Presentations of Learning

MPOL 2020

Sam

Welcome back to my final Mid-year Presentation of Learning. I will be reflecting on my learning and work habits of my grade 12 year so far, and then explaining the areas I expect to improve by the end of the year. So I hope you can relax and enjoy it, but still listen closely.

The Good

This year has definitely been different than all the others. Our projects are different in that they are longer and more in depth, forcing us to learn a multitude of topics through different mediums and media from the past and the present. We have done three major projects this year in total, and there are parts of each one where I was definitely successful. I’d like to talk about all the things this year that I think I did well, and the things I’m proud of.

To start it off, I’ll talk about our first product of the year. My Taming of the Shrew essay. Right from the start, this project didn’t sound too fun.  Reading and studying old Shakespeare, and then writing an essay on it? Not really my preference. But as time went on, I was actually learning lots, as the play had so many levels to be analyzed and researched. Going to see the play live was also a huge help in my understanding of a complex text.


By the end of the unit, I learned more than I thought I would. We studied the play and it’s meaningful themes and commentaries, and also learned a lot about roles of women throughout history. In my final essay, I explained this while also arguing for why the play is considered a classic piece of literature.

I feel like this project was a good start to the year, as it was my wake up call that school was starting again. It required thoughtful reading, text analysis, and individual thinking which I hadn’t done in the previous two months. The essay came at a rather bad time however, I was amidst the long recovery process of a mild concussion. I toughed it out however and managed to complete a very strong essay, with a little help from Mom. This project was not my personal preference or favourite by any means, but it was something I needed to kickstart my grade 12 year. I pushed through the difficulties of being concussed and learned what I needed to in order to create a strong final product, the essay.

Classic Shakespeare

Onto the good things from the next project, the Horror unit. I want to focus on our own class movie part of this unit, since there were many smaller assignments beforehand. This project is considered among our class to be a failure, which I guess I agree with. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t succeed as a learner.
Personally I think my greatest success in this project was my work ethic on set. I believe that I was always helpful, patient and cooperative with my classmates, even when everyone was tired and stressed out. I showed strength and perseverance, as being the camera operator was a big responsibility. Everyone was relying on my judgement for the camera angles and quality of each shot. I was expected to come prepared to each shoot with all my gear ready to go and charged up.

What I am most proud of with this project is the knowledge I acquired. Going into film school next year (hopefully), I was quite excited to start this project. I found that I learned a lot about Horror as a genre of film and why the typical tropes of horror are so effective. I also learned for myself how difficult any film production is, communication and organization wise. The technical side of being the camera operator was also eye-opening for me, I got to see firsthand how different lenses portray different emotions, and how lighting and framing are crucial to each scene.
Overall this project was a fail, but we’ll get to that in a minute. But for now, I did succeed in my work ethic and I learned a lot more about horror and film itself by embarking on this project.

Lastly, I will talk about our most recent project, my presentation and artifact on the moon landing. I feel that I researched and executed this project really well all around. My research was strong and added to my point, my presentation was engaging and interactive, and my topic was something I was interested in.

I have improved my presentation skills drastically over the course of my PLP career, as I was totally comfortable with presenting this project. If I was to do this same thing in grade 8, I would have been nervous for days before the presentation. But I have grown as a person to be more confident and comfortable with myself and my classmates. My biggest success with this project was my presentation, as I clearly articulated my driving question, research and conclusion to the class in an interesting way.

 

The Bad

And now the other side of the coin. What I have struggled with this year. Personally, I think I have one general large problem that is impacting each and every assignment I get in PLP and the rest of my classes at school. And that is my attitude. I have caught a bad attitude bug you could say, and the bug makes me allergic to anything school related. I’ve been struggling with this since the end of grade 11, and then it was worsened when I got a concussion and fell behind in all my classes.
My attitude has given me really bad habits, and my procrastination has been at an all time high this year. Somehow I am very aware of this and yet it won’t go away. How this has been affecting my schoolwork is evident. Most of my assignments this year have been late, by a few hours or by a full week. I feel like all my work has been a mediocre quality, something I would not be happy with in previous years. I know my potential but I can’t find the will to bring it to life.

