Year: 2024

Hey blog veiwers! Welcome back to another reflection, this time on my first PGP project ever. Our atomic habits and artifact project consisted of reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and then making a realating project to that book. This project focuses on daily habits, how one can change their life a little bit to impact their future dramatically. 

In this reflection blog post I will touch on the benefits and struggles of choosing an artifact that is unique and not something I would normally consider to work on. I’ll also touch on the driving question, competencies, and my take aways from the project.

First off I would like to talk about how much work this artifact took. Our task was to make a artifact relating to Atomic Habits, I chose to make a video documenting one week of my life and how I implement atomic habits rules into my everyday life. I had to change my life a little to become more productive and remember to film everything. On top of changing and filming my everyday life, making the video was a ton of work. Not including time lapses and long videos, I still had an hour of footage, which I had to cut down to 4mins. In the video I used multiple edited features, and added a mix of voiceover and video audio. 

https://youtu.be/1Ijmghr8Wf4?si=vceICyvt5IpoErcp

The driving question for this project was, how can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond? Well of course habits literally shape your life. You are what your actions are, and if you want to change that you need to change your habits. So when you make a small change in a habit, you are just making a change to your identity. You can change your identity to shape success this year and beyond. I’m going to shape my success this year following my intentions statement, my vision, mission, and values, and my own goals for myself. Although I agree with much of the book, It often said to focus on a habit instead of a goal. For me, I obsess over my goals so much the habits just follow as a way to reach that goal. One habit I’m gonna change dramatically this year is the quality of my school work. Right now I’m exercising the habit of making good school work and my productivity and procrastination has gotten way better this year.

We had the task to present our artifacts at my first PrePOL in PLP ever. I really put everything I had into my artifact, so I was very happy when my parents liked it. I made a document for my PrePOL presentation with paragraphs on my goals for the year, my VMV, and how my artifact connects to atomic habits. My PrePOL went amazingly well, I never ran out of things to say while still being on topic, and I got to present work that I am actually proud of.

PRE POL.pdf

The core competency for this project was responsible Learning. Basically how I am responsible to take action with my work and to help others around me. I definitely took action for my work, starting the artifact the day my pitch was approved. And I did my best to help others around me, as since this was a very broad project some people needed help brainstorming. The other competency for this project was questioning. While reading the book I had to question many of the teaching and come up with my own conclusions from them. I also asked lots of questions in my artifact.

Would the world be a better place if Canada took it over? Probably not, but Canada is an amazing country so does the world need more of it?

Introduction

Canada isn’t a perfect country, that doesn’t exist. But there are many lessons we can learn from our country that could be beneficial for the rest of the world. I recently participated in a Humanities project called “The World Needs More Canada”, where we had a conversation about Canadas greatness. The driving question for this project is, why does the world need more Canada? I helped answer that question by making a podcast, reporting on a current events issue, and reflecting on short Canadian relating stories.

My answer to the driving question

As mentioned the driving question is, why does the world need more Canada? My answer to the driving question is that, Canada is a pretty well off country compared to the world average, the rest of the world would benefit from having some of Canadas traits. Examples of Canada’s beneficial traits are strong economy, universal healthcare, being a first world country, being culturally diverse, being a free country with free speech, having good international connections with strong global trade, exporting many goods, and having a democratic government. 

The evidence I am most proud of  

My podcast is a project I am currently very proud of. Honestly it’s pretty rare that I’m proud of a school project I do, but that’s changing this year. Our task was to make a five minute long podcast about a reason Canada is so awesome. I chose to focus on the topic of immigration, and the benefits of it. Before working on our podcast we had to make a topic pitch, a graphic organizer, a multi paragraph composition, and a podcast script. I am so proud of my podcast because I feel it is something I would actually use to take notes or learn about Canadas immigration, while being entertaining. My podcast is a bit over the time limit at seven minutes, but since there is so much to cover for the topic I think it would we a good tool for others to get a better understanding of the topic. In the podcast, I interviewed my immigrant grandparents, informed the viewer with statistics, and asked thought provoking questions. My podcast is a proficient-extending level in my opinion, because of the depth it goes into the topic for such a short time, and how high quality it is.

The other peice of work I am most proud of is my Thinking Thursday Discussion. I reported on the CBC National’s news story on landlords raising rents and how it has affected Canada’s housing crisis. On top of summarizing the report, I voiced my own opinion on the topic and did plenty of other research from other sources to come up with a unbiased conclusion. 

