Mpol 2024

“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 welcome to my 2024 Mpol, today I will be reflecting on my work so far in grade nine I will be talking about my growth as a learner in my most significant projects.

Our driving questions:

How have I demonstrated my growth as a learner this year? 

I’ve shown growth as a learner this year by looking at various projects! I remember being excited to explore different topics and trying new learning techniques. I’ve become more confident in my abilities and have been tackling challenges. I’ve been exploring new topics and trying out different ways of learning. It’s been fun to see myself and others grow and become more knowledgeable. I’ve also been challenging myself to think critically and ask questions. I hope that the work I am about to reflect on will show my growth as a learner and will reveal what my work says about me as a learner.

How can I sharpen my learning plan to ensure I reach my learning goal by the end of this year?

To make sure I reach your learning goal by the end of the year, I will try to break down my work into smaller, manageable tasks. This way, I can track my progress more easily. Second, I can create a schedule or routine that includes dedicated time for learning.

Consistency is key! Third, I want to make sure to ask for help or seek additional resources if I need them. Learning is easier and more fun when I have support. And finally, stay motivated and celebrate my achievements along the way.

Circular competences:

Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Oral Communication, Quantitative Literacy, and Written Communication.

Core competencies:

Creativity, communication, critical, thinking, collaboration citizenship, and connectivity for future education.

Revisions and critique:

I have gotten a few revisions this year but I am happy I did! Revisions and critique from both peers and teachers, help me improve my work to its full potential. Without my revisions, I wouldn’t be able to get the grades I was reaching for this year.

An example of why feedback is so important is when I was making a short thriller with two of my classmates. I liked this project because we were able to be creative and use our ideas to make a story. After filming all of our clips the first time we looked back at the clips and realized we wanted to change many things about our film. We gave ourselves revision because we knew we weren’t happy with it. We later tried again and refilmed every clip and changed a couple of things about our story. After editing and making more changes, we were finally very happy with our movie because of all the changes we made!

What does my work in PLP reveal about me as a learner?

I would like to say that I am quite Creative and I say this because I love art and I love thinking outside of the box. some evidence of this would be,  my frankinstuffy story our most recent project. People that I showed it to said I was very creative and they liked my funny story. my creativity forms when I am doing projects like this. I would like to do more things like this in the future since I find that they are super fun and different!

https://www.blog44.ca/alvap/

Writing

I have improved my writing skills a lot this year and I would like to continue to develop my writing to its full and best potential. I can achieve this by using my curricular competencies like creative thinking and literacy.

For example, when we were writing our story for our Frankenstuffy film, we practiced using descriptive words in our stories to make them more engaging. Using descriptive words in your stories instead of simply telling your readers what’s happening makes your story more immersive, and allows readers to experience it alongside your characters. Projects like this help me explore both my circular and core competencies like creativity, and creative thinking.

Communication 

I have met many new people in PLP thanks to random seating plans and group projects! This has helped me get to know more people by developing and expanding my communication. It also helps me get to collaborate with different people!

Before we started the year didn’t know everyone very well. Now, I’m confident to say that I have met new friends and connected with different people. I would like to expand my communication with other people in PLP that I don’t know as well in the future. I have used my core competencies like communication, and collaboration.

My learning plan!

I am really happy with how I made my learning plan this year because I set big goals for myself. I don’t think it will be necessary to make changes because I’m still working on achieving these goals. high expectations for yourself can be beneficial! When you set high standards, it pushes you to strive for excellence and reach your full potential. It can help you grow, improve your skills, and achieve things you never thought possible.

Plus, it’s a great way to challenge yourself and discover what you’re truly capable of.

In maker and humanities, my learning goal was to get proficient.
(that I achieved)

My Rockies field journal 

Humanities reflection 🥾🏔️

This was one of the first projects we did in humanities I am super happy with how my book turned out. I used many of the core and circular competencies like creative thinking Quantitative Literacy, and Creativity throughout the process.

I have taken away so much information and not only learnt but grown as a learner throughout a week. This project has helped me appreciate Alberta’s history and natural beauty, and I was able to use my creativity to design my book overall it was a fun trip and an interesting project.

