Hey guys, one of the main things we have to do in PLP is mPOL’s or, if you like to be fancy, mid-year presentation of learning. Now you’re probably wondering ‘what the heck is a mPOL?’ Well I’m here to answer that question that you may or may not have asked yourself. You already know it stands for mid-term presentation of learning, but what you probably don’t know is that it’s basically a student led conference. A student led conference is exactly what it sounds like, a conference led by the student rather than the teacher. However the difference between a student led conference and a mPOL is what is actually talked about, the SLC (student led conference) is more showing what you did and mPOL’s are so you can show how you have improved as a learner and how you will continue to improve. But enough about what mPOL’s are it time I show you what they are.
Let’s start with what we did in Humanities, so far this year we have done so much in Humanities it was hard to pick one thing to talk about but I finally decided on the Worldview Explain Everything. In this project I had some trouble with the app we were supposed to be using called Explain Everything, basically the trial period had run out so I couldn’t do much of anything but nevertheless I I still tried to make it work. However I had gone over the time limit that Explain Everything gives you if you don’t buy the full pack and it basically stoped me from doing anything on the app. Instead of giving up and waiting for Ms.Willemse to figure it out for me I decided to make the whole thing in iMovie since it’s better to have a rough idea of what you’re going to do then nothing at all. Luckily Explain Everything was working for the second draft so I could do the assignment properly. For each revision I added a new video and made it more enjoyable to watch, I grew with each new draft with my understanding of how to use Explain Everything and my worldview as a whole. I also took the responsibility into my own hands when Explain Everything wasn’t working and made it in iMovie so I would have at least something to hand in. I took what Ms.Willemse corrected about my drafts and made them even better, but I think that I could still add more to it and make it even better because there is always room for improvement. I’m actually going to use what I learned about problem solving from this project in the future just in case something happened to my iPad or I loose my work, keep working on it even if it seems hopeless.
So far in Maker this year we have done many things such as the student blogging challenge and the awesome images activities but I have decided to focus on the Winter Expedition. Now this may seem like a huge topic to cover but I am specifically focusing on the night of the expedition. We had three hours and twenty minutes to get everything set up and ready for the expedition and my group did a pretty good job at doing just that. I remember we had to come up with a new set up for our station when Ms.Willemse assigned us our place because wha we had designed did not work with the area. We pitched ideas to each other for a bit until we decided to go for an open semi-circle shape with the TV behind the centre table. Once we had that figured out we assigned jobs for each other to do, we had been doing this since we started working together as a group, and we used our problem solving skills to work through any problems that arose. I think that assigning specific jobs to everyone in the group is really important because then you know exactly what to do and your mind is set on that one task, I’m going to use that tactic for the next group project actually. We worked well as a team and I’m hoping that my next group has as good as a dynamic as my last one.
This year PLP started a new class called PGP and let me just say it is a handful. It is to help you become a better student and it has in some ways. I’ve learned lots of new ways to help me succeed in PLP such as time blocking and goal tracking but there is one part that I need to continue to work hard at for the rest of the year and onwards: the weekly reviews. I have a hard time motivating myself to do them and it can get really annoying. I really don’t like writing on paper because I write really slow so I can never get all my thought down and it just really hurts my fingers. My goal for this year is to do all the reviews for each week even if it seems tedious because if I’m going to start a work habit it might as well be this one. However I don’t want the review to be crapy so I have come up with a way to motivate myself to do a good job on the review once I am finished writing I have to read it over and if it’s painful to read I have to redo it. But if it is good I’ll treat myself with a candy of some sort or I’ll watch a show on Netflix.
As always we had to attend a science and math class, surprisingly it wasn’t that bad. So far this year in science we have learned about tectonic plates and are now currently learning about cells. Of course there was a project fro science last term and it was actually pretty fun, we were tasked with writing a kids book that taught kids how tectonic plates worked. I found that I left the tectonic plate children’s book to the last minute which I was really unhappy about because I didn’t get to show my best work on it. If I was given the chance to redo the project I would have spent way more time and made a goal ladder for all the steps that I had to do to finish it. I realize that I kept telling myself that “I’ll do it tomorrow, I have other stuff to do” and it really affected my performance. Luckily with the some help from my mom I was able to get my stuff together and finish the project. This project actually helped me come up with some ways that I’m going to use to help keep me on track: 1) never tell yourself that it can wait or else you will never get to doing it. 2) if you’re going to push yourself on a project make sure you can actually take it or else your just going to have multiple mental breakdowns and a terrible time, and last but not least. 3) it’s ok to ask fro help as long as you do the work yourself and don’t just get the person to make the whole project for you.
As I said before we also did math this year which should be obvious and I have to say i was one of my favourite classes just because it was a calm laid back kind of class that gave me a break from all the craziness of the other classes. Mr. Tomas would teach us what we needed to know and gave us a work sheet to complete, and I loved it, I was able to unwind while I listen to my music and did the work. However I don’t usually take in all of the information so to avoid confusion in later weeks I’ve decided to start reading over and using a calculator to check my equations so I know exactly what I should be doing. I also finish the worksheets early so instead of just doing random stuff for the rest of the period I’m going to start to use the time to complete other homework from my other classes. Please comment down below your thoughts on my goals and maybe some other goals that you think could be of some benefit to me.