Over 50% of Liger students, including me, will end this school term with SAT Exams, which I surprisingly really excited about but also nervous at the same time. The exams will be held in Liger campus on the upcoming October 6th. I had tried to spend as much time as possible into doing intense practice for the SAT mainly use Khan Academy but also SAT textbook; it had been hard to manage to do so due to the amount of homework I receive from school.
Math period had always been a time for me to study math deeply to prepare for the SAT. I can always ask my math facilitator for any math problems I struggle with. With the help from my facilitator and the self-study I’ve done, I had made a significant jump in my math SAT score.
My goal in this upcoming SAT specifically in the math section, I hope I will get no more than ten questions wrong which means I plan to get 670 or above. There are many strategies that you could use to save time during the SAT exams. Those strategies could be as simple as choosing the right way to solve each question and don’t always depend on the calculator.
For this specific questions, instead of plug in and solve, you can use the eliminate strategy:
Screenshot from Khan Academy.
x + y = -9
x + 2y = -25
Subtract both equations and we get:
y = -16
Plug in the easiest equation and quickly solve for x.
Compare to plug in and solve, this strategy saves a lot of time. If you were to do the plugin and solve strategy:
y = -x – 9
x + 2(-x – 9) = -25
This might seems easy for this particular question, but for a lot of time in SAT, this strategy is really time-consuming and during the process of solving, you might face some stressful number like fractions as well.
In SAT exams, you got no time to waste. You can always use each second you save for the harder questions you meet. Though, you should prioritize getting the easy and straightforward questions done before spending time, solving for the harder one because each question worth the same amount of point.
Through many practices throughout the week, I feel really confident in a lot of material in math.
Though, there are still some questions that still bother me and a lot of those made up a really tiny percent of the SAT.
On the first day of school after the two-month holiday, we had a P-SAT test which was really frustrating. What a way to start the next school year!
As mentioned, we started this school year very differently with SAT Bootcamp for the first two weeks because many of us will be taking the real SAT exam in the upcoming October 6th which including me as well. We had three different classes in total: math, English, and an extra class for Bootcamp homework and also a class to catch up with some new information about college.
This SAT Bootcamp was just like any other SAT Bootcamp. In English section, we always started class with 10 pairs of the most confusing words in English and the rest of the class time will be focused mostly on studying each strategy to answering the different type of questions efficiently. One of my most favorite strategies was the elimination strategy. This strategy was really useful when it comes to the command of evidence question (COE). It’s really hard to explain the way I handled this type of question. Basically, I read the part A question and then go straight to the COE because instead of reading each well-written answers that are very tricky and confusing in part A, I tried to figure out the answer in part B because it usually not as tricky and later on match it with the answer from part A.
We always end English class with a lot of homework. By a lot I mean A LOT; I remembered that one time when we got 80 SAT questions to get done overnight, plus the vocab homework which was to come up with example sentences for each vocabs questions which we would then share to our classmates in the next class period.
For the math section, we didn’t really have specific strategies for each type of math questions. So basically, we tried to do as many kinds of questions that can appear in SAT exams as possible. The class would basically start with our mentor showing some convenient way to solve a question. My favorite strategy that I wanted to highlight is polynomial division, which basically works like the normal division as well. I like it for a lot of reasons and not only that it’s getting me to the right answer very quickly but also it teaches me to not afraid of fractions, or abnormal numbers because there’s always a simple way to handle things.
SAT Bootcamp had taught me a lot of useful strategies for time-limiting exams and I definitely gonna use those while taking the real SAT exam.
Welcome to the Mosquito-borne Diseases exploration! This is one of the last round explorations of this school year 2017-2018 at Liger. We are a group of 12 students and a facilitator who is trying to study deeply about a very common mosquito-borne disease in Cambodia, Dengue Fever, that every Cambodian had heard of. Throughout the research, we had found that the number of Dengue Fever cases are doubled this year compared to the previous year. This information had encouraged us to pick this particular disease to focus on most. Currently in class, our teams are working on a project called ‘Risk Analysis’ where we have to survey villagers, analyze the data, and finally writing a report for the study ourselves.
The goal of this project is to estimate which village of the two are most likely to have a Dengue Fever outbreak in this upcoming raining season.
Mosquito larvae inside villager’s water storage.
