Unit Assessment Final

    During this unit, I learned how to change the basis of my social media platform to direct it to the people I want, and open my eyes to all the ways social media is helpful to college applications, school projects, reaching out to professionals, and much more. Three assignments we received this unit that helped me design a social media platform that targets a specific audience were our Unit Project, Blood Lab, and

    The first assignment that helped me take a deeper understanding on how my work ties in with social media, was my final unit project. My final unit project required me to make social media platforms, therefore I made a blog surrounded by depression and anxiety, how social media affects it and how to cope with it, and a twitter sending out different links and numbers to help anyone in need looking for assistance. Link to Depression and Anxiety Blog. This was an easy connection because it links right onto social media and if someone searches my name, my youtube channel videos about depression, anxiety, and social media will come up, my 3 different blogs can come up, and my twitter which revolves around a project I did. Twitter Account- Newschoolunit. Therefore they can see all my work and how I reached out to my community using social media.

    The second assignment I chose that helped me understand the links between social media and my work was my blood lab. The links between the blood lab were not as explicit as my unit project was, but they are still connected. When we got the instructions for the blood lab, we were told to log onto a site and find them.

That is using a social media platform to get the information we needed to first, just go over our instructions. Then, as we proceeded with the lab, took photos, and recorded information, we had to write a lab report reflecting back on what we had previously done. We wrote the lab report up and I published it to my blogger as the rest of my classmates did. Our blogs are for my teacher, fellow students, and other teachers to look at and get inspiration, ideas, and creative ways of teaching.

    The last assignment I chose was my  vaccine slidedeck. We were put into our social media groups, and given one vaccine to focus on. Link to Vaccine Slidedeck.  We took a deeper dive into the vaccines and found every ingredient possible, gave a description of what it is and what it does. We also labeled each ingredient as “toxic” or “nontoxic”. We organized our information by using a slidedeck and placing it in the order of our presentation.

    In conclusion, the work we did this unit completely tied back to social media in many different ways. The three assignments I chose to bring to light were first, my unit project, second I chose my blood lab, and lastly, I chose my slidedeck revolving around vaccines. During my year in NEW School, and first year in highschool,  I was given the best classmates to work beside, and I enjoyed learning from all of them.

How Are Antibodies Used for Blood Typing?-Lab Report

Introduction: In NEW School Science, this unit we have been focusing on vaccines and the immune systems. We had the option to find out what blood type we had, by doing a lab created by Neto to help us grasp a deeper understanding of the immune system and blood types.

Purpose: How are antibodies used for blood typing?

Hypothesis: If my partner’s blood has antigen A, presenting on the surface of my red blood cells, then her blood will precipitate or clump when placed in the opposite solution, because the humoral system and antibodies react a certain way when around different blood types.

Materials: Blood typing slide (4)

• Antisera A and B
• Anti-Rh factor
• Mixing sticks
• Synthetic blood samples (4); Note: These do not contain real blood and thus are completely safe to handle. They will however accurately simulate the blood typing process.
• Disposable plastic pipettes (4); these are for moving the blood samples to the blood typing slide
• Chemical splash goggles
• Disposable gloves

Procedure: Using a disposable plastic pipette, place a drop of synthetic blood sample #1 in each well of a blood typing slide.

1. Add a drop of synthetic anti-A to the well labeled A.
2. Add a drop of synthetic anti-B serum to the well labeled B.
3. Add a drop of synthetic anti-Rh serum to the well labeled Rh.
4. Using a different color mixing stick for each well, gently stir the synthetic blood and antiserum drops for 30 seconds. Remember to discard each mixing stick after a single use to avoid contamination to your samples.
5. After 30 seconds of stirring carefully examine the liquid in the wells.
1. If the liquid is clear or light pink with no particles or cloudiness formed, then no reaction has occurred and you should mark "No" in the appropriate box in the data table.
2. If there are solid particles that have formed in mixing the sample or antiserum (they may be darker or lighter than the original liquid), then a reaction has occurred and you should mark "Yes" in the appropriate box. Also, if the liquid has very small particles formed, giving a cloudy appearance to the liquid, then a reaction has occurred and you should mark "Yes" in the appropriate box.
3. It is important to look very closely at the wells and only do one well at a time. Be sure to stir at least 30 seconds with the plastic stick. The final product may be clear, white or dark pink depending on the combination of blood sample and antiserum, so look carefully to see if small or large particles have formed in the well.
4. Reference the photos in Figure 1 for help determining if a reaction has occurred or not. If you continue to have trouble read the FAQ for this project.

Figure 1. If the antiserum does not cause agglutination the sample will be free of floating particles like the picture on the left. If the antiserum does cause a reaction the sample will turn cloudy and you will see particles form as shown in the picture on the right.