The national thinking Thursday

Struggles

The first task of this project was to analyze five short stories, writing or describing a summary, setting, characters, protagonist, antagonist, POV, conflict, theme, and mood. Since I was sick for about a week and a half, I struggled with this task. Especially after seeing a very confusing story like bread, I struggled to figure out what to write, and think I definitely could have done a better job on this section of the project. I think my understanding of the short stories is limited, and my analysis shows that. This affected my final podcast project slightly, because I probably would have realated immigration to these short stories in more detail if I had a better understanding of them.

The jade peony

Core Competency

The core competency for this project was “responsible learning” and I can use my tools and thinking to contribute to a class project to share a quality podcast with the world that celebrates and builds a sense of community among Canadians. I will build my own appreciation for where I live.

So, have I completed the core competency? Definitely. I used my thinking to make a quality podcast and I celebrated and built an appreciation for where I live. If someone asked me why Canada is such a great place, I could think of five reasons within a second. My podcast was super high quality, and I covered why immigration has made Canada a better place and why other countries should let in immigrants concisely.  

Curricular Competency

The curricular competency was “questioning”. I can ask questions, research information, and share ideas. What conclusions have you reached about the driving question? What did you learn to help you reach that conclusion? Explain.

I asked questions, researched, and shared ideas in my thinking Thursday discussion, already covered my conclusions on the driving question in this post, and learned from the research needed to make my podcast and thinking Thursday. During the podcast I literally asked questions to immigrats and was asking the viewer questions in both projects.

Conclusion 

In all this project was the most well made one I’ve completed in PLP (until my artifact). I learned to plan projects better, how to come back from a two week sickness, and of course all about how great Canada is. Although I had some struggles I feel like I have some part of this project at a extending level like my knowledge on the housing crisis and Canadas immigration. The study habits I used in this project could be implemented into the next project where if implemented even better could pass this project and become my best humanities work yet.

Have you ever seen a comic book about WW1 at a presentation of learning? You probably haven’t unless you attended the recent PLP exhibition, where the grade presented their WW1 comic books, mine being on monchy-le-preux. This years end of year exhibition was definitely a hectic one, and I’ll touch on what went well  and what could have been improved in the exhibition and in my individual comic book.

My comic book had 20 panels and was about monchy-le-preux, where ten Newfoundlanders had to protect one of the most strategic points in the western front. I focused on one of the ten, Albert Rose and made a realistic story around him. Working on the comic book ended up pretty well but there was some challenges on the way to success. I had a knockoff Apple Pencil that the wasn’t best so I definitely had a harder job than many to draw. On top of the Apple Pencil, I wasn’t familiar with sketches pro and throughout the project I learned how to be efficient with my drawings, going from a simple drawing taking an hour, to a good looking one taking twenty minutes. 

This recent exhibition went pretty well but definitely could have been a lot better if it was prepared a little differently. I don’t think we had enough time for this project in general but especially the decorations, costumes, and food. We didn’t even have costumes and food and our decorations were random sticks and leaves picked about thirty minutes before the exhibition. I think we could have cut the nationalism project a few days short to have a bit more time to work on the exhibition preparation. In the end I think most individuals were pretty proud of their projects everyone showcased their drawing skills and the visitors seemed to be engaged.

This project and exhibition helped me learn to draw on an iPad so much better. The exhibition grew our team building skills, within the chaos of preparation we all somehow managed to make a presentable space for the public. I also improved at managing my time, I set out how many panels I needed to achieve each day to stay on track, which helped so much to makes sure I would have my comic ready by exhibition. In all this exhibition and comic project went pretty well and was a really great learning experience for me.

Mr./Ms. (teacher’s name), this is my mother/father, Susan and/or Mathew .

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.

Success behaviours

Below this paragraph you can see my success behaviours form, where I filled out how my learning is in terms of proficiency. In this TPOL I will cover the required topic of agency as well as my choice of engagement and self regulation each my strongest and weakest point of my success behaviours. As you can see below in general my success behaviours are could use some work, they aren’t necessarily bad but I’ve set out some goals for my self that I’ll touch on later one of which includes getting all but 3 of these success behaviours in consistently. A reason I think I am ready for PLP is how well I performed on possibly our hardest project, DI.