We start off by creating a team to work on the questionnaire. The questionnaire will only include the relevant questions and are not expected to be a long list of the question due to the time limit; we don’t have much time to interview as well as to analyze responses of each question. There was also another team that is working on figuring out routes that each team or pairs will be taking in order to avoid interviewing the same households.
On May 18th and 19th, 2018, our team went out of campus to do surveys of our neighborhood villages: Champus Kaek, Koh Krobey, one household followed by the other. We spend approximately 20 minutes to interview each household. The six pairs complete about 60 household in that morning in Champus Kaek village and are ready to keep on the work to interview the next village tomorrow, expecting to have a sample survey of 52 at least. After the two days, we end up interview 116 household in total which was really impressive.
Interviewing one of the households.
My favorite part of the whole process is to be able to connect and feel the kindness and a warm welcoming from each person we’ve been walking through to interview them. They were really friendly in term of like respecting and letting some 15-year-old asking them questions. Getting the accurate answer from them is really important, so we have to make sure they are comfortable with telling us the information we need. I was glad to get to talk to and connect with all the villagers once again.
In the second village, Koh Krobey, we seem to run into an issue. Each route the group had divided doesn’t seem to share the same amount of household, so some group seems to struggle with completing the amount of survey they needed to get done with. I was also one of the groups who’s struggling. As I walk through the route, I try my best to ignore those dogs that were barking hard at us. After a few minutes, we make a decision to just meet up as a team and continue to interview the route with a lot of people which is another team route.
Observing one of the village’s water storage.
There were many flaws in making this report. There are a lot of different interviewers. So there’s a chance that we can interpret the question in a different way and receive a slightly inaccurate answer.
While analyzing the data, I was on a roll with the other three mates to work on analyzing the association between people’s behavior and their risk of getting dengue fever. Surprisingly, there isn’t any evidence of an association between them. This means that the risk of getting dengue fever is not influenced by their behavior.
One of the water storage type that many villagers had used.
Throughout this whole exploration, I had worked my hardest at all time! I asked a lot of questions and always pay all of my attention toward the lesson our facilitator had given us. Those questions had influenced my understanding of this topic very well. I had worked my best to connect all of the experiences from the last exploration like Surveying in Cambodia into writing the report. Lastly, I hope I had played my role well and had contributed every knowledge I have had toward making this project happen.
On Friday, February 2nd, 2018, my Exploration group went to Thailand in order to attend the VEX Robotics Competition in Bangkok 2018. VEX Robotics Competition is a competition that requires the student to work as a team, using their engineering skill to design and build a robot to play against another team. It is a game of alliances which mean we will require to cooperate with the other team(s). It came with a lot of rules that we must follow in order to avoid from disqualification. We’re a team of five girls named “Beta-B“.
On Saturday, we went to NIST International School to join the VEX Robotics Competition. We went through many challenges throughout the whole competition. Before the competition, we spend a lot of our time getting familiar with the real field to fulfill the practices that we’re missing because our school doesn’t have the field.
Hanging out before the competition.
We discovered that our cortex (robot’s brain) isn’t working very well. The Bluetooth is always disconnected with the controller. So we decided to risk changing it with the extra cortex at NIST, although we didn’t know for sure if it working well. Before getting to make everything work, we’re running out of time because we must go to lunch altogether. What worse is we are one of the teams who will compete in the first round and we really don’t want to miss it in order to keep our score as best as we can.
Checking and fixing the robot to make sure everything is working well.
After lunch, we rushed back into the working room, and we weren’t allowed to get in until 12:45 pm. We were freaking out, and feeling hopeless because the competition will starts at 12:50 pm. But because of the good teamwork, we get to make everything done on time and we get to attend every round in the competition.
This is our group picture!
Finally, we end up at the 11th place. I was really surprised that a lot of teams want us to be their 3rd alliance. But we choose to team up with the top two team; the 1st place “Shadow Corruption” and the 2nd place “VEXecutioners” where they really want us to be their alliance as well. This is where my favorite part of the competition begins. We collaborate so well that we win every game smoothly and we’re getting into the final and compete with “Team A++” and their alliances.
Receiving the Tournament Championship with our alliances!
This is the video of the whole competition. You can watch us compete in the final (the 2nd round) by move the video forward to this minute, 4:54:15. As you watch the video, you will soon discover something wrong right after we finished the game.
Although we met some issues during the final game, we still get through it well and end up winning the competition and receive the Tournament Champion award!
