Month: June 2022

tPOL 2022, Here We Are

Before we start, here is the POL declaration- “Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Hello and welcome to my TPoL (transitional presentation of learning). In this post I will try to answer the question “Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade?”. In short, I am ready to go on to grade 10 because I have become proficient at the skills that I learned in grade 9. And hopefully the rest of this presentation proves that. I have chosen one project from each class to represent my progress as a learner  this year.

First, a quick look at my learning plan. I think I did a good job at trying to reach my proficiency goals for each class. At my MPoLs I stated that due to stress I lowered my goal for maker from an extending to an accomplished. And I think that that was probably a good call because It set a realistic goal for myself to achieve.

Some things that I feel I have done well at that are in my learning plan this year would be;

  1. I have been using things regularly for both school and non school related tasks and it has helped me greatly.
  2. I have set up routines that help me focus on my homework and help me not to get discouraged.
  3. I have been asking my peers/parents/teachers more often when I need clarification on concepts that I do not understand.

Some areas that I want to have more growth in my grade 10 year would be starting homework asap so that I don’t put it off until the point where I am then rushing to get it done.

Evidence From my Classes

Humanities

“A War to End All Wars” 

You can check out my blog post for this project here.

I chose this project because I found it to be the project that I had the most interest in researching. I have always been intrigued by world wars and I found it really fun to be able to research a topic that I was genuinely interested in. Because of this, I was really determined to know the battle of Monchy Le-Preux inside and out, and make my comic book a tribute to the battle. I usually have a hard time doing art in projects because I am not the most talented artist and then my self-proclaimed perfectionism gets in the way of  being able to pump out a lot of work. But in the end I am super proud of the work that I created because I know that I put a lot of hard work into it.

I think the skills that I really improved on in this project would be my researching and summarizing skills. My notes were extensive and I was able to work with a fellow researcher to understand a cohesive summary of the topic. I held a sustained interest and was very passionate in the topic I was representing.

Scimatics

“Time is Money”

You can check out my blog post for this project here.

I chose this project because I think it shows my perseverance and reflection skills. I have always been interested in owning my own business/practice and the type of math that we learned is super important in that line of work and just general adult life. So that was an extra push to help me get through all of the math that I didn’t understand at first. And as I was reflecting on my business in the video, I was able to see where it was not sustainable and how I could’ve improved upon it for next time. 

Maker

“Believe in Good ”

You can check out my blog post for this project here.

Believe in Good was a chance for me to expand my creativity and think critically about myself as a person. I feel as though over the course of this project, I matured as a person and learned how to be a more effective version of myself. I was able to reflect on how I maybe need to put first things first more often and think carefully about what actually needs to happen and when it needs to be done by. I think these skills will help me in being an effective grade 10 student next year.

So hopefully you can now see how I am ready to be a grade  10 student! I hope you enjoyed my TPoL and I’ll see you next year for my grades 10 MPoL’s!

As always, Brooke.

Spring Has Sprung – Gardens and Exhibitions

Hello party people and welcome back to my Learning Portfolio, or simply, my blog. The year is almost at an end and that means that a lot of these posts are going to be coming out at once so don’t forget to check out my other posts as well! So here is the summative post for my last grade 9 maker project, “Your First Film”

Project  Overview

You may remember that I recently did another project with videos called “VIBRANT VIDEO POST”, and I would say that this project was basically the final product of that project. This project was all about using all of the video skills that we’ve gained top make one final video, a documentary with a topic of our choosing. The documentary had to include an interview, storyline, message, and original music. At first I had no clue what I wanted to do my documentary on, and after a few ideas I landed on a general topic of “gardening”. You see, a few days ago I moved into an apartment and I really want to grow a little garden on our balcony. Originally, I was going to focus the doc on my journey of planting a potato, but as I got to filming I realized that my original idea may have been too “vlog like” and that I could use the influence of my interviews to guide the story instead. This project was also going to be the grade 9’s focus for showcasing at the spring exhibition. Now unfortunately I was sick so I wasn’t able to be at the exhibition this year, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Driving question 

How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?

By using all of the skills that I have learned about making videos, I can create something that is of good quality and interesting to the viewers. A well written logline and treatment indices the viewer and can help get your video to the right audience. Hopefully as I explain a bit of the project, you will be able to see how I was able to use my video and storytelling skills to engage and entertain my audience.

The Documentary 

As I mentioned briefly in the driving question, we created loglines and treatments for our documentaries. A treatment is a short summary of your documentary, and a logline is a few sentences that you would put in the description or be the tagline of a movie trailer. This helped us start to envision a storyline to create a structure for our documentary. Then we created a screenplay. A screenplay is a written view of what you will see and hear in the film, who will be in each scene, where things take place, etc. My documentary ended up being quite different from my original screenplay, you will probably be able to tell later on when you finally get to see my doc.

