Hello! And welcome back to another blog post. Today’s post is my Midyear Presentation Of Learning! We haven’t done an mPOL for quite some time but I’m excited to jump right in. This year’s focus for the mPOLs are these two driving questions: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? As well as, How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? So tag along to find out my answers!

Something new PLP has started is individual Learning Plans. In the beginning of the year we all filled out a statement of learning intent, step by step plans to accomplish our goals and choosing “Profiles” representing different levels of the Core Competencies that we chose and aimed to have improved in by the end of the year. In this year’s mPOL, I’m going to be talking through some of these Competencies and how my progress has been.

The goal I set at the beginning of this year was to improve on my Communication skills. Meaning, speaking in front of others in a interesting and positive way as well as being informative and clear. Presenting and speaking in front of people has always been a very difficult and overwhelming task. I understand how important it is to have good communication skills to help you in the future, and I definitely want to feel more comfortable presenting as time goes on. That’s why I believe this is a good suitable goal for me to be able to successfully achieve. 

In preparation for my mPOL, I decided I wanted to take a different approach to it then I have in the previous years. I began to review my past mPOLs and what I noticed was I mainly focused on the specific projects we did throughout of the year. While that is clear and helpful, this year I feel as though there are much better ways to self reflect on my progress with Core Competencies and my chosen goals. I did not want to solely choose projects to reflect on. I wanted to be more wide range with reflecting on the year so far. So I decided I would focus on my Learning Plan, the goals/competencies I feel I could improve on, and examples to show my improvements.

Looking back at this school year so far, and I believe I’ve shown some promising improvements in the Communication Competency. While presenting to my peers about my “Playlist of My Life”, I felt way more in control and calm as well as confident in what I was speaking about. I focused on practicing presenting and making sure I’m fully aware of the Core Competencies I needed to achieve so I could submit a project I was very satisfied and proud of. Although I still have much more to improve and revise on, for our first semester I feel fairly proud of the progress I’ve made. I look forward to see how my skills will evolved by the end of this year.

The next thing I’ve been really working on this year is the Collaboration Competency. To break that down, I wanted to get better at successfully and effectively working with my peers. I’ve never had a problem with getting along with my group, what I struggled with was expressing and sharing my ideas, and giving helpful and specific criticism to ideas I had opinions on. I had a tendency to not share my thoughts because I felt they could be “wrong” and “bad” or not creative enough. I have come to the realization that there is no such thing as bad ideas. When we did our Political Party project, I had a difficulty finding my voice and the strength to speak up. I was concerned about the reactions I could get if I spoke up about my thoughts, but once again to my surprise I was welcomed by a helpful and supportive environment. I only wish I would have stepped out of my comfort zones earlier. But I’ve learn to not be afraid to express my thoughts because although it might be scary at first, the feedback and helpful criticism you receive it’s extremely useful and supportive and will only help you improve!!

Now that I’ve gone over and explained my answer for the first driving question: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? Let’s answer the next one. How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? Overall I’ve made strong progress on my goals, I understand there is much more room for improvement and I’m eager to keep on improving. I aim to reach the levels of “Communication” and “Collaboration” I set in my Learning Plan by the end of the year. I will continue to make good progress on my goals, I will keep my organization skills up and work hard to try and meet the next level of the “profiles” in my Learning Plan. I’m going to work on my time management and organization skills so I can use my time most efficiently. I aim to become the best version of myself, with lots of practice and determination I’ll make it. 

Thank you so so much for taking the time to learn about my progress so far this year. I hope to see you around!