Agency

Now focusing on agency, my ownership and responsibility is in the sometimes category, meaning I have some work to do. I need to take responsibility for my own learning and actions which I can do sometimes but not consistently. Something I need to work on in general is not needing reminders to take responsibility in my actions and projects. While sometimes reminders can be a helping hand for motivation to push a little bit more, it shouldn’t be the reason to start or even do a task ever. Relating to reminders, I often don’t ask for help until much needed and often too late. An example of when I could ask for help would be when I’m still a little confused with an upcoming project and need to know more before starting. Being late on projects is probably my biggest struggle. I’ve gotten better this year at starting projects and knowing how long a project could take and not biting off more than I can chew. My late problem comes down to three reasons, procrastination, forgetting, and not putting the needed work in. Going into next year I can continue using reminders to help forgetting, start using smart study habits like working for 20min and having a five minute break to help put work needed in. Procrastination is the hardest challenge to overcome and it’s something everyone can relate to. I don’t have any fancy method to help with procrastination I just kinda have to use my self control. The two things I found I can consistently do in agency are accepting feedback and showing resilience in the face of setbacks.

Engagement 

Engagement is probably the hardest thing for me to do. Even when it appears I am focusing on a task my mind often wanders causing me to not get all information needed. In engagement I can participate ideas when prompted and sometimes shows interest in learning. I put those two in sometimes because I usually don’t answer questions or raise my hand in class, and I honestly don’t really think I need to unless I don’t understand the project at hand. I put helping other learners and demonstrating growth over time in something I’ve done consistently. When asked I always help friends out in a task and make sure they understand the topic clearly. Over my last two years now working in PLP I’ve demonstrated so much growth with my work and how the quality has gone up. 

Preparation 

Preparation is the only category in my success behaviours document that I labeled as both in the sometimes column. At school I come to class but sometimes not ready for it without the needed materials and outside of school I have a system to manage tasks but struggle with consistency. For some reason I always don’t leave enough time to complete PLP projects as comparison to mainstream school projects. I have put in my upcoming goals section to complete all projects on time and to work on my procrastination problem. Overall preparation is something I need to work on but can very easily be tweaked with a few minor changes like charging my iPad I can be consistently achieving preparation. 

Goals for next year related to school and PLP

Get extending in four of my classes 

Get 50 hours of volunteer work

Balance sports, school, work, and friends 

Spend less or the same amount of time doing homework by being more efficient 

Get extending for 3 things in humanities

Driving question

The driving question for this TPOL is, How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade? I can answer that question by showing my progress throughout all of high school in my work and as a person in the last two years. I’ve learned so many skills some related to PLP and some not. I’ve learned to study effectively, picked up new hobbies, and learned to balance my life. I’ve completed all of my projects in PLP this year, and I think I did a pretty good job on most of them, especially DI and my recent comic book. I think right now I am in the best position to go Into grade ten PLP with a new year and achieve so much. When I start strong in a class I can kind of use my momentum to continue strong throughout the year. This TPOL is one of the longest things I’ve written and I’ve put a lot of work into it, going into next year this amount of work will be the norm for me. 

In the name Nationalism 

 

We have only done two projects since our last delayed MPOL one of them being in the name of nationalism project. In this project we made a video about the nationalism for our chosen country. My country was Canada and I focused on Canada’s history and how it shaped  present day Canada. I did this project to a proficient level like the rest of my projects. I made a video that can inform a viewer about Canadas nationalism effectively and quickly. 

WW1 comic book

Our most recent project was for our exhibition, the WW1 comic book. In this project we made twenty panels on a event that happened in WW1. My battle was Monchy le preux and I focused on Albert Rose, a WW1 veteran from Newfoundland as a part of the ten heroic men that defended Infantry hill from an entire German battalion. I’m really happy on how my project ended up, I think it told a great story and I greatly improved at my online drawing skills. 

 

What I did well

I’ve already touched on what I can improve on while talking about success behaviours so now I’d like to talk about what I’ve done this year well. This year I’ve grown so much as a PLP learner. You can’t even compare my first project with my last. My strongest points this year  were DI, my MPOL, and my comic book. My team building skill improved so much during our winter exhibition Rube Goldberg and I think teachers can tell how much my work has improved and is now to a high level. I hope to bring my current successes into next year and go even further. 

Thanks for reading/listening to my TPOL I hope you learned something about my learning this year!

 

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.

Alberta trip

I started this school year a different person than I am now. PLP helped me improve my learning process and skills over this year plenty and in this mpol blog post I’ll be talking about that. This school year basically started with the Alberta trip. Seeing a place that looked nothing like I had ever seen before was a great experience and since I like hiking and the outdoors the trip was lots of fun. I learned from the Oregon trip in grade eight to stay on to of my book creator and take lots of photos. Because of the minor switch to plan and stay on top of my work the work load was much less afterwards then Oregon was. The main skills I learned in Alberta were to plan while still enjoying a trip and like with the rest of PLP if I just did a bit of work everyday it would be a lot less stress than if I did it all at the last minute with bad planning. 

