Well it’s almost the end of grade 10, and it has been a pretty awesome year. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, failed a fair amount and because of that, learned a lot. I’ve had good times and bad times, but overall grade 10 has been one of my favourites. But since it’s the end of the year, you know what we at PLP do.
And that is reflect.
If you’ve been one of the many, many followers on this blog you’d know that twice a year in PLP we have parent teacher meetings, but we as students individually lead the conference and explain to our parents and teachers how we’ve done over the course of that year. This is one of my 5 other TPOLS, and so here goes another one.
Lets begin with the driving question:
Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?
As I go through my TPOL, I will be sharing examples of my work that contribute to my argument as to why I believe I’m ready to advance. So, here we go.
My Favourite Project
First off, I would like to talk to you about my favourite project of this school year. That would be my California book. Last year, when our PLP 9 class went to Florida, I stayed home with some other students and didn’t get to experience a large scale field school. But this year, I’m really glad I went. I was able to gain experiences I’d never get anywhere else like going behind the scenes at the San Diego Safari Park and seeing how they train elephants.
I also was able to have lots of fun with the people on the trip and become closer with everyone in our PLP class, which I believe is very important. So when it came time to design a book that showcase everything we did in our own way, I was excited. I worked really really hard on it, trying to make it look super nice and also explain all that we did and learned on our trip. It incorporates a lot of what we learn in PLP in it, for example layout and design, something we learned in grade 8 with advertisements, and also storytelling which is something we learn about every year. My growth as a learner is evident in this project with how I enhanced the book with photos, videos and text in interesting ways throughout the entire book. I used my knowledge from all my PLP years to create a piece of media that I’m proud of and is thoroughly interesting. This is something I had a lot of fun doing and can and will keep with me for the rest of my life.
Work I Did Well
The next piece of work is the work I think I did really well. This was the LOTF Great Debate. When I first learned that we would be doing a debate, I was actually looking forward to it. I had never done anything like it before, and I wanted to test my public speaking and quick thinking skills that I had been working on over the course of this year.
We got our topic, power and authority, and our statement: “Power leads to corruption” and our position: AGAINST the statement, and I was stumped. I didn’t know how we would argue against this with strong evidence. After a few days of thinking I had an epiphany, and explained it to my team. I was very excited for the debate, with a little bit of nervous anticipation, but after it was all over we had won by only one vote. It was a great debate, and my team did really well. If I had the chance, I would do my debate again. I realized afterwards when we had broken it down as a class that it was too scripted and bland in some ways.
But overall I feel this is a great example of my work because I had to come up with our argument and then break down research and things we’ve learned to formulate an opinion that would win us a debate. This shows my growth as a learner in that I needed to analyze information we have learned in class into an opinion and then turn it into a captivating argument. I also grew as a person and learner in that I needed to face my now small fear of public speaking and speaking out my opinions in front of my class. With those fears put aside I was able to communicate my ideas to my team and classmates, turning the tides in our favour in the end. I feel that I did this really well and my team and I excecuted it with precision. Almost a little too much precision.
Work I Didn’t Do So Well
Now is the work I think I didn’t do so well on.
This would be my math cell phone plan project I did with Simon. The aim of the project was to use linear equations to graph how much three different cell phone plans would be over time, and how much it would cost when you went over your paid data. The whole time while making this slideshow formatted project, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just kind of put in the basic slides you’d see in other projects, and then drew some graphs that seemed right.
Personally I had no interest in this project because I didn’t understand it, and that was what caused me to not do well. I wasn’t engaged at all so I thought I could just wing it but I was wrong. What we had was okay, but we were missing a few key elements of the project. I think that my biggest problem this year has been staying engaged and interested in the projects I don’t really like. I’ve struggled with it all year, and most of it has been in math since it’s not my favourite subject. In my MPOL I said I wanted to change this and start focusing on working hard even though I don’t want to and to put my own twist on each project, to go a little above and beyond. And I must say I haven’t completed that yet. Lately I’ve realized that I have checked out of school and I’m just coasting through to the end of the year, and I know it’s not helping my schoolwork or my grades. I hope that over the summer I can settle down and relax, regain my focus on school, reset and then come back next year really strong.
My Growth This Year
And finally, how I think I’ve grown as a learner. Now there isn’t one specific project that I’ve grown the most in, but I think that I’ve grown the most this year in my storytelling. In eighth grade we worked on this through advertisements and still images, in ninth grade we created video products and now in tenth grade we have been through podcasting and interviews. I feel that all three of these main ideas will contribute to the rest of my life no matter what I do in many important ways. One example that I can use is my Who Am I Video that we sent to High Tech High.
This took me three tries to perfect, and it shows my storytelling growth in a great way. First of all, in my post where I describe how I made it, I said that in the first draft I was showcasing myself in a boring way, when I do not have a boring life. And by the third draft, I was telling the story of me moving to Vancouver and finding ways to have all kinds of adventures around our city in an engaging way. Through a three minute video I was telling the story of my life, something I had been learning all along.
Another good example of this is our WWII Perspectives Website. This is a different type of storytelling and it includes my ability to make my product aesthetically pleasing. This is something we have learned all throughout PLP and something I consider to be very important. With my group members, Adam, Reid and Sofia, we researched and designed three or four pages of a website our class was making. We needed to research different aspects of Germany before, during and after WWII and then break down our information and write out the most important facts. We then took that information and put it into a website format, and then set about formatting our pages. We needed to learn how to balance all our text with interesting photos and titles. I was really happy with what our end product was, and I wasn’t nervous to present it at all to Kathleen Barter, a historian. This was because I was really confident in the work we created and I think this is a good example of all I’ve learned in PLP. We are taught how to research points and information, keep the attention of the audience, and then essentially, turn that into a story. I think this is evident in a lot of work we do, and I believe it will be a very important skill to have later in life.
Overall, I believe this year has definitely had its ups and downs, and I’m looking forward to the summer for not only a break, but also for a time to reset and refocus for next year. My largest form of growth has been storytelling, and I’m still really looking forward to developing it further.
I hope that this presentation shows evidence as to why I feel I’m ready to advance to the next grade level. I have grown in my ability to tell stories in all the work I do in PLP and I really enjoy doing that. I know I have lots of skills I need to get better at, and that’s why I want to continue into PLP 11: to grow those skills even more.
I hope you have enjoyed learning about my learning, and thank you for listening.
thats all,
See you