MPOL 2023

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.

So we are officially halfway through the school year and that means it’s time for my midterm presentation on learning. In this post, I’m going to detail my experience with PLP Humanities 10 so far (as we haven’t done Maker or Careers yet). I will look into and discuss my strengths, weaknesses, FAILs and more throughout this first portion of the year.

Learning Plan/How I improved throughout the year with examples

I’m going to start by talking about my learning plan and how my goals have changed from the start of this year to now. At the start of the year, we had to set the grades we were aiming for this year and how we are going to achieve them. I based my learning plan on my strengths and weaknesses from grade 9 which was that English and socials weren’t my strong suites and that I felt that it would be smart for me to aim for just an accomplished in humanities.

Throughout the next couple of months, I felt like I was following this goal and achieving it, most of my work was accomplished and I was happy with that. Until the Midterms came out and I saw an 80%, even though that’s what I was aiming for I knew I could do more. As soon as the next project started I vowed to make this one of my best projects. This project was all about Romeo & Juliet, finding meaning and theme behind quotes and connecting the original play to movie adaptations. The main task was to create a theme book analyzing how quotes in certain acts related to the theme Shakespeare was trying to portray. I felt like this project showed my best work this whole year as I went up and beyond the bare minimum, I provided a very detailed analysis and I received the mark I was looking for. Our final product was creating a video that reenacted certain scenes in Romeo and Juliet with a modern twist, I felt very confident taking more of a leadership role in creation and idea generation. Our final video ended up being very well made and was very in-depth. After this project, I ended up changing my learning plan grade to an extending as I know what I’m now capable of in humanities.

Classes outside of PLP

Math:

If I was to chose one word to describe my math class this year it would be unprepared. Math was by far my most stressful class this year as scimatics didn’t prepare at all for what was to come. I started the year off incredibly poor, I started the first test getting a 63%. I feel like I didn’t do well on this test as this was the first test I had ever done in high school and I was just not ready for it. Seeing my mark it really motivated me to improve my grade, I made sure to complete all of my homework with full marks as it was 30% of my final grade and it would bump my bad test scores up quite a bit. As the term went on I found out that my math teacher didn’t really teach us the concepts and only gave us homework, I ended having to learn all of units by my self using YouTube videos. Doing this took a considerable amount of time as I had to watch videos to learn then do multiple worksheets and study for tests. All of this really tested my time management skills. In the end I bumped by grade up from a 60% to a 87% which I’m really happy with.

What were my FAILs during math 10:

-lack of preparation

-getting behind on work

Science:

Science went surprisingly well for me this year, although it went great I learnt a lot and FAILed plenty. One thing that was pretty new to me was note taking as there wasn’t any Basecamp to look back at info, you basically were required to take notes to stay on top of everything. I found this class a lot easier than math as there were significantly less tests and more of my grade was dependent on homework I could do at home.

What were my FAILs of science 10:

-Focus at times

-Note taking and keeping up with making detailed notes fast

Goals and Work Habits

Looking back at the goals I set last year, most of them include bad habits I wanted to fix and good habits I wanted to work on. One of the biggest problems that has effected my learning this year has been procrastination, going into this year I didn’t realize how busy I would be with schoolwork, junior and senior ball. I underestimated how little time I would have and how hard it was going to be to balance all of this. Not planning my time and time blocking led to many late nights and assignments not up to my standard and or handed in late.

What have I done to fix this habit? One thing that’s helped me so much throughout this last couple months has been things and calendar , I decided to start using it this year to find time that I can allocate to homework. In things I have all my school practices, deadlines, and things I have going on. Using things has elevated my learning experience and I plan to keep using it for future years.

What do I still need to improve on? I’ve noticed that I can get off track and distracted very easily or get delay working and procrastinate. I often start working on homework the night before it’s due, this leads to not thought out work and rushed ideas. I think I could work in time blocking and devoting time to specifically work on homework with no distractions.

Finally, How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?

So far this year, I believe I’ve grown as a learner simply by trying harder and putting myself forward. In the past, I didn’t try or care and had a lot of bad habits. Starting this year, I noticed and decided to change everything, and I’m glad I did because not only has it been more successful, but I’ve discovered that when I apply myself, I produce a higher quality of work.

Thank you for reading this years MPOL, see you again during TPOLS at the end of the year.