Another project I think helped me improve in various ways was “Let’s get Reil”

I improved my writing during this project, and I used core and curricular competencies, such as Written Communication and Quantitative Literacy. I’m adding this because I think I improved my writing skills a lot and I did a good job of collecting information and summarizing it.

Another project I liked was in science where we learned about the historical significance of an element of our choice.

I chose arsenic because of the interesting history behind it for example, women would use it in their makeup ,cloths, and as rat poison! sometimes they even used it to poison their husbands! Our task was to write a paragraph on the historical significance and make a drawing to go with it. I decided to focus on the fact that they would put our arsenic in their makeup which would burn their skin and cause a lot of permanent damage.

I am proud of my art, because I came up with it myself, I had a vision and I had and I made it come to life!

As a learner, my strengths come out when I am designing things or coming up with ideas. (usually when I am doing artsy things.) 

For example, when we were learning about the French Revolution, one of our first tasks was to make infographics. I like how mine turned out because I used the colours that symbolized France and the revolution. I also added small things to symbolize the revolution and country. For me, it’s fun to use apps like Canva, because I can use different effects and tools to get the outcome I like.

Conclusion

PLP has been fun for me and I would like to continue to do this next year. I think that I have improved a lot as a learner. I would like to keep getting better at everything I have improved on. PLP has helped me be more creative and it has helped me meet many new people overall, I think that I have done a proficient job at reaching my learning plan this year. Thank you for listening to my Mpol!

Frankenstuffys🧸

 Have you ever ripped up multiple stuffy’s and then sewn different parts together?

Well I have and I made even made a story and video to go with it!

this project was all about storytelling, creating and editing In this project, we learned how to use various tools to make our movies, and I learned how to become a better writer.

Our driving question:

How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience?

Throughout the process of making my video and creating a story, I have noticed some key elements to making a clear and engaging message

One key element is using a hook, by grabbing your readers attention right from the beginning with an intriguing opening line or captivating scene make them curious what’s going to happen next I use this method in my blogs as well, like in my introduction, it makes you interested in what I have to say and that is probably why you’re still reading.

Another thing to think about is developing interesting characters This is funny, because I actually made my character by hand, create well-rounded and relatable characters that Your readers can connect with give them unique personalities, motivations, and challenges to make your story more engaging

Using descriptive words instead of simply telling your readers what’s happening, try showing through vivid, descriptions, dialogue, and actions. This makes your story more immersive, and all allows readers to experience it alongside your characters.

The creating process 

Theses were the stuffys before:

after

The first thing I had to do to create my story was identify who my character was. I did this by filling out different character forms.

Next I wrote my story this took a couple different tries, but I finally got my story.


After this, I started making my video on my stuffy. I got the backgrounds for each one of my clips and then I edited on my Frankenstuffy onto the photos. I also had to add different things to make it fit the scene this took a while, but I did it I changed my script and shortened it to make it fit the video better after a couple tries I got a good voiceover and I put my clips together. After getting feedback from peers and teachers, this is my final copy

Overall, this project has helped me with my writing skills, my editing skills, my movie, making skills, my creativity and problem-solving.v I’ve learned new skills from this project, and this was a fun thing to do!

How has the portrayal Louis Riel changed throughout time?

Welcome back to my blog!

These past few weeks me and my class have been leering about a very important member in Canadian history , none other than Louis Riel! Our driving question for this project was: ”How has the portrayal Louis Riel changed over time?”

That is a very intestine question so in order to answer it we fist had to lean a bit about Riel. 

To get to know his story we watched multiple videos as well as textbook pages and more, all these different sources help me gain an understanding of Louis and his story. Many different people have different options on Louis and wile many people see him as a good person today who has brought justice to the Métis, many people back then saw Louis as cray and a threat to the government witch one of the reasons he was hung. In the end I learned Louis was very passionate for his people and he sacrificed himself for the Métis. 

Another part of this project was learning and practicing using more meaningful and interesting words in our paragraphs. For example, instead of using the word “bad” you can look deeper and use words like or like flawed or dreadful. Using words like these expand your sentences by making them more interesting and engaging. 

This skill later helped me in my final paragraphs answering the driving sentence.

These are the revisions I got on my draft.

 

 

Here is my final paragraph👇

In conclusion, It’s interesting to see how Louis Riel’s perspective from the public has changed over the years. Initially, he was seen as a rebel and a traitor by some, but now many recognize him as a Métis leader and a symbol of resistance. It’s interesting how our understanding of historical figures can evolve over time!