That is my main downfall this year, and I’m not happy it’s happening as this is an important year. Procrastination and laziness has impacted each of my projects this year. For example, my taming of the shrew work was mostly all late, and not very good at all, save for my essay. In the horror unit, I started out as a producer. But because of my lack of enthusiasm in school, I wasn’t able to uphold the responsibility that the producer role implied. I failed my classmates because I wasn’t engaged in my schoolwork, and I know I could’ve done a lot better if my mindset was in the right place. After this, which was kind of a slap in the face, even though I knew it was coming, I think I got my crap together a bit more. I took control of the camera operator role, which was more fitting based on the mental state I was in at the time.

Now, we’ve finished one more project in the new year with Ms. Maxwell, and I believe that I have stepped up my work quality with this one. It’s a baby step, but it’s something. I struggled less with keeping up with due dates and assignments, but I still think I could do better. Part of the reason I think I did better on this project was because it was a topic I was interested in. So I will work hard to maintain this level of work ethic even if the next project doesn’t interest me.

And Where I Can Do Better

For the remainder of this year, my final year of PLP, I want to focus on getting myself back on track. Because I don’t feel like I’m doing work that represents me as a person or as a learner. I feel like I have a lot of areas for improvement, and getting my attitude and mindset back in the right place will resolve a lot of those areas. Right now, my learning and skill level have plateaued, and I need to work to get it back where it should be, so that I can grow and mature as a learner even more. And so I will end this presentation with a question. “Academically, what do you think I can achieve this year that I may not see at this time?”

 

Thank you for coming to my mPOL and listening to me and my learning.

 

see you

The Mpol Strikes Back

Sam

Welcome back to another Mid Year Presentation by yours truly, Samuel Scheewe. Today’s topic will be about me, and my learning this year in the PLP 11 Cohort.

This year had been quite a difficult, but also very rewarding year for me as a student. I found the transition from grade 10 to grade 11 a huge jump in academics and homework amount. I’ve also found the work this year just really good quality work, and I’m very proud of it. Most of it anyways. So listen carefully, I’ll be telling you all about my life at school.

Typically in my Mpols in the past, I’ve described work I’m proud of, not proud of, and areas where I need improvement. But this time, I’m going to mainly focus on growth. I’ll talk about how much I’ve grown this year, and where I want to grow even more. Here we go folks.

My Growth As A PLP Learner

I think that in my PLP career the skill I’ve grown the most in is leadership. From being the quietest kid in the class to one of the top students, I feel that I’ve grown as an evident leader in my PLP Class. Even more so in the last year or so. This is something I’ve been working on for a long time, and I believe I said so in my MPol exactly one year ago. I wanted to become a better leader as a student, and I feel I’ve done so. I’m still a fairly quiet person, that’s just who I am, but my leadership skills shine through different aspects of my work and behaviour. To give you examples of this, I’ll talk about the two main projects we’ve done this year. First off, we’ve got the Manhattan Project Project.

The Manhattan Project Project

This was a really fun project for me. For the most part, I was engaged and interested to learn more. This unit was based around our field school down to Hanford, which was one of the best short field schools in my opinion. We went down there with the sole purpose to learn as much as we can in 4 days, and gather enough video to make a short 5 minute film about the Hanford site. And, as you may or may not know, I really like filmmaking and editing video, so this project was going to be great.

I feel I demonstrated my leadership when I took the lead on this project in my group, which consisted of myself, Parker, and Ethan. We had a lot of work to do, and we worked well together. I was one of the main directors, actors and the sole editor of the 5 minute video by the end of the project. Not to steal anyone’s thunder though, I totally didn’t mind taking more responsibility than I would have if I was in grade 8. Our finished product was finished before any other groups video in our class, and in my opinion, blew all the other ones out of the water. I was and still am extremely proud of this project, and the way I stepped up to take more responsibility. My leadership is evident in this project because I heard feedback from my classmates that they really liked our video, and asked me for tips on how to make theirs better.

And after the Manhattan project, we lead our studies right on through the 1950’s and multiple different forms of media to get to my all time favourite project in my PLP career. This project was the most recent PLP project, our Carousel Of Communism.