1. Record the results for the first blood sample in the data table.
2. Thoroughly rinse the blood typing slide, then repeat steps 2 through 8 for synthetic blood samples 2, 3, and 4. Use a different pipette for each synthetic blood sample to prevent cross contamination.
3. Repeat steps 2 through 9 two more times so that you have done a total of three trials.
4. Once you have determined the blood type for each sample (by referring to Table 1, in the Background, you are ready to look at the data like a doctor. Would any of the samples make good donor-recipient pairs for a blood transfusion? Why or why not?

Data Table:

• Should be done with a ruler and a pencil (NO WHITEOUT!)
• Title
• Heading for each column (what was being measured)
• Units for each column

Conclusion: This section shows YOUR UNDERSTANDING of the lab. A strong conclusion will be 2 paragraphs long and follow the argumentation from evidence format.

Paragraph One:

Antibodies are used in blood typing to show us what blood type we are. As shown to the left, when we add the blood into each section. The blood will react with the antibodies by clumping up or moving together, depending if it is associated with A, B, or Rh antigens. When my partner stirred her blood into each section, none of them had a reaction besides the A antibodies, and the O therefore we came to the conclusion that her blood type is A+.  Part of my evidence is the picture shown to the left, because the way we found her blood type was by drawing the blood, and taking what we learned from the information Neto gave us, and applied it to the lab. My next piece of evidence is the table my partner and i made while we were doing the lab. We made the table to keep track of what we were using at the time, and the impacts it had.

Trial Number	Sample number	Reaction w/ Anti-A (Y/N)	Reaction w/ Anti-B (Y/N)	Reation w/ Anti-Rh (Y/N)	Determined Blood Type
1	1	Yes	No	Yes	A
	2
	3
	4
2	1	Yes	No	Yes	A
	2
	3
	4
3	1	Yes	No	Yes	A
	2
	3
	4

This data tells me that my partner has an A blood type. Although her blood also reacted with the O antibodies, she is still an A blood type. The reason it does not matter that she reacted with an O blood type is because “O” blood type can be a worldwide donor, because it agrees with all blood types.

Paragraph 2-

My data does support my hypothesis, and i know because when we did the lab and when i recorded the impacts i saw lined up with my hypothesis. I think a way to improve this lab for my learning, would to use my own blood so i would have more hands on experience with my own blood and my personal experience with it. I am confident in the results i got from my lab. I think if i were to do this lab again i would get the same results, and i cannot say that for most labs i have done do not normally come out as i wanted, but this lab did. I would recommend this lab to any teachers who are teaching their students the same topic.


                                                     Analyze Great TED Talks
Brene Brown- The power of Vulnerability
Brene Brown was very passionate about her profession and what she was talking about, which was why the audience was so engaged and interested to hear more. In the beginning she talked about her main profession, and how she came up with the name of it, in the middle she talked about how vulnerability was good and how she discovered it, and in the end she brought all her main points together.

                                                     Death Penalty Fact Sheet

                                                3 pieces of interesting information
1. The amount of deaths since 1976 is 1451
2. Over 75% of murder victims resulting in death penalty were white
3. If a person has a mental disability they are immune to the death penalty
 2 conclusions-
1. When someone has a mental disability or a mental illness it is not okay for them to be put to death
2. More people believe inmates should have a long life without parol rather than being sentenced to death

Why was the death penalty rate so high in 1999?

                                                 Environmental Unit Assessment 

“Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.”  (Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction) What Kolbert means is as humans leave their footprints on our environment, it is mostly on the harmful side. In this environmental unit we got to take a deeper look into what happens in different environments and how one thing affects another. Three main assignments/activities that took place during this unit that helped me the most was the honors students teach backs, reading fahrenheit 451, and our field trip to the davis marine lab.

    The first activity that helped me understand the environmental unit the most, was the honors student teach backs. This way of teaching has always helped me grasp information the best. I love being able to hear information and immediately jot it down and it helps me connect with information differently than when i am being taught a different way. The teach backs taught me about the different kinds of fossil fuels, how they are made, how long it takes, why we are running out of them, and why that is a major problem. Here is a link to my notes on my classmates teach backs  

    The second activity that helped me grasp the information we were given and take it to another level, was reading fahrenheit 451. This novel by Ray Bradbury shows how an environment is falling apart and destroying itself, almost showing us what could happen in the future, even though it is a “dystopian” novel. This connects back to the food web we did where a group of about 12 students got together and each got an animal and had to connect itself to what it consumes/who its consumer is and showed how everything works in an environment and if one part of it is rearranged it could demolish it completely.

    The last activity that helped me was the field trip to the davis marine lab. This was one of the most helpful piece as well because this was much more hands on and closeup.  I think part of what helped me understand the food web and what keep an environment moving and thriving was the tour we got around the lab, and seeing the different species all live together peacefully. Our tour guide told us about how if the coral reefs go extinct it is danger for the rest of their environment and we were able to tie that back to the prior knowledge we came into this field trip knowing about. This helped me understand how many mammals and species really do contribute to each environment and every one of them makes a difference.