See you next time!

Winter exhibition 2023!

2023 winter exhibition!

These past months, my class and I have been working very hard to make metaphor machines. We built them from scratch in time for our winter exhibition, only given a few weeks to build the entire structure. Before I jump into the process of making the machine and what we learnt, I want to explain what the project was all about…

The first thing we did to start the project was learn what a revolution was. I learned about the French Revolution, arguably one of the most famous revolutions of all time. I chose the French Revolution because I had learnt a little bit about it before, but now looking back to my prior knowledge, mostly all I knew was that people got their heads chopped off by a guillotine.

To learn a bit about our revolutions, We started by making an infographic about them.

This was a good starting point to learn about the revolution and what a revolution even was. This is mine:

The driving question for this project was:

“How do ideas drive change?”

When we have ideas, they inspire us to think differently, and take action. Ideas can lead to new innovations, social movements, or even personal growth so weather it’s a small idea or a big one, they have the power to drive change in a simple yet impactful way.

We were then put into groups with other people also studying the same revolution. Our task was to make a metaphor machine as a group. Each person was responsible for one connection of the machine.

To explain what a metaphor machine even is, it is basically a rube Goldberg machine, (a chain reaction of different objects that all work together to achieve a simple goal.) The way ours ended was to rise a picture of Napoleon with a pulley. Each connection was representing a significant event that happened during the revolution. Then we had to build our machine in the span of a couple weeks. This was a long process with many ups and downs along the way. It did help me and my team in the end work better as a group. 

Building process:

My connection was the very last one. It represents the rising of Napoleon. To show this, I made a pulley to show him coming to power here is a video of it working:

 

I finished my connection pretty early on so I was able to use my spare time to help others with different tasks. One of the main things I did was paint everything to try and and make it as visually appealing as possible. I think I did a good job in trouble shooting and solving problems when our machines were dysfunctioning as well as coming up with ideas and helping others. This was a fun project were I could be creative and think outside the box even though many things didn’t go to plan. we had to make changes along the way but that was all part of the learning. If I were to do it again I would change a couple things but overall I think me and my group did a good job.

Presenting:

At the actual exhibition, we set up for two hours to transform our space. when people started coming in, we would present and then run through our machine. We also made documentaries to show the process.

In conclusion, new ideas spark change in the world, and this project is a great example of that.

This was overall a fun and unique Project were I have improved on my teamwork, collaboration, creativity, problem solving and more! In the future, I hope to do more projects like this!

See you next time!

👵Thrill us!🩸

Thrill us reflection 

Have you ever created your own short thriller?

Well maybe you have with your siblings or friends when you were younger but for this project me and my classmates made a thriller for our maker class.

Welcome back to my blog!

Recently me and my maker class have been learning about thriller movies and how to make a good quality film. Some of the things we did along the way to prepare to make the final film was learn about the three Cs. Contract- (meaning an implied promise in the plot) Clock- (the feeling of pressure due to time going too fast and running out), and Crucible- (increasingly harder challenges).

To begin we watched different short thrillers for inspiration and to get an idea of what we were doing. I think it helped us because after each video we would discuss how they included the three C’s what we would’ve done differently, and what our favourite parts were.

We also looked at the different aspects of the film to see what made it scary and what built suspense. I think doing this increased our knowledge on thrillers and helped us make our own videos better.

Our idea:

Before I start talking about the process, I am going to explain what plot film was about: Basically, it starts with two friends walking along one one of them disappears. The other one goes to look for her and then finds her necklace outside her grandmas house. She knocks on the door and gets pulled inside where the grandma reveals something. What could it be?

Before we filmed we needed to prepare when to film, what to wear, and make a story board. All this went pretty smooth and I think we managed our time well in class. Our first time filming did not go so well… after we looked back at our clips I don’t think our communication was very clear and  the clips came out a bit weird. The fist mistake we did was filming when it was bright out, we thought we could use the exposure on the phone to make it look dark outside. We later realized that it looked super weird because no matter what we did the sky was still blue and the only thing that darkened was our faces. Another mistake we did was making Aiya a “boy”. Originally, we were going to have the three characters: Aiya as the boy, me as his “girlfriend” and Kaia as the grandma. We tried to make Aiya look like a boy but it ended up looking really unrealistic (looking more funny then scary.) Our last mistake was that we decided to have lines and talking in our first video and after watching back at the clips it was really unrealistic and our acting was really bad.