A Carousel Of Communism

In this particular project, I stepped outside my comfort zone and volunteered myself for one of the largest roles possible – the guide. I think I did this because I wanted a challenge, or I didn’t know how much talking I would have to do. Either way, it was something new to me because I’ve vowed to never be an actor. But even before the actual night of the exhibition, I found myself constantly brainstorming, and putting out ideas for the project with my classmates. I feel that even though I wasn’t a DRI, I was at least the equivalent of a prince in our chain of command in our class. I was constantly being surprised at just how well everyone worked together, and all the work we had done so far. I grew as a leader here because as a guide, I had to lead a group of random people through our exhibition, and also my classmates during our acts. I’m super happy that I took a role as a guide, even if it was a challenge because it made me a better version of myself and I would have regretted it if I hadn’t.

Growth For The Rest of the School Year

So the driving question for this Mpol is “How are you going to progress as a learner before the end of this school year?” And for me, I want to progress even more as a leader.

I will do this by forcing myself to do a lot of time blocking and time management. This comes from our new course this year called PGP, otherwise known as our personal growth plan. I’ll use the benefits of timeblocking to my advantage, benefits I still have to discover. Like a lot of PLP students, I was reluctant to use the techniques described at  our PGP meeting such as timeblocking and weekly reviews. I’m just beginning to wrap my head around how it all works and I think that if I put in the work to start it off, it will reward me long term.

I would like to use the strategies of PGP to help my work become quality that I’m proud of every time. I want to be a leader where my work sets a standard for our class, and it should be something I’m happy with, and be finished on time. I still need time to get my PGP weekly reviews up to date, and remember to constantly be adding to my calendar so I don’t forget important events.  Another mini project inside of PGP is my Dream Board. This is a collection of photos of places you want to go, things you want to have and who you want to be in the future. Below is mine.

This is meant to help us envision our future to help us strive to get there. This will be a constant reminder for me to stay dedicated and to put in the work so there can be a reward.

So, for the rest of this year I want to be able to use techniques given to me by my teachers, who want me to succeed, to my upmost benefits to create work that inspires the people around me, and makes me proud. That is how I will grow as a learner for the remainder of this year. It will take focus, determination and discipline, but I want this to work, and I’m willing to work for it.

So, thats the end of my MPol 2019.

Overall I’m really enjoying myself in PLP this year, especially the projects we’ve done so far. Our next project has to do with video creation, something I’m skilled in, and so I’m looking forward to seeing how will use my timeblocking and leadership to influence the final product.

And that’s all for this MPol, I hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you again at the end of the year.

 

See You

 

Are You Ready To T-T-T-TPOL?!

Sam

Well it’s almost the end of grade 10, and it has been a pretty awesome year. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, failed a fair amount and because of that, learned a lot. I’ve had good times and bad times, but overall grade 10 has been one of my favourites. But since it’s the end of the year, you know what we at PLP do.

And that is reflect.

If you’ve been one of the many, many followers on this blog you’d know that twice a year in PLP we have parent teacher meetings, but we as students individually lead the conference and explain to our parents and teachers how we’ve done over the course of that year. This is one of my 5 other TPOLS, and so here goes another one.

Lets begin with the driving question:

Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

As I go through my TPOL, I will be sharing examples of my work that contribute to my argument as to why I believe I’m ready to advance. So, here we go.

My Favourite Project

First off, I would like to talk to you about my favourite project of this school year. That would be my California book. Last year, when our PLP 9 class went to Florida, I stayed home with some other students and didn’t get to experience a large scale field school. But this year, I’m really glad I went. I was able to gain experiences I’d never get anywhere else like going behind the scenes at the San Diego Safari Park and seeing how they train elephants.

Californiaaa Knows How to Party

I also was able to have lots of fun with the people on the trip and become closer with everyone in our PLP class, which I believe is very important. So when it came time to design a book that showcase everything we did in our own way, I was excited. I worked really really hard on it, trying to make it look super nice and also explain all that we did and learned on our trip. It incorporates a lot of what we learn in PLP in it, for example layout and design, something we learned in grade 8 with advertisements, and also storytelling which is something we learn about every year. My growth as a learner is evident in this project with how I enhanced the book with photos, videos and text in interesting ways throughout the entire book. I used my knowledge from all my PLP years to create a piece of media that I’m proud of and is thoroughly interesting. This is something I had a lot of fun doing and can and will keep with me for the rest of my life.

