Hello everyone, welcome to my midterm presentation of learning.
“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.”
Overview
My presentation will be split into three major sections, one for each PLP subject I had each year. In each subject, I will talk about how its been going, my strengths and weaknesses, and and a goal to work on for the rest of the year.
My goal starting this year was to achieve Extending marks on all of my assignments. I wanted to make sure that all the work I was putting out was meaningful, and to the best of my ability. I chose this goal, because during the previous year, I was often turning assignments that I put minimal effort into. I know that I am capable of high quality work, so that’s why I tried my best this year to prove so.
With that in mind, lets talk about how Makers been going this year.
Maker
I’ve never really enjoyed Maker, so I’ve had a track record of not putting a lot of effort into it. This year, I’ve definitely improved with that, but not as much as I would have liked. I think the main reason I’m never motivated with Maker work, is that sometimes I don’t see the point in it. I often struggle to see purpose. Sometimes the assignments will be fun, but I never really see how its gonna help me in the real world. I will say that in some projects this is more prevalent than in others, but overall there’s always been a struggle for me to see how this stuff is useful to me.
I don’t have Maker again next term, but I chose a goal for to work on during the three weeks between Winter Break and the Semester Transition. My goal was to do my best on my assignments, and have fun while doing it. I wanted to end my Maker class with good energy. This fit really well into the mini-project that we’re doing right now, where we’re making fun little videos and learning about different random tools that we can use as expressive mediums of story telling. Its now week three of this project and everything’s going well. I’m quite proud of a lot of the work I’ve been doing.
Something I’ve noticed while doing Maker, is that I’m not the best at standing up for myself. Often times I would notice that an assignment or piece of critique didn’t make any sense, but instead of talking to the teachers about it, I would sit silently. A good example of this is when we had to make Smart goals. My friend wrote the goal “I want to achieve an extending mark on all my PLP courses in my final report card.” He wrote the habits he will need, and all the steps he would take. The teachers told him to find a new goal, because it “wasn’t specific enough”. The goal followed the criteria. It was Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. The interesting thing, is that many other students submitted goals that weren’t smart AT ALL, but they still got approved.
What I’m trying to say here is that I need to get better at sticking up for me and my friends when teachers are being unfair.
Now lets talk about one of my stronger subjects: Science.
Science
Science this year has been going very well. Its a subject matter that I very much enjoy, and find interest in. I think this has really helped me find motivation to do my best work possible, as while doing so, I’m building understandings of topics that I find interest in.
Science this year felt like a free block. It wasn’t a struggle, but I also had opportunities to challenge myself. I went above and beyond for all my final products, trying to incorporate advanced an understanding of the topics we were learning. A lot of the mediums we were using to create our final products were apps or tools that I had used many times before, so I was able to focus more on my effort and the quality in which I displayed by learning, rather than spending lots of energy understanding apps and tools.
When I wasn’t extending my work, I took the time to help others understand concepts. Something I’ve been working on is my ability to teach people things. Being able to clearly explain concepts to other people is a skill I value, and is something I wish to focus more on throughout the rest of high-school.
The area in science in which I’m the least proud of this year is my blog posts. They were often rushed, and not revised very much. I wasn’t putting a lot of effort into reflecting on my science work, and thats something I will be working on next year. My goal for next year will be to start writing my science blog posts during the project, that way I have more time to revise and review my writing to make it better. This will also allow me to reflect on different parts of the project at different times, making it easier to remember.
Now let’s move on to my third and final subject this year.
Humanities
Humanities is definitely my second strongest subject, and it’s definitely the class in which I put the most work into. I see a lot of value in social studies, making it something that I actively try to improve my work in. This year, I’ve performed really well, getting extending on all of my projects. I’m proud of my work, as I put a lot for work into it, and got the results I was working towards.
My english has gotten a lot better since last years. I’ve noticed that my spelling and grammar have improved quite a bit, and my word choice and vocabulary have gotten more advanced. One thing I’m going to try and work on going into the second term is my punctuation. I’ve had to redo a few of my writing assignments because I forgot punctuation, so thats definitely something to work on.
As a goal for the rest of the year, I want to put more effort into my reflections. I’ve noticed that all my other work is very high quality, but my blog posts are falling behind. I need to be putting the same effort into my blog posts as I put into all my other assignments.
Habits
This year I did a great job of always being on-top of my homework, which was something I was struggling with last year. What I need to start working on going forwards, is sleeping. I’ve noticed that I’ve been really tired at school, and sometimes even a couple minutes late, so I’m going to be paying better attention to my sleep schedule, and making sure I get to sleep at a reasonable time.
To wrap things up
Overall, this year has started off great. I’ve reached my learning plan goal of getting extending on all my assignments, and I feel proud of all my work. The main thing I will be focusing on for the rest of the year, will be my blog posts. I’m going to spend much more time on them, making sure they are up-to par with the rest of my work.
I couldn’t figure out a way to conclude this without it being irrelevant to my learning, or being really cliche, so I’m just gonna end it right here. Thanks for reading!