Hi everyone,
We are now almost halfway through the school year! I have done a lot of work, and my work habits have changed a lot. So far this year I have learnt many things. Now I have a 12 minute presentation to give to my parents and teachers about how I have grown as a learner this year. This blog post will be about my work so far this year and everything I have accomplished and failed.
The driving question for the mPol is, “What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will you meet it?” I will be explaining how I’ve grown as a learner this term. I’ll also explain what my learning goal for the end of the year is, and how I’ll get to that goal.
My first Project was, “The Medium is the Message.” You can check out my blog post on that here. Looking back on a lot of the work I did at the start of the year I am really impressed with how far I’ve come along. Below I have to summaries I wrote, one which I wrote at the start of this school year and one which I wrote in mid January. Notice the difference? In the first one I was vague, didn’t explain my points enough and was just not that interesting. In the second one I was more descriptive, explained my points more and, was more interesting.
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This was the first assignment. My Welcome Home Dissection. -
This was my recent assignment. The Siege of Acre
Another thing I have really Improved on over this year is blogging. Checkout my first blog post vs my reflection post on the winter exhibition and my blue sky project. The latter is so much better than the first one. The first one was super short, didn’t use many photos, was super boring, and skimmed over all the topics. If you went through my blog posts you would notice my blog posts improved very quickly. The first thing you will notice is the extra photos, and longer posts. Then my vocabulary and my writing improved. I still have a lot to improve in the area of blogging. In my first reflection post called Tectonic Books I had troubles reflecting on competencies. If you check out my reflection post on my blue sky project you will see how much better I was at reflecting on competencies.
We started this year out in Humanities learning about advertising. It is astonishing about how much better my work is now then it was at the start of this project. I’ve already showed you my first assignment. Here is my reflection blog post from this project. During this project I learned many interesting things and my work improved quite a bit. The second project this year in humanities was religion. We never really seemed to complete this project. I learned about all the major world religions in this project (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism). The project we are currently doing in humanities is This Changes Everything, Middle Ages. As you can probably guess by the name we are studying the Middle Ages. We are focusing on the continuity and change. So far I feel as if I have done well in humanities, and I have learned a lot. My hard work this year has given me many sunshine’s and even a 1 rainbows!
In Maker this year we have completed many projects. It started off with Big Life Journal, this project was really important as it taught us the basis of a growth mindset which is super valuable in PLP. Then we did Photography, This project was about teaching us some basic Photo techniques to help us with photography in Oregon. Then we did sketching. Then we did are Star Wars blue sky project for the exhibition. Finally, now we are doing DI (Destination Imagination). This year I have enjoyed maker a lot, and I feel I have really improved. The thing I like the most about maker is that you seem to have more freedom in maker. I’ve worked very hard in maker and I have been rewarded with 1 rainbow and lots of sunshines.
We started Scimatics this year learning about fractions. This project introduced us to spreadsheets and improved are math skills. Then we moved on to Tectonic Books were we wrote a children’s book about Tectonic Plates. Then we moved on to Mazer Tag, this was my favourite Scimatics project so far this year. Now we are doing chemistry coding. My work in Scimatics this year has been very consistent, I have gotten all sunshines.
My 4th subject is PGP. We haven’t really done much PGP yet this year. Although, we have had many experiences which we can be evaluated for in PGP. The whole Oregon trip involved us being evaluated for PGP. We have also had one PGP meeting. So far this year in PGP I have improved a ton. The skill I am the best at in PGP is leadership. I sometimes get in pointless argument with classmates and I need to stop that. I also am sometimes a little bit bossy.
So far this year I have learned many things. I get all my work done. Although, it is sometimes a little bit late. I also need to improve my grammar. Finally, I find myself doing a lot of work at home, I’m really busy so I want to get my homework done quicker so that I can do more things which I love. My learning goal for the end of the year is to get more work done in class. Specifically I want to do no more than an average of 1 hour per day (although, I will do more if I have more). In order to achieve this I will need to start time blocking my calendar. I’m terrible at this, I put tasks in things but I need to know when to do them. If I assign a 30 minute time to do my homework it will help me be more efficient. Also, I need to become more aware of how long assignments will take. Secondly, I need to get less distracted in class if I want to do this. The biggest distraction I’ve had this year in class wasn’t gaming, it was talking to friends. Thirdly, I need to balance out my work better. To do this I will have to remind myself when I’m talking to friends I actually should be doing work. Sometimes I will get hung up on something and spend 30 minutes on something which should only take 5 minutes. This will prolong my whole assignment and throw off my workflow. The way I will change this is that if I spend 5 minutes on something and get nowhere I will move on to something else or take a break from homework and go outside. I think the best way for me to clear my head is to go for around 20 minutes.
My learning question is “how can I use the resources I have to improve my productivity and keep a good school/life balance?”