   In conclusion, during this environmental unit i think we got the most hands on experience and i learned the most. Some of my main takeaways from this unit is how well i contain knowledge by being taught with teach backs.  The honors teach back was the most helpful thing for me that we did the entire unit because i managed to hear the information, write it down, and remember it. Another takeaway is how interesting it was to receive a tour around the marine lab by an expert. It was fascinating how quickly he could answer every question we threw at him, and how he knew everything we needed to know. This was the unit i gained the most out of, and did not think i would be as interested in it as i thought i would be in the beginning.

#BlackLivesMatter
In my opinion i think the worst form of internet bullying is threats or hate comments, which are frequent.




          Sixth Extinction Analysis

For my research the decline of the bees is one of the main environmental problems, because as long as the bees continue to decline, we become more likely to decline in the future. This will greatly affect the world because the big part bees take in pollination. In the beginning Kolbert states ,"No creature has ever altered life on the planet in this way before..."(Kolbert 7). This quote shows how much of an impact the honeybee population declining will be for our society, environment, and world.

     ANSWERS FROM QUESTIONS BELOW


    This unit, half of myself is very satisfied with my learning. I have taken information from the mental health unit, and was very interested to learn it, because it applied to my life, considering my peers could be going through something similar. The other half of myself is disappointed in how much i have grasped the information given to me especially in science class. On the other hand, i am very satisfied in the way i demonstrated my learning, with the unit project and how i went out of my comfort zone too try different approaches, and repeatedly presented the steps my group and i took to make the project, as well as how it all came together. I think my work is decent according to the rubric, which i do not hold myself to. I want to go above and beyond with all my work and i have not been presenting work that shows my abilities. I was most satisfied with my unit project because of the amount of skills i gained from the long process. I think my unit project reflected very well on how much information we learned. Considering the slide, the project, the presentation, and the lights i believe it reflected perfectly. My group and i had many ideas that was attempted and started with which failed, over and over again so we had to change the base of our project into a cardboard/paper material. We also did not have enough light we made to be able to go all the way around the project, therefore we used some of the lights we made light up, and the other parts were lit up by christmas lights. For our mental health unit project we had the topic of anxiety, and paired it with making a sculpture or a figure. We wanted to show the physical characteristics of a person with anxiety and show the key factors that happen while someone is experiencing anxiety.We had a big board with a boy printed on it. We cut out spots on the cardboard such as where his heart, lungs, and brain would be, and put in the shapes we molded and put them in. We drilled holes in the organs we created and put in lights we were taught to use so when we talked about the organs, they would be lit up. Some strategies my group and i used was going to see the stem teacher Mr. Vizino who helped up bring our vision to life. He helped us make the organs, lights, and kindly let us use all his supplies to make our project exactly the way we wanted it. This was so helpful because he stayed after class with us to teach us more about the machines we were using. I would definitely work with him again because of how helpful he was, and how easy it was to understand his way of teaching. I would rate my effort a 9 because i did put a lot of effort in, and tried my hardest, but at the end after our first few ideas did not work, it was very late and we had very little time to finish the project, and i got discouraged. Although i was discouraged, i continued to try every idea we could. The time, strategies, and effort helped my group and i achieve our goals. I think if we did not waste time trying to contact Mr. Vizino over email and through my teachers, we could have had more time and not have been so rushed. As a teacher, i think welcoming questions would help me. Whenever i have a question, i don’t normally ask because i do not want it to be a topic you have already gone over, or to get in trouble for not asking someone else, or checking somewhere for the answer. 

   


   • Are you satisfied with your learning?
 • Are you satisfied that you demonstrated your knowledge and skill?
• How does your work compare to the expectations on the rubric?
• With which parts of the assignment (project, performance, etc.) were you most satisfied?
• How closely does your work on this assignment (project, performance, etc.) reflect your learning?
 • Why do you think this assignment worked for you?
• Were there any parts that didn’t work?
• How did you do the assignment/project? Be specific.
• Were the strategies that you used effective in helping you reach your goals? o What learning strategies were helpful? Explain. o What would you have to add to learn more, do better, etc.?
 • On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your effort?
• Did the amount of time, effort and strategies used help you reach your goal?
• If you were to do this over, how could it be improved?
• As a teacher, what can I do to help you?
• What can I do to increase the value of this assignment/project, etc.?

                                  Unit Assessment-Mental Health

     When I heard the next topic we would be studying was going to be mental health, I was immediately interested. There were many activities and projects we did that helped me understand the mental health unit more, and grasp the meaning. The projects/activities that helped me find a deeper understanding of the unit, was firstly, my mental health unit project, secondly,  is the AA speakers, and lastly the yoga we have been learning throughout the unit.