Work I Did Well

The next piece of work is the work I think I did really well. This was the LOTF Great Debate. When I first learned that we would be doing a debate, I was actually looking forward to it. I had never done anything like it before, and I wanted to test my public speaking and quick thinking skills that I had been working on over the course of this year.

We got our topic, power and authority, and our statement: “Power leads to corruption” and our position: AGAINST the statement, and I was stumped. I didn’t know how we would argue against this with strong evidence. After a few days of thinking I had an epiphany, and explained it to my team. I was very excited for the debate, with a little bit of nervous anticipation, but after it was all over we had won by only one vote. It was a great debate, and my team did really well. If I had the chance, I would do my debate again. I realized afterwards when we had broken it down as a class that it was too scripted and bland in some ways.

But overall I feel this is a great example of my work because I had to come up with our argument and then break down research and things we’ve learned to formulate an opinion that would win us a debate. This shows my growth as a learner in that I needed to analyze information we have learned in class into an opinion and then turn it into a captivating argument. I also grew as a person and learner in that I needed to face my now small fear of public speaking and speaking out my opinions in front of my class. With those fears put aside I was able to communicate my ideas to my team and classmates, turning the tides in our favour in the end. I feel that I did this really well and my team and I excecuted it with precision. Almost a little too much precision.

Work I Didn’t Do So Well

Now is the work I think I didn’t do so well on.
This would be my math cell phone plan project I did with Simon. The aim of the project was to use linear equations to graph how much three different cell phone plans would be over time, and how much it would cost when you went over your paid data. The whole time while making this slideshow formatted project, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just kind of put in the basic slides you’d see in other projects, and then drew some graphs that seemed right.

Personally I had no interest in this project because I didn’t understand it, and that was what caused me to not do well. I wasn’t engaged at all so I thought I could just wing it but I was wrong. What we had was okay, but we were missing a few key elements of the project. I think that my biggest problem this year has been staying engaged and interested in the projects I don’t really like. I’ve struggled with it all year, and most of it has been in math since it’s not my favourite subject. In my MPOL I said I wanted to change this and start focusing on working hard even though I don’t want to and to put my own twist on each project, to go a little above and beyond. And I must say I haven’t completed that yet. Lately I’ve realized that I have checked out of school and I’m just coasting through to the end of the year, and I know it’s not helping my schoolwork or my grades. I hope that over the summer I can settle down and relax, regain my focus on school, reset and then come back next year really strong.

My Growth This Year

And finally, how I think I’ve grown as a learner. Now there isn’t one specific project that I’ve grown the most in, but I think that I’ve grown the most this year in my storytelling. In eighth grade we worked on this through advertisements and still images, in ninth grade we created video products and now in tenth grade we have been through podcasting and interviews. I feel that all three of these main ideas will contribute to the rest of my life no matter what I do in many important ways. One example that I can use is my Who Am I Video that we sent to High Tech High.

This took me three tries to perfect, and it shows my storytelling growth in a great way. First of all, in my post where I describe how I made it, I said that in the first draft I was showcasing myself in a boring way, when I do not have a boring life. And by the third draft, I was telling the story of me moving to Vancouver and finding ways to have all kinds of adventures around our city in an engaging way. Through a three minute video I was telling the story of my life, something I had been learning all along.

Another good example of this is our WWII Perspectives Website. This is a different type of storytelling and it includes my ability to make my product aesthetically pleasing. This is something we have learned all throughout PLP and something I consider to be very important. With my group members, Adam, Reid and Sofia, we researched and designed three or four pages of a website our class was making. We needed to research different aspects of Germany before, during and after WWII and then break down our information and write out the most important facts. We then took that information and put it into a website format, and then set about formatting our pages. We needed to learn how to balance all our text with interesting photos and titles. I was really happy with what our end product was, and I wasn’t nervous to present it at all to Kathleen Barter, a historian. This was because I was really confident in the work we created and I think this is a good example of all I’ve learned in PLP. We are taught how to research points and information, keep the attention of the audience, and then essentially, turn that into a story. I think this is evident in a lot of work we do, and I believe it will be a very important skill to have later in life.