Learning plan

After Alberta we made our learning plans and I want to reflect a bit on mine. I’m going to only talk about my areas for growth and if I have grown in that field. I wanted to check Showbie more often and consider different view points, which I have definitely done. I’ve greatly improved in my reflections going from my worst point in work to on par with my other work. I’ve improved the most in loon lake which I’ll mention later but it’s definitely changed the way I’ve thought about work a little. 

What I can Improve on

I’ve also gotten a bit better at group projects taking a bit more leadership although I still could improve on that especially during the start of projects. I often seem to not put enough effort at the start of projects and then have to make up for it during the second half of it. Going into the rest of the year I would like to improve on my planning during projects, preparing well and to continue using things to track my progress. Back to my learning plan, I wanted to become a leader and help others. I have achieved that more than I had at the start of the year but some growth is still needed in the future. I have been taking much better notes this year with my use of things, craft, and pages. And have fully used my technology wisely a improvement from last year.

Loon lake and videos

This year we have worked on many videos especially in group projects. Since we have had so much practice with videos my editing, planning and filming has gotten good and I can now work quickly to make a video. Loon lake was a great experience for me, Jono was a great teacher that helped us as a class bond and actually changed the way I thought about learning a little. Often in PLP and learning it’s not about the actual substance of the lesson but about how I grew as a person and become a better one.

Destination Imagination 

The last project I want to talk about is our most recent, DI. In DI to be honest there was lots of stress and time out of school and last minute changes as well as some failures. Looking back at DI now while I didn’t enjoy it in the moment It really challenged me as a learner and made me work and think more than other projects have and in a different way. DI also made me work with people I wouldn’t normally chose to work with. PLP often choses groups for you but in DI I had to spend way more time with them and really be on top of everything like when we were meeting etc. This school year my work and myself have improved greatly.

My areas of growth and successes 

I want to continue to work better by implementing a few habits into my life. I would like to check Basecamp and Showbie every day. I want to take even more notes, and I want to look ahead in Basecamp to prepare myself for a upcoming project. Something I did well this year was revising well, I have been somewhat on top of my revisions and done them pretty well. That’s what I’ve done and learned this year! I’m proud to say I’ve become a better learner this year and would hope to continue that into the second half of the year.

Have you ever seen a mutated stuffy? In our most recent PLP project we had to make one! This is my blog post for the frankienstuffie project I recently did. The driving question in this project was, how do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience? This project started with the making of our physical frankienstuffies which we made by cutting parts of pre existing stuffies and sewing them together. 

We then learned we were making a film for our end product and to plan for the film we made a storyboard, a short story, a logline, a theme statement, and a plot outline. With so many different elements to this project I found this might have been the project with the most amount of separate assignments in it. I found it hard at times to be able to stay on top of so many different tasks at the same time while keeping a good work balance in my life. I could have definitely improved on my productivity and time management skills overall in this project because especially now at the end so much work is needed to be handed in in such a short time since it’s now spring break. Another struggle was not having an apple pen. Much of this project required it and was more work to do with my fingers, specifically the animation. 

While I won’t ever be making a mutant stuffy again much of the knowledge I learned from this project could be implemented into a real life situation. I learned to use many apps that help with video making, editing, animation, and planning. Since I chose animation as my way to  present my story, my animation skills have greatly improved. Learning how to tell a story in multiple different formats and planing the story is something we worked on lots and I personally think that it’s some of the most useful knowledge I’ve learned in PLP so far.

This project made me learn how much thought goes into making a clear and engaging story. Overall I learned very much and am now ready to go back into school after spring break with a new knowledge of animation and storytelling.

Destination Imagination is a project based program hoping to unleash the creative power in children’s minds. I had the opportunity to be able to take part in DI this year and this blog post is about how it went. We started this project near the end of semester 1 and had about a week of in class time to get to know our group and plan our project for the next 2 months. I was put in the technical team where we made a pinball machine but instead of using a pinball we used a soccer ball. Being in the pinball team meant we were a very heavy on building team because we had to make a very large size pinball machine. Our group built at James’s house and honestly wouldn’t have been able to do what we achieved without James.

Our first major setback was our lack of work being done. We would meet out of school but after hours of work we wouldn’t have a very good result. After fixing problems we had with the drill and our screws we started working at a faster pace. Something I think our group did well on especially compared to other groups is how often we met up outside of school. We met up most Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Something we could have improved on was how complex we planed the machine to be.

