tPOL Time!

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.

It’s that tPOL time of year again! I think I’ve changed a lot over the past semester, and I’ve made some discoveries about myself as a learner.

Last semester, for my mPOL, I talked a lot about how I had improved from grade 8 by doing most of my work in class and being able to keep from stressing about it and letting it impact my life outside of school. Now, looking back on the whole year, I can confidently tell you that the second semester did not work out as well as the first.

At the start of this semester, I went to Mexico for a gymnastics competition. I was only gone from school for two days but it impacted two entire projects. I missed the launch of Frankenstuffies, and I was already behind. We were expected to almost be done our stuffy, but I barely knew what the assignment was. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, because I would’ve had lots of extra time to catch up. Instead, I let it get to my head.

This semester, I discovered that I cannot let myself fall behind, because if I do, I let it snowball and suddenly I’m a whole project behind. For Frankenstuffies and Building a Nation, I was constantly a step or two behind.

You might be asking, “what do you mean by letting your work snowball”? Well, what happens is I get all stressed over it even though I’m barely behind, and because I’m stressed, I start procrastinating getting my work done, and suddenly two days behind turns into two weeks behind.

How did I solve this problem? Well, by the time we got to the end of Building a Nation, I was only a few days behind. So when the weekend between it and the next project, I got down to business. I finished everything and went into Dulce Et Decorum Est with a fresh mindset, ready to enjoy the project like I did with other projects in the first semester.

How can I prevent this happening in the future? I think it’s important for me to fix my mindset. I need to stop having this idea that doing my work at home is harder, or slower, or impossible. I need to be able to take it home and have it be just as good as at school. That way, if I miss a day for whatever reason, I don’t get so completely, helplessly behind.

That was a bit of a downer, but now that I know this about myself, we can look to a future where I’m on top of my work all the time. We can also look at my accomplishments from this year.

First off, I was really proud of my book from the Power of Geography project for humanities last semester. I put a lot of thought into it and also spent some time making it look good, and I really think it turned out well. I think it was one of the best things I worked on this year. I also thoroughly enjoyed doing it, and I was actually invested on how it went, which included putting some real thought into it. Here are some of my favourite pages from it:

I’m also really happy with all the photos I put into it.

Something else that I’m really proud of that’s more recent was my final product in our project called Building a Nation. It was a board game representing Nationalism and the history of the Confederation of Canada. I found the project pretty interesting and I enjoyed making a board game. This is what the finished product of our board game looked like:

Finally, we had our World War I project, which we put on show for the exhibition. For this, I painted a mural to represent poetry created in WWI. I mostly wanted to do a painting to step out of my comfort zone, as I’m not a super artistic person and don’t usually do things like paint. I’m happy with how my painting turned out, even though it definitely could’ve been better if I had more experience painting. But I think I ended up getting what I wanted, which was trying something new for a project. Here’s what my piece looked like:

That’s a wrap of my 2023 tPOL! Thank you for coming/reading my post!

My Favourite MPOL

Hey y’all welcome back. Tis the MPOL season.

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.

MPOLS are all about growth, and you know what? I think I’ve grown a lot. So that’s what this post is all about.

Let’s compare: what did my work look like last year?

Last year, I wasn’t very invested in my own growth. I didn’t try my best, I didn’t care about my work, and I wasn’t ever proud of my work. Everything was a halfhearted attempt because I didn’t really care about school. An example of this is in the humanities project New Beginnings, when we made our visuals to represent an aspect of New France. I chose survival.

What does my work look like this year?

Well, I care a lot more this year. I try my best to try my best, and I work as hard as I can to hand in good quality work in a timely manner. While I don’t feel the most motivated because I’m not as surrounded by my friends in the classroom due to them being in different classes, I’ve been pushing through and I’m glad that I’ve been able to produce good work that I’m proud of. For example, I was really proud of my work in the Power of Geography, because I feel my finished product really showed my thought process throughout the project.

What do I want my work to look like in the future?

So right now, my work is something I’m proud of, and I put a concerted effort into the things I do. In the future, I want it to stay that way, but I also want to make use of my time better as well. I want to be able to get all my work done in class, and I want to be happy with my work all the time.

I’d like to especially talk about how much better at time management and organization I’ve gotten since last year. I’ve handed in almost nothing late, and I’ve given myself enough time to create work that I value and I’m happy with. I feel on top of my work, and it’s really helping me with my mindset at school.