 

Next, step we created the storyboard. A storyboard is basically the screenplay but in drawings.

Then we had a whole butt ton of filming to do. I went through quite the roller coaster of trying to find a person to interview, but in the end I managed to have a great interview with Alex Johnson, the assistant manager at my local Gardenworks. We also had to create original music using GarageBand and I found it quite tedious but fun. And of course will al of the filming, there came even more editing. The editing was soooooo meticulous but it is a really improvement part of creating a good film. And then Ta Daaa! Documentary finished. I am super proud of the final result for this project, as it is the last maker project of my grade 9 year. 

Exhibition 

So as I already stated, I didn’t actually end up going to the exhibition but I will talk about the part of the process that I was a part of. Exhibitions are a chance for every grade to tell a story and answer a question, while using their work to enhance and show as an example. The grade 8s+9s worked together to tell the story of “What Does It Mean To Be A PLP Learner?” Throughout the first part of the school, and then guests would walk to the gym to see the main event of the 10/11/12s. I was part of the the conclusion of our section, where our driving question was “What is a PLP learner?”. We decided that a PLP learner was hardworking, creative, thoughtful, collaborative, and detailed. 

It was our job to design the layout of our section and make all of the decor that we would need. It was a lot of work to design everything and create something visually appealing. We were also given a group of grade 8s to help us at the exhibition and give them a chance to display their work as well. Most of the work was put into the “Hall of Hard work”, where we tried to show the process of developing work to extending quality work.

Our group’s documentaries were displayed on a projector in our “Dungeon of Docs”. And I am quite disappointed that I wasn’t there to see all of the masterpieces.

We also were running some instant challenges and getting the guests to self-asses on how they preformed. As any good PLP student knows, we don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflection. Self-assessment is heavily incorporated in PLP’s structure so we thought that it was a perfect showcase of what its like to be a PLP student.

 

 

 

 

And that’s it for my section of the 2022 spring exhibition!

Conclusion

So this will be my last blog post of the year. Wow. If you’ve made it this far I really want to thank you for taking the time to read these because it takes a lot personally for me to write a whole post. I’m so proud of myself and all of my classmates for making it through this year, we did it guys! Anyhoo cya in September!

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.

Linear Labs Artisan Jewelry

Greetings fellow earthlings. Welcome to another scimatics post on this ghastly blog of mine. I am currently writing this in my bedroom where I have been glued to a tissue box and a whole plethora of cold medications in my system. If you didn’t get it already, I’m sick (not covid).

Project Overview

This project was called “Time is Money” but for some reason I’ve been calling it “Time Beith Money” like in an old-English type of flare. Anywho, in this project we were to create a small business selling products or a service and learn about finance though linear relations. I chose to make a small jewelry store through Instagram and sell some cute lil’ accessories to my friends. Now I am no wiz at math but eventually I did catch on to this whole algebra thing and boy is it helpful to know how to do.

Driving Question

How can we predict our finances for the future?

With calculating your expenses (living), startup costs, sale price (income), and time, you can get a pretty accurate estimate of how sustainable your finances are. Using a linear relations equation like where and putting the equation into a graph where the y axis represents profits and the x axis represents hours of work, you can get a visible representation of your financial situation.

Curricular Competencies

Communicating and representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic form

I successfully used a linear equation to determine my profits. I calculated my hourly wages, predicted NET earnings for a year, and how much money I had made (and lost) over the actual amount of time that I worked for. My graphs are clear and functional, and I labeled them for easy understanding.

Understanding and solving: Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations

I calculated all of the time, materials, equipment, and impact, in the cost of making my products. I used recycled materials and used a digital method of selling my product in order to create less waste. I chose to make products that I already had most of the materials to make, and still calculated the cost of the items that I had bought long ago.

Connecting and reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.

My business is sadly not sustainable as a full time job. I think this is partially due to the fact that I grossly under-priced my products for the security of making transactions. Realistically I should’ve priced my products in a way that would have me make more money on every transaction, which wasn’t the case mainly for the engraved items. Other businesses in the class, like Dana’s cookie sale, would make more money annually than I would but they both would not be sustainable as a full time job. Maybe with some remodelling and another go at this I could make a more sustainable business.

Conclusion

Honestly we do a lot of connecting our projects to the “real world” but I think this one was the first project that I think actually has an important connection to my future. I have always been interested in owning my own business/practice and this type of math is super important in that line of work and just general adult life. So now I can proudly say that I can do algebra and understand linear relations!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

As always, Brooke.