Mpol: Performance of Learning
Thank you for taking the time to come to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.
I won’t be covering every project we have done this year, as that would take a very, very long time and would go well over the allotted seven minutes I have been given.
Since we didn’t do Mpols last year like we were apparently supposed to do, I will be mentioning and using some work from grade 8 as examples.
Another thing I will mention: I have attended my older brother Noah’s Mpol presentation, and it was very helpful in writing and preparing for this Mpol.
Humanities
I’ll start first with humanities.
Humanities in my opinion has been more interesting and less challenging for me.
Not that I necessarily want more work from humanities, but it’s just one thing to mention.
Anyways, for Humanities I thought the prompt question that best suited it was:
“What decisions did you make about how to approach different projects this year?
How did you decide how to allocate your time and attention?”
For each humanities project there has been a pretty similar working strategy to each one.
I have found that taking it one step at a time and going with the flow is the easiest method for me.
This sounds extremely simple, and it kind of is; by prioritizing the most important things first and least important things last, I can effectively do work and save time for other schoolwork or activities. Assuming I keep track of everything and don’t fall behind too much, It’s almost guaranteed I’ll hand everything in on time. As for balancing other work with Humanities work, I simply take care of whatever has the closest due date.
For my learning plan this year, I set my goal to a rainbow. Looking back now, this might be a bit of a stretch but I think that if my year continues similarly to how it is now, this is definitely an attainable goal.
Another part of humanities I want to touch on is the project Revolutions on Trial. To me, this project is one of the things I am most proud of. If there’s one thing I didn’t expect we would do for the winter exhibition, it would be acting in a play. I learned to adapt through everything I was given, and ultimately played a role that was challenging, yet I could be proud of at the end of the day.
Scimatics
Next up is scimatics. If I had to say, scimatics has been less challenging than last year. This is partly due to the fact that one third of the projects we have done so far have been in groups, and also due to the fact that all of them have been science-based, as opposed to mathematically-based, which suits me just fine. Despite this, I have had difficulty in scimatics due to a number of reasons. The prompt question I have chosen for Scimatics is this:
“What are you going to strive to achieve in the remainder of the school year?”
I feel like this is a very relevant question to ask myself. If I wanted a quick and easy answer I would just say that I want to meet my learning plan. But I have higher standards, and so ideally I would like to meet my learning plan, yet work as if I intend to finish this school year with a rainbow. I figure that this way at the very least I won’t fall behind what is my current goal, which is a sunshine.
At the time I thought this was a decent and realistic goal considering my weakness in many parts of scimatics. What I would preferably want is a high sunshine or a rainbow, but I know that this is unlikely, considering my skills in math are weaker compared to my other subjects.
One thing I can do is follow what I wrote in my learning plan. In the learning plan I said that the most important thing for me in scimatics was to ask for help when I needed it. This could be from a few different people, but what I don’t want to do is not be able to accomplish something, which leads to me getting frustrated or distracted.
Since there weren’t Mpols last year I would like to touch on a few things from scimatics in grade 8 that I feel relate to what I am dealing with in grade 9 scimatics. First of all, I would like to acknowledge how much time I spent on the projects comic cells, and chemistry coding. Both of these projects were science-based and had a unique medium; a comic book and a game on the coding website scratch.
With both these projects, I worked for so many hours on them because I was truly interested in what it is I was doing. If I can find an interest in future assignments like I did with these projects, then I would be able to raise the quality of the final product on future projects, as well as hopefully raising the grade on future projects.
Overall for scimatics, I would say that I am well on my way to achieving an accomplished if the school year continues as it has so far. If I can find more focus and enthusiasm for each project, then I might be able to finish the school year slightly higher than what I expected.
Work Habits
My working patterns and habits this year have been very solid in comparison to last year. The biggest change I have noticed is that I am no longer staying up late to finish every little thing in Humanities and Scimatics. This no longer happens, and I am not sure exactly why. I like to think that either the work is getting easier, or that I am working harder. It’s probably the latter.
As my grade 9 year continues, I am getting more used to the PLP program and developing habits that work for me and the work I have. This will be useful in the future. One upcoming project I will need to focus on is DI, if it still goes on. DI will be a stressful time, and I will need my work and study habits to be able to perform my best.
What I need to do is put myself in an environment that I can work in. I have learned that the space I work in is one of the most important things that impact how I focus and study.
Thank you for listening to my Mid-year presentation of learning. I hope I was able to offer some insight to my working strategies, as well as where I persevered and struggled.