Month: May 2014

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Biography Description

Exploration Name: Biography

Exploration Dates: August 12-September 26

Essential Questions:

(1) What is a biography?

(2) What events have shaped this person’s life?

Number of Students: 13

Description: The first day that we started to learn our Exploration everyone was very excited. Our Exploration studied with teacher Jo, Sambath and Channa. Our Exploration learned about Biography. Biography is studying about the other person’s life. Biography group worked together and shared ideas that we had. For example: we went on a trip and searched the information in computer. When we interviewed we used the strategy to understand about the other person’s life​​ like listening strategy, asking questions and interviewing. We learned how to interview the people, by writing down the notes, how to be a good photographer and a good questionnaire. When we interviewed the people already we not just write down notes in our book. We also learned to make a documentary in the iMovie program. Some people worked on the information that they got too but they did it in Powerpoint program. The reason we wanted to do like this because in the future if we forget what we have we can look in the documentary of the other people life. The people that we interviewed were:Sophal’s uncle (the older person and now he does not do anything because his leg is hurt), Sophal’s sister-in-law (now she not do anything but she works at her house), Sophal  (works in Liger cleaning the school), Simian (works in Liger cleaning the school) and Houy (also works at cleaning Liger too). We had many different people that we interviewed but we only give example some of the people. We took the trip to go to the pagoda near our school to interview the monks in that pagoda. It was so fun for the Biography group. Our group studied only six weeks. Every day during Exploration time the students worked hard and studied new things a lot. In this Exploration all of the students are not lazy, they are active and helpful. We all were really happy to study about biography and now help us have a knowledge and a lot of the experience that we thought.

 

Interview Shopkeeper

Biography

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Food Systems Description

Exploration 6

  • Exploration Name: Food Systems
  • Exploration Dates: March 10 – May 2
  • Number of Students: 15

A food system is the cyclical process of growing, transforming, packaging, transporting, cooking, eating, and recycling food. Sometimes we can skip some of these steps. For example if we eat a mango that grows from a tree at our house we are skipping packaging, transporting, cooking, and transforming. This is an example of a local food system. An example of a global food system is chips that have ingredients from different parts of the world and are packaged, transformed and transported all over the world. In our class we learned the difference between all three kinds of soil. They are sand, silt and clay. We started to grow the seeds. The seeds have grew, but we have not taken its to grow in our raised beds yet. In one day we have to give the water to the plants 3 – 4 times. We learned the six steps to grow the seeds, from laying the toilet paper to moving them in the tray. We have learned the part of the seeds. There are seed coat, embryo and cotyledons. We learned about the fruits and vegetables. We also learned about global and local food systems. Global is the food that is all around the world. Local is the food that is near. Ex: If we are Cambodian and buy the food in Cambodia that food is the local because it is near where we live. Ex: If we are Cambodian and buy the food from Malaysia that food is the global because it is far away from where we live. Also, we learn about the pros and the cons about local and global food systems. We took four trips to learn about Food Systems. The first trip we went on Organic farm. The owner shown us how to grow the seeds. In his farm there are ten different types of seeds: lettuce, fruit plants and herbs. Also, he told us that insects and the weeds destroy his farm. Weeds are the things that you don’t want. EX: In the farm have the grass that grows, the weeds is the grass because the farmer doesn’t want that to grow in their farm. New technology is that they cover the soil by the plastic because when we put the compost and the water will not go away. Compost is made out of the animals poo mixed with soil and rice husks. The second trip we went to Natural garden store. In that shop sell vegetables, snacks, wine and ingredients. The owner had taught us how to find where the food came from. The owner said that some of his fruits, vegetable and cookies are bought from France, America, Thailand, North America, Singapore, Germany and local. He has own farm in Kampong Speu and at Kampong Som. The third trip we went to University Agriculture. In there we learned about hydroponics. The guide told us that hydroponic is the new technology in Cambodia. Hydroponics means growing on the water. At there we saw lots of lettuce that grows on the water. The last trip we went to Rice Mill. We learned about the different rice in Cambodia. Also, we learned the difference between brown rice and white rice and how both of this rice is good for us.
Food System

Milk

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Robotics Description

Simple Robot

Exploration Name: Robotics

Exploration Dates: Exploration 3: November 20 – January 17 and Exploration 4: January 20 – March 7

