Quote: “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 MPOL, even though it’s not the middle of the school year but who cares (I do). In the beginning of the year I felt uncmfortable, with my work and class environment. Now I feel much different, more so happy, comfortable and confident but what changed. I’ll take you through my year so you can get a clearer picture.
For me It all started with the big Alberta trip. Personally I’m not sure how too feel about it and I can’t say too much except that it made me feel bad. There will always be big problems in the world in terms of objectifying, disgracing and everything a long those lines. I just didn’t think it would all come so soon at this age.
That’s where everything was complicated but it got better, as everything does. I’ll never forget our re-do trip, Loon Lake. I’ve never had so much fun without my phone glued to me, I got to rock climb, do archery, high ropes and so many other great activities. Most importantly our class bonded together. It brought out a lot that we didn’t know about eachother. We were all just strangers that spend hours together almost everyday, now we know. I know.
Here’s a link to learn more about my loon lake trip:
I’ve felt that I have grown more in my self awareness but also confidence. I got closer with new people and cheered them on. I felt good about how I’ve improved and my learning plan can show that:
I feel I have reached the social level in which I’m now comfortable and confident, and able to be involved in any class discussions. My work does get done with the level of proficiency but to get extending I have to sharpen my learning plan. I need to create a plan such as a schedule to balance sports, school and work, so I can keep proper track of assignments. I can use things and calendar to keep track but also modify my days so I can study and balance homework so I’m not stressing. My goal is to achieve this plan and my reward is an extending. I will work hard for it.
Humanities is all year round, which means plenty of projects to demonstrate my learning and growth.
Two big projects I feel and impacted me are the Revolutions and Louis Riel. French Revolution made me learn a lot on history. Especially on how society collapsed, bringing down the monarchy, Napoleon coming out on top.
I feel like this project was an example of something I’ve done well due to many examples like my infographic:
And this was also my winter exhibition. My group involved me, Neko, Liam, James, Alva, Kaia, Gino and Kainono. Our project was to make a Rube Goldberg machine representing the French Revolutions through metaphors. I think we nailed it. It worked one time, but not everything’s perfect. We had costumes, theme, documentary, setting, so many components that all tied together. I loved this proeject in the way the way that I learned new things but also got to use my skills when crafting and creating. I feel like I work better with a mix of hands on learning, rather than just typing on iPads for endless amounts of hours. This project involved plenty of teamwork but we were happy with the result, happy enough to show our parents.
Secondly Louis Riel, I learned a bit about him but also it was a project all about improving our writing. It took a lot of effort but now it has benefited me in everyday life and will help me in the future.
Maker, more so DI (destination imagination). DI was the biggest project I’ve had in my life and Mr. Hughes was right. I’m glad I did it but only after it was done. This is an amazing example of things I did well and things I flunked at.
Things I did well: Decorating, designing and especially presenting. Presenting was my favourite thing because I just got to have fun on stage, with my lines, humour, actions and improve. Again I feel I’ve grown more confident in myself as a learner and a person. My team did so well infact that we won second place in Provincials but most importantly we won the Di Vinci award! With our Star Wars theme, funny dance and smiling faces we achieved something we thought we had no hope of getting. I’m glad, not just for getting the award but for beating the odds in our heads, because we are so much more than what we think of ourselves. And we ended up delivering a high quality product.
Here’s my medal:
Things I didn’t do well: Building is not for me. As well as it took me and another group member some warming up to do, but in the end we preformed at our best. For next time I would like to start well with all so to be sure that it doesn’t created an unpleasant environment or affect our finished project.
I would like to continue working on my relationships with people because to me it matters. It affects you as a person because who wants to be someone who has an issue with everyone they work with. You wont get anywhere it that continues in your life. This is our time to change and improve ourselves for the future.
Science with Ms. Kadi was my favourite class. I had a lot of fun especially because we usually always got to work with others. No matter what if I failed at simply turning on a battery, I at least failed with my bff Hunter (I love his mom). We spent most of science laughing our faces off and goofing around but there is a project I really enjoyed. Elements and compound chemhistory. First we got to learn the history of any element we wanted, then we created an article about it:
I picked fluorine. I learned about the history about it and how it actually use to be in water and later got removed.
