PLP

My First mPOL 😬

As a grade 8 I had never done an MPOL before. I didn’t really know what it was to be completely honest, I just learned about it and I’ll tell you all I know…

MPOL

What does it stand for? Well it stands for Midterm Presentation Of Learning.
We don’t show absolutely everything we have learned just the things that really impacted our learning such as…

POL Declaration

(Introductions) 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 Outsiders

This was one of our first projects in PLP and it was almost like a building block that added to all of our others that semester as well! The outsiders was a reading that we did that showed us a lot about worldview and our own worldview compared to others. I made an entire blog post on it so I wont be saying too much about it but click here to read it.
As I was saying The Outsiders taught us about worldview. You may be thinking, “But what is worldview?” Worldview is how an individual or a group sees the world almost like their perspective on things and its how they act, speak, live all of that. What I have is a western worldview and I’m pretty sure most of you have it as well! According to many articles that I have read that means that we have more fact based decisions and need more proof before making decisions on anything.

What do you mean by “Building block”?

During this year we have done so many projects that are based around the idea of worldview and our first project was the starting building block to help us understand all the other projects as well.
As said by our PLP teachers then idea of worldview and learning about it and applying it to our learning and assignments will be carried on with us till almost grade 10 that 2 more years! I do think that worldview is a great concept to know about deeply and it is also a great concept that you can learn more about.

 Tryptic

This is my groups digital triptych! Our tryptic was one thing that really impacted my learning and the reason for that is it made us think about other times and their worldviews. A tryptic is a 3 panel art piece so in one panel we had the medieval times in another we had the renaissance times and in the middle we had the contemporary times (now). I have another blog post on that so you can click here to view it.
The triptych was a group project and it helped me build teamwork skills and helped me understand how much different it is to work in a group than by yourself. 

Poems Book

A Journey Through My Poems

Click the photo to view my poems book!!!

This was the hardest project for me to do because it required me to express myself in a new and different way that I never had before. I know a lot of people are saying it was one of the easier projects to do because they just had to write some meaningless poems. I wasn’t able to write some poems that were meaningless because for one I wanted a good grade and also I was intrigued in this project to learn and to discover more about the different ways I could display my learning.
Just like all the others I also have a blog post for this humanities project so you can click here to read that as well.

Destination Imagination

So yeah of course I am going to talk about DI a reason I am going to do that is because it helped improve my teamwork skills and my building skills. What it also helped me improve was my actual life skills which is what DI is “supposed” to do. I feel DI has improved me the most and has actually been the most fun and stressful at the same time if you know what I mean. 
Me and my group have been able to work together and actually win together! I feel that my group has many strengths that were demonstrated in our challenge. We do have many strengths but we do have a very big weakness having the same level of commitment, we find it hard to make it to meetings such as tutorial and lunch practices. Here is my are both my blog posts for regionals and provincials.

What Have I Showed A Great Understanding in? 👍

I feel that I mostly understood the Bon Voyage project where we had to make an AR maker video on the European settlers when they came to Canada. Another thing I felt I really understood and did well was my blog posts. I put a lot of effort and tried really hard to make them intriguing, long-ish and enjoyable! If you read any of my recent posts I try to include images and videos so that it is more intriguing. Another thing I am proud of is DI I feel I did well making props, writing the script and working with my group. I also feel that me and my DI group have come along way from the beginning where we used to argue and not agree on the same ideas.

My AR Maker Video:

Blog Post On This Project Link

What I Need To Work On? 🔄

I need to work on listening and using other peoples ideas when I work in a group of people. I usually like to use my ideas because i think they are the best and only include others sometimes. Another thing I need to work on is staying focused and doing the work I need to instead of talking to my friends or playing games. Another big thing I need to do is ask for help when I need it. I feel like I struggle with this because I like to think I can do it myself (when I cant).

Things I Can Do To Help Me Improve: 🛠️

– Going to tutorial when I have questions

– Challenging myself and going past the expected amount

– Using the app Things to help me hand in my assignment on time

– Asking for help when I don’t understand something or if something is unclear to me

– Reading instructions more carefully before I do an assignment

Learning Plan Goal  🥅

When I say learning plan goal it is technically called “Statement Of Learning Intent” So this was my statement of learning intent also my goal that I am going to try to achieve by the end of the year. Here it is:

This year I want to know and want to be able to receive feedback on how to do things in a deeper and better way. For example I may want to learn how to ride a bike but instead to learn things more I want to learn tricks and skills to become a star trick biker. For me I want to not just have people tell me that I’m doing things wrong and for me to accept that I want people to tell me what I can build on and be better at and I want to be able to use that feedback to make it better. Basically in conclusion I want to become a more Open learner who excepts feedback and can grow on it.

