SLCs are back!

In PLP every year instead of parent teacher interviews we do a thing called SLCs (Student lead conferences). It is a way to show off our work and what we learned in front of our teachers and parents. This is now my third time doing SLCs. The first time it was very nerve racking but now I just think of it as a way to physically show some of the work I have done throughout the past two terms and reflect on that work, as well as make goals for myself to achieve by the end of the year. We do this by reflecting on our learning portfolios which is the blog you are reading right now. This year we are showing an example of the work we are most proud of, a piece of work that shows my learning and something that shows my growth mindset.

The work that I am most proud of so far this past school was my Harry Potter Blue Sky at the end of term 1. Blue sky projects are very open ended and based on answering an inquiry question about whatever you like. This year the question had to be within the realms of Harry Potter.

At first, this was a little hard to come up with a question and try to answer it especially as I have never read any of the books and have only watched one movie. However based on some information and research I came up with a question “What spells and potions would society choose and what does that say about our worldview?” I answered it by researching different spells, potions, and charms etc. and used them to create a survey to see and test out the worldview of the community.

I ended up getting a hundred people to fill out the survey in 5 age groups; 10 males and 10 female in each age group. The survey included 5 categories of spells and potions with four in each category giving the survey participants a 4 question survey with 5 options about spells and potions.

After receiving all the results from the survey, I was very surprised at how the results of the survey did not match my hypothesis at all. I had predicted that the beauty/ physical appearance category would be the most popular because of all the social media and influences of today but in reality the most popular choice was the mind category showing people wanted to increase their intelligence more so. In the end, the results were very surprising to me and I used different charts to represent the results including a 3D chart made out of test tubes with coloured sparkling water at different amounts representing the overall results of the survey. Overall I am very proud of this project and the work I put into it to bring the project together.

 

Harry Potter Blue Sky

 

Some work that shows my learning this past term were the group challenges that are a part of an organization called Destination Imagination. The challenge we participated in was in the category the Fine Arts and was called Vanished!

This was my first choice out of the six different types of challenges. I was happy with the group I was placed in as I was put with my two friends that I work really well with as well as two other people. At first, we all thought the challenge would be super easy because all we had to do was come up with a story about how the disappearance of a single colour changed the world as well as including a colourful character and vanishing act. However, when we got around to coming up with an idea for a story we had too many different thoughts and ideas to put into one story that had to be less than 8 minutes including set up. We took some main ideas we had and came up with having a detective solving a mystery story of the colour’s disappearance. When we finished our first draft of the script, it was very confusing and the story didn’t make a lot of sense.

First draft of the script:

We learnt from what we could improve on by reading over the script a couple of times and then correcting and changing parts of our script as a group. At times, it was a little hard as sometimes our group wouldn’t agree on the corrections we made but we just kept correcting the script until we were all satisfied. We also got some help with grammatical errors from our peers.

Here is the final draft:

In the end, I think our script was pretty easy to understand and had a good storyline that everyone could follow.

Destination Imagination 2.0

My Alice In Wonderland fantasy essay is an example of some of my work this year that shows my growth mindset. When we started reading the book Alice in Wonderland it was a part of our unit based around the question ‘What Draws us to Imaginary Worlds?’This question was also what our field study to Florida was based around. When I first heard we would be writing an essay in class, I was very nervous and stressed as I am not the fastest writer. I sometimes find it hard to get my ideas quickly down on paper especially when we have minimal time to plan and are not allowed to write anything before hand.

I always like to take my time when writing an assignment to do corrections as I go. When we got into class we had 40 minutes to write the essay, 10 minutes to plan, 20 Minutes to write, 10 minutes to revise and edit. I only ended up getting my intro and 2 body paragraphs done. It wasn’t my best work but I tried my hardest to get as much done as possible.

We then luckily were able to edit and revise our work for a second draft of the essay. I feel however as if I could have spent more time correcting and editing the final essay so that in the end I could have worked towards a better mark.

After the corrections were made on my essay, even though we didn’t have to correct our work, I decided to take the feedback and learn from my mistakes by editing my essay. Now I am proud of my work but of course I could still improve on my essay by editing and correcting as well as getting feedback from my peers, teacher and parents about my workout.

Down, down, down the rabbit hole

Here are my goals for the rest of the year:

1. My first goal use my time effectively even if I have a busy schedule to plan time to get work done. To achieve this goal I am going to try and plan my schedule the week before adding in all the necessary work during my free time.

2. My second goal is to always revise my work whether it is writing a post for my learning portfolio, a paragraph for the class or video project. I will be spending
more time looking over and reviewing my work for the best results because some time I feel as if I rush my work.

3. My final goal is to post more on my learning portfolio about assignments or projects that I am proud of and want to display. Because at the moment I feel as if I need to add up and beyond to by learning portfolio of work that isn’t just assigned to post but thing I would like to post to give my perspective on that assignment. I will do this by after finishing an bigger or more interesting piece of work I will pot it to my blog, my goal is one extra blog post a month.