Last year, we learned all about growth mindsets or the “PLP mindset.” This is a mindset of growth, a mindset where you’re ready to tackle the tasks you’re given, and try your best in the things you do. It’s also about looking to the future and knowing how you want to be, and making a plan for yourself to get to the point you want to be at. When we first learned about the PLP mindset, I thought it was a bunch of junk that we get told to motivate us to put more effort into our work. Or at least it was something I didn’t have and I’d just have to go on the way I was: handing in my work late, it being rushed, and not being happy with it. Somewhere between then and the start of this year, I lost that mindset and took on the PLP mindset. I come to school ready to try my best and put in a real effort. I actually care about my work and doing my best, and I really try to hand everything in on time.

Looking to the future, I’m ready to head there and see what it has to offer. I’m excited to grow as a person and a learner, and I hope I improve in the same ways that I already have. 

One thing I could really grow on is my interaction with my peers and teachers. Sometimes in class, I’m really distracting to people because I get off task. Usually, I can redirect myself and still get my work done in class, but it’s really distracting to the others. It also comes off as disrespectful to my teachers when that’s not what I’m trying to do. My goal for the rest of the year is to improve on this by always making sure I’m working on what I need to get done for the class while I’m in class.

I think that over the course of this semester, I’ve grown a lot, not only as a learner but as a person, too. And even though I’ve grown a lot, I also know that I can still continue to grow, learn, and thrive throughout the rest of the year and even farther into the future. I’m excited to see where my growth takes me.

Thank you, 

Susan

TPOL

Hey y’all, welcome back to my blog! This is the blog post for my tPOL. 

Declaration:

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I’m 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 projects I’m going to talk about Becoming a PLP Learner, Comic Cells, New Beginnings, The Outsiders, and Laser Laws. Then I’m going to talk about my growth this year by comparing how I did in different core competencies in different projects.

Becoming a PLP Learner

Becoming a PLP learner was a big project for me. At the time, I was just starting grade 8, and barely knew what was going on. I did really well in that project, which gave me the confidence boost that I needed for the year. In this project, I especially did well in the communication competency. I was easily able to express myself through works such as my user manual and my bitmoji sticker.

Comic Cells

Comic cells impacted me a lot as a learner. In this project, I really struggled with time management. I almost always had to do most of the work at home, and I handed most of it in late. This means that there’s definitely room for me to grow as I go into grade 9. 

New Beginnings

New beginnings was a great project for me. I was interested in most of the subjects we learned about, and I learned a lot of new things. I was able to grow as a learner and focus and work hard on all the work I was assigned.

The Outsiders

The outsiders was a big project for me. It was my first full scale exhibition, and I think I did pretty well. I was able to work well as a team, and the project allowed me to grow into a better team member.

Laser Laws

In laser laws, I grew as a learner in the communication competency. I’m proud of my work in this project because I think I explained my learning well in my presentation. I also excelled in the personal and social competency, because I worked really well with my group to create a nice presentation.

Here’s some evidence of my growth this year:

Thinking

Laser Laws

Oh, to think about my thinking in laser laws. In laser laws, I demonstrated that my thinking was definitely in need of development. My group’s creation of the laser display was pretty good, but it definitely could’ve been better. If you look at my projects further on, they’ve definitely improved.

Chemistry Coding

Chemistry coding was a big think project for me. The creation of my game was a bit rough at first, but it improved over the project. Eventually, I was thinking at my fullest, creating one of the best end products to a project that I’ve created all year. And that’s on GROWTH!

Communication

Becoming a PLP Learner

Oh wow. This project was a bit rough in some spots, but at the same time I excelled in it. For example, my keynote was not very good. It was messy and hard to look at. But on the other hand, my user manual was really good! It was fun to read, and easy to understand.

Comic Cells

In this project, I totally upped my communication game. I was able to clearly express scientific ideas, as the project criteria said. This shows a lot of growth in my communication.

Personal and Social

Medium is the Message

In this project, my teamwork skills were… not there. I helped, but definitely not as much as I should’ve. I was terrible at compromising, so many decisions turned into arguments. 

Destination Imagination

My teamwork skills definitely improved when I did this project. Our team worked together pretty well to come up with a solution for the challenge. Obviously I have much more room to grow, but this project was definitely a jump up from medium is the message, at least in the personal and social competency.

All in all, I definitely have room to grow, but I’m comfortable with my learning and growth so far this year.

Loon Lake Learning Advance!

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today is a more special blog post: I’m going to be talking about my very first field study, the Loon Lake Learning Advance! In this post, I’m going to be reflecting on my learning while I was there.

