Unit 9 Reflection

     Unit 9 taught me how to classify animals.  The first essential question of this unit was "How is life organized?"  Throughout the vodcast, I learned about different domains and kingdoms.  Not only did I learn the various domain and kingdoms, I also learned about the structure of organization after that.  Next comes the phylum, class, order, and so on.  This unit taught me how to classify organisms.  Some other essential questions are "How does a taxonomist determine the kingdom and domain that an organism belongs to?" and "How do defining characteristics of modern invertebrate phyla show increased complexity evolved in animal kingdom?'.

     After learning about the various domains, kingdoms, and phylum and how they can group different organisms in a fairly organized manner, I still wonder about the "odd-ball" organisms.  Mr. Orre mentioned that protists is kind of the miscellaneous group.  In the world of science, there is never a right or wrong answer or even lines.  There will always be some grey area that scientists debate and I wonder about those "odd-ball" organisms and I am interested in how they could possibly be classified. 

     During the course of this unit, I put a lot of effort into a presentation called What on Earth Evolved.  During the lottery of choosing my organism, I chose the shark.  During the course of my research, I found many interesting things about sharks that I did not know before.  I studied their significant impact on Earth and their distinctive characteristics.  After I spent a lot of time researching, I could dump all my information I gathered into a Google Slides Presentation, which is embedded below.  Having made presentations before, I came into this project knowing that formatting presentations to make them aesthetically pleasing takes a lot of time.  I tried to include little amounts of text per slide complemented by a picture that portrays the point I am trying to make.  I also need to make sure to not forget to cite my source.  After I finished my presentation, I now needed to practice presenting.  I asked my dad for help because I knew that he is adept at speaking in front of large groups.  I asked him if he could critique my presentation and he gave me a few pointers such as "Don't say umm, like, and so a lot or else it seems like your stalling." or "You're talking to fast."  These pointers eventually gave me a direction to point my presentation before.  Finally when I thought I was ready, I presented to my family to get practice speaking in front of people.  This practice was really helpful because it made me get use to people staring at me.

     It was the day of the presentation and I was presenting last.  I was really anxious during the time of the presentations before me.  Once it was my turn, I executed my presentation well, but I thought I spoke too fast and did not provide eye contact with enough of the audience.  I started my presentation with a question, trying to involve the audience, and surprisingly, many different people started saying what they thought, which gave me confidence.  I ended with a pun, which might have been funny.

     Trying to assess my performance, I thought that having few bullets per slide was helpful because it did not overwhelm the audience and also gave me pointers to the things I wanted to say.  I also thought pictures were nice to because it supported my point.  At the end, I had four slides of Works Cited, which I did not like.  For the future, I could make the font smaller to squeeze my links into a smaller space.
     For the future, I should give myself more time to practice my presentation.  Getting some practice helps because you know what you want to say and also you do not get too nervous in front of the audience.  Also, I thought that I was speaking a little too fast, which I tend to do when I get nervous.  In addition, I should have stood more assertively and projected my voice to sound confident.