Well, it’s been a long year. Over the course of this year, I’ve grown a lot. At the beginning of the year, I don’t think I was living up to my potential. Joining PLP was a big risk for me, and I didn’t know what it would be like at all. PLP has such a different structure to other classes. We can hand in our work at any time before the deadline, and it can be graded at any time as well, especially outside of school. I was a bit  worried about that, but it turns out I didn’t need to be. 

We’ve done a lot this year, but I have to say my favourite things were exhibitions and the Stitch in Time project. 

I loved both the exhibitions because I’ve always enjoyed talking to people and presenting to people.  I think something I’ve really improved this year is my presentation skills. Not only do I love presenting, but I know how to do it now as well.

The Star Wars Exhibition was where we presented our Star Wars-based inquiry projects to anyone who wanted to see them. My project was based on the CGI used to bring back other characters from other movies, even if the actors weren’t around anymore. The exhibition was a really new experience, and the thrill of setting up the space and opening it up to the public was eye-opening. I think this method of presentation is so useful because you really have to think on the fly for the answers to people’s questions. 

I also enjoyed our Stitch in Time project, where we created quilts to show the story of the Crusades. I enjoyed this project so much because it’s one of the prime examples of a project where my group had a lot of troubles and hardships, and we found a simple solution to all of them. We couldn’t figure out how to include everything in our story that we wanted with such literal icons, like people and the symbols of Islam. Everything was too complicated, so we took the next logical, but hard to understand, step; we represented each character with a triangle. This simplified it so much we were able to add tons more details, like a sunrise and sunset, or conflict represented by sequins on the surface of the quilt. All in all, I think it turned out really well, and it’s really something that taught me to think outside the box. 

Something else really important I’ve learned this year is the importance of your worldview. I was completely unaware what a worldview was before I entered PLP. I had no idea that worldviews differed between religions. That is what our religious worldview unit was about. My group, which consisted of me, Anika, Aedan, and Ben, created an infographic to show what a Sikh worldview was. To learn about a Sikh worldview, we visited a Sikh temple, called a gudwara, and asked some questions.

It was very informative, and we learned that a Sikh worldview focuses on helping other people. There is no leader of worship, and everyone volunteers to serve a meal to people entering the gudwara. That focus of helping other people is one of the defining features of Sikhism. I would have never understood how to present and talk to the person giving us a tour if I hadn’t worked on my presentations and gotten so much better at talking to people. 

We used our newfound knowledge of worldview to create books full of poems about our worldview, and how it affects our lives.

I have never had an interest in poetry, but this unit was fun and simple, but also challenging and a good opportunity for growth.

One of the projects I think I learned the most from was our Door Project, in math. I worked with Aedan, Kyle, and Taylor to increase a section of the door’s surface area by 5. We started working with square pyramids, and eventually filled the door with other 3D shapes such as cylinders and rectangular prisms. However, we were a few square centimetres short. We weren’t really sure where to put anything else, until Aedan had the great idea to attach rectangular prisms to the tips of the pyramids. That change made everything come together. I think I learned the most from this project because it was affected so much by something we hear about a lot in Maker- the power of creative constraint. Aedan was able to come up with a really good idea because he had constraints. In this case, the constraints were how much space we had left and how much paper we had left.

I think joining PLP was a really good decision. I’ve learned so much about thinking in and outside of the box, and I think reflecting on your work is a great way to learn more. Thanks for reading my TPOL blog post!