It is the season where we get to pitch to our teachers how we have grown as a learner and what areas we still need to improve in other words, the season of mPols. This will be my last mPol ever!
Driving question: What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will you meet it?
This term we have covered so much so far from Shakespeare (Taming of the Shrew) to horror movies and space monkeys. I have also improved many skills that are transferable to many other situations many of these skills came from the horror unit!
A reflection from last year:
Reflecting back from last year, one of my goals was to improve my writing and reading skills. To try to accomplish that goal I am enrolled in two English courses, literature and PLP English. So far by being enrolled in these courses has significantly improved those skills and I will keep improving as the year goes on. Another goal I set last year was to manage my time wisely in order to meet certain deadlines in school. This year especially has certainly been the busiest out of all my years at high school but with the tools I learned last year such as time blocking and Things, I am able to keep up on all of my school work this year.
Of course once you complete one goal it’s time to make another one. All of our projects so far have either been tasks which involve a group or presenting our work. This year I want to work on this year is my communication skills. When I say communication skills it includes aspects such as presentations and getting my ideas across as well as communicating with a vast group.
The two main projects where I felt my communication was lacking was the horror movie and the significance presentations. However, on the flip side I showed other skills that were also strong throughout these projects.
Let’s start off with the horror movie…
To start off with I am so proud of our class for all taking the project seriously and committing even though we didn’t quite finish the movie. This project was for sure the most challenging project I have done during my years in PLP. The project took patience, organization, leadership, time management and most importantly, communication.
In this project I also stepped out of my comfort zone and took the initiative to apply for director which is something I would never have done in previous years.
Even though I didn’t get the role I was put in a role that you could say was even more out of my comfort zone, writing the script. As I have said in previous years, English isn’t my strong suit however I decided that this role would significantly benefit me in many ways. The script for sure took patience and it taught me the importance of critique and how to take it in a positive way. In this role, communication was key and this is where we “failed”. The lack of communication with our classmates consequently lead to many malfunctions with the script including the ideas. Moving forward, I have certainly learnt the importance of communication and working as a team. We should have communicated and checked in with our class frequently to make sure there were no surprises so everyone was on board. That being said with all these skills are unquestionably transferable to other projects or even future jobs.
The next project I wanted to touch on is our significance presentations. I really enjoyed this project because we had a great extent of freedom and I got to research and learn about the first monkey in space (space monkey). Similarly to the movie, there were highs and lows to this project. I was able to explore Keynote to create an info graphic that represented the significance of the space monkey.
I used images and diagrams to visually communicate my ideas and this part of the project was a success however on the other hand, the verbal communication of this project had room for improvement. With a tight time limit and technical issues which left me with out a script I struggled to communicate all of the main points of my presentation.
To conclude, I am very proud of my self this year for keeping up to date with my school work since grade 12 is a very busy year. I have learned so much so far not just history and English literature but how to work and function as a team. Even though the movie didn’t turn out the way we wanted, I learned so many life lessons during the process and like all projects I will learn for the mistakes. Like all mPOLs we finish off with a discussion question that will help me achieve my goal.
I have learned that communication is the most important skill in life. Moving forward how can I improve my communications skills whether it be talking to an audience or conveying important information to a vast group?