and took notes about the difference between them.
While we are still in the unit of Climate Change, in Quest we have talked about the importance of Climate change and the harms of it to animal life. We had a mini activity where we worked in groups, read an article about a specific animal, and the effect of Climate Change in the animal, answered a few questions, and finally gave a mini presentation to the class, summarizing your information. We were also learning about Climate Justice, and for this lesson, we had to read and annotate and long article on Climate Justice, and end with a log response about Climate Justice and its effects. After we learned about Climate Justice the final thing that we did was begin to draw, and possibly finish, a chart or diagram on our final research on Climate Change and what it affects, how, and the consequences of its effects, and how it is ruining our earth.
Another activity that we did in Quest Science was a Carbon Footprint Lab! We did this to see how much each of us is distributing CO2 everyday, or the total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide. We also did a graphing activity where we made line graphs about how much Co2 was in the atmosphere and the temperature. We also read articles on Corals and Chemistry and Ocean Acidification, which was relevant and important because corals are actually animals/invertebrates that serve as homes and ecosystems for marine life. They are being destroyed by pollution, climate change, and infected with chemicals and climate change.
Elise-Mr. Gornto Mon-Fri
Avani-Mr. Greenberg Mon-Fri
Olivia-Mrs. Bruvik Mon-Fri