Overall, I believe this year has definitely had its ups and downs, and I’m looking forward to the summer for not only a break, but also for a time to reset and refocus for next year. My largest form of growth has been storytelling, and I’m still really looking forward to developing it further.

I hope that this presentation shows evidence as to why I feel I’m ready to advance to the next grade level. I have grown in my ability to tell stories in all the work I do in PLP and I really enjoy doing that. I know I have lots of skills I need to get better at, and that’s why I want to continue into PLP 11: to grow those skills even more.

I hope you have enjoyed learning about my learning, and thank you for listening.

 

thats all,

See you

 

My SLC…No, My tPOL… No, My mPOL!

Sam

Well, we are in 2018 now. And, we are also pretty close to halfway through the school year. And guess what that means…

REFLECTION TIME!

And typically, in PLP we do that in the form of a special version of a parent-teacher-interview. Now, these meeting have gone by many names, always changing their identities… it’s so us students don’t realize what they really are…

But every year, in January and in June, we do a SLC, or tPol, and now we are doing mPols, Mid-year Presentations of Learning. And every year, we realize that these meetings are the same dreaded 15 minutes of our lives, just with a different face.

But, on with it.

In this presentation, I’m going to tell you about four topics.

1. The piece of work that I am most proud of so far

2. The new skills I’ve developed this year in PLP

3. What I have been struggling with

4. My top areas of improvement I need to work on

First off, I’ll tell you about the work that I’m most proud of so far, and that showed a lot of hard work. And that would be my Who am I Video. We made these videos about ourselves because we are going to be working one on one with another class in High Tech High, in Our California trip. We will send these videos out to their class, and so they can pick who they want to work with based on our personalities and interests.

We started out with broad instructions. A short, around 2 minute video that showcases ourselves and what we like to do, our families, etc.

When we first were introduced to  this project, I was very interested, and excited, as I always like making videos. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, as I have lots of video of me and my friends doing all sorts of outdoor activity.

And this was my first draft:

I was not very happy with this one, mainly because it wasn’t too exciting. And so we moved on to our second draft. I changed the style a little, but still wasn’t happy with the overall feel. And then when editing my final draft, I felt I knew exactly what I wanted. And so here is my final draft:

This one I LOVED. For this one, I made my script a lot shorter, so there was room for the videos to play, and you won’t hear me talking the entire time. I also found some way better music, and made it come in at an amazing time. I felt that everything worked exactly as I wanted for this draft. This draft had the feel and mood I wanted it to but couldn’t capture in my first two drafts. As you can see as well, my first draft is a lot less exciting than my final draft.

But the main reason I was most proud of this project was because of all the hard work I put into each draft, and I built up from each step, ultimately reaching my goal. This to me is a big accomplishment, and I’m very happy with the end product. I went from a boring version of me, to showcasing myself in a fun and exciting way that people will want to watch, and I would want them to watch. I spent probably 10 hours total, and showed lots of revision skills through these 3 drafts. And that’s why it’s the project I’m proudest of.

 

Next up are my New Skills that I think I’ve developed this year in PLP 10. The biggest one so far is:

Podcasting.

And this breaks down to multiple different skills.  In PLP we have done multiple projects that involved podcasts, and it started all the way back in Camp Capilano, where we created our first podcasts ever. The skills I think I gained from this are:

– The ability to write scripts that are very informative, yet entertaining.

– Research facts and interesting information to use rather than photos and visuals, like I usually would when making a video.

– The ability to create in-depth questions that I can ask my interviewee that will make them give a detailed answer

– Learn how to conduct an interview that will give me the answers and stories I was looking for

Overall in the year so far, we have done a lot of podcasts. Our first major one was the WWI Soldier Podcasts.

World War One In A Podcast

I think that in this project, I was just starting to realize how podcasts work, and what I needed to do to make mine a lot better. But, I think that I applied these new skills the most in the Winter Exhibition podcasts.