Day 1

We started this day at school. The assignment of our Book Creator book was introduced to us. At around 12:30, we left the school and started heading towards Loon Lake. As soon as we got there, we went to the amphitheatre and went on our photo walk. I took photos of different parts of nature during this walk.

In order to get to the path, we had to pull a cool rope barge.

After our photo walk, we went on a ‘quest’ to get used to the area. At one of the clues, we took a photo of ourselves as a human totem pole. 

My team for this activity was Daniel, Caitlin, Kira, and Hannah.

After that, we settled into our cabins. I shared a room with Kira, Brooke, Kai, and Gwenyth. Once we put our stuff away, we headed to the gym for a team building activity. Our activities included a few games. For the first one, we had a partner and we walked around the gym alone until Mr. Harris called out a scenario (for example, a frog on a log,) and we had to find our partner and act out the scene. Another game we played was a fun drawing game. We sat in a circle with a small group and had a piece of paper and a marker for each person. We drew one shape 3 times on our piece of paper, and passed it to the next person. Then you draw different shapes on the paper passed to you, and so on. We ended up with some fun artwork.

After we did these activities, we ate dinner. We had some delicious lasagna! Once dinner was over, we had evening fun. I chose to do games night and I had fun playing cards. After evening fun, we had our first advisory group. We called our group the Wolvefishes.

After advisory, we went to sleep, excited for the next day.

Day 2

On day 2, we woke up bright and early to have a delicious pancake and french toast breakfast. Directly afterwards, we had advisory. After advisory, we headed to the forest to build shelters. My group for this activity was Daniel, Callum, and Chris. 

After that, we did our first learning block with Mr. Harris. In this lesson, we learned all about the NAME acronym to determine historical significance: N-novelty, A-applicability, M-memory, and E-effect. I think I did really well in this activity because I was an active listener throughout the video we watched. We had a productive conversation about the NAME technique and events throughout history that I took a big part in. Anyways, after all of these events, I had the DI Sweatbox. Basically this was an activity where way too many kids chill in a room with a painfully hard floor and no chairs to work on Destination Imagination for 2 hours straight. So that was SUPER fun. My team finalized our script and practiced it, so at least the painfully slow 2 hours weren’t completely in vain. After this we had free time and finished the part of the day where we had to think properly with dinner. After dinner, we had evening fun, where I played cards again, and then advisory. With that, we finished our day.

Day 3

We started day 3 with breakfast at 7:45 again. (I call a riot. We should’ve eaten later!) After that, we had advisory as usual, and started our thinking time. Our first non-routine activity was silent ball in the gym. After that, we had another lesson with Mr. Harris on how to mask with the app SuperimposeX.

Next, we ate lunch and continued with yet another DI Sweatbox. We continued practising and improving our script until we moved on to free time and then dinner. After dinner, we had advisory and then our final evening fun, which was a movie night. We watched Back to the Future. After that, we went to sleep our final night at Loon Lake.

Day 4

On day 4 we started our day with breakfast 15 minutes early (seriously, why did we have to wake up so early ahhhh!) After breakfast, we had our final advisory, and then packed up our stuff. Finally, we played capture the flag (grade 8’s vs grade 9’s) and finished everything up with chicken burgers for lunch. After that we loaded back onto the buses and headed back to school.

Overall, I loved going to Loon Lake! I learned all about historical significance, and my knowledge on SuperimposeX is much more vast than before (though I didn’t know anything beforehand.)

Finally, I can’t forget my book! During our time at Loon Lake, we worked on a book in the app Book Creator about our time there. Here it is!

mPOL 2022

Hello! Welcome back to my blog! This post is for my mPOL (midyear presentation of learning.) Today I will be talking about how I’ve grown so far this year, and what I could do better. 

I’ll be talking about 7 different projects in this post: I’ll be talking about DI, Laser Laws, Working With Words, Constructing Creative Communication, The Medium is The Message, Fractions of Our Time, and The Outsiders.

Scimatics

One of my strengths in scimatics is my problem solving skills. When given a problem, I am able to work with pieces and put them together.

One thing I could grow on in scimatics is my motivation. It depends on the project or problem, but my problem solving skills are wasted when I am simply tired. A way I could work on that is to remind myself that I will need whatever information I am finding later on in the project.

Fractions of Our Time

I think I did pretty well on this project. It was the very first project I did in PLP, and I worked pretty hard on it. I really remember being comfortable in this project, because I was really familiar with fractions. It managed to set the bar pretty high for my projects in general.

Laser Laws

Laser Laws was definitely one of my favourite projects I’ve done. Setting up a laser display was really fun. One big thing that I could’ve improved was the whole time we were building knowledge. It involved a bunch of textbook work and I could’ve done way better in that part.

Maker

One of my strengths in maker is my ability to work in a team. If I’m with a motivated team, the motivation passes over to me too, and I get a lot more done.

One thing I could definitely grow on is my inability to work in a team. I know that completely contradicts my strength, so let me explain. I’m not a great leader. If there’s no motivation in the team, it likely will drain my motivation, and I end up getting nothing done.

Destination Imagination

In Destination Imagination (DI) I think I’ve done okay so far. A way I could grow in this project would be participating more. I’ve been a lot more involved with the planning part and haven’t really participated enough in the doing part.

Constructing Creative Communication

In this project I definitely didn’t do the best that I could. In the Carr part (the drawing part) I did okay, and most of the time I was genuinely trying my best, but in the Herzog part it slowly fell apart until I was just scraping by with sketchy work that I didn’t fully think through.

Humanities

One of my strengths in humanities is my ability to tell a story. No matter the format, I am always able to create and tell a story. Another one of my strengths is my ability to give honest criticism with little to no bias.

One thing I could grow on is definitely my mindset. I enjoy most of the work I do in humanities, but usually at the start I don’t. A great example of this would be in The Outsiders project. I didn’t have very high expectations thanks to my mindset. In the end, I ended up enjoying it greatly.

Working With Words

In this project, I think that I definitely did well. One of the things I was the most proud of from this project was the emotion in my poetry. I managed to tell good stories throughout all of my poems and properly reflect my worldview in a passionate way. One thing that I definitely could’ve done better was effort-wise, and this isn’t really regarding to my poetry, but my E-Book in general. I definitely could’ve put more work into it. Overall, though, I’m very proud of this project and the work I did in it.

The Medium is The Message

One way that I definitely could’ve grown in this project was giving more criticism. I helped quite a bit by working on the general ad, but I definitely could’ve helped more by giving criticism. That’s definitely something I’ve grown on in general; if someone asks my opinion on their work, I’ll give honest but not mean criticism.

The Outsiders

I already used this as an example overall for humanities, but I want to talk about it more in-depth. One thing that I totally could’ve done better would be to have a better mindset. In the start, I was constantly thinking “this project is going to suck, and I’m going to do really badly.” In the end, I enjoyed doing it a lot, and looking back on it, I wish I had taken the time to enjoy it from the start. I definitely improved on this, especially in the next humanities project, which was Working With Words.

How to Write a Good Story

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! If this is your first time on my blog, or if you haven’t checked out my last few posts, here are parts one, two, and three of this series. (link posts) In this post, I will be telling you how to write a good story. Later on, I may create another post telling you how to write better non-fiction and informative-type prose. For now, I’m just going to start with this.

How to Start Yourself Off

A lot of people start their stories at the wrong time. Usually this involves being either too close or too far from the climax. For example, a while ago I tried to write this fantasy story about three kids who travelled into a new reality by accident. My problem when I wrote that story was that I started it and less than a page later it was at the climax. If I were to go back in time, the tip I would give myself would be to start the story a day before the characters are thrown into action, so the story can start off slow and get keep snowballing until it’s at full speed. This way it seems more natural.

How to Finish a Story

A lot of people don’t know how to end a story properly. Usually you want to close any loose ends. One way to make sure you’ve finished a plot line properly is to read over the story again and make sure there isn’t any “unfinished business” in there. Of course, if you’re planning on writing a sequel, you can have an unfinished plot line (though I recommend the only plot line you leave unfinished be the main one.) Other than that, just try to tie most if not all loose ends in your story.

How to Hook Readers

There are many ways to hook readers into your story. The first one doesn’t have quite as much to do with the actual writing. If you can, write a short summary but leave the reader on a cliffhanger. They will almost 100% come back for more. Another way is to separate parts of the story by chapters, and leave the readers on a cliffhanger after every chapter. In general, cliffhangers are great ways to bring in and keep readers with your story until the end. Yet another way is to stick to the storyline. This one seems obvious, but I have seen many times when a story completely strays from the main storyline/plot line. Make sure to check in every once in a while so that you don’t bring the story too far away from the main idea.

The End?

Those are just the three most common mistakes that people make when writing. Hopefully this helps!