Hello again everyone! I’m back with another blog post. This time, we will be reflecting on my first year as a PLP student. At the end of every year of a PLP students year, we have to do something called a TPOL. TPOL stands for Transitional Presentation Of Learning. We basically speak to the teachers about our growth as a learner and also about the projects we performed well on this year. If you have been following my blog, I wrote about something called a MPOL, which is similar to a TPOL. Click the link to read about my Midyear Presentation Of Learning.

Let’s get right into it!

This year, I think I’ve improved as a learner substantially. At this time last year, I wasn’t thrilled to be going to into high school. I was a little nervous and wasn’t sure if I was ready for as much work as we get in high school. Now, I think that I can manage my time well and get the work done without too much trouble.

That being said, I do have some trouble with work. I think there are a couple things I struggle with as a learner. For one, procrastination. Sometimes, I just put off my homework to the last minute and just hope I can finish it. I think a good rule for me next year will be that I have to finish all my homework and do it well before I can go golfing or hang out with friends. I think if I can stick to that routine, I’ll be able to balance my schoolwork and my personal time well. One other problem I have with completing my work is that my iPad sometimes distracts me from finishing my work. At times, this can be a good thing because I’ll use it as a reward. “If you finish this paragraph, you can watch YouTube for 5 minutes”. It can work both ways.

Moving on, let’s talk about some fun projects we did this year. One project that we recently finished I really enjoyed. We studied Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest and watched the play and the movie for it. After that, we were divided into groups and each were given an act. After we were given this act, we had to summarize it. Using the summarized information, we had to create a tableau with costumes and background images. My group was given act 2 to perform and I thought we nailed it. It was fun working as a team and being on stage.

Another project I thought I did well on was the poetry unit. Although I thought poetry wasn’t really my “thing” or that I wasn’t going to be smart enough, it was really fun writing poetry and learning new terms about it. It was cool to learn new types of poems and what I liked about the unit is that it went by quickly so you had to be on top of your work to be done the unit successfully. We also had to create a poetry book and I thought I was pretty creative putting my poems into the book.

One unit I thought I didn’t perform my best in: The DI unit. It was tough to commit to the project. At first, our group style clashed and we didn’t work too well together. I also didn’t really love my role in our skit. It was tough, but in the end I think we all realized we needed to get it together and we ended up working as a team to the end. I think that some parts about D.I were frustrating and hard, but in the end I did do my part for the team. I felt that even though we stayed after school a lot to practice, we could have some more rehearsals and that was holding us back from being really good. Click the link to read more about D.I.

One thing I really like about PLP is constructive criticism. I mentioned this in my MPOL post and I still really think it’s important to my learning. For example, if I handed in work that wasn’t my best, the teachers wouldn’t take it. I’d have to revise in and hand in a more completed version. I like this compared to regular school because in mainstream school there are no second chances with your work. With PLP, if you do the right work you get rewarded with not having to do more work to make it better. There are high standards. And I like it.

To finish off this post, I’d like to set a goal for next year. My goal is to complete all school work before playing golf or doing other things. I think this is going to work well for me in many ways.

That’s going to wrap up this post. I hoped you enjoyed this year of blog posts and I’m excited for another year in PLP!

Until next time,

Nik