Tell Me A Story

This is mostly because that’s when we were introduced to these new skills. But I feel that I took a lot of time to really think about the questions I was asking, to give myself a good outcome. I also feel that my podcast editing of the interview was really strong from the beginning, as I made each one engaging and interesting. A technique I used was to edit out the question I was asking if the answer explained enough so that the listener could follow along. This really helps the flow of the podcast, as my voice would interrupt the story flow that the interviewee was sharing. It made the interview go from a choppy question-then-answer recording to a smooth story podcast, which was the goal.

So, that was the project that I felt demonstrated the new skills I’ve developed so far in PLP 10.

 

And that brings me to my next topic.

My Struggles… (deep sigh.)

My biggest struggle this year has been lack of interest in some of my projects. That has mostly effected my math and science class, as I am often uninterested, and I end up falling behind in the smaller assignments in class. But, luckily, I do find that by the time that the project comes around for the unit, I have learned enough of the material that I know how to create my project. I was quite happy with my trigonometry and ideal angles project, for how much I didn’t understand.

Trigonometry Sounds Scary… It Is…

But, even though I managed to pull off the project at the last minute, I still need to work on keeping focused in class better so I can keep up in class. I will begin to focus more in class and ask questions when I need go, to help me get the right answers.

But the project that demonstrates my lack of time management and enthusiasm was the Vancouver Sins of the City project.

The Good and the Bad of Vancouver

I was put into a group that I hadn’t really worked with before, and a topic I didn’t really enjoy learning about. For some reason labour rights in Vancouver just doesnt intrigue me at all. And so that how I felt for the whole project: unenthusiastic. Thankfully I had the sense to work hard when we needed it though, and so I did get a lot of work done, but it was always the day before something was due. I’m pretty certain that the only reason we actually had on interview in our podcast before the final draft was because our interviewee waltzed into our class the day before and spoke to our class about Workplace Safety as Youth…

None of us had taken the initiative on finding someone to interview, and to just our luck, we managed to find one, at the last minute.  Anyways, my group and I didn’t spend too much time on each step of the project, but I am happy with what we produced, it’s better than I thought it would be at least.

I think the reason that I didn’t focus and work hard on this project was because I didnt have any motivation to work hard. I wasn’t interested in the topic, and that really made working on this project a drag for me, which slowed down our progress and creativity.

I think that I need to work on finding 1 thing per project that intrigues me so that I can enjoy a little bit of each project while working on it. This is because right now, the project is either boring, or not boring. I need to work on finding a middle ground.

And that leads right into my next topic, my goals for the rest of this year.

MY GOALS FOR THE REST OF PLP 10

For the second half of the year I hope to improve my skills as a PLP learner, and these are the ways I’m planning on doing so:

 

1. Work on time management by beginning assignments and projects when I have extra time, instead of other things. Write down all my assignments is order of priority so I have a visual image of what i need to do.

2. Find and integrate something that I like into each project so I have a stronger motivation to work on it, and do it well.

3. Find some way to go above and beyond in each project. Right now I feel that my work quality has plateaued, and I want to drive the quality back up to where it should be.

 

These goals will help me improve my work, and I hope to use them as much as I can.

To sum everything up, I feel that my proudest project this year was my Who Am I video, as it was fun and exciting for me to create. I would say that I have grown as a learner in my podcasting skills, developing many other skills that help in podcasting. I think my biggest struggle is keeping up in math and science, and also my Sins of the City project because of our bad time management. And I plan to work on focusing more in class, keeping track of my assignments more effectively, and adding in something of my own to each project I do, for the rest of my PLP years.

 

And now,

Finally, I will ask a question to you, my audience, to conclude my Mid-year Presentation of Learning…

 

“What is one thing I can do to become a better leader in my classroom?”

 

And as I let that sink in, that is all for today, and thank you for coming to my 2018 mPol.

 

See you,

tPOL’s – Totally Perfect Observations (of) Learning

Sam

Hello, and today I’ll be talking about my Transitional Presentation Of Learning – or a tPOL. I’m going to cover four main points:
Examples of growth
Examples of revision
Examples of hard work
My favourite project and why

So let’s get right into it.

