As the end of the year rapidly approaches, it is time to start reflecting on all of the work I have done so far. This is where SLCs come in, because they help share the work that I have done so far this year with my parents and my outlook with my teachers.

Timelapse from Destination Imagination

The first project that I will be talking about is my presentation for Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination is an tournament where you are asked create a project that helps solve a complex challenge. The area of focus that I chose was Fine Arts, because of my passion for art and design. Our challenge was to create a play about the effects that would happen if a colour was to disappear. My group chose to focus on if yellow disappeared. This posed a lot of challenges because of us choosing a primary colour. We didn’t take into consideration of how colours mix to create other ones. This created a lot more of of work for us to do when we were running out of time. In the end, our project came together and we were ready to present at regionals. Unfortunately regionals didn’t go as planned because the vanishing act didn’t seem to turn on. This didn’t discourage us because we still landed in 3rd place out of 8 other groups. I am very proud of how my group worked so hard and so well together to create something we were very proud of. Moving forward from this we hope to perfect our act by practicing more and adding some key elements we might have missed, and hopefully do even better at provincials.

This year I feel that I grew a lot as a learner. I not only changed my outlook on learning but I also feel that I have become a much better writer. Looking back at my first blog post about camera angles , I can really say that it wasn’t my best work. The way I wrote, didn’t reflect my personality and I really didn’t know how to write for an audience. Now when I read my more recent posts like in my Oregon Blog Post , I see more text and pictures, that have links and other media to help explain a topic even that much deeper. I also use more transition words and my spelling is a lot more outgoing I have been using more unique words that I probably didn’t know at the beginning of the year.

One of