"Why did I Why?" by Desi - May 15, 2022 - Arshiaa

 Introduction ~

Greetings, my name is Arshiaa and I am in Mr. Hodgkinson’s grade 7 class! My favourite subjects are maths and science. I immensely enjoy swimming, painting, and spending time with my friends. I am very excited to write this week’s blog!

The Rose ~

The rose is definitely our Mystery unit! I would love to describe it but I can’t break the class rule! As my classmate mentioned in last week's blog, we are doing connected lessons after each episode. This week we dug deep into confidence men/women (con people) and cons also known as scams! 

This was a very interesting topic to learn about! We connected it to mathematics and learned about financial money schemes. We also read about some of the most popular "confidence scams", so we will not fall victim to them. We also connected this to drama -- more on that below.

The Thorn ~

This week, our teacher, Mr. Hodgkinson, unfortunately, got Covid. We were expecting to continue our Mystery Unit but because of this unfortunate event, it’s paused for this week. 

My classmates and I were eager to perform our dance to the song Baby by Justin Beiber choreographed by our multi-talented French teacher! Sadly the performance got moved to next week because our dance teacher was also unable to attend school.

The Bud ~

The weather is eventually starting to get warm and cheery! Although there are some fluctuations in the temperature I would say that it’s officially summer or very close to summer! 

We finally started track and field which is my favourite time of the school year! We did multiple track events like running, ball throw, long jump, and triple jump. Now we are all anxiously looking for the last track and field event to happen -- it was cancelled the last two years due to Covid!

My first attempt in the long jump

I am delighted to be selected for the relay team to represent our school in the Regional Meet, and I am also looking forward to winning and bringing laurels to my school!

Literacy and Drama Links ~

We connected Con Artist scams to drama. We formed groups of 3- 5 people and had to present a scam, with actors and a narrator. We were given a baseline to help us write the script!

The scam that my group and I are going to act is called, “The Melon Drop.”  In this con a scammer is strolling on a busy street, usually in an area where tourists visit. The con will be holding something that looks valuable even though it isn’t, then they find the right person (the mark) and bump into them, but make it appear as if the mark was clumsy and to blame! The Con Artist then drops the item and convinces “the mark'’ to pay them a lot of money for this casualty. Sometimes, they will create a scene and may even have an accomplice. disguised as a police officer. Flustered, the tourist will quickly offer money to make this embarrassment end. It is called the Melon drop because, at one time, melons were used to target Japanese tourists -- who consider melons valuable in their culture.

(PS: scamming is not encouraged)

Mathematical Mentions ~

This week we learned about different currencies and how to convert them from one to another! This was a surprisingly easy topic and I am glad that I learned it!

After learning we were assigned a very amusing activity to do! We had to choose a foreign destination and spend at a week there! Now our job was to find how much our trip will cost -- travel, meals, entertainment, accommodation and tips. We need to present our costs in an engaging visual presentation...in both currencies.

The staggering part was that we had UNLIMITED MONEY! We can go anywhere and do anything -- just no fast food restaurants. We're supposed to try the local cuisine.

I am going to South Korea to spend some Won with my partner and friend Jiya. A Thousand Won is about $1 Canadian.

That concludes this week's blog! Thanks for reading! :)