Tpol – My Learning Portfolio

My 2023 tPOL

jacksonc Other June 22, 2023Tpol 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my 2023 tPOL. Before I begin I have to, as always, make the POL declaration.

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.

The first thing that I want to bring up as example of why I’m ready to move on to the next grade is my learning plan. Within my learning plan there are a few things that I would want to further change since my mPOL. During my mPOL I focused mainly on wanting to set a higher goal for myself and aim for an extending instead of an accomplished. While this is still a change I want to keep, there are other aspects I would also change if I were to do it again. The first thing would be to also change my goal for careers to an extending instead of an accomplished. With the level of work that I can produce I feel that I need to aim higher with my goals so I can set an expectation for myself of what I should be doing. Even though I have been doing a pretty good job of meeting my goals, I think that I could be a lot better at meeting them, and meeting them on time, if I stuck to the habits that I had wanted to set for myself. This semester especially, I have been having trouble sticking to the habit I wanted to set of having a time where I would just get work done. I have a busy schedule that changes a lot which made it very hard to find a time that worked every day, making it hard to get in the rhythm of it. Next year, I want to try a lot harder at making this work so that I can do a better job of meeting my goals.

If I could’ve gone back there are a few things that I would’ve changed with the work that I did this semester, the main one being, and I know that I keep repeating this time and time again, not putting my work off to the last minute. I repeat this all the time but I’ve noticed that this last semester, which has been a lot busier for me then normal, I’ve been pushing work more and more. A good example of this, and how I’m working on it, was the Frankenstuffies project. For some parts of this project that I found less important I would put off till the last second, or even just do it late, but for the parts that I knew were important and hard I was able to sit down and put in the work. When we had to film the trailer and I committed to doing stop motion I knew it was going to be a challenge and that it was going to take a lot prof time. Knowing this, plus the fact that I genuinely enjoyed doing the stop motion, I used all my class time to the best of my ability as well as making time to do it at home. This really reminded me that when I enjoy something and think it’s important I will really focus in and get an end project I’m happy with and I think that if I can find more ways to incorporate things that I enjoy in my work it’ll deter me from putting it off.

Even though there have been many things with my work that I’d I wish I had done different or changed, there have also been positives in my work. I think that taking and using feedback is one of my strong suits. I believe that I demonstrated this in all my projects this year, but one of the outstanding ones was the Case For A Nation project. With all three of the keystones I got feedback while working on it, after I was done it, or both. All the feedback that I got from peers and teachers I was really able to apply and make changes. For example our first draft of the game was very plain, didn’t have enough information, and was overall lacking in various areas. After a few rounds of feedback from a few different people, I was able to make the changes that it needed to be a good project that I was fairly proud of. This project was also good for helping me with my collaboration skills. This was a partnered project and my one problem when I’m in a group is that I tend to take control. I think that I did a good job working with my partner, Jessie, and making sure we both had an equal say.

So why do I think I am ready to advance to the next grade level. Well, I believe that I have shown growth in most areas, and if not growth then an understanding of what I could’ve done differently. I believe that I can consistently produce an extending level of work, even if I’m putting off my work. There are many examples that show this, but these examples are some of the best ones. I look forward to continuing my growth as a learner over the next few years. Thanks for reading my tPOL and listening to why I’m ready to move onto the next grade.

Grade 8 tPOL

jacksonc Humanities, Scimatics June 21, 2022Tpol 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my tPOL. Before I begin, I must make the tPOL declaration. 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.

Halfway through the year, I did my mPOL. The mPOL was a reflection on my work throughout the first half of the year, while the tPOL is me explaining why I am ready to move onto grade 9. Throughout my tPOL, I’m going to be going through my different PLP classes this semester, scimatics and humanities, and pulling some examples from them to show why I should move onto grade 9.

Humanities

Humanities is a subject that isn’t really my strong suit. I tend to especially struggle with history, which wasn’t the best since we had all of our projects that were almost entirely based around history. The projects that we had for humanities this semester were The Renaissance, Argh Matey, and New Beginnings. All of these projects had different thing that went good or bad with them, or even just had things that I FAILed in.

Out of these projects, I think that my FAILs are the most important things that happened. If you didn’t already know, in PLP FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. The reason that my FAILs are important is because mistakes can help you learn. If you do something wrong or poorly, you can take criticism and learn how to improve it. I feel that taking, and using, criticism is something that I do very well. The best example of me FAILing in these projects is the seycove advertisement that we did at the start of the New Beginnings. It was something that we were doing to see what we remembered from past projects about photography, editing, and layout. In my first attempt at it, I forgot about all of the things that I had learned in the past, making it look terrible. I took some feedback from some of my classmates and my teachers then started making changes. The feedback that I was given, allowed me to make my second version much better.

The other humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the argh matey project. This project had good examples of things that I did good in and things that I could have done better. The main thing that I think I really did good with in this project was getting things done efficiently. I feel that all my class time was used very well and, when we were filming at cates park, I was able to finish the project. The thing that I definitely could have improved on was my story for it. I had a bit of trouble with making the story enjoyable and have all the necessary information. I do think that I could have made my story a bit better if I had put a little more time into the actual writing of it and not all my time into the research.

Scimatics

For this semester, with scimatics being a lot more focused on the science aspect of it all, I had to push myself a bit more then normal. The reason that I say this is because I tend to understand math a bit more then I do science, but I do think that I was able to still do a pretty good job understanding the science this time around. The projects that I had for scimatics this semester were Chemistry Coding, Ultimate Design Challenge, and Comic Cells.

Out of these three projects, the Ultimate Design Challenge was the only one that was mainly math, it was also the one that I think I did the best in. A big part of the final result of this project, the presentation that we gave to the class about our design, was the calculations. For most of the shapes, we were given the formulas for surface area and volume, or we could just look them up, but I changed myself by doing shapes that didn’t really have a set formula, meaning that I had to figure them out. It was a fairly hard and tedious process, with a few FAIL moments, but I was able to do it in the end. I think that the whole process of that showed that I am a very persistent, and stubborn, person that will always do my best to follow through with things that I’ve committed to, in school and personally.

The Chemistry Coding project is the last scimatics project that I’m going to talk about because I feel that it really showed who I am as a learner. The first reason that I say this is because, like I was saying with the Ultimate Design Challenge project, I was really trying to challenge myself and see it through. We had to code a game in this project, and I was trying to do something a bit more complex, so I was using tutorials and videos and even other students to help me with making it work. It also definitely showed my ability to take and use feedback. I was continuously making changes and getting feedback/ideas from others.

In the end, I have really learned a lot about myself as a learner this past year. I think that, in this semester especially, I’ve really started shaping into the learner that I want to be. I do still think that there are things that I need to change if I really want to become that learner. The biggest change I’d need to make being my ability to use time more efficiently because, I know I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I always struggle with procrastinating and staying on topic, making my work not always as good as I want it to be. With that said, I do think that I did better with that every once in a while and that, with time, I can become a lot better with it.