tPOL, or how I think I did this year

Today I’ll be talking about my tPOL. TPOL stands for Transitional Presentation of Learning, so transitioning into the next grade. This is the last Presentation Of Learning for the year. I am going to talk about my learning this year, what I think can help me for next year, what I need to change, and then give examples of my work.

This year started off pretty well. I felt like I was able to keep up with my classes well and knew what I was doing. At the very start of the year in early September, we went on our class Field School to Alberta to study some Canadian history. I felt this trip went really well and I learned a lot from it and really enjoyed the experience. I found out I really like Alberta and Albertans. Here is a link to that blog post. Alberta Post .I am including here one of my favourite videos that we have made in PLP. It is a black and white video done in the style of a silent movie that was filmed at the “haunted village” that we stayed at the first night of the trip.

Just a little bit past that trip, I got a concussion and had to change drastically how I did my learning. I had a lot of headaches, dizziness and nausea. I couldn’t tolerate certain lights, like the lights in the classroom, and loud noises gave me a headache. I couldn’t do a full day at school as I was exhausted after only a couple of classes. My near vision was also affected and I ended up needing reading glasses. This did not help with my dyslexia. A lot my projects fell behind, and my work wasn’t at the quality that I wanted it to be all the way through to my mPOL (midterm Presentation of Learning) in January. Here is the link to that post. mPOL. I needed a lot of exemptions from work so I could focus what energy I had left on the bigger projects.

Still, a lot of my work was really slipping, and I wasn’t able to fully participate with my groups in the projects, like not being able to compete with my DI team in the Provincial competition. I couldn’t help my group as much as I wanted in our big project first term that combined Scimatics and Humanities in our Metaphor Machines project either. I felt like I was really behind all of first term in Scimatics because I missed all of the afternoon blocks for this class. If Mr. Gross hadn’t made so many adjustments and given me so many Khan Academy videos I don’t think I would have been able to get anything out of Scimatics from first term.

This term, I got back on track and started to do really well. I learned new strategies that really helped me out, like making micro blocks in my schedule to do my work in smaller chunks, and making my goals into more steps. The PLP teachers, my Learning Assistance teacher, Ms Brady, and the Vice Principle, Mr. McLeod, worked really hard to make adjustments to my schedule and my learning to allow me to improve. If you take a blog post from the first term of the year when I was still really injured, like my DI blog post for example, I spent a long time writing the blog post (DI Post ).It would sometimes take me 2 weeks just trying to get it done because I couldn’t keep all the things I needed to say in my head. In fact, I had to re-write my whole Louis Riel post because I couldn’t remember all of the instructions for what was supposed to be in the post, and i left out half of the information we were supposed to have in it. Thankfully I got to revise the post so you won’t see the first version on this site.

But now at the end of the term, even with all of the chaos that is happening, I’m working really well and have gotten a lot of stuff done. Including a rapid progression of my blog posts. Some projects I did really well on include the “Billy Green” video for our Heritage Minute project. I did well on the acting portion, and on getting the blog post done on time. I really enjoyed that project and I enjoyed the people I was with and our final product. Especially because I felt like I was an equal contributor this time.

The project I think I did the best on so far, especially in my level of understanding, was my World War I (WWI) project. I also think I’ve done my best blog post this year on my WWI blog post (coming soon to Destination Procrastination). For the WWI post and project, I was able to use a lot of my prior knowledge, as well as all of the things I learned during the research portion of this project. Here is my video from that project.

Overall, I think the last few blog posts I’ve done in the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing really well and they have come together really well. I have gone from taking days to write a post and needing to constantly refer back to what I am supposed to be talking about, to being able to make an audio recording in one attempt that includes almost everything I need to include. I have also improved in my participation in Scimatics after adjusting my lunch break times so I can attend the afternoon classes. I felt like I was an equal partner for Emerson on our Clone project. I also found out I have a green thumb as the garlic clones I brought home from class to grow, got bigger than anyone else’s plants.

Another thing that has really helped me this year is PGP. Both the things I learned in PGP, and the things I had learned prior to PGP that were covered in the course, gave me strategies that have helped me overcome my concussion. For example, time blocking has had to be a big thing in my everyday life, not just school life. In order to get my posts done on time, in order to get enough rest and healing for my concussion recovery, and things I have to do in my everyday life, it really helps. I started managing my time better, and not procrastinating so much in getting after it. I made my time blocks a lot smaller to compensate for my concussion as I didn’t have the stamina to do a long stretch of work. I feel like I use my time better now as I am more focused on getting things done so I can rest and enjoy life.

Another thing from PGP that helped a lot with my concussion was goal setting. I have always set goals, but I couldn’t function at the same level after my concussion. I had to adjust my goals and make them smaller so I could achieve them. The goal setting work we did in PGP really helped me to be able to make micro-goals that I could measure so I felt like I was making progress.

I think my blog post for PGP shows a lot of the work that I did this year, and I feel like I did it really well. I feel that with my artifact I showed my understanding of PGP and what I took away from the course, not just copying down everything. I took these things into my own life and experimented with them and found out results. The things that work for me, and the things that don’t work for me. A ton of this content really paid off for me with my concussion as this year has been a struggle to change how I learn and do work.

PGP Post

I feel like I have come a long way to overcome my concussion. At the beginning of the year, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. But I have been working hard to get back into my normal groove, and now things are feeling pretty good. You can see this in the length and depth of my posts when you compare the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I have come so far in my recovery now that I am almost at 100%. I feel like I can transition to Grade 10 having gained a lot from the experience of recovering from a concussion. I need to keep focusing on making SMART goals, using my time blocking, and using my time wisely as I move into Grade 10 so I can start on track and stay on track.