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Month: June 2025

Tiny Wings, Big Impact🦋

Tiny Wings, Big Impact🦋

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What if I told you that a butterfly is the reason our ecosystem is thriving? That’s right, butterflies my be tiny but they have a huge impact on our environment. 

I, with the help of my group (Sven, Daniel, Liann, Emilia, Madeline), just finished a project where we strived to answer the driving question, how can we support and protect local pollinators to ensure healthy ecosystems in our community? This was not any old project, it was very important because it was presented to the public at the 2025 spring exhibition.

The Project

We were assigned with creating a booth that educated the public about our assigned pollinators (mine was butterflies). Our booth had to include many aspects, including a pamphlet, an ecosystem food web, a call to action, an interactive element, and food!

My Answer to the Driving Question

Pollinators play a huge part in the world, without them our ecosystems would crumble. Before doing this project, I had no clue how important they were, and I had no clue they were in need of help. In order to support and protect local pollinators we need to spread the word. We need to communicate it to people and make the cause known. If more people are aware of how to help pollinators and start to do their part, such as using the app iNaturalist and planting native plants, the ecosystems in our community will start to thrive. 

How I Got There

Pamphlet

Within this project we created a pamphlet about pollination in order to educate the public about pollination and how it works. Before creating this pamphlet we had to educate ourselves all about pollination, we learned about the different ways of reproduction such as mitosis, asexual reproduction, meiosis, and sexual reproduction. We then learned the parts of a flower and how they work. We then created a pamphlet that we gave out during the exhibition to educate people on what we learned. Knowing what pollination is  and how it works helped me answer the driving question because it made me aware about how pollination is helping keep our ecosystem healthy.

Food Web

If butterflies die off then all of the plants they pollinate would have no way of reproduction and would disappear. Then, all of the animals that ate those animals would lose a primary food source and die off. And then, the animals that eat those animals would die off. And so on. And so on. Ultimately leading to a crumbled ecosystem. This is why butterflies are so important to keep our planet flourishing.

We created a food web where we connected butterflies to other plants and animals in our ecosystem. We then had to showcase what would happen to all of the plants and animals on our food web if butterflies were to disappear. This part of the project really helped me understand why butterflies and other pollinators are detrimental for keeping our ecosystem healthy and thriving.

Call to Action

After we learned about what pollination is and why butterflies are so important, we had to spread the word. Involving others in saving the butterflies is a major part of reaching and sustaining a healthy ecosystem. We did this by creating 2 calls to action.

First, we created a poster about the nonprofit organization Butterflyway, which focuses on planting butterfly way gardens, supplying butterflies with more habitat, giving them more flowers to pollinate, and helping them thrive. We then created a butterfly garden simulation where we got people to create pipe cleaner flowers (making sure they were native species), then plant them in the garden (green foam), and watch the butterflies flutter on them (we placed paper butterflies). This simulation demonstrated how important it is for butterflies to have a habitat and flowers, because if you took all of the flowers away, there would just be butterflies with no where to go, and then they would eventually die off.

For our second call to action we created an informational poster about the app seek and iNaturalist. Seek is an app that identifies plants and animals when you take a photo of it. You then have to option to send it to iNaturalist, doing this sends you photo to scientists giving them data and helping them to know what is going on in our environment and letting them know where and what they should help. We also created a butterfly Photo Booth giving the public a way to practice taking photos of butterflies, as they would do when using seek.

2025 Spring Exhibition

If you have read some of my past blog posts you would know that PLP does an exhibition twice a year, giving us an opportunity to showcase our learning to the public. I believe the exhibition went quite well this year. Everyone in our group knew what they were talking about which made our explanations to the public very effective and people were drawn to our booth because of our fun activities.

F.A.I.L (First attempts in learning)

If I were to do anything in this project differently I would have spent more time on designing our booth. Other groups had tents and very eye catching booths which drew people in. At the beginning of the project we had a plan to make big flowers to put on either side of our booth. If we had more time I would have absolutely followed through with this plan, creating a way more interesting engaging booth.

TPOL 2025

TPOL 2025

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Here we are, 2 more days of grade 9, at the beginning of grade 8, this seemed like a century away. Back then I expected to be a completely different person by now, all of my hardships fixed, a perfect student and person. And although I have picked up skills that have helped me better myself, I still have a lot to learn.

