My grade 10 year has been filled with learning new skills, gaining experiences and lots of growth. Now that it has come to an end it’s time to reflect on the great and not so great things I have done this year. That’s were the tPOL comes in! You might recal in the middle of the year I made a mPOL blog but now that it’s the end of the year this blog will reflect on much more. This blog will provide examples of some of my best work and what I have learned to prove I am ready to advance to the next grade.
Writing
This year I have grown greatly in my writing skills which I have demonstrated in my blogs aswell as other writing assignments.
A good example in which I have grown in my writing skills is my LOTF and Debate blog post called School boys to Savages -LOTF.
This blog proves that my writing skills have grown not because it was my best blog this year, but my most organized. Something I struggle with in writing essays, blogs, or even paragraphs is planning out what I’m going to say before I write. It’s important to know your examples and organize them in a thought out order so the reader can easily understand the point you are making.
In this blog I also included my concept paragraphs we did for this unit. My first concept paragraph concept paragraph was about human nature. This paragraph was one of the strongest peices of writing I created this year because I planned out my thesis and what examples I was going to use. I chose WWII, LOTF, and Donald Trump to be my examples and I put them in order of past to present. I also did a lot of research on each of these topics aswell as using what I have learned.
An essay I am proud of is my synthesis essay on disruption. (Which you can also see here)
Disruption in technology Synthesis essay
We prepared a lot for this essay by going through 7 steps. In these steps helped me learn about and create:
- Brainstorm
- PAR= purpose, attitude, and role
- Thesis
- Coherence
- Specific and general topic sentences
- Supporting ideas
- Making a Hook
The seven steps has made me a much stronger writer and I will definetly take them with me next year.
To be a great writer you have to put careful consideration into what words you use and how you organize your writing so that your able to send the message your trying to get to the reader.
Science and Math
I have struggled with multiple science and math projects this year because I haven’t found that perfect balance between creativity and knowledge.
A project I think we all struggled on because of this was the Energy Capture science project. The goal of this project was to create a generator to capture kinetic or potential energy from nature and transform it into electrical energy. This could have been a great project, if done right.
At first each group had there own unique idea of how they were going to complete this task. My group which was Adam, Sam, and Robbie was first going to build a waterwheel with motors attached. After multiple attempts and fails to capture enough energy to make at least 1 LED light shine, we had a new “brilliant” idea. Using our materials we made a mini car with motors attached to the wheels. The problem with this was that we struggled to make a decent in circuit the tiny car we created. In the end every group created water wheels with hand generators.
Even though, our waterwheel completed the goal by using our knowledge of energy transformation and conversion, by the end most of the creativity and personalization in the project was down the drain.
Even though I didn’t have the best term in science and math I am very happy to have ended the year with probably my strongest project. The last project we were given in science was about astronomy. For this project I was partnered up with Claire to focus on the Big Bang Theory. I excelled at this project because I was very interested in my topic, did a great amount of research, showed other things we had learned in science and math such as graphing and elements, split up the work and used my time well.
Working in a group
Something that I learned this year, is that it’s important to be able to be a good team member or leader depending on the situation. Everyone has different skills they give to a project aswell as weaknesses so it’s important to know when you need to step up or step down for a project. I think that Destination Imagination helped me learn what skills I can bring to a project as well as when I should let others take the lead.
For DI my team members were Robbie, Sofia, and Lucas.
We all have very different personalities so it was interesting how well we worked together. One of the reasons we worked so well together is that we all had the same goal: to make the best out of DI. We also all were focused on contributing as much as we could to be successful in this goal. Because of this for everyone was a leader at some point during DI preperation. Something I learned that I bring to projects is being artistic. I used this skill a lot in DI when creating our tie did backdrop, Robbie’s flower pants and the window. Something I learned to let others take the lead on is writing. For our script it was Lucas’s job to write it and Sofia’s job to do the forms. Even though it wasn’t my job to do the writing I still helped editing. I had to hold myself back on editing and adding things because in group projects I usually do most of the writing. Finally I learned that its important to build off of others ideas instead of replacing them with yours.
Moving Forward
Now that I finnished my tPOL and reflected on my grade 10 year its time to advance to the next grade