After watching all the clips, we decided to re film everything to fix our mistakes. This time we filmed it in the dark and it actually started raining, this wasn’t  planned but it added a spooky scenery. We also decided to make Aiya a girl, so it was just two friends instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. We also made it a silent film without talking so it could be scary and you wouldn’t have to hear our terrible acting. We fixed a couple other things like our clothes and changed some of the clips to make it as professional as possible. I think one of the most important things when making a thriller is lighting and sound because without those two aspects it’s not scary or thrilling. This is why our second take turned out a lot better because we looked at what we needed to improve on and then we fixed it.

All the things we did to improve our film really made a difference in the end after adding the sound and editing a bit. This was our final product!

I am actually pretty happy on how this turned out. Even though the editing took a while, I think it was worth it. Without learning about how to get the right sounds, and the right angles in our videos I don’t think it would’ve turned out as good. Overall, this was a really fun project to do and I think moviemaking is a really interesting thing to learn about, i really enjoyed making this because we could be creative and add our own twist to our films. Me and my classmates were really lucky to be able to do this in a project. See you next time!

Loon lake trip🏞️

Loon lake reflection 

Loon lake was one of the best field trips I have gone on in plp. The Loon lake was all about embarking on a journey of growth, leadership,and trust along with my peers and making memories and preparing for the future.

Welcome back to my blog!

Recently me and my classmates had the amazing opportunity to go to Maple Ridge to stay at Loon Lake for five days with Pinnacle Pursuits. Our driving question for this trip was: “How do the choices we make set our future path?”

The choices we make definitely have a big impact on our future path. Our decisions shape our experiences, opportunities, and ultimately the direction our lives take. Each choice opens up new possibilities and can lead us down different paths. It’s important to think carefully and consider the potential consequences before making decisions. That is why I think Loon Lake taught us many important life skills so we can make good choices and be prepared in the future.

My expectations when I first heard we were going to Loon Lake was that we would have to do loads of work on our iPads… and I did not expect it to be very fun, but after going I think that this trip has exceeded my expectations and I had a fun and memorable time with my class. Upon reflection I think I have learnt important life skills on how to treat others and myself.

Below are six words that I would like to use to describe Loon Lake:

Growth

I feel that after going to Loon Lake me and my classmates have grown as a team and we have all changed as it helped us learn and grow in a fun unique way.

Fun

I must say that I had so much fun at Loon Lake,  I wasn’t overwhelmed with schoolwork and we did so many fun activities such as a talent show, dance party, high ropes, archery, scavenger hunts and more!

Outdoors 

Almost all the activities we did were outdoors which was fun because we could do awesome activities and be in nature/ learn about it.

Friendship

Not only did I make new friends but I got to be with my good friends and get closer with them,  I love that we all had a fun memorable time together.

Teamwork

Almost all the activities we did involved working together as a team. I don’t think we could’ve completed any of the activities if we didn’t have each other and if we didn’t work together. For me teamwork was a skill that we learnt to improve on at Loon Lake.

Safe 

Loon Lake was a safe space for everyone and we could be ourselves without feeling judged. I think we all got to know each other better and we all feel safer and more protected as a team because of it.

Thanks to Pinnacle Pursuits we got to work as a team instead of a random group of people- we did tons of activities and games but out of all them these ones stood out to me the most:

  1. Trust Falls

Trust falls was an activity we did were you would have about six people standing ready to catch you as you fell off a chair that was on top of a table. You would then stand on top of the chair and fall backwards onto your peers. This was activity on trusting and support(not only physically but mentally) it was great how everyone was being supportive and encouraging everyone to try. At fist I was really nervous to do this because it felt very high and I didn’t want them to drop me, but after hearing that is was great I decided to do it.  After I fell, I felt allot calmer like I trusted everyone more. This was a great way of gaining trust for my peers and learning to work together.