Our robot with the champion. – pictured by Rika Chan
I had learned a lot from this experience. It isn’t just learning how to design and create a robot, but also how to collaborate with other people as well. I understand that to build a good robot, it doesn’t need to have every function but what important is that it has a function that works super well just like the one we built. If there’s a VEX Robotics Competition next time, I would really LIKE to join it again!
On Saturday, January 27th, 2018, a group of twelve students and two facilitators from the Liger Leadership Academy had run an event called “Gender Summit” where they tried to raise awareness about gender issues to students from different places around the country. I’m really glad that I had received this great opportunity to confidently share my opinion with everyone about this problem as well as getting to hear different aspects coming from students my age. This event comes with a lot of lessons about gender along with fun and educational activities that are really entertaining. We also get to eat free, delicious snacks and lunch as well.
Sharing opinion with the whole group.Get to know other people’s aspects.
One of my favorite activity of all is under the section called Violence and Power. Basically, at the start of the activity, one of the instructors will hand us a ball and a card. On the card, they had written some phrases that describe a type of person that we going to put ourselves in their shoes. For example, “Male street boy. 10 years old.” There’s a bin that is placed on the other end of the room opposite of where we stand. After everyone knows who they represented, another instructor will read different statements for example, “You don’t need to worry about food.” If it true for you, you will take a step forward, if not you remain at the same place. At the end, we will try to score the goal [bin] in front of us. And of course, the nearer you are to the bin, the more chance you can score it.
Everyone started at the same place.
What I like about this activity is that it’s a physical activity where we’re using our whole body to involve in the game. It was a really fun game but powerful. This game had demonstrated that people nowadays who have a lot of power are enjoying their lives happily every single day while the other people are living under struggle and unable to accomplish their goal to get to where they want to be. Those powerful people are walking toward their goals easily without turning themselves back to help those poor people. In this contemporary world, power and money always play a role in bringing people to succeed.
This event made me think that solving gender issues is not impossible. But the most important thing to know is that it’s not easy, that is why we really need to raise awareness from now on. Before the event, I always think that some culture is really useless [sorry to say that], but now I realize that culture is really powerful and had made a huge impact on someone’s life. It sometimes mislead us. Moreover, I really want people to realize that to make this world a better place, it requires both genders, men, and women. If only men are doing the work, the world wouldn’t be any better. It really impacts how I view the importance of gender equity.
We write the reflection of the whole day.
One quote from the event that is really powerful to me is “The people who have power aren’t using violence, the powerless one is.” From my understanding, this means that the people that aren’t having power are using violence because it’s the only way that they can gain power and use it over someone. And people you already have power, they don’t need use violence to get something they want.
This is when we have the discussion together.
I strongly believe that, through communication, we will be able to understand more about the issues as well as getting more people to look into this problem and together trying to raise awareness to more people and those dark aspects will slowly turn brighter and Gender Equity will happen to have in this world.
This is our group picture.
There’s also a website that was created by the twelve students who run the Gender Summit. I really hope you can check it out sometimes.
Here is a short video that basically describes what the whole day of Gender Summit looks like. Enjoy,
Beside learning in class with teacher, we also have something called independent math which is focus mainly on learning math by ourselves. So, I’m using this Expertise time to learn what I don’t understand in class, and practice more math. This hour is really helpful for my math class. Without this class, I will have a difficult time, learning some lesson.
Sharing learning experiences with government students related to project-based learning.
Welcome to PBL exploration which is stand for Project-based Learning. Our goal is to includes project-based learning in Cambodia learning curriculum, which was request by the Ministry of Education in Cambodia. We strongly believe that we can do it. In class we are working on the four lessons such as PBL definition, Teamwork, Interview and presentation to share our experience to the teachers at the government school so that they can share it to their students. They are having one hour per week which in the total of three hours to complete their project. I really proud of Liger that give my a chance to help create a huge change for Cambodia.
Liger has a field trip to Kep as a celebrating time because soon the new Liger junior will come and learn at Liger too. I have marked it as my core memory. This is the last trip that we went out campus together as a school for the first generation at Liger. On the first day at Kep, we have gone to sleep at Gibbon Valley and hiking on the mountain as the mission to find the money that our teachers had hidden. Through this activity, we get to practice a lot of teamwork skills. On the next day, we went to Rabbit Island and have a free whole day to swimming in the ocean and walk on the beach with our barefoot. At night we are looking at the slide that created by our principle, Dom, that show the picture when we were younger, from the first and second year at Liger. Everyone is very surprised because there is a huge difference from the first year until now. I really appreciate the hard work that Liger does for me! Thank you and I am looking forward to more learning opportunities that are coming toward me.
