Welcome to my blog post about my first mPOL. I have been in P.L.P for half a year so far, and I have really enjoyed it. In this blog post I will be reflecting on my growth as a learner and what I need to improve to help me grow as a learner. The main focus of this blog post is about how I’m going to progress as a learner before the end of this school year and I will include lots of examples of my work and where I need to improve. Enough with the jibber jabber… Let’s get into the mPOL!

The first subject I’m going to talk about is Humanities. If you don’t already know, humanities is Social Studies and English combined. We have done two major projects in humanities so far and both included field studies. Our first project was on advertisements. We did some practice advertisements here and then went down to Oregon to interview a business and make an advertisement for them. I think I did a very good job of revising my drafts and making them better each time. This is something I will continue to do in all my projects throughout P.L.P. I didn’t get the best photos at Nisa’s Thai (the business we advertised for in Oregon) because I needed more quality and quantity for my photos. My photos for the ads weren’t the best because I didn’t spend the time to make them perfect and I didn’t take enough photos. I don’t think I took full advantage of the time I had at Nisa’s Thai. I definitely have improved in taking my time to take lots of photos on our field studies, although I could still definitely improve this by the end of the year and throughout my time in P.L.P. If you would like to read my post on the advertising project, click here.

Our next big project was the Religions and Worldview project. This project consisted of two projects, one on our worldview and one on religions. My worldview video turned out pretty good and I think it worked out well, but our religion group had some troubles. Our task was to make an infographic for a religion we learnt about. Our final product was good, but I think our group could have worked together better. I need to get better at working in a group environment and keeping everyone (including myself) on task. I think I’m getting better at this, but the religion project was a great example of how I need to improve throughout the rest of P.L.P. If you would like to read my post on religions and worldview, click here.

That was a lot about Humanities, and we have lots of subjects, so I think it’s time to move on to Maker. Maker is an elective that every P.L.P student has to take. It’s really interesting and pretty much covers everything that’s out of the curriculum. In maker we have done two major projects and we are in the middle of a big one right now. Our first project we did was all about mindset. We learnt about growth vs fixed mindset and how to affect your own mindset. Our main task was to create a goal we wanted to accomplish before the end of the school year. I think I did particularly well in this project because of all the learning about mindset. It made me more thoughtful of different approaches to creating a goal. My goal was ‘I want to receive constructive criticism positively and use it to create my best work’. If you want to read my post on growth mindset, click here.

Our second project was a big one and I think my biggest fault was procrastination. Our task was to create a Blue Sky project based on Star Wars. I did lots of research, but I left lots of the hands on creating to the last day, which was a bad idea because I barely got the project done on time. Procrastination has always been a big struggle for me and I could definitely improve as I continue on with P.L.P. Overall I think the Star Wars exhibition turned out really well and (even though I procrastinated) I finished the project with a great answer to my inquiry question. The Star Wars project is another example of how I used revision to create my best work. Here is an example of my poster board draft one and poster board final draft. If you would like to read my post on the Star Wars Blue Sky project, click here.

Enough with Maker, let’s get going onto Scimatix. Scimatix is a mix of Science and Math. Right away your probably thinking ‘why doesn’t Aedan right blog posts about Scimatix?’. One of my goals for Scimatix is to start writing blog posts about the projects we do there. We have done two big projects in Scimatix so far. Our first project was about Kinetic Molecular Theory and we had to create a short video explaining the kinetic molecular theory and the effects when applied to different temperatures. I think my biggest strength in this project was working together with my lab partner. My partner was Fraser and we worked really well together. Our biggest weakness was that we had too much to say! At first we made our video fifteen minutes long and we had to shorten it. We put a little to much unneeded information, so I think we just needed to get to the point faster. Overall Fraser and I worked really well together.

Our second project was an interesting math project where we had to make a doors surface area five times bigger than it already was. I was in a group with Lucy, Taylor, Kyle , and myself. For this project our group did good, but I thought I could have contributed a little more to the math side of things. I really liked this project because it was a different way to view math and usually you don’t do math projects. It took us multiple attempts to finally increase the doors surface area by five.

In conclusion I think I have learnt lots in P.L.P so far and I am going to progress as a learner by continuing to pursue my growth mindset goal, continue to make multiple drafts and include revision, work hard with team members and work as a group, take advantage of our field studies and not procrastinate. I am happy with how P.L.P has been so far and I cannot wait for the second half of the year.

Until next time… Aedan Loughran