RPReplay_Final1701451743

  1. Stepping across the line

Stepping across the line was a very unexpected activity where we couldn’t speak, and we were all told to stand on one side of the gym. There were two ropes on the gym floor and when a question was asked and it applied to you, you would walk across the line. look who was with you, look who is not with you, and think about how you felt. At first the questions were pretty normal like “if you’re a single child or if you have lived in North Vancouver all your life”, but as the questions went on, they started to get more personal, when a more personal question was asked only one person walked across it was actually very sad and emotional for everyone, and many people started to cry. We had a big circle to talk about how we all felt and I realized  that after this activity how much we have in common but also how different our lives are. I understood things I hadn’t realized before about my classmates, and I think our whole class connected more after this activity. I think we all gained more compassion and empathy for each other.

  1. Building shelter

This was a fun activity that we did in the woods, the task was to build shelter in under 30 minutes and we basically paired ourselves up with a couple of people in our class and made a shelter using the natural materials that we would find in the forest. This activity helped our group work together and have fun doing it. It was very rewarding to build the shelter and show our final product in the end. I think is one of the many activities that helped us work together as a team.

 

To conclude this awesome experience, I have come to realized that you don’t have to go as far Alberta or Oregon to have a good time and learn a ton. I must say I think I learnt the most here, even though we didn’t even need to use our iPads! We learnt to work together as a team and get to know each other better.  Overall, I think we will be able to move forward as a team in the classroom better after Loon Lake. Who knows maybe we will even have a different perspective on life and each other people moving forward. Reflecting back at the driving question I think that loon lake had a impact on me as well as the decisions and path I chose in life.

Thank you loon Lake!

Memories📸

Bring your kids to work day

Today I got the amazing opportunity to come with my mom to bring your kids to work day! My mom works for the urban horse project the urban horse project provides free access to connecting with horses and learning about them. I was able to go and see where it takes place and I was able to meet the horses and help out around the barn. This was a great experience and I recorded it all and made a video on it. This video shows how my day went and what I did. It also includes my interview I did with my moms boss who stared this program, I think it is really cool. She had great answers to all my questions and I think this experience has been great, I have learned more about my moms cool job. I love horses as well as my mom and I’ve been riding my whole life and I think this is a great job where you get to work with people all ages and help spread your passion and knowledge about horses.

 

Humanities reflection 🥾🏔️

 

Have you ever been stuck driving around in a school bus with 20 other kids for a week?

Well, I have. Can you imagine? For hours on end in a hot bus with annoying kids and annoyed teachers. This was all because my class and I were trying to figure out: “how has the geography of the west shaped who we are today.” By using people and information around us in Alberta. We stopped at many significant and historical places as well as discovering and learning about the incredible history of the Rockies in Alberta. Even throughout all the hikes, driving, and all the work we did, we got through it and I was able to enjoy the beauty of Alberta! The geography of the west in Alberta has played a significant role in shaping who I am today. The stunning landscapes, like the Rocky Mountains have provided me with a deep appreciation for nature’s beauty and has offered opportunities  for adventure outdoors. Additionally, the unique ecosystems and natural resources in the region has influenced my understanding of environmental conservation and sustainability. Overall, the geography of the west in Alberta has definitely shaped my experiences, values, and connection to the natural world.

My thesis for this project: “tourists choose to visit Canadas west for its natural beauty and its rich historical value.” Most of the people I interviewed were here to see the natural beauty of Alberta. I used my thesis so I could have an idea or an understanding of what the people I interviewed would respond with. 

I also related my questions to my thesis.

For the reader to better understand what geography is we made a comic in an app “comic life” representing the five themes of geography.

I have taken away so much information and not only learnt but grown as a learner over a week long period. I have learnt how to be flexible in difficult situations (and got a lot better at hiking even though l wanted to roll down the mountain I got through it! 

 This is my multi touch book I tracked my journey throughout the trip on:

At every stop I learnt something. I was also asked to interview different people at multiple locations. I have written about that in my Maker reflection that is linked here-maker reflection-https://www.blog44.ca/alvap/2023/10/12/maker-reflection-post/

To be honest, I did not love making this book because it stressed me out because we had so much work to do but I needed to remember that I was on a field study and not on vacation with my friends. 

I did not end up working that much on the book on the trip because I wanted to focus on what I was learning and later I would finish my book. Next time I will definitely try to be more productive because I have a short attention span on things. I often find myself getting distracted and getting off task sometimes. 