     My mental health unit project helped me develop a deeper understanding of anxiety. We had to research and know everything we could about this mental illness. Our project helped us understand what happens externally when someone develops anxiety. We made shapes to represent lungs, the heart, and the brain. We also cut holes in the hands, and all the organs we previously created and had them light up, so our audience would know exactly what we were trying to convey. We talked about how when a person is having anxiety, a series of reactions happen. For instance, sweaty palms, your heart begins to beat faster, and you can lose your breath. We also told our audience how a lack of neurotransmitters or too many, can cause a mental illness like anxiety, which can lead to worse anxiety, or even multiple illnesses at once.

    On December 12, 2017 two former alcoholics came in and introduced an organization called AA to us. Most of us knew what it was, from one way or another, but i've never gotten to see a point of view from someone who participates in AA meetings, and knows what it was like. It was interesting to see how much they said they have grown. One of the things i wanted to know the most, was how they got introduced to AA. They told us how AA seems untrimmed, and before when i thought about it, i honestly thought it would be very embarrassing to have to show up to an AA meeting. They told us about the welcoming community that AA is, and the many other groups and meetings that are held to help different people. Listening to the people talk about AA meetings and their experiences helped me understand their struggles from their point of view and learn more about AA meetings and more.

    My last activity/project that helped me gain a deeper understanding of the mental health unit, was yoga. Yoga helped my classmates and i calm down before stressful occasions, whether it was a test, or daily school work. Yoga helped me calm down, focus on my breathing, and get ready to do the tasks i was given next. When people do yoga, it helps stress and anxiety and i could definitely feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders.

    In conclusion, there was three projects/activities that helped me gain a deeper understanding and grasp the concept of the mental health unit. The first one was my mental health unit project, the second one was the AA speakers, and the third was learning yoga. I think all of these relate to each other because mental illnesses are involved in every one of them. People go to yoga for help relaxing and letting go of stressful situations, people go to AA meetings to help them with their alcohol abuse and lastly, people have anxiety and the unit project helped my group and i share with people facts about anxiety, help them get past it, and told them important information they probably did not know before. So far, the mental health unit has been my favorite because I think teens will be able to relate to it much more than the other unit we previously had, and i think being able to relate helped us take in and grasp a deeper understanding.

                                      CLICK HERE FOR PASSION BLOG




      
                                    Unit 1- Nutrition Reflective Assessment

     In these past six weeks, we have done a lot of research, learning, labs, field trips, discussions, teach-backs, projects, and more. Three big activities we have done i feel really enhanced my learning and made me understand the concepts we have previously learned. The first activity was the field trip to the farmers market, the second activity was reading omnivores dilemma, and the third activity was forks over knives.
     The field trip to the farmers market impacted my learning because i got to talk many farmers from around the area and ask them questions about their crops, farms, struggles or rough patches in their time growing the crops, and much more. This helped me grasp a deeper understanding of the topics we were learning because it helped me see not all farmers are the same. Some farmers could not call themselves or their crops "organic", because as i learned, it is a process you have to go through. Some farmers found it important that they were labeled "organic" but others said they didn't feel they needed a piece of paper to say they were producing organic crops.


Click here to listen to an interview with Hector (A farmer from the farmers market)

Click here to listen to an interview with Linda (Another farmer from the farmers market)

The picture on the right is a banner located in front of the table on of the farmers was located at. 

     Omnivores Dilemma helped me understand the nutrition unit because of how part of the novel was written like a journal, it let me see what he was writing about through his eyes. Although in the beginning omnivores dilemma was hard to grasp, the audio books helped me understand it more. Omnivores dilemma made me think about the food i was eating, how it was good or bad for me, and overall helped me make better food choices. Omnivores dilemma also made me think about topics i haven't thought about before, and evaluate them, and create an opinion, such as hunting, and how he was very guilty after. I now know i would never want to hunt, and hunting is not something i enjoy seeing or
   watching.                                                                            The picture on the bottom left is the book omnivores dilemma. It shows the annotations and notes i took.   

     Forks over Knives was the most helpful thing i feel we did for my way of learning. Watching the video and answering the questions helped me understand the book much more, because right after hearing information, writing it down helps me grasp the topic. I learned lots of information while watching the movie, and i liked seeing how people with diebeties or eating disorders, turned their lives around by just eating good foods, and sticking to a healthy diet. 

     In the end, the main activities that helped me understand the Unit 1- Nutrition, was first, the field trip and interviews to the farmers market. The second thing that helped me was reading omnivores dilemma and reading and seeing things from a different perspective. Lastly, the thing that helped the most was watching the movie forks over knives and answering the questions.