Here’s a link to learn more about my science project:
My favourite part though was creating this into art. I love art, all of it. We got to make stencils of some sort and cover them in paint, creating a print. My end result was a toothpaste tube painted with purple. It took me a couple of attempts, correcting and revising but I was satisfied with my end product.
Overall for all the countless projects I’ve done so far this year I’ll admit I’ve had plenty of revisions, but that’s motivation. It’s helping me create something even better than before. “Why be good when you can be great.” With all this I’m aiming high for an extending and I’ll only become better.
Finale. How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? Everything I’ve written here gives evidence to that. I’ve become a better version of myself and by the end of the year who knows. I’m glad I’ve gotten to share my experiences so far this year because it does get better.
As I woke up at 7am on Saturday, march 2nd, the only thing I could think of was DI. The night before my group had worked tirelessly to finish our pinball machine; with painting, making costumes and finalizing everything, I wished we had more time. But all these lessons I’ve learned through regionals will benefit me in provincials.
Let’s begin from the start. My group consisted of Jackson, Jack, Jasper, Ailie, Matteo and me, which created our team name J.J.J.A.M.M. At the beginning of DI we signed a contract, basically to promise to be nice to eachother. I do think our team worked well together with communication and creativity. There were exceptions though in which at certain times we got stressed. For the future I wish to be more patient and understanding and well as using my time to benefit others mode and relieve the stress of DI.
Overall for this project/ presentation we had to make a working pinball machine and a story that included it in some way.
Our group collaborated our on main idea which won us 2nd place in regionals. Our presentation was great, our acting was emotional and our costumes worked well, the one part we left out of were the acutal rules of the pinball. We unfortunately didn’t even make one round so we got zero points for rounds. For next time we’d like to improve on actually getting credits for the pinball rounds and how to rework if we fail.
My contribution was I was a designer. Our group worked collaboratively but we also had jobs, some focused on building and others did designing.
Overall I think I learned a lot of new things, as well as things I’ll use in the future. For example, I’ve learned new skills on how to use building tools properly especially the drill; and also somewhat skills like time management. This became crucial at the very end before regionals where we were in a big time crunch. But we did accomplish a lot in those 24 hours before presenting.
These are our “donuts” that we made as a team choice element. Lesson learned donuts are really hard to make. Thankfully I went through this struggle with some of my team members.
As you can see at the bottom right is our pinball machine. You may be able to tell, or not but our choice was to make it Star Wars themed. We decorated it and made it not look too heinous. In the end we were very proud of our finished product and how it came together. Obviously there’s room for improvement which we will present at provincials.
As I tore apart multiple stuffies, their arms legs and torso and resewed them together. I had created a monster, a monster named Todd.
1. Making our Frankie stuffie
My frankiestuffie is named Todd. I created him from octopus, flamingo and bear. But I wasn’t always sure of his design. I had a vision and an ambition to make something weird and different. As I grabbed random stuffies of the shelves of superstore I got already see him being born.
Throughout this part of the project I learned how to sew and use my creativity. I’ve given Todd personality, characteristics and so much more. He’s a humourous guy but later faces challenges when it comes to making a story.
2. Making a story
We started with gathering information about how to portray our story. With our driving question “how do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience.” Through our story we can use verbal communication, animated actions, clear plot, hints and so much more to interact with our audiences understanding.
3. Creating a film
Now we implement our story into film. In these past few weeks we learned how to use different apps that have been provided to us to create our film. I decided to use keynote and iMovie to deliver my story. I animated within keynote using their tools, including animation, media, voice recordings and more. A big part of these process was creating a storyboard.
This is my story board:
My teachers told the class that every animated movie has to start with a storyboard, it helps with the animated process. Giving slides, frames and details to fortell the final product.