This Sonnet is created by Sreyneang.L and me.
And both of us named it as Gaming Sonnet
I couldn’t think of anything to say
Cuz there’s a word that pops up in my mind
I only know that I just want to play
Just couldn’t wait to see morning sunshine
Turn on my computer to start my game
Dragon City Minecraft and Clash of Clans
Think of creative ways to get to claim
Feeding my dragons and expand my land
Got my hacks and my sword for PVP
Just keep playing until my brain is bored
Build upgrades my village in C.O.C
I play all day, but still feel that it’s short
Saturday and Sunday are my free time
I wouldn’t spend money, even a dime
Chapter 1
“Wohoo!” came the happiness sound of Pardy the Leopard, running around on the cold, icy mountain, which was called Marindella. He sat down on a huge, freezing block of floating ice, hoping to see birds flying over the ocean at sunset. “Owlvy!” shouted Pardy with a grin. “Hey boy! See ya!” Owlvy the owl, flew quickly over the icy mountain with the other owls.
Chapter 2
“Haha!” came the laughing sound of an old, evil leopard, Frinom, who lived in the cave nearby the castle on the cold, icy mountain. “The King of Marindella should be me! Haha!” said the evil leopard, with his little friend, an evil frog, Venny. Frinom tried to create poisonous medicine and was planning to kill the queen soon.
Chapter 3
After enjoying his day in the beautiful environment outside, Pardy returned to the castle. “Pardy!” said the queen of leopards, Stinga. “Yes, Mama?” said Pardy. “Today we are going to have a celebration for your birthday! And I just want to say Happy Birthday to you, honey!” said Stinga with a grin. “Oh! Thanks mom.” He paused then continued: “I’m going to get dressed up, ok?” said Pardy, while running quickly to enter his dressing room.
Chapter 4
The poisonous medicine was finished being created by the evil leopard. “It is time for me to be the king! Haha!” said Frinom, while holding it tightly. At that moment, a fly flying around the bottle attracted Venny, who shot out his tongue, trying to catch the fly. But accidentally, besides catching the fly, Venny pushed the bottle out of Frinom’s hand, which caused it to fall down in a drainage pipe on a little, bird with a broken leg. The medicine actually helped this bird to fly and be healthy again.
Chapter 5
“Welcome to Pardy’s Birthday celebration!” said Stinga, showing her happiness while sharing the tickets to her guests. “Oh, thanks!” said Owlvy with a smile. “Hey Owlvy! I can’t believe you are here today!” said Pardy. “Ok thanks, bye Stinga!” said Owlvy while walking straight to Pardy. “Hey! Let’s go upstairs to eat some fresh fish from Marindella castle, ok?” said Pardy. Upstairs, Owlvy flew around showing how fun it is to have wings. Then Pardy said: “I wish I could fly one day,” while dancing slowly, following the music’s melody downstairs. As he finished his sentence, a little, glossy bird came flying around him and gave him a peck. After a moment, Pardy felt little shiny things floating around him in the air, and then he became unconscious.
Chapter 6
“Oh gosh! Where am I?” asked Pardy, while knocking his head, showing his confusion. At that moment he heard a shrill sound: “Meow! Meow!” This secret, scary sound showed up again louder. Then Pardy quickly ran to find out who it was. “That’s my pet, Kitty, the little cat!” said Pardy while looking at his cat, who was stuck on the thin branch of the tree nearby. So then Pardy quickly tried his best to help it. As he reached Kitty, a sound of tree branches cracking was heard. Just then, both Kitty and Pardy were falling down! Pardy tried his best to avoid falling. As they were about to hit the ground, something strange happened. Pardy’s hands changed to wings, which allowed him to fly and escape from being hit. Then he put his cat down and started to enjoy his new wings. Owlvy was coming to Pardy’s room to find him, but Pardy had disappeared. “Pardy, where are you?” said Owlvy, walking straight to the door. But something distracted his action. “What is it? This purple book is pretty attractive.” Owlvy paused, then continued: “I’m going to borrow this book from Pardy!”