How Will I Make Sure I Achieve My Goals By The End Of The Year? 💭

To make sure I can complete my goal I will look over my goals often and will make sure that I am motivated to complete them all. I will also try to go beyond the expected amount more often (as one of my goals say) and why I am doing this is too get a better mark and prove that I am willing to do more. I have many examples where I have done the work and gotten a proficient mark ✅ but to show that I can do more and am capable of it I will work harder to get extending 💯 in the future.

How Have I Shown That I Have Grown From The Learner I Used To Be?

To show that I have grown as a learner I have proven to ask more creative questions about the topic we are learning. I have also shown that I am capable of doing what’s expected and sometimes even more. Some evidence I have that shows I have grown are my blog posts. At the beginning sure they had words and pictures but they weren’t really as intriguing I got this advice from most of my teachers saying how I need to “Improve” so I took that feedback and have tried to apply it to all my more recent posts. As I look back at the projects I have done I see that at the beginning I wouldn’t have been able to do them at all. For me that shows that I have grown as a learner.

Other than me growing as a learner I feel that I have grown as a person. By that I mean I have been exploring different learning techniques and just learning new things (un- school related). With us doing that I have discovered different ways I like to learn and what I like to learn about! I have found out many things about myself such as what I have improved on from the beginning of year to now! Something I have learned about myself is that I am able to talk in front of people and speak publicly!!! At the beginning of the year I could never have done a presentation in front of people where I would have to talk… for a really long time… I have noticed over time I have been getting more used to talking to groups and talking in a presentation (like how I would be doing while presenting my mPOL) I have been growing in this area and I hope to keep getting better!

Thanks for reading! And stay posted for my next post! 😁👍

We Are Poets And We Didn’t Even Know It!

Our last month has been really interesting… we have just come out of winter break, sports and activities are getting started back up again, we became poets and — did I just say we became poets?! Let me explain… this last month we have started a new project called working with words and its all about writing poems and explaining how they personally connect to you.

DQ (driving question)

How might I write poetry that I enjoy and shows who I am?

🚀 Launch

We first started with some simple and easier poems we had done in elementary school so we could get the hang of it. Such as haikus and similes, but we didn’t know it was gonna get a lot more difficult…

We were shown what we were going to do with all these poems in the end and that was… Make a book of poems! We had 8 poems we needed to have complete and ready to put in our book by the end of the project.

These are the poems we had to do:

We didn’t end up doing the personification poem so I just scribbled it out! 😂

Thoughts on each poem:

Simile – I found this one wasn’t too difficult it was just hard to make things rhyme! I liked how we could be super creative with it as well.

Metaphors – This was one of my favourites! I found this fun and interesting to learn about.

Sound poem – These were absolutely hilarious to read and learn about! Don’t get me wrong it was very interesting to know that poems like that existed.

Haikus – A lot of people said this was the easiest one to make and I totally agree! The hardest part for me was making the haikus have meaning while still keeping to the rules of making them. 

Found poem – You know black out poems like where you get a piece of paper from a book or something (not a song, it cant have rhythm) and you black out everything but a few words and those words are a poem? Thats what a found poem is! And it was super fun to create.

Experience poem –  It was about an experience that really changed our worldview and I found it hard to find an experience like that. I ended up using the time when I broke my wrist.

Imagery poem – The example we were given was “The smell from Robin’s Doritos filled my nose with its cheesy, spicy nuances and its crunch made my mouth water” #Robin the point was the fact that it activated your senses and changed your mood. This was definitely my favourite one!

Self portrait poem – This was our last poem to do and I honestly think this was a great way to further express ourselves in poetry 9/10!

Next Steps

While we were creating our poems we were putting them in Book Creator
and editing them to make them look more eye catching and aesthetic. We also had to add some things off to the side of the page that connected to the poem.