We tried to fit too many ideas into our machine and at the last minute realized that we would have to scrap some ideas. DI is probably one of the most useful projects we’ve done in PLP so far. I can put doing DI in my resume and state how it’s grown my team building skills and my creative thinking. So a school project could help me get a job or get into a college. While I probably won’t ever be making a giant pinball machine in the future I will definitely be using skills I learned in this project.

This project improved my skills of working with a random group of people, sometimes with clashing ideas and how to find a solution that works for all of us. Our end result unfortunately couldn’t complete at pinball round but we got lots of points for risk taking with our complicated machine.

Going into provincials our group hopes to get a full pinball round by tweaking our design to work. We also will rehearse our play that goes with our pinball machine, learning to face the audience and project our voices, as well as switching up the play a bit to make it easier to follow. Something that went well was our instant challenge. Our group agreed we did a good job with our teamwork and learning to think quickly. Overall our group did pretty good and will hopefully do even better going into provincials and I learned a lot.

Louis Riel is one of Canada’s most important historical figures, but how has peoples views on him changed overt time from a villain to a hero? As a final project for this year in humanities we worked on Louis Riel. The driving question is how Louis Riel’s portrayal has changed over time. Over this project we worked on a multi paragraph response, topic sentences, a heritage minute paragraph, and discussed how various artifacts portrayed Riel. 

This project made me think about how people can like or hate the same person based off the perspective they have on that person and how that perspective can change based off of how you act. The story of Louis Riel shows how people’s perception can change, in this case societal standards changed and to most Riel is now seen as a Métis leader that stood up for his people where as back in the 1800’s he was seen as a rebel and murderer. At the start of this  project we talked about how some artifacts portrayed Riel. I hadn’t heard about Riel before so seeing the weird ways he was perceived was intriguing. It was like he was a man with multiple personalities. 

 

We then learned to write a proper topic sentence which gives the reader a good expectation for the writing to come and a skill I will use for the rest of my life. Writing a topic sentence is one of those skills that a should have known to do but didn’t and now that I can my writing flows better and if I feel like I’m getting off topic I can refer back to my topic sentence to get me back on track. Next, we watched a heritage minute film and wrote a paragraph about it. This short film made me think about how a video and how propaganda can shift people’s perspective. (not saying the heritage minute is propaganda I just thought about that) I definitely thought about how your surroundings can impact you life and your world view. 

Finally, working on the multi paragraph went pretty well for me. I felt that paying lots of attention in class and taking plenty of notes really paid off, and I came out with something that although the first draft wasn’t perfect it was one of my best pieces of writing. Throughout this year I’ve been consistently getting better at writing and all of my small improvements throughout the year have added up to being a much better writer. I’ve also gotten more patient with my writing and am able to focus and work for a longer time witch I demonstrated in this project. Looking back at my work from the start of grade 8 I can easily tell that I’m a much more experienced writer. 

I’ve always thought history was a little bit odd. I didn’t understand why I should be learning about something that already happened, but I actually found this project and learning about Louis Riel pretty interesting. The most interesting part of this project for me was how people’s perspective of Louis riel changed and even though it’s the same person people now versus in the past have very different reactions of Riel. I also thought about how someone that might be disliked now in a few hundred years might be seen as a hero like Riel. Anyway, over this project I learned how to write and how people perspectives can shift that made me think and question  many things about perspective.

 

 

A Rube Goldberg is a complicated machine that achieves a simple task and I had to make one about the Irish revolution. This project started with the launch of nation X, a simulated society in a classroom with different classes that get paid differently and have different rights. In this project we learned about how society functions and why rebellions might happen. We then read the book Animal Farm written by George Orwell. Animal farm represents the Russian revolution with farm animals in the place of political leaders. Then we stated to gear up the main part of this metaphor machine project, which was in my case making a Rube Goldberg for the Irish revolution and then presenting it at the winter exhibition. I believe we had around 3 weeks to complete this task. Honestly I wasn’t really sure how some balls and dominos would represent the Irish revolution, but after a few days of confusion and trying to understand this project, I became way more on task and helping to my group. The main things I contributed in my group was building connections, editing our short documentary about the process of building the machine and how it relates to the Irish revolution, and connecting each of our connections to metaphors that happened during the Easter rising. During this project the thing I improved most in was communication with my group especially how I was asking often if there were any tasks that I could do. When it came to the exhibition honestly our machine didn’t work too well but I definitely still learned lots about a revolution I didn’t even know existed.