Number of Students: 6

Description: In our Exploration class we learned about natural disasters and how to make the robot with the lego bricks. The lego brick is really complicated to do the robot because it is small. The lego box has four sensors: ultrasonic sensor, color sensor, touch sensor and gyro sensor. The ultrasonic sensor is used for measuring the length. The color sensor is used for measuring the reflection of color. The touch sensor is used for touching something that tells about the place. It will send the information to the brain. We learned about how to program, build and about natural disasters. Each of these are very important and it gave lots of advantages because we needed to use all of the skills to do it. Building is the most important, which gives most advantages too because building is the first step to make the robot. Programming is the most difficult part because we need to write the code to make the robot work. When we started to learn our group needed to think about the ideas to make a robot that can do the challenge and complete the four goals of the challenge. They are Mechanical Design, Strategy & Innovation, Robot Performance and Programming. The natural disaster was divided into three parts: Presentation, Innovation Solution means how creative was the solution that we did and Research. The challenge was we needed to make the robot knock down the building, tsunami, take the track and the ambulance to the end zone.The students needed to work ìn a team with six people to have success in the FIRST® LEGO® League in Singapore. We had to look and watch lots of videos to get more ideas. We also looked at the rules of the game in order to learn more about the challenge. Then we went to Singapore to do the challenge.

This is the Prezi slideshow that we presented to the judge:
Cambodia

This is some our photo at Singapore

We had practice with SAS students about robotic Simple Robot Presentation Robotices Time at Phnome Penh Airport Singapore American School showed Simple Robot Team of their Robot

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Forest Ecology Description

Exploration Name: Forest Ecology

Exploration Dates: Oct 7, 2013 – Nov 19, 2013

Number of students: 12

Essential Questions: (1) What is an ecosystem? (2) What is a natural resource?

Description: An ecosystem is the living things and the non-living things connecting with each other. The one example is algae. Algae take the sunlight for food and fish eat algae and then people eat fish. This is one connection. In Ecosystems class we had a journey book to take notes or write keywords that we don’t know what that word means. In Ecology class the first topic that we learned was tropical forest. We did not just learn only tropical forests but we also learned a lot of kinds of forests like conifers and others. A tropical forest is the forest that has rain a lot all year. We also learned about ecological relationships. Ecological relationships mean that one organism and another organism connect with each other. Ecological relationships are divided in five parts. They are parasitism, commensalism, predator-prey, mutualism and competition. Our Ecology group went to Mondulkiri province to study there. We spent six days at Mondolkiri. We met a lot of people like Bunong people. On Saturday we came back to our school and we shared what we learned.

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Art History Description

Advanced Enrichment Name: Art History

Learning Facilitator: Jo

Number of Students: 8

Date: March 30 – June 12

Days We Meet: Thursday and Friday

Course Description: Our group learned about Art History. The first time we learned about the Art of Greek. We found the information from the videos of their history and looked how to paint. We tried to find the interesting things from the Greek art and then we chose to paint the Greek urn. First we didn’t take the pot to paint but we used the papers to make the pot shapes. We took our computer and found the styles of the Greek urn and drew some of their style in the paper. When we did it finish we tried to draw the pot on the papers. When we finished we cut it out and we painted colour orange. If we wanted to have the picture that we want to draw to colour orange we painted the background black. If we wanted the picture black we painted our background to the orange colour. When we chose finish and we waited for them to dry. Then we drew the style of the Greek. When we finished we drew the things that told us about our life. Then we painted the colour on it and waited for them to dry again. Then we had the paper Greek urns. Also our groups learned how to paint. We found information about Monet and Leonardo Da Vinci. We watched the video of the Rome and about Leonardo Da Vinci life. We had the book that told us about the types of art of Rome and Leonardo Da Vinci. When we watched finish we started to choose the art and started to paint like that picture. We chose Monet art. First we took the colour to paint on the paper for try. We went near the pond. Then we painted the water and water lilies. We started to paint on the canvas. We divided into three groups to paint. When we finished we went to paint at the wall. We painted the black on it and then we drew the Khmer history. Then we painted white on the line and that is our Art History group work.

