What it do and welcome to Landon Gonzalez’s mPol! (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 leaner”
now with that out of the way let’s get right into it. Now unlike previous years this is the first year that we actually got the full “high school experience” with 4 70 minute classes each day. With this new schedule came only 1 plp classes and 3 other “normal classes” which makes it hard to base my whole pol around PLP work alone so instead we’ll be covering my growth as a learner across all the classes to fully get an understanding of my growth.
So far this year has been full of surprises and some of them have been good and some have been bad but regardless of being good or bad I learnt from both of them. One of the major changes from last year to this year was the execution of scimatics and thank god for that. So instead of having that everyone got put into mainstream science and math which was a big change. This was a great change but the bad thing was that scimatics did nothing to prepare me for pre calc 10 and that hit me very hard. Science on the other hand wasn’t as challenging but still required a good amount of work and focus.
Science:
Science this year was a whole new experience for me and I learned a lot but I also F.A.I.Led ( First Attempt In Learning) a lot too. Throughout the course we went over multiple topics varying from Chemistry to physics to biology etc. Going into this course I still had the mindset and work ethic as last year, that being save everything until last minute, do the bare minimum and not focusing. I quickly realized that this tactic was not going work and tried change it almost immediately. I had to adjust to this new style of learning as our science teacher taught us in a college type way by him just talking the whole class while we took notes.
FAILs of science 10:
– preparation of tests and quizzes
– lack of focus
– note taking
It really took me a while to adjust to this class and once I did I felt things where going decently smooth. I found that in this class it was extremely hard to focus as there where limited seats so I sat with 3 of my friends at 1 table and as you could probably imagine not much got done back there when we where together. As an attempt to try and change this I sat in a different spot in the class to try and avoid the distractions of my friends. While this seemed to work for a while I noticed that I was getting distracted by my iPad as well which made it difficult to stay focused on the note taking and the class. Another thing I had to do was study for tests and quizzes and I found this very hard. The first few quizzes I studied the night before which lead me to second guess all of my answers on the quiz and leave me unsatisfied with my mark. This happened for 3 out of the 6 quizzes. Thankfully I noticed this pattern and decided it was a time for a change and really started to put in work for my last 3 quizzes and was very happy with my mark.
Math:
Math this year was by far my most stressful class I’ve ever had as scimatics last year did absolutely nothing to prepare me for this year. It really required a lot of work, focus and dedication and I was most definitely not right for all that. For a teacher we had Dr. Welch and sure she was super nice but between us she wasn’t the greatest teacher as she would tell us stuff rather than teach us stuff. Her systems where also rather confusing and stressful. It’d be like we start a unit a week goes by then we do a quiz than a new unit and a week into the new unit a test on the old unit. Regardless of it being very challenging I still managed to stay on top of things and get my work done. Before we get into the FAILs I want to say something that I really feel like I did well in this class was focus despite being surrounded by friends. Sure I got off task a little bit but I think I was the most focused out of my surrounded friends and really tried to get my work done in class and I found myself with little to no homework.
FAILs of math 10
– lack of work put into math outside of school
– studying/stressful situations
Now if I’m going to be honest I feel like I didn’t do too bad in math even tho I had a C+. I feel like most of my issues in the past like procrastination and focusing etc I did a really good job of overcoming it and staying on task which I did. Now the reason I got a C+ is because of my studying. Like science I spent most of my studying late at night before the day of the test or quiz. Looking back I now also see how little effort I put into doing math at home and I wish I would’ve noticed that sooner. Another thing I FAILed at was just the mindset of learning math. My dads pretty good at math so he helped me with it but 9 times out of 10 I had the mindset of “this is stupid I don’t wanna do it” and that led to our study sessions being 75% arguing 25% studying. Once I finally got into the headspace I was very productive but I really need to work on a good growth mindset and to be able to apply it to all subjects.
Humanities:
Humanities this year got off to a very slow and rough start with the first project being about the gold rush. For this project I did pretty poorly on because at the time I was putting science and math as a priority which was good and bad at the same time. As the year went on my grade slowly started to climb in humanities as I was adjusting to everything. By the second project I was finding a good balance on how to balance my humanities and other work leaving me a ☀️ On the second project. By the third project I really put all I had into it and found a great balance and this ended up with my first 🌈 since early grade 9. So overall it may have took a while but once I got into my groove I really felt accomplished.
FAILs of humanities 10:
– slow start
– procrastination
– sometimes off task
despite getting that 🌈 There where still a good amount of FAILs in this class, the main one being my slow start. Like I said above it really took me a while to get into a rythm but once I did good things came of it. Another reoccurring issue is procrastination. I feel like it wasn’t ass bad this year as it has been in the past but it still dosnt excuse the fact that it happened. The reason it happened was simply because I was putting my humanities stuff off to the side to do my math and science. Coming with this procrastination was that sometimes I got off task in humanities and I really did struggle with that but than again as time went on in that class it got better and better.
picture of humanities thing
Learning plan:
Similar to last year we started off this year with a learning plan. Now I’m not gonna cap I completely forgot I did this but looking back on it now, I don’t want to say it helped me because i haven’t looked at it since now, but it kind of came true with regards to putting more effort to my school work, going out of my comfort zone and stopping my bad habits. I wouldn’t say it helped me become a better learner but right now I’m on the path to becoming that better learner.
How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?
so far this year I believe I have showed growth as a learner just by simply trying harder and putting myself forward. In the past I really didn’t try nor care and had so many bad habits. Starting this year I noticed and decided to change all of that and I did and I’m glad I did because not only has it been more successful I’ve found that I produce a higher quality of work when I actually apply myself. I don’t want to sound cocky but I truly do feel like the jump from last year to the start of this year has been tremendous and I’m really proud of myself for trying to break my old habits and do better as a learner, friend and student and hope I can carry this good momentum onto term 2.
thank you for reading and or listening hope you enjoyed even though it was long
SLATT 💚
Landon