4. Final product
This is my final film. It is based in the White House and it’s a mystery film surrounding the idea for unfair government and economy. The rest is for you to find out:
Overall this entire project has taught me skills within apps that I will later use in the future when needed. There were multiple successes and also failures, like when I couldn’t import might movie properly so it was just a random project in keynote and I thought I had nothing left for me. Another failure was editing, this killed me. The timing to link everything together took many tires and plenty of time. The success though was the finished project and the stuffy. I loved how both turned out together. As well as it showed me ways on how to communicate efficiently to my audience whether it’s in animated or art form. I enjoyed this project especially creating the stuffy and then making an entire story for my character.
For the past three weeks we’ve been learning about Louis Riel and his story. I’ve spent numerous hours focusing on this man and his controversial life he lived. In the end my only question is, how long will peoples portrayals of us affect us? Do we ever grow out of it like Louis Riel did, even after many many years.
Throughout this learning we’ve not only learned all about Louis but also how to write. Due to covid and other conflicts our writing was sloppy and not our grade level. So teachers took action to improve it and with harsh criticism and numerous hours of learning proper spelling, paragraph placements and more. I think my writing has definitely improved, atleast I hope, and with the countless times my work was sent back I pray it got better.
Let’s look through my multi paragraph which explains the controversy between Louis Riel’s actions and his portrayals. As well as you can see the “improved writing.”
Introduction
Louis Riel's controversial actions during the 19th century left a long lasting impact on the way Canadian society perceived him. Throughout history Louis Riel has been called many things. A Métis leader and hero, as well as traitor and rebel, but what caused these portrayals? Two main examples that show his controversial actions are: the Heritage minute made in 1991 and his statues made in the 1990’s. Both events had negative backlash. The representations mentioned help control the narrative in regarding that Louis Riel’s image whether he was alive or dead was controlled by others. For how long though? In the end how has the portrayal of him changed over time?
Heritage minute
In 1991 Historica Canada created a 60 second short film to give us an insight on Louis Riels last moments of life. The film captured Louis’s thoughts. During those moments he was reflecting on his controversial actions. Why he stood up for Métis culture and disrupted the Canadian goverment’s plans to silence them. Throughout the film he’s asking God to forgive him and to forgive those who will soon take his life due to his actions. One is led to believe that until very end Louis Riel lived a selfless life. In the background of the video you can hear two sides. One is the settlers and one is the Métis, while the settlers degraded him for all he was, the Métis, the people who he stood up for, thanked him. Looking back on this in 2024 we wouldn’t have done that to someone like him because times have changed as well as the portrayals of him and people’s opinions. Overtime, Louis Riels image has changed with the world, and for the better. We now reflect and celebrate his actions for the Métis and we view him as a hero for it.
Even a metal statue that represented Louis Riel was controversial. Lemay and Gaboury, Miguel Joyal and John Nugent were all artists who captured Louis Riel’s essense in a statue form. However, they caused a lot of controversy in 1990 with the display of these sculptures. Some people saw these statues as a symbol of heroism, and others saw them as a tease, as a provocation, because they believed he was a traitor to the Canadian government. They even went too far in vandalizing them, forcing them to relocate the controversial statues. Then later to replace some with more improved versions. This just shows that his statues served as a reminder of the difficult and complicated nature of history and the diverse perspectives that shaped public memory and commemoration. These statues stand now as the glorifying actions of a hero, perceived as harmful to Canada in the past. In the end, the portrayals of Louis Riel have shifted from being seen as a traitor and rebel to being recognized as an important figure in Canadian history and as a symbol of Indigenous rights and resistance.
Overall I actually had a ton of fun learning about Louis Riel because still in society we struggle with our image and peoples opinions, but the world has also grown. Even though he was controversial he still stood up for his culture, which to me over those weeks he became my person of inspiration. Also is there ever a powerful or famous person who never was atleast a bit disturbed. Even the most beautiful art pieces were made by artists who even cut off their own ear, or a bit of it at least.
We not only learned about Louis but also we were able to expand our learning in a more proficient manner. This project taught me a lot about how important writing, grammar, sentencestructure, words, quotations and more. All this skills will benefit me and I’m able to use them in future projects, especially for next semester.
If I could describe PLP in one word it would be ambitious, and especially when winter exhibtion comes around it really shows.
