Personal Project

Table Of Contents:

1. Investigating

a) The goal

b) Global context

c) Demonstrate research skills

2. Planning

a) Developing criteria

b) Plan and record the process

3. Taking action

a) Create a product following the goal, global context and criteria

b) Demonstrate evidence of communication and social skills

c) Demonstrate thinking and decision-making skills

4. Reflecting

a) Evaluate the quality of the product against my criteria

b) Reflect on how completing the product has extended my knowledge and understanding of the topic and global context

c) Reflect on developments IB learners through the project

5. Bibliography

Investigating

The Goal

I have decided for my personal project to create a product that could help me get closer to my family, therefore, I will be writing a children’s book about my family’s history. Three years ago I heard that my Turkish side of the family are actually immigrants from Greece, but I have never got the time to fully reflect on it as I was younger and careless. However, this year I was really interested in this topic and I consider that family is an essential part of your life and people should try and be as close to them as they could. So, I decided to shoot two birds with one stone and study this situation.

However, for my final product, I would like to write about this story in a children’s book format. The reason I would like to write this story, for kids, is because I believe that children should start being open minded about different cultures and beliefs since a young age. So, reading about a true story would make them more knowledgeable and caring as well.

I wanted the final product to be written in Turkish (see Appendix B), because I was seeking to improve my Turkish skills. On the journey to creating the final product, I was correcting and enhancing the language it is spoken in my house. Because all my life I was surrounded of people speaking Turkish, I already got some knowledge of it, and it really helped me have a good start.

Global Context

I chose to focus on identities and relationships for my global index, as it relates to the fact that I will be interacting with my family as I will ask pointed questions about the history of this family. This global context is asking the questions “Who am I?” and “Who are we?”, which are questions that inquire into identity, beliefs, value and health. Additionally, for this project I questioned my family’s identity, along with their beliefs, value and health when I was interviewing them about their history. As for the relationships part, I will obtain a better relationship with my family as I got closer to them when I understood their adventure.

Research Skills

The five steps in my investigating for my personal project are:

a) Improve my Turkish skills

b) Apply the language in an everyday basis

c) How to write a children’s book

d) Interrogate a family member

e) Collect opinions and data

Improve my Turkish skills

This stage my most influential research has been some sites that help you learn better Turkish. I have found sites that are similar to games and quizzes that help you improve your vocabulary, the sites that helped me the most were Babbel, TurkishClass and Duolingo ( see Appendix C ). They really helped my vocabulary because I was learning them with a positive attitude as they were fun mini-games. They also made me remain motivated on my goal because I was having a good time learning. Besides, I have worked with some PDFs workbooks at the beginning because I couldn’t find any Turkish grammar workbooks, here in Romania. However, I did find a workbook in Turkey, but I had to wait until it is shipped in Romania, so I just worked on those PDFs files. When it did came, I worked with two books that helped my grammar and my vocabulary. I enjoyed learning from them as they are very interesting and include interesting examples that catches the attention.

Apply the language in an everyday basis

I bought some online children's books, so I could understand the language better and also to improve my vocabulary. The books I read (see Appendix L) made a drastic change over my fluency and my vocabulary. I started memorizing new words more efficiently and I stopped blabbering when I am talking. I also started watching TV shows, movies, news in Turkish. There I have learned a lot of new words and expressions, and it also made me more confortable with the language. ¬¬¬Also, I have started to speak in Turkish with my family at home and with my Turkish classmates. This stage was easy to achieve, however it was very challenging because most of the times I was struggling understanding what the person was saying, or I was hassling with trying to remember a word that I was needing to say. On the other hand, this stage really helped me evolve because it forced me to work on my personal project everyday as I am surrounded by Turkish people who I can speak Turkish with, or internet where I can search a movie or a clip in Turkish.

How to write a children’s book

I researched on Google for information that could help me in achieving my goal, which is writing a book for children (see Appendix F). The sites that I have been using taught me the basic elements of writing a book for kids. Moreover, in order to prevent for making any kind of mistakes, I studied another website, which helped me quite a lot in terms of getting the book published with