This sort of left me with very little time to finish my book because we also had a bunch of videos we needed to make for Maker. Since I didn’t have much time to make my book, it left me little time to decorate my book and proof read it. Next time, I want to make more time for myself to do my work.

 

Conclusion 

I have taken away so much information and not only learnt but grown and a learner throughout  a week. I have learnt how to be flexible in difficult situations, (and gotten a lot better at hiking even though I wanted to roll down the mountain at times I got through it! This trip has helped me appreciate Alberta and its history ,and natural beauty. I now know more what west and different regions in Canada are like. I come out of this project with more knowledge and a memorable experience.

Maker reflection post

Maker reflection post:

Have you ever interviewed a stranger in public?

Well, I have, it was for my school project relating to a maker and humanities project we did on our tip to Alberta.

The driving question for this project was: how can I tell a story through a moving image?

I tried to help answer this question by all the videos I made!

Throughout this whole project I have learnt tons, most of how I can improve my public speaking and getting different and unique resources from multiple people. But that was not the only thing I learnt, I also was able to learn how to make better videos and I learnt how to tell stories though moving images even if the video didn’t have words you were still able to understand what was happening.

Silent Video:

The fist video we made was our silent video, we made this in the Ghost Town since there were many options for filming. This was super fun to do with my group, it was fun to see our ideas come to life through a moving image. Silent video means that there is no talking and we tried to tell the story by our movements and our expressions. When making a silent video you kind of need to exaggerate all of the movements or else viewers might be confused.

 

TikToks:

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Next we had to make the TikTok style video! This was really fun for me because i use TikTok sometimes and its super fun and easy to make videos. We needed to make the TikTok’s relating to our trip and we could do fun trends. My videos told a story through a moving image because it showed some of the different places we wanted it to represent from our crazy journey!

Investigative Video:

I made this video by putting all my interviews together. If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll explain, on the trip we had to interview a couple of different places people so they could help me answer our driving question for humanities “how has the geography of the west shaped who we are?”So this video was basically a mix of humanities and maker: humanities because our questions were related to the humanities project the the video and the ending was about maker. To be honest I think that I could have made this video better, so next time I will try to edit it better and cut out the boring parts.

About Me Video:

The last video I made was about me! In this video we had to answer “what inspires me?”I made this video by including my biggest interests like riding, dance, crocheting, and more!

I think I could’ve of tried to answer the question a bit more throughout the video instead of just the end. I also think I could’ve made my voice on time with the images a bit more next time I will try and make my voice recording before adding the images so it can be more in time and then I wouldn’t need to to talk so fast at times and then I wouldn’t shudder as much. Besides that I think I displayed my interest pretty well and I was able to show my passions and show a bit of what my life was like through all the images I showed I think it was very visible to see that I am vey passionate about riding since I had many images of me riding.

I learnt how to tell a story through my photographs and my voice recording about myself. This has helped me tell stories better and I now know what I need to improve on for next time.

All these videos that I made help me get closer to the humanities driving question and the maker driving question. I can confidently say that I have improved at the video making skills even if some of them are not my best work, By making this reflection I now know what I can do better next time. This was a fun thing to do since I was able to be creative and make these personal and that is what I want to work on this year as I stated in my Learning Plan I want to work on making my work more me!

Thank you for reading feel free to check out my humanities post here: https://www.blog44.ca/alvap/2023/10/16/260/

🌷My Tpol 2023!🌷

“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.”

 

 

Welcome to my Tpol! 

Now that I have done my Mpol and you know what it is, I will be presenting my Tpol. This stands for transitional presentation of learning. It is similar to my Mpol but I am going to be answering a different driving question:

Our Driving Question:

Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade level?

Circular competences:

Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Oral Communication, Quantitative Literacy, and Written Communication.

Core competences:

Creativity, communication, critical, thinking, collaboration citizenship, and connectivity for future education.

At the beginning of the year I didn’t really know what to expect from PLP. I knew that we would work on iPads and they were field studies, but I did not know anything else I didn’t even know we had Mpols and Tpols!