Examples of Growth as a Learner

Growing as a learner is something every single PLP student does, in all different ways. It helps us with all our projects, and we all grow as learners whether we realize or not. Every assignment that’s a little out of our comfort does exactly that. We learn with every new experience.
And so, over the course of my whole PLP 9 year, I think that I’ve grown in my ability and comfort to present to an audience. From just standing by my Blue Sky projects at an exhibition to doing my past SLC’s, I think that I’ve definitely gotten way more comfortable at presenting. A good example of this is a few weeks ago, a group of maybe 50 teachers and Apple employees came to our school to learn more about PLP. And I was selected to go on a panel with some other students in front of all those curious teachers and just say a few quick words about one project that I did, while my teacher ran the presentation. This made me quite nervous. But, I fought down my fear, and just did what I came to do. It wasn’t much, but it got me pretty nervous. Now I think that I am more comfortable with presenting, a lot more than before.

Examples of Revision

Revision is a crucial part of PLP. After being in PLP for two years now, I now realize that if we didn’t have the revision aspect of the program, we’d be similar to “regular school.” In “normal school” you’d turn in your assignments and depending on how much work you put into your assignment, get a grade based on that. Then you move on. But that’s not how life works in the real world, you don’t get off with doing a half-decent job at something, you go back and do it well. That’s why I chose my fantasy video to show my revision skills.

Florida Films From February

When I was in later elementary school, grade 7 in specific, I went to a small private school here in north Vancouver. It was a small class and after a few assignments, I was used to being the top of my class without breaking a sweat. I did all my work on time and it got me good marks every time. And so when I got to PLP, my fantasy video assignment in particular I made my video, handed it in, and moved on. Then, when I was given it back and told I needed to revise, I was a little taken aback. This hasn’t really happened before, and I’d never had to completely redo an assignment. But, after a few more drafts, I managed to complete the assignment, and my end result was more appealing to the viewers, and better overall.  All in all revision is still new to me, and now I’m starting to see that it pays off.

Example of Hard Work

Lately in PLP, we’ve had multiple projects at once, and we’ve had to work hard. Hard work is very common to see in PLP, you can’t get a good mark without it. I think out of this year the assignment that shows my hardest work is: my Frankenstuffie Video.

Freaky Frankenstuffie

That’ll explain it, and I’ll tell you about why it took a lot of hard work. The main reason why it took a lot of work is because this assignment came from multiple classes. There were math ecology, geography and LA aspects to it. The video definitely took the most work because it was pulling all those together into one animated film, and let me tell you, animation takes FOREVER. This video came to me at the wrong time, I was just starting, and then I left on a week and a half long vacation to California, and when I cam back, my classmates were done, and starting Blue Sky. So, when I got back, I left it till later and worked on catching up other work. It was about two weeks later that I finally just got it done. It took me a long time, all the animations and information had to be perfect. I think the whole thing took me 4 hours to complete… this is definitely on the list for hard work, and I think that this drive to complete work well will help me to be a better PLP 10 student.

And to add a bit of my own touch:

My Favourite Project and Why

I think that having a favourite project is an important part to learning. It gives you a good memory of your schoolwork and helps you to try to recreate that favourite aspect to other parts of your learning. My favourite project this year is my Things I carry presentation.

The Items I Bring

I really loved this project because it was talking about something I know a lot about: Me. I also really enjoyed watching my classmates and their presentations because it allowed me to see their personalities in ways I hadn’t before. But I liked this project because I really strived for mine to be remembered. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I think it is. I really wanted mine to be funny, and go above the expectations. I included videos in my keynote because no one else had, and I thought it would help bring my presentation alive. I included some of my own funny/embarrassing photos of my friends to make my classmates laugh as their hearing what I have to say. Overall, this project was my favourite because I could really personalize it however I wanted, and it was really fun to present to my classmates.

Those are some of the examples on how I’ve become a better PLP learner, and I hope that it will be a good reason for me to be accepted into PLP 10 next year. I’m really looking forward to it,

Thanks for listening.

SLC: Sam’s Lovely Conference

Sam

Hello,

This post is about my SLC, (Student Led Conference), and in this post I’ll be talking about three pieces of work. One piece I’m most proud of, one piece I think shows the most growth as a learner, and the last piece Is one I think shows growth mindset.