Theme

Theme is basically the overall message in a poem. Like the theme of this poem is “don’t disrespect your parents!” Or you know something like that.  A big rule when writing you theme is AVOID CLICHÉS!!!!!!! These are overused pieces of writing! They are unappetizing. Boring. People want to see YOU and clichés are not you, they are everyone.

example: Don’t judge a book by its cover ( Cliché MAX 🤮)

Auto Biography Page

This was the page that had to be a the beginning of the book to introduce it and make it seem super interesting. 
  This page had to have an about me video (about 1 minute long) a paragraph on your thoughts of the project and a link to your blog post.

The video was the thing that intrigued me most because we have made multiple about my assignments already but this one was different. This was different because it really was completely about you! Not your worldview not your past assignments… YOU! I fooled around with the video for a while till it was completely ready.

 

The End!

In conclusion I enjoyed writing poetry and I believe I really showed who I was in my poems. I expressed myself in a new way and a more creative way that I never thought I would before. I loved experimenting and discovering and learning new kinds of poetry. I think I will be able to use these skills in the far, far future… 

Thanks for reading! Stay posted for my next post! 👍

Let’s Draw Something!

Wouldn’t it be fun if there was just a week of school where you drew the whole time! Well that’s exactly what we did! And Ill tell you about it and what we were drawing exactly…

Getting started

To start we were told that we were going to be experimenting with the app sketches pro.
We had to start by making a grid with six sections and try a different tool in each one, this is to get us used to the way they look and feel to use. We also were experimenting with pressure on the Apple Pencil. With the Apple Pencil you are able to apply a certain amount of pressure and that how dark or how light the colour is.

Calligraphy 

That same day we were tasked with writing any word we wanted including our own name and really personalize it. We were encouraged to use the tools we had just experimented with. The word I chose was “Inspire” I wanted to use my favourite tool to write with the calligraphy pen that really makes your lettering smoother and just better!

3D Shapes

The next lesson we were working on was creating a shape that realistically looks 3D. Some of the tips and tricks we learned were to use darker shading around the bottom and lighter near the top. Then we were tasked with making a robot with 3D and making it fun and personalized.

😮‍💨😭😍🙄🤪- Emojis

has there ever been a time that there was an emoji that you really wanted to use but you couldn’t find one that represented your feeling? Well we got to make our own for those exact moments! I decided to be a bit silly and create a “farting emoji” I mean I would use it! I joined the relaxed emoji and embarrassed emoji and some of my own creativity and created my masterpiece. Be honest would you use this? In what situation? Tell me in the comments!

Design A Logo

We were given the fun task of creating a fake business and making a logo that represents our business. I decided to create a beads business and my target audience was Taylor Swift fans. To start we were given a sheet to fill out on our business name our colours and words that relate to our business. A big one I thought I could include was rainbow 🌈 as in colourful and my business is just that because all the beads are many colours.

Reflection

I have learned so much in this part of our maker learning I have learned more about my IPad my IPad apps and my Apple Pencil. All of these skills that I have developed can also help me in future presentations of my learning in other PLP projects. Another thing I learned though was who I am as an artist on the IPad of corse with all the tools provided it makes things a lot easier and me being someone who was never really strong with art it helped me so much. In conclusion You can always learn more even when youuuu think you are horrible you can always get better and still if you think its impossible there will be other strategies and opportunities to try harder.

Thanks for reading and stay posted for my next post! 👍

We Learned Something From The Past?!

            We became medieval art!!!!! Want to find out why and how?

Yep that’s me in the medieval times… WAIT WHAT! No I wasn’t actually in the medieval times even though that would be cool but that is our artwork project and I’ll tell you all about it.

Driving Question

This is the question that drives us through the entire project and this question is normally always the question we always come back too. This projects driving question was “ What can we learn from the past and why does it matter to us today?”. I found this driving question really interesting because there are so many answers to it and I was really excited to learn more about it.

Book of the lion

To start with our project we read an old timey book called book of the lion. The reason our teacher made us read this book is because it’s very strong on worldview (how they view the world). To me honest opinion its basically gibberish and was hard for me to follow and hard for me to finish. While we were reading this book we were having to fill in our role sheets specifically about your weeks reading. There were 3 roles in total and you would have a turn to do each one.

 

Leader tribute

For this assignment in the project we had to make a leader tribute with our group to a historically significant leader. Me, Elsa and Evelyn (my group) decided to choose Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. We decided to perform an acting skit Gen z version showing the amazingness of Queen Eleanor. Overall we were all very happy with it and it was hilarious! The point of us doing this was because we were trying to show different worldviews and options on women and people not wanting her to be in charge such as her husband.