For this winter exhibition our learning started around the beginning of November. They explained the project to us and it was crazy. We would have to build a working Rube Goldberg machine, (a machine that is overly complicated in which works with chain reactions to accomplish a simple task). We had to build one but there’s a catch, every connection of the machine had to present a metaphor from revolution.
My revolution was the French Revolution, the one with Napoleon. Beforehand we spent time getting to know our revolutions personally and to show our learning and understand we made inforgraphics. This is mine:
This information was transferred into our machine in which I created and built with my group including James, Neko, Alva, Kaia, Gino, Kainono and Liam. Our idea was to have 7 different connections that each of us built and personalized and in the end attach them together. This seemed simple to us until we started building.
The process of building was so long and tedious, some days were good and some days were absouloutly terrible like one day when someone destroyed our guillotine. It took a long time to get it fixed and to even get it working. As exhibition night came closer and closer, stress and anxiety skyrocketed. But there were some highlights like the day we got to spraypaint everything, it was really fun until it got on my hands and wouldn’t come off. There were definetely challenges but it all worked out in the end, kind off.
Exhibition night was stressful but once it was over I was so glad, not just because it was over but because it happened. We built a machine that maybe worked once but we still built it and including we had made documentary to go with it to show the revolution and process of building. Looking back on everything I liked this project because it was lots of hands on learning and creativity which is the reason I joined PLP.
To answer the driving questions “How do ideas drive change?” Without ideas nothing would’ve been created, ideas are the building blocks for our world. It can be the start of a new machine, or law, or shift how we live. They can make someone’s life harder or easier, they spark new ways of thinking and doing. Ideas can be big or small but either way they shift the world in some way, better or for worse.
Movies are fun, movies are exciting, movies have many important components that go into making them such as high quality cameras, top notch actors, inticing storyline, but what if a group of teenagers had to make a thriller, with phone quality, no Hollywood actors and a storyline that had to fit into 2 mintues. Henceforth a two minute thriller.
This might have seen easy and many people have probably made movies as kids with their friends to show to their parents, but this was not the case. We spent days of learning, anazylizing evey detail on multiple short films such as “Laundry,” “Blackhole, “Tuck me in,” and more. We learned many skills that helped for our finsihed product such as angles, continuity, sound, emotion, plot, character dynamics, storyline, cliffhangers, foreshadowing, and much more.
Every class we paid close attention and by the end we correlated all this information into a productm which is my two minute thriller. I worked in a gorup with Lila, Syd and Alex. We worked as a gorup and collaborated especially when we were faced with challenges.
The big challenge was we wanted to film our thriller in a pool. I’ll remind you that it is winter right now. The issue was the entire story was based in the pool, but it was too cold to be in for more than a couple minutes. We attempted to film but we realized this idea didn’t work at all, so we regrouped and found a different solution.
So we made an entire new movie. In the end we got an extension because our work before was not something we felt proud of handing in. We made time, a storyline and setting and we got to work, focusing hard and finishing our movie in an entire weekend. This was definetely a learning experiance and for next time I would make sure our ambitions match a bit more with reality.
No phones, lots physical activity, growing as a group, the sound of it felt weird like a dream which is exactly how this trip felt. Without physical documentation such as photos on my phone, what do I remember, what did I learn?
Throughout this trip we were accompanied by a learning group called Pinnacle. We had sessions with them daily and during these we became comfortable with our class, the people we spend time with almost everyday, hours on end, yet we still acted like strangers. These sessions included personal reflecting on our private journals to learn about ourselves, group activites where we got to know one another like sharing our goals and lastly bigger groups where we did inticing activites such as trust falls. Each one of these helped us or at least me grow as a person and understand our driving question which is “How do the choices we make set our future path?” This is your life and the choices you make can better your life or worsen it. How do you want to be in the future, think about that before you make a hard desicion.