Chapter 7
Pardy was flying over the broken icy blocks over the ocean, where he used to watch birds flying with the sunset, when: “What in the world?! Is this a dream?” said Owlvy with an excited face. “Hi there!” said Pardy with a grin, then he continued, “Can you show me a trick of flying?” Owlvy asked, “If you can fly, do you have any special powers?” Pardy said, “Emm! I don’t know. But we can try, right? Let’s do this!” He quickly flew back to his room with his friend. As both of them flew together, touching wings, Pardy’s legs became owl talons. They both were surprised, but they continued their mission without knowing that they had been recognized by the evil leopard, Frinom.
Chapter 8
“Can you change yourself back into your proper body?” asked Owlvy. “Maybe!” said Pardy.” He try to focus on his wings and his legs, but nothing happened! Owlvy advised. “Maybe you should try to put all your energy on your wings and legs!” Pardy tried it again. As soon as Pardy concentrated, there were a lot of glossy little things floating in the air, which quickly flew into his wings and legs. He became normal again and he said happily “I did it!”
Chapter 8
“Em! I hope to find out what happened to Pardy, the prince of Marindella!” said Frinom to his frog friend. “You need to follow Pardy and find out how he became like this!” said the evil leopard. “Yes, Sir!” smiled little Venny. So then Venny started following Pardy everywhere without letting him know.
Chapter 9
“Hey! I have one question that you have not yet answered,” said Owlvy. “Oh yeah, what is it?” said Pardy. “How do you become like this?” asked Owlvy, showing a confused face. “Actually, this is a great question and I’m not really sure what the answer is . But, as I remember, before I became like this, there was a little glossy bird flying to give me a peck, then I became unconscious. So I became like this!”. As Venny heard the answer, he ran quickly to tell Frinom. “Really?” asked Frinom, then continued, “I know what I can do, ha ha!”. So then Frinom created another medicine and quickly drank it.
Chapter 10
Pardy’s family was having dinner time happily. “Mom! This has been the best day ever!” said Pardy happily. “Yes it has been!” said Stinga, then continued: “Where was Owlvy?” “I didn’t know, but…” Something distracted Pardy. Pardy quickly found the owner of the sound: Frinom. “Frinom! What happened, why do you have…wings?” asked Stinga with surprise. “Your majesty, are you afraid of the new me, with half of myself and half of a vulture?” asked Frinom. “What do you want?” asked Pardy. “I want that!” said the evil Frinom quickly, pointing to the queen’s crown on her head. He was flying straight, hoping to kill the queen immediately. But his hand was caught by Pardy. “Stop that!” yelled Pardy. So they both were fighting. “Take the queen to a safe place, guards!” Pardy told the guards. So, he got hit strongly by Frinom. By the time Owlvy arrived, staying behind Frinom quietly, Pardy didn’t recognize Owlvy.
Chapter 11
Something popped up in Owlvy’s head, reminding him of a purple book that he was found in Pardy’s room. So he quickly flew to find it, hoping to find some solutions. So he went through the book. “How to become your normal self again?” Owlvy read it out loud. After finding out the answer, Owlvy quickly flew back to help Pardy.
Chapter 12
Owlvy was acting weirdly behind Frinom, trying to tell Pardy something, but Pardy was misunderstanding. So he decided to say out loud: “Catch Frinom!” Owlvy’s words distracted Frinom’s actions, who was fighting Pardy with strength. So Pardy bravely caught Frinom without being afraid of him. Now Owlvy had a chance to complete his work. First of all, he put his ten fingers on the middle of Frinom’s back and screamed loudly “Safirasonyrato!”. As he finished his words, many glossy little things floated in the air out of Frinom’s body. Then Frinom became normal again. “Guards, take Frinom to the prison!” Four guards came quickly to take him. “Thanks Owlvy!” said Stinga and Pardy. Then Owlvy gave Pardy the purple book, and started to talk about it with him. When the evil frog, Venny, knew that Frinom was in the prison, he was pretty scared. So he decided to escape from Marindella, and changed himself to be a better frog.
Chapter 13
“Cheers!” said Pardy. The whole family happily enjoyed the celebration. Then two years later, Pardy was getting married with a beautiful leopard princess from another castle. They respectfully said thank you to their mothers in their wedding celebration. The king, Pardy, lived with his queen and friend, Owlvy, happily ever after.