 

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Film Making Description

Name of Course: Filmmaking

Learning Facilitator: Mr. Jeff

Number of Students: 12

Dates: January 19 – March 27

Days we Meet: Thursday and Friday

Course Description: Our group studied about filmmaking. When we started to study our Advanced Enrichment we started to study in Internet by watching a video and how many kinds of the tricks that they used to do their videos. When we studied in the Internet already we all started to make one video that talked about the book. When we made the video we were not taking the video in video camera. Our way was we took a picture then we put it in the folder in our computer. Then we used one program in our computer to do our sponser video book. That program is called Movie Maker. Then when we did it already we started a new things. The new thing is that we took a picture of our school then we made it into a video and that video we needed to make it perfect. Some ways that we can make us to have a good video is that our video needed to have three things: 1. good sound on the video 2. picture is clear 3. have a good information. Then our filmmaking thought about a new ideas. Some people thought that they wanted to make a movie about the sticky hand can play the Minecraft in the computer. Some more people said they would like to do a movie about the stickman dancing and one more big ideas was they like to make a movie about the stick girl. We thought that this was very important things so we started to make a movie. The movie like stick men, sticky hand, it just took only a little bit of time but for the stick girl movie it took very long time to make a movie. The title of the movie that talked about the girl was Charlie Lima. This story was really hard to film because we have many scenes to film and one scene maybe took for two days to film because is hard and this story told about the stick girl wanting to be like a human. So it was a little bit related to the people so we needed to make the stick girl look real. That video took us nearly one month to make this movie and until now we not finished yet. Unfortunately the time went so fast so we don’t have enough time to finish our movie but we hope we will. Filmmaking group were really excited because they can study how to make a video and acting and how it hard when we do the movie. Everyday of our study we were trying hard and working together as a team and everyone was happy. We all were really happy to study about filmmaking because filmmaking is the part of the things that is important for us.

Charlie Lima Website: https://d3hzrtb9p6to3i.cloudfront.net/e0/00c290b5ae11e3af71fdca9d7f259a/CharlieLima.mp4

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World Leaders Description

Name of Course: World Leaders

Learning Facilitator: Sophorn

Number of Students: 10

Days we Meet: Thursday to Friday

Advanced Enrichment Dates: October 20 – January 16

Course Description: In World Leaders class we learned about the leaders and also the students learned to analyze the good or bad leaders all around the world. The good leaders are supposed to lead the country to develop and the leaders need to make the people get the peace. The bad leaders treat in bad way to the people in the country. We can understand the way how the famous leaders are leading for the country. The important part of our class was to understand the concepts of the leaders which means what are their ideas or inventions to change the country. All the leaders had different concepts like Gandhi. He led by integrity and non-violence. Also we watched a lot of movies because it helped us to get more ideas about the different leaders. The main movie that we watched was Gandhi. He was one of the most famous leaders all around the world because the way that he led shown the integrity. He had the mindset of non-violence. The most interesting part of our class was to learn about the quote of the leaders. For example Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said “If you think you are helpless please help someone” and we think about her quote, do we understand or not. We also went on a the trip to meet Mr. Kok Tha. He is the person that can share us a lot of information because he is the good leader. The leaders have many parts it is not just the leaders of the country they call the leaders. World Leaders was really nice because we can learn how to be the leaders.

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Scratch Description

Name of Course: Scratch

Learning Facilitator: Max

Number of Students: 13

Advanced Enrichment Dates: August 12-Oct 17

Days we Meet: Thursday and Friday

Course Description: In our Advanced Enrichment class we learned how to program in Scratch. Scratch is a program for making continuous animation, games, simulation, music and art. This program uses custom programming language. We learned each category of custom programming language: Motion, Control, Looks, Sensing, Sounds and Pen. Motion is moving custom program. Control is controlling custom program, for example when we click right arrow the avatar go to right. Looks is size, avatar, and communicating custom program. Sensing is sensor custom program, for example when we touch color black the avatar turn to black. Sounds is sounds custom program, for example when we press space avatar say hello. Pen is coloring custom program. We learned what the categories mean and we translated in Khmer to make more understand and remember. We played with the program to change the color to make it big. We thought what story we were going to make. Then we made the stories in Scratch. Also some of us made the games. When we had some of questions we asked teacher or our friends to help. We played with makey makey that connects to Scratch. One example of a game we made is when we touch the Earth material that connects to makey makey and the makey makey connects to computer. The computer plays the sounds.