My first piece of work, the one I’m most proud of, is the Think Different video. We did this project earlier in the year, and it wasn’t a big important one, but I feel like I really did great on it. I put a lot of work and a lot of time into this video and I think it didn’t get enough attention in class. This will take you to my post about the video and the creation of it:

Do You Think Different?

I really enjoyed creating this video because Muhammed Ali was an interesting person to research, and since he was a boxer and I love sports.

 

The next topic is something I think I’ve grown in as a learner, and I think it’s my ability to manage my time in order to come out with a strong end product. I think a very good example of this is the time during and right before we went to Seattle this year. We were planning out a big video we would make explaining how a certain group or organization of people were Crazy Ones. This blog post will tell you more about it:

Seattle Is a Crazy One

The video was very fun to make but we never did get around to finishing it.

 

The last piece of work I want to talk about is the work that shows my growth mindset. Growth mindset is something we learned about in grade 8, but it still carries on to help us a full year later, and it will be helping us all through our lives. It is just the way we think in a certain situation we don’t like, but we still push through and perform. The piece of work that I think shows it is my Destination Imagination project. Even though its not my favourite project, me and my group pushed through and performed well in the competition. Our challenge didn’t end up working,m but me and my group kept on going to a good finish. Go here to read more about it:

Destination Imagination: Year Two

Thank you for reading and listening to my SLC

The SLC’s Are Back!

Sam

Hello!

I just want to start off by saying thank you for coming to my second SLC.

Today I will be telling you about some of the work I’ve done in my PLP class during the year, and what I think about it.
The first piece of work I’ll be talking about is my iBook introduction video. This video was created to go into an iBook that we could publish for others to read. Personally, I really liked this project because I like to film and edit, and it puts together a lot of work we’ve done into one video. In my opinion, this is the piece of work that shows the most evidence of learning because it relates to way back to when we worked on our advertisements. It shows filming and editing skills and good quality photos and sound, which are all big parts of all of our work in PLP.

The iBook of the Century!


Ok, now to the next piece of work. I know I just talked about the iBook, but overall, as a class, we could have worked harder at finishing it. This project started like Destination Imagination, where not many people were working as hard as they could have been. I think that if we had started as strong as we had worked at the end, we easily could have finished the iBook. I enjoyed the whole process of the iBook, but it could have had more effort. Next time, personally, I would start the filming for the video sooner, so we had more time to help out in other areas of the book.

The final part in my conference is to talk about my goals in PLP. In my last SLC, I talked about my Ads, Star Wars project, and DI. And since then, we have done lots more projects, and some I liked and some not so much. But since then, my mindset has not changed. I want to do the best I can in everything I do, and all my work. That has shown in all my work, in my opinion. I’ve tried my best and worked hard at school and at home to keep my work at my best.

Well, I thank you for coming to my SLC, and I hope you have a good summer!

Samuel Scheewe

The SLC’s Are Here…

Sam

Hello again,
Thanks for coming. In my SLC I’m going to share my plan for three parts of my presentation.
The first part of the presentation is to share the work I’m most proud of. I would say my Star Wars project is the one I’m most proud of.

Star Wars

My project is small, but it took a lot of hard work and concentration. It was very hard to get the bike to balance above the box using magnets. I’m most proud of this project because of the hard work doing it, and presenting it for others with an awesome slideshow of my progress. It was also fun to do because, well, it’s Star Wars! Here is a link to my Star Wars blog post:

Star Wars In School?

The next part of my conference is showing the work that showed growth. For this topic, I would say my advertisments. My first drafts of my ads were definitely not as great as my final ones. I needed to make my ads tell a story, and also have strong advertising techniques. At first, it was hard because I had never done a project like it, and I wasn’t used to doing a project without lots of specific criteria to complete. Go to this link to see my blog post on my ads:

Reflecting On My Advertising

To finish my SLC I need to talk about my work that I think shows evidence of growth mindset. I think that my Destination Imagination project showed a lot of growth mindset. At first, no one was really working, and there was so much work to do. Everyone took a while to start working, but then everyone started working really hard. We all turned our fixed mindset into a growth mindset to get the project done well. I was a happy with how our project went, we placed third in a tournament!
Check out my Destination blog post!

Destination Imagination

Thanks for reading!