This year has taught me so much! I am happy I have a got to be in this fun program. I think that I am ready to go onto grade 9 because I have learnt many things in PLP and I feel ready to advance to next year. I have met many new people this year and they are fortunately are all going to be in PLP next year! A great way for me to get to know more people was field trips, for example, the start of the year, even though this wasn’t part of PLP I met many new people at outdoor school! I think because you stay in the same cabin as someone you get to know them better. Same thing, like when we went to Oregon for example, I was friends with some of these people, but we weren’t super close but after Oregon we became a lot closer and got to know each other better!

I drew this willow tree because it represents my growth as a learner this year. Willow trees are large trees with long, flowing branches and leaves, the willow tree often symbolizes flexibility, and adaptability. And I think I have had to adapt this year going into high school and I will need to continue to adapt as i continue to grow and learn next year. The branches also represent my growth and new skills I’ve learnt as well as the roots resembling important things that I will use later in life.

A project I am am the least proud of is our precision chart, even though I loved the project we did about advertising for the Hatfield marine science center. Some of the work we did after was not my favourite.

I think this was because I did it a bit messy and I was under stress it was also a bit complicated with a sub.

I could’ve improved this by giving myself more time to work on it and I also could’ve done it better by being less messy and engaging more. I feel I am much better at things that I find interesting example if I am doing a project interests me I am much more likely for me to do better and spend more time on it.

 Oregon trip and advertising

One of my favourite things I’ve done this year in PLP is definitely going to Oregon. I learned many things there and it was a great experience. (to read more about that you can go to my blog post about it.)

What did I find most boring?

Though this wasn’t a project it was a keystone, I found that the who am I science was not my favourite. Since I do not like math and it’s kind of confusing to me. The reason I don’t is because I like to be creative, and subjects like a math tend to not be my favourite. I like projects where I can be creative like the advertisements we did in Oregon. I think the reason I like the Oregon trip so much and the project we did was because we could think outside the box and we could basically do whatever we wanted it to our ads. Things like math on the other hand you cannot do that you have to stay in a box with the rules. It’s just black and white. This is why I love subjects and projects like our advertising ones.

What does my work reveal about me a learner?

I would like to say that I am creative and I say this because I love art and I love thinking outside of the box. Some evidence to this would be my Pandora’s box for the winter exhibition and many people that I presented it to said I was very creative and they loved my detailed boxes! Another example are some of the projects we have done as well as maker and working on my advertisement for Oregon. My creativity really forms when we are doing crafty projects like the Pandora’s box and projects similar to that .

I would love to do more projects like this in the future since I find that they are super fun and lets me be more artistic.

Projects like this help me explore both my circular and core competencies like creativity, and creative thinking.

Skills have I needed to develop:

Throughout PLP I have needed to develop new skills than what I used in elementary school. 

Learning to use my iPad

When I first started, PLP I was not very good with technology and I still am not that advanced but, PLP has helped me learn many new things with iPads, and other skills for example, before I began PLP I didn’t even know how to copy and paste! Now I would like to say that I have become better with technology but I can definitely continue to grow my knowledge on using technology, since it will used in my future.

Revisions and critique:

I have had to do quite a few revisions this year but I am happy I did! Revisions and critiques from both peers and teachers has helped me improve my work to its full potential. Without my revisions I wouldn’t be able to get the grades I was reaching for this year.

An example of me getting revisions is during our process of making ads for the Hatfield Marine science center. I had to make many drafts for this project because we wanted our ads to turn out as best as possible. I think revisions and critique help me allot because even if they are annoying you can always improve on everything you do.

Here are some of the drafts I did to get my final advertisement:

 

I think a great thing about PLP is that you can keep revising your work till it’s the best it can be. So you can get the best grade possible that you will be happy with.

I think this is a good skill to have in life and I think this skill set will help me be prepared for grade 9.

Here was my learning plan!

I think I have reached my learning goals this year, and I will make sure to set higher goals for myself next year so I won’t have to change my learning plan again.

I think I am ready and exited for grade nine. It will be different not being the youngest in the school anymore. I also am really looking forward to the Alberta field trip that the grade 9’s get to do. If a younger student was asking me if they should apply to PLP I would definitely recommend it because I believe that we have learnt more than the people doing the regular program. I would say that it’s more interesting work and also that you get to choose how you want to learn and how to present your learning. I’m happy that I got into PLP and is looking forward to develop into a more sophisticated learner and person.

Thank you for listening to my TPOL!