SLC Winter 2017

Once again it’s is time for SLC’s. In case you don’t know SLC stands for student led conference. A student led conference is a meeting between a student in PLP, their parents, and the teachers of PLP. The student leads the meeting and talks about their learning so far in the year. This has been a great year so far and I’m excited to talk about my work. I will be talking about the work I’m most proud of, an example of my learning, and example of my growth mindset.

The work I’m most proud so far is my blue sky project. For my blue sky project I made a fifty House for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter world. If you would like to read more about the project check out my Post on it. This is also one of my favourite projects I have done. The question my project was based on was ‘What would be the Hogwarts House for Divergent Wizards?’. To answer the question I made a fifth house for Hogwarts. To create the house I researched the already exsisting houses. I realized that all the houses were based on the same criteria. For example each house was named after a famous wizard and the colours were based off that wizards clothing. I decided to base my house off of the same criteria as the other houses so I named it after a great Wizard, Dumbledore, and I made the colors purple because Dumbledore is wearing a purple robe on the back of the book cover. Making a house was a lot like creating a business because I had to think about what people would like and how I can make this house successful. I am proud of this project because I worked really hard on it and I was very happy with the  outcome. I’m also proud because while presenting it I spent a lot more time talking than I normally do. I was able to use my creativity to make this house and I feel like it reflects part of the learning I’ve done this year on how everybody is different but everyone can fit together because everyone has at least one thing in common. 

An example of my learning would be Destination Imagination. If you don’t know what Destination Imagination is you can read about it on my Post or on the Website. I learned so much while doing Destination Imagination this year. It really helped me grow as a learner and I feel like it will help me with future work I may have. For destination imagination I was in the improv group and you can read more about what I had to do in my blog post on it. Before I started D.I. I was pretty good at working in groups I just wasn’t that good at trusting my other group members to put in the effort to do a good job. I’m used to a lot of people not doing the work so it took me a while to trust my group. Because we were doing improv I had to put all my trust into my group that we would all be able to work well together and do amazing performances. We practiced many times and sometimes we were good and sometimes things did not go well. In stead of worrying I tried to focus on the good practices and believe that on the day all would go well. Doing improv taught me that when you trust your group you can do amazing things. It also taught me that sometimes people don’t want to put in the effort so you have to learn to work with  them and be patient even when it is hard. I also learned that I really like doing improv.

For an example of my growth mindset I will be talking about my field school in Florida. If you would like to read bout Florida check out my Post on it. Florida presented many new opportunities for me. Often when I am faced with the decision on weather or not I want to try something new I get really nervous and worried and miss out on amazing opportunities. For Florida I wanted to have an open mind about everything and do stuff even if it scared me. Even if I thought  I wasn’t going to be able to do something I decided to look at it with a growth mindset and try it anyways. One example of this was surfing. I was terrified to go surfing. I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it. I was also worried that I would fall off and hurt myself. I almost opted out on it. I knew that I would regret it later if I didn’t do it so I made myself at least try it for a little while. When I first got in the water I was very scared. Everyone was lined up to try and catch a wave and I decided I wanted to be one of the first people to go so I wouldn’t get scared watching everyone else do it. I went up to one of the instructors and waited for a wave to come. The instructor told me to get ready and then she pushed me out in front of the wave and told me to stand up. As soon as I stood up it felt amazing. I rode the wave all the way to the beach and felt so proud of myself. After I caught my first wave I was very eager to catch another. I caught I few more with the instructors help and then I was ready to catch one on my own. I waited for a big wave to come, I paddled hard and then stood up. It felt so good to be able to do it own my own knowing less than a hour ago I didn’t think I was going to be able to surf at all.  It was great to do something I was so worried about successfully. I learned that I need to use my growth mindset more often because great things can happen when I do. 

For my SLC I had to come up with three goals for the remainder of the school year. My first goal is to get my work done early. Most of the time I leave my work till last minute and I don’t do as good as I could. My goal is to get it done early so if I have any time after I get it done I can edit it and make it better. My second goal is to improve my writing skills. I’m not a bad writer but I can definitely be better. I’m going to practice writing a lot more at home so when I do writing work at school I can be a lot better than it is now. My third goal is to read more. I don’t do a lot of reading so I’m worried my reading skills may not be as good as they could be. I’m going to try and read at least three books at home before the year is over. I’m very excited to finish the school year and see how I can improve my learning.