Oh. No. It is that time of year again. The perfect time of year, mid-January, mid way through the school year, what could be worth saying “oh no” about. Well, that “oh no” is mPol’s. An mPOL is basically a meeting that you have with your parents and your teachers that is super SUPER nerve-racking. But it isn’t all bad. It’s a time to look back at what you have done this year, your successes, failures, and places for growth. The driving question for our mPOL is “How are you going to progress as a learner before the end of the school year?” This will be organized in a very specific way so I might as well explain now. 

For each subject (Humanities, Scimathics, Maker, and a brand new one called PGP) I will talk about one or two projects and things that went great and that I learned as well as things that didn’t go so well and maybe counted as a F.A.I.L. This is so I can explain how I can use those empty spaces to grow! But to make it even more complicated I will be talking abut these things called Habits of Mind.

These are things we learned about in our newest PLP course, PGP! Which you will hear more about when I get started, which I should probably do right about now!

PGP stands for personal growth plan. It’s actually pretty self explanatory if you ask me, but don’t worry, I’ll go in to detail. It’s a course to help us set out a path that will guide us to where we want to go, right now, in the near future, and way, way, way in the future as well. We set goals to help us determine our grades in each class and learn about how to do that with tools like these: Habits Of Mind. Each grade has their own sets of those as well. The featured habit of mind that I think has really helped me through this class is Thinking Flexibly. 

A big project we have been working on is reading a book called “What do you really want?” 

This book is all about goal setting and how to do it in a smart, efficient way and to be brutally honest, I actually used to really hate goal setting, I did not understand what the point of it was at all. That is why I think I have been using that habit of mind, Thinking Flexibly. It has really helped open my mind to this new idea and this is definitely a habit I already want to start using way more. Or I mean, I could just be stubborn and stick to what I usually do but that’s no fun at all! We have done awesome things like create goal ladders:

And a Dream Board (which is also my title picture):

 

But I have discovered pretty quickly that if you don’t stick to those things, your goal will not be pursued easily, if at all! That is something I think I want to improve on by the end of year. There is a quote in the book we are reading “There are 1440 minutes in a day, how are you using them?”~Beverley K. Bachel. Instead of procrastinating like I do sometimes (all the time) why don’t I get up and do one thing to help me get closer to my goal whether it be a small goal like finishing a project, or a big one like how I really want to become a vet when I’m older. In fact, I am going to set a SMART goal right now! I want to get into the habit of using a goal ladder at the beginning of each project to help plan it out and get in the habit of fulfilling my short term and long term goals.

Humanities has been….. eventful. This is because of all the crazy projects we have done and I think the “Taking Responsible Risks” Habit of Mind has been extremely important for the last half of the school year.

 One specific project I would like to highlight from Humanities 9 so far is Metaphor Machines. Metaphor Machines was an action packed project full of team work, hard work, and perseverance. Without the use of responsible risks this year, I don’t think we would have actually completed our project, but with a little bit of living on the edge, we made it through. A specific example is when we decided to completely configure our board differently than most people in the class. We didn’t know how it would work!

But we knew that if we worked together as a team and if something didn’t work to try again, that we would be successful, that is why it was just responsible enough. But Metaphor Machines wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I remember when our team kind of just stopped communicating. Just simply stopped! And that did not work, no, no, no! Not one bit. The deadline was nearing and we were moving at a very slow rate because we didn’t really know what every one in our group was supposed to be doing and that could have been detrimental to the success of our machine. But luckily we pulled it together just in time. I think that communicating is very important and will definitely help me and other people in my future groups because talking is everything!

I loved maker so far this year. We focused so much on filming and making movies and I thought that was sooooo cool! We got to make so many awesome videos of all different kinds, I have never ever done a project like this in my life! I think the video that I am most proud of making was definitely my live event video.

 

I don’t think this video would have had the success that it did if I hadn’t “Listened With Understanding and Empathy.” TA DA! Our third Habit of Mind for the day! 

I probably edited that video over 3 times because of feedback I got. I listened to what my peers and teacher had to say and even if I didn’t agree, I imagined as if I was a viewer, I imagined that I was in their shoes and they definitely would not have wanted to watch my first draft. This is a very hard lesson to learn, even if you love the work you did, even if you think it is perfect, there is always something you can improve. I can use that for any project for then rest of the year, it is never perfect! You can always do better! From this project I learned to lessons in one: One, listen to what people around you have to say, it usually helps. And two, nothing is ever perfect, you ca always do better. I think that is one of the biggest things I will work on by the end of the year for sure!

Scimathics has been a wild roller coaster ride this year wooo eeeeee!! The lucky project that I will be featuring today is chemistry in general. Everybody thinks that chemistry is like the movies. You pour a pink liquid and a blue liquid together and then it explodes, that’s even what I thought. But, that’s actually not the case. It’s much much much more complicated than that! 

I thought I understood it several times and then I really really didn’t. I got a little quiz back that we did just for fun aaaannnnddd well…… yeah. I learned two big lessons from chemistry. One being that, I really need to practice tests more often. As I get older, I will have to do more and more tests because right now we don’t have to do any. They become a big percentage of your grade but that’s not as much something that I need to work on by the end of the year as it is a personal thing. The second lesson I learned was that I need to stay calm. I have had several people come up to me and tell me to calm down during projects that I don’t understand as well as Ms. Willemse telling me that I look like I’m gonna barf when the project gets hard. That is a big goal for me. By the end of the school year, I want to be able to stay calm and collected during a very challenging project. Here is a goal ladder of how I will do that.

The Habit of mind that I have been using a lot in science class is “Responding With Wonderment and Awe!” 

Science is super interesting, it’s all about our planet, us, and what those things are made of, so of course there is a reason to be amazed about the wonderful things around us. Plus, projects are way more fun when you are really in to them.

IN CONCLUSION..

PLP 9 has been pretty great so far this year. A lot of ups and downs when it comes to school work. Lots of lessons learned and F.A.I.L.s made in every subject from PGP to Scimathics but after writing this post, I have realized that isn’t a bad thing. It goes to show that through out the next year, I have so much more work to do! Just joking. It shows that I have tons of room to improve and grow as a learner by the end of the school year. To answer the driving question in one sentence I would say that: I will improve as a learner by the end of the year by taking the lessons I have learned from projects the were a bit rough and inserting them into my future work to make it better. I will check in with you guys more on this topic in June when tPOLs come around. Ahhhhhhhh!!!

~Your Blogging friend, Jordyn