Hello, 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 my growth thank you in advance for listening an offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. For my Tpol I mostly wanted to focus on 3 main aspects of the year that I thought were very important as to why I think that I can pass on to grade 9.

First was the Outsiders project this was definitely a big PLP based project because it was one of my favourite projects that we did in the entire year. I thought it was specifically great because of how Mr Harris managed to make a book seem like an active movie that we were critiquing  as we read, everyday we had a new reading role that we had to fill out everyday and each day was a different one. We did a reading role every 2 chapters I thought that this was a perfect activity for the class because it kept us invested in the story by asking questions and answering them in the same document so we can read them all and show how we thought of why we thought so. There we lots of different types of reading roles so we could fully understand the message of the book and I thought that this was a very good way to give us a good idea of how PLP works and I really loved that project because it felt entirely different from the regular school program. Even though the project took a while and it was about a book I really thought that it gave me a new perspective whenever I read a book or watch a movie it makes me think of other ideas and some forms of how they describe their ideas in their story’s. I really liked how this project worked and I thought that it gave a better way of showing literature.

Another project that I found especially interesting was the Medium is the message, I thought that this project was again a very PLP original style and there are a few different things that made me feel that way.  When we first started working on this project we were told that we were going to just have to look at ads and decipher them in class to learn what exactly they were doing to get our attention and what techniques they were using in the ad and granted we did do that that still was not what we were mainly focusing on at all.

We later leant that we are going to be making our own ads and everyone got really exited about that because we got to make our own style of ads for some of our favourite businesses, we the found out that we wont be able to choose our own businesses but we were still looking forward to it. About a week later we were put into our business groups and everyone got a business that we were going to go visit in our Oregon trip that we were going on by the end of the week my group was the Columbia River Maritime Museum. https://www.crmm.org/.

On Monday we looked at our launch journal, this was basically a big place to store our questions and ideas that we had for our ads and questions for our businesses. Each page of the launch journal had its own format for us to store our work and I thought that this was a really good way to keep all of our ideas nice and stored because it was easy to access and easy to keep neat. By the end of the week everyone had their own questions for our business and we were ready to go.

When we got to the museum it was very clear that their first impression of us was that we were going to be lots of trouble so we were sure to be on our best behaviour so we don’t get into trouble. Me and my group looked around for anything that was pretty clear that they wanted us to mention but we couldn’t find that much so we just stuck with what we had. We then got ready for our interview but for time related reasons (I think) we couldn’t do the interview at all. Even though we were ready and prepared for the interview we were just a little relieved probably because of nerves (I hope).

After the trip we began working on our ads for the exhibition. On the very first day we got back we made our first draft and I will admit it was not pretty at all but through lots of drafts and the help of Canva I made a good final product. I think that this project was very interesting because we were much more involved in the making of our projects because we actually got to go to the place we wee working with and I think that is an especially unique thing to do because normally when I learn about businesses or company’s its research build and hope for the best.  And I think that this project in particular was a big reason why I think I am ready to pass on to grade 9.

 

Later in the year I went on my first field school trip to the Oregon coast and I have to say, this was a crazy experience, when we were first told about this it was way back in November and we all thought it wouldn’t be all that exiting but boy were we wrong. We knew we were going to be going on this trip but we didnt know that it would be this tense and fun. We left about a month ago and the main thing I remember was that we weren’t allowed any snacks whatsoever and I personally thought that that was crazy because knowing myself and my friends we were gonna need snacks around every hour but rules are rules so we were stuck hungry for the bus ride.

This is a photo of jack sleeping on the bus.

When we first got to the border it was basically the same process that you would naturally do at any border just with 30 kids. Our first stop was at Canelos and this was our lunch stop and this was my first meal with the whole class and I gotta say it was loud, after we ate we left to go to a cool place called Dismal Nitch, and Dismal Nitch was a kind of grassy park/parking lot where there was a great view of the river and bridge we learnt a bit about the place and then we left.our next stop was Astoria Collum and that place was incredible it’s was a great big tower that was at the top of this big hill, inside the tower was a spiral staircase so you could actually go to the top and see the entire city from up there.

Now I wont explain the entire trip day by day but I’ll just talk about the team building and learning parts of it. The trip lasted 6 days and throughout the trip we did quests and the quests were pretty much a scavenger hunt but with no prize even though we were told we were going to get something but we never did. Anyway in these scavenger hunts we had a sheet of paper with clues and a spot to fit answers, some of the clues were pretty hard to make out so we had to really think and since I had a really good group, we had lots of smart individuals and people who were good at deciphering the clues but there was also Ryan, we didn’t know what to do with him.

We won 2 out of 3 quests and the only reason we didn’t win the 3rd is because another group left later so they got the best time. Anyway these quests were really fun and they were a great way to exercise team building. We ended up with a good score in the end and we managed to win the trip competition, I thought that these quests and exercises were very educational almost because each clue had a little piece of trivia to help us understand it.

 

Now the final reason I think that I am ready for grade 9 are the exhibitions, we did 2 exhibitions this year and that is twice as much as I thought I would do this year because I thought that these things were very precise and planned out for months but turns out you just need a 2 week notice and hope for the best. When we did the first exhibition which was a Winter exhibition and  it was a much more new experience and was very fresh because we had never done anything like it before, we were entirely new to this and we didn’t know what to say or how to act and I will admit I was very nervous but the whole experience was great and I learned how to explain a complicated thing to an 80 year old man who thought this was a Christmas party but in the end I thought that I gained lots of new skills and experiences in the meantime.

Now the second exhibition was a little different but I still thought they were pretty similar, in the first exhibition we stood at our booth explaining to people what we had been working on for the past month and in the second exhibition we stood at our booth explaining what we were working on k for the past month but there were the obvious differences like the project and group but the message was still very different. In the first exhibition we were explaining a form of war and in the second we were advertising a business, I thought that I got more speaking skills in the first one because it was much more me talking whereas the 2nd one was a little more interactive and I thought that I didn’t talk as much in my second one. I still thought that these exhibitions really felt like a show the world your work and tell them how proud you are but that wasn’t really my thing, so this was a big learning experience for me since I don’t really show my work to many other people other than my teachers friends and parents andI would never expect to show it to complete strangers that I didn’t really think cared for my work and were just there for their kids project. Anyway I felt that this was a big part of my learning this year and I really think this is an important skill to know.

 

Even though we did a lot this year I felt like these were my biggest learning experiences and I am glad that I got to do them and I am very thankful to all my teachers who helped my accomplish what I have learned to this day.