A quote that really stuck with me is “it’s everyone’s first time living.” Everyone goes through their own struggles, which we learned in a very emotional activity we did one night called Crossing the Line, it showed us how different yet connected we are. For me this activity was hard due to the leader of Pinnacle Johno asking us some tough and personal questions. This actvity showed me to be more gentle with everyone because if I have hard times, they can have them too, and or don’t bother negatively if someone is happy because everyone needs a break of their own.
Besides the learning portion of this trip we also had a ton of fun! We went rock climbing and archery, as well as we did high and low ropes. My friend Syd and I did the high ropes together and we had to put a lot of trust in eachother as we crossed this rickety bridge together. In the end we made it across but we did fall, but we fell together so we were fine, more than fine we were laughing.
Overall I learned to better analyze situations and how to deal with them with hard decision making, and lastly I learned to be more open and to think creatively in my own way. Because everyone’s thoughts can help contribute solutions. Now we’re at the very end and personally after this trip I wish I didn’t leave, but my own special goal I would like to be transferred is “I would like to be more confident for myself and for others, and speak up for those who can’t or fear it.”
“Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known,” this changed my brain chemistry because if I think how hard science is to learn, what about the person who created it, the people who added all their new findings and knowledge without having any blueprints to follow. New things are being found everyday so eventually couldn’t I find something new, like a new element?
For this unit we learned about the Periodic Table and you may think it already looks complicated but it gets way worse, there’s math involved. From learning how to represent an element in drawing form such as the Lewis diagram or the Bore diagram, to how different elements combine into compounds. The periodic table is interesting because we can see every element on our iPads easily and at the same time their make up our ipad and everything else in the world.
We haven’t finished our project which is a painting we will create of our element of choice, but we have done all the learning and reaserch for it. I chose fluorine as my element and I was really able to dig deep into the history of it, which brings me to our driving question “What impacts do elements and compounds have on history and modern day society? Fluorine changed our society, it harmed us and benefited us. To show all the work I’ve done I made a poster about fluorine which you can see below:
The process of learning everything was enjoyable and steady which gave me the oppurtunity to really take charge of my work without feeling overwhelmed. Even though we haven’t finsihed yet I loved making this poster of fluorine and I can’t wait to paint!
What I learn from this experiance is that my dads job is complicated. He works as a manager at Volkswagon, and I thought he just bossed people around but I was very wrong. It involves having a lot of patience when handling work and challenges with either your coworkers, boss and customers. As well as it involves a lot of paperwork to ensure the customer is happy and safe when getting a new car or a repair, but as it turns out some customers are rude becasue they either have too much time or too much money, or both.
That was my experiance and I learned that my dads job is not for me, but congrats to him. But to show my learning I made a video. I held interviews with some of my dads coworkers to get an understanding of the different jobs that take place to satisfy a customer, I asked many questions, took photos and went back home to edit and bring this video to life.
I’m going to apply what I learned into my everyday life (school life), which means to be more patient and understanding with people because in the end their just trying to communicate in their own way.
As I’m climbing up a mountain I can feel all the pressure building in my legs, I feel as if I take one more step I’ll fall all the way down but then I look up.
Welcome back, if you’ve already read my maker post you’d know that we went on a adventuress trip to Alberta. If you haven’t then heres a link to it: https://www.blog44.ca/mikar/2023/10/13/a-trip-though-moving-images/ In that post I reflected on everything we did on the maker aspect of the trip, which were the numerous amount of videos we created.
For the humanities part, our question was “how has the geogrpahy of the west shaped who we are?” And to answer this we created a filed study journal! We blogged, took note and reflected on every place we visited. From Lake Louis, to the Columbia Icefield and all the way back home (which was a long and heinous drive).
Our book is made up of our own personal answers to the trip, answers to questions and our views on each place. At the start I didn’t like doing the book at all and it freaked me out but once I got the hang of it, it became very easy, so for advice: dont stress about your assignment, the point for the trip is to enjoy the trip.
Overall out of all the things I learned, one thing stuck and it was the word sonder. It’s means realizing that others have lives has vivid as yours. In Alberta while talking to people I really took that word into account as I heard amazing stories like some guys son was a skiing archer. That amazed me.
But if you’d like to learn about my trip more than the crazy stores I was told then click here:
