POL declaration of learning:

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.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post. This blog post is going to be a tPOL. A  tPOL is your transitional presentation of learning. The driving question for a tPOL is: Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade?. A quick answer would be something like “I feel I am ready to move on to Grade 10 because of the skills that I have learned in Grade 9”. However, I want to go more in depth and really show my learning and growth as a learner. So, that is what I plan to do in this post. 

To start off why don’t we re-visit my Learning Plan. I’m proud that I feel like I was able to reach each of my chosen year end competencies for each subject. I think that by having my learning plan guide me throughout my year, I was able to set goals for myself. This boosted my sense of accomplishment and helped keep me motivated throughout the year. Some of the goals that I think I have completed from my Learning Plan are:

Humanities – 

• I worked really hard at making sure that I cited all my sources and included evidence to back up my opinions and thought

Maker –

• I feel like I tried my best to not get distracted by other people while working on my projects

Scimatics – 

• I tried really hard to stay on task throughout the entirety of class. Looking back on this, I see that this was a very un-realistic goal, however I know that I did try my best to stay focused throughout all Scimatics classes

Now that I’ve talked about where I think that I accomplished and completed some of my goals from my Learning Plan, let’s talk about where I could have worked harder to accomplish some other goals that I feel weren’t quite reached:

Humanities – 

• I think I could have reached out more to teachers, friends, and my parents when I felt like I was struggling with the work load

Maker – 

• I could have done a better job at not getting frustrated with my classmates. I noticed that in big group projects like DI, I got annoyed and agitated with my teammates a lot easier then I usually would

Scimatics – 

• When I felt like I was behind in Scimatics, I should have come in for tutorial time

Evidence from my classes

Humanities – 

A project that I was really proud of was what I created for A War To End All Wars. You can check out my blog post for that project here.

To start off, this project was a comic book about a battle or the involvement of Canada in WWI. I’m really really proud of this project. I think this is one of my best projects in Humanities because you can really see my growth as a learner. Below you can see my first draft of the comic:

And then below here you can see my final draft of the comic:

In this project, I think the difference between my two drafts really showed the time and effort that I put into the final draft. I spent maybe too long, making sure that everything was historically accurate and that the right amount of detail was in every picture. I don’t know if you can tell by my writing here, but I’m really passionate about what I made in this project. I think that I did a good job thoroughly researching my topics. Content wise I was able to drastically change my drafts based on the feedback I received causing my creative thinking skill to be applied within these changes.

I really enjoyed this project and I loved the freedom that we got when we got to choose our topics. By getting to choose our own topics, I was able to feel passionate about what I was researching which I think led me to creating my best work possible. I also loved that I got to choose my art style.

Maker – 

I think where I did my best work in Maker was the project Believe in Good. This project was  also my favourite one that I did throughout the entire year. In this project, we read the 7 Habits of a Highly Effective People. For each section of the book we read, we would do a reflective piece of work. This piece of work was called an assessment choice board. It could literally be anything. However, it had to represent what you learned. For example, you could write a short story, or make a workout video, or build a sculpture. You can check out what I did for my assessment choice boards below ⬇️ 

The reason why I liked this so much was because I got to use my creative thinking skills. I loved the freedom that we were given and I think I did my best work because of it. I really enjoyed this project because it made me think outside the box so that I could represent my learning in a way that I felt connected to.

You can check out my whole post on that here.

Scimatics – 

I think a project where I really improved on my learning was Meosis Models. In this project we had to take pictures of garlic under a microscope to be able to see mitosis. We took pictures and labeled the different stages. We also created 3-D models in TinkerCad. I think I really learned a lot about meiosis and mitosis. At the beginning of the project, I had never heard of either terms. But at the end of the project, I was able to give a presentation on it and define both words in ways that I understood. I also learned about the different stages of meiosis and mitosis. I learned what happens in each stage and how it affects cell reproduction. Below, you can check out my video below ⬇️ 

You can check out my blog post on this project here.

Where have I had a FAIL this year?

I think a project where I had a FAIL in was the exhibition. I did try really hard, but I think that I could have contributed better ideas. I think that when it came to actually creating the objects that were going in our room, I feel like I could have contributed more work and I could have spent more time on the things that I did do.

This is something that I could have spent more time on to make it look better.

Overall, the exhibition was an example of my learning where I could have improved on. While the exhibition itself was really fun and I enjoyed working with the people that I was with, I feel like I could have been a more productive member on our team.

In the end, I think that I had a really good year. I had so much fun in all of my classes and I bonded with my classmates. I really enjoyed the work that we did and I’m super proud of everything that I did. While I feel like I did better on some projects then others, all of them taught me important things that I will apply in Grade 10 and beyond. Thank you so much for reading that long post on my tPOLS!

Best wishes,

-Dana