Artwork choice chart

This was our first benchmark in this project, Where we have to finish this and do it right or we wont be ready for the next steps. This was the base of our medieval art it was like our planning page where we figured out why it would be there and what pictures should be there. This part of the project was tricky but I got through it and was able to carry on!

Medieval portraits

Now that we had a basic idea of what was going to be in our portrait it was time to start putting our face into it. I know it sounds kind of strange but it’s exactly what we did we just stuck our face on an old medieval person and BAM! We were onto the next step…
Next thing we had to do was add all the other pictures into the background, it wasn’t able to just be a collage in the background it had too be a whole scene where things were placed and cropped to fit.

 

Paragraph explaining my art

How can our artwork help us learn from the past and why does that matter to us today?

With our medieval artwork it shows how they would live their lives and their worldview. This can help me understand myself and my worldview by explaining and showing to me how lucky I am to be able to live somewhere that we have the opportunity to learn things we are interested in.

One of the images in my artwork are a medieval clock artwork to represent time. In the medieval times people cared about time but its not the same as it is now, such as back then time was in morning, noon and night so that they would know when to wake up and what time to go to sleep. Time in the medieval times is not nearly as important as it is now. Now we have to be in certain places at certain times. Back in the medieval times if you were late to a school or lesson you would be punished severely. Today this relates to my worldview by me always wanting to be on time to places I go (even if my sibling will always make me late). Whenever I am late to a sport or to a class my teacher or coach is a bit frustrated as they should be because as they know I have missed learning that could’ve improved me to be better. I am lucky to live where I do for the fact that with my school teacher she is very strict and if you are not on time she may call you out in front of the whole class. This also improves me by wanting to get myself to school on time so I can learn faster and not miss as much. Another thing I decided to add to my image was a medieval map that that is for geography, the map in the picture is very inaccurate. This is because in the medieval times people had just started explaining and had to really know what else was out there. This relates to me because I enjoy travelling so much and if I could have a conversation with the person who created this map in the medieval times I would try to explain how much more is out there. I would really hate a world that was misinterpreted and was harder to learn about. The way that map was probably made was because of the fact that those things were the things that they had been taught or told. Now today things are taught with more evidence and as someone who is very interested in geography I am happy to say the earth IS round. This is important to my worldview because I enjoy being taught things that are proven and are true. Another thing I then put into my art work was an image that represented beliefs. I chose two represent beliefs about punishments and death. All the punishments back then were brutal and some of them were not all exactly fair. Such as if you steal instead of having jail time, you would be strung to a pole and have arrows shot at you and your brain and heart being last so you stay alive to feel the pain. This can relate to my worldview by me seeing how much of a fair style of ruling or society that we live in and that the medieval people lived in. There are many forms of beliefs that the medieval people had such as women can not and should not learn. I believe this is very wrong and as a women today that values learning and is a learner, I see that women have rights to learn when ever they want whether they are 50 or 5. This is also important to my worldview because education is an important part of my world and how I view it.

In conclusion, medieval art can represent so many things and can show examples of so many things and can also show your differences of their life and yours. When you view these differences you may begin to see how lucky you are to have what you have and live where you live.

Take a breather 😮‍💨

I understand how that could’ve been a lot to process so lets just take a break and breathe…. If you really need a break click here.

 

 

Sketch and tell

This was one of the last parts of this project that we had to do we had to in a sketch show how societies gain and lose power. In my image I decided to show war and bad leadership being a main reason of how societies gained and lost their power. In the rough sketch I drew I am not trying to say dinosaurs and superheroes were fighting in wars but I was trying to show a battle in a more colourful looking way. This image is important to my worldview because sometimes I can see bad leaders and unhappy followers.

Reflection

Overall in this project I have learned so much about the past and the present! I really feel that all the steps we did take were completely necessary for our end result. I have learned that past decisions can really affect what we do and what we say now in the present. I have also learned that we dont always learn from our mistakes and end up doing something worse or just doing the same thing. This is also very relatable to today because lots of the time we may make a mistake and just keep making that mistake and eventually never learn even when you tell your self “ Siena make sure you are on time for school!” Or “Siena remember peanut butter then it’s jelly!”. In conclusion we always have something to learn from the past and we can decide what we do with that information whether we use it for the better or for the worse.

Thanks for reading and stay posted for my next post! 👍