My Learning Statement

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.

Why do I Feel as if I’m Ready For Grade 10?

Looking forwards at grade 10, all I can picture is the huge amounts of work, all of the projects I will have to do, all of the late nights I will have to spend, and all of the groups I will have to work with, and that is scary. However, grade 9 has taught me several skills that will help me get through it.

I feel as if I am ready for grade 10 because I have spent this year improving and growing, not just as a student, but as a person. This year I faced so many difficult challenges and situations that pushed me put of my comfort zone. Group projects that tested my communication, difficult situations that tested my agency, and deadlines that tested my time management. Although it wasn’t easy, I learned how to over come challenges, how to problem solve, and how to improve from my mistakes. Grade 10 is not going to be easy, but I now feel so much more equipped to handle it

Introduction

I would love to write my Tpol about how much I have improved since Mpols and how much I have changed as a learner, however unfortunately that is not the case. I really struggled to write this reflection because not much has changed since the beggining of the year. Although I have had had quite a few wins, I still have the same struggles and the same goals going forwards.

F.A.I.L in Time management + Perfectionism

What went wrong?

In my vision mission and values statement, I wrote about how I wanted to work on balancing my life and keeping the bad stress away.

During my MPOL this year I reflected on that goal, and my hardships with it, and I made it a point to work on it even more. Unfortunately I would be lying if I told you my skills in time management, balance and fixing my perfectionism have improved this second half of the year, and I would be lying if I told you I even tried to improve. As you know, I am a huge perfectionist and It is very important to me that I do well in school and succeed in life. I really want to stop hyper fixating on projects. However, I’m scared that once I do a bit less than I normally do, I will stop getting the same positive results. This is why I haven’t even attempted to better myself in this aspect.

Mini Doc Project

A project where I really noticed my poor time-management and perfectionism was the Mini Doc project in maker. We were assigned with creating a short 2-4 minute documentary that told a meaningful story in my life or community. I created my documentary about my mom and how she turned the pain she went through in her past into her passion. This was a very hard project for me because at the beginning we were shown several professionally made documentaries for inspiration. The whole time while making my video, I was trying to get it to look like the examples that took several years, lots of money, and professional film makers to make. This caused me to spiral and spend so many hours trying to make it look perfect. After a long time working on it, I eventually had to hand it in. I was very not proud of my final product and I came into school feeling very ashamed and embarrassed of it. Except, when it was shown to the class I got a very positive reaction I was not expecting.  This project goes to show how impossible the standards I put on myself are.

Moving forwards

My ultimate goal for next year is to, even if it is hard, focus on doing what is expected of me first, and then if I have time going back and adding the extra pizzaz. Also, I am going to start communicating my struggles with my teachers, that way I can talk to them about what they expect of me, and they can assist me in knowing when to stop working on something. If I follow through with this goal, It will be easier to finish my work on time and will prevent me from getting so burnt out all the time.

Success in Communication and Collaboration 

What went right?

I may have talked a lot about things have to work on but I have also had quite a few wins this year. Communication and collaboration is a skill I have been trying to learn for years and years now. I never thought I would be saying this but I have made huge progress this year.

In the name of the nation project

There has been several examples of my successes, destination imagination, the spring exhibition, but I am going to be highlighting the “in the name of the nation” project. For this project my group and I created a video advocating for Ontario to join confederation. I believe that our group had a very healthy dynamic. I dont feel like i took on any more work than anyone else in my group. That is because we all worked together, we communicated, and we assigned tasks that played off of each others strengths. This led us to creating a successful video and didn’t cause us to be in a time crunch.

Moving forwards

Going forwards I want to remember the things that I did in this project and I want to continue to do it in the future. That is, continuing to communicate to my peers about struggles in group projects, and things we should continue to do. This will allow me to continue to have successes within my communication and collaboration skills.

My Game Plan

Going forwards this summer, next year, and every chance I get I need to remember and start to learn the skills I acquired this year. I need to start going out of my comfort zone, and stop hyper fixating on projects by knowing when to stop. Also, I need to continue to communicate while working with other people. Mastering these skills will help me become a successful learner and person in grade 10.

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