Mpol

Hello in this blog post I will be telling you about by Mpol you might know me for better or worse but today as you know I am going to tell you about how I showed my learning in 2022  and for that I am exited to tell you about what I have been working on. Throughout the beginning of this school year I have done a variety of different projects in Performance Learning Program and looking back on them it definitely was a very new experience for my education both with Performance Learning Program and high school.

My fist project this year was The Outsiders and I really liked that project because we would work on it everyday but instead of an end date we had individual roles that we needed to finish daily and if you didn’t you would fall behind since the very next day we would have to work on another role and read another chapter. I really liked this project because it kept me interested in the book and the actual project as well. Everyday we had to complete a reading role for every two chapters so overall six reading roles that we had to finish by the end of the book. Once we finished the book we started working on a title page for the book. The idea for the cover was that our group recreates something from the book and choose a quote. Our group wanted to take a photo of ourselves in the distance and out of perspective so it showed foreshadowing the downfall of the story. When we had to actually go take the photo one of us had to take it so we had the photo but one of us was missing so then later we all photo shopped it into the picture. I really liked the idea since we started think of it as if we were evaluating it and not a school project. I really thought that I learned a lot from this experience because I had never done anything like it and it was a whole new style of learning for me. 

When I began PLP this year I was mostly surprised by the level of iPad usage in school but I should have known since that is basically all that PLP is. At first I thought that I was going to fall way behind since I had no idea how to do anything that we were doing in class but later on I got the hang of it and got more accustomed to it. Normally whenever I had a project I would procrastinate all the way to the very last day but in the PLP program they keep you intrigued and kind of glued to the project. When I actually did start to fall behind I just calmed down and took a step back then made a list of everything that I had to do and worked on them one by one and I think that that was a really good process for me since I can get a little overwhelmed with whatever I am working on. A few things that I could have done better were definitely trying to keep myself focused and set on my work and not getting distracted by other people or anything on the iPad. I could’ve payed a bit more attention in class because I can tend to zone out when I am either tired or just not interested in the subject. 

Later in the year we started working on making interesting images and this was a project that I really thought was new for me since I had never really used and I pad in school and now we were going to be learning how to use and create with the camera in class. The first thing that I learned was how to adjust the lighting on my camera and even that seemed crazy tome since like I said I had never done anything like this before. Throughout the rest of the project I saw that there are so many things that I didn’t even know existed that I know exactly how to do now. Since the iPads were such a big part of the performance Learning program it would be necessary to learn everything about them but even with all of the information that I had from past experience it was still challenging to be accustomed to using one everyday. Throughout the project I was using my camera skills more and more and in the end I really enjoyed the experience.

For my Middle Ages project since I had never done anything like this before so I didn’t know what I was getting into. When I learned more about the medieval times I got more interested because like I said I had never learned about it before. While I was learning in class I wanted to take notes since I was so interested in the subject.

Everyday we would work on either small worksheets or brainstorming ideas for farther projects but overall I really like how we could write about what we were interested and not a strict guideline. Sometimes I would have issues coming up with ideas but whenever I would get frustrated I would look at all of my assignments and put them in a list and worked through them one by one so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed.

Our driving question was “How did the quest for power affect people in the Middle Ages” when we started working on our keynote project I wanted to talk about how the feudal system worked as well as what it was, when I was working on it I got stumped repeatedly because I am not that good at making slide show style projects I would either ask my friends for assistance or ask my teachers. Sometimes while working I would wonder if I was missing information but when I looked at it in the end I was round of all my work.

After we finished the Medieval Times we started learning about The Crusades I wasn’t as interested as I was while working on the Medieval Times but I had optimism for it. The Crusades were about Christians trying to control religion against the Muslims and it was very interesting to learn about because it took over 200 years with multiple individual crusades. I think that overall in my experience with the Middle Ages was probably one of my favourite           Projects that I have ever done and I would gladly do it again.  

For my Pandora’s box I was sick at home when I was making it so it was a little harder since I had no one to get help from besides my family and they were out of the house most of the  time but I still made it work. My theme was militarism so I had to represent it somehow in a box, while I was working on it I kept on thinking that I was doing something wrong or I was looking at the wrong criteria but I just calmed down and focused on my work and got it done. When I was feeling better and came back to school I met my exhibition group and what we were going to do for our room and I definitely felt a little behind but my group helped my through it, when the exhibition began It was really more of a “show your work to strangers” than an exhibition than what thought it was going to be. I think that the exhibition taught me a lot more social skills and how to explain thing even if you didn’t have a script, it gave me an opportunity to show my personality. I think that one of the thingsI could have improved like when I first arrived I was a little distant to my group because I was feeling a little lazy. Another thing that I could have done better was how I wasn’t as involved in the decision making in my group but that’s also because I was away and I didn’t have any idea what we were doing at the time. During the exhibition I didn’t really know what to tell guests when they asked me what my project was but I managed to give them an answer. When I was making my box I was a little limited to my materials in my house since like I said I was sick at home. I feel that I learnt a lot during the exhibition and it was a great experience in the end and I feel that I am prepared for the next one.  

Ever since I started PLP I really think that my learning has improved a lot throughout the projects and classes but I really think that I was able to give myself a new perspective of school and instead of being hesitant to a project I was exited and ready. I really hope that more students sign up for the PLP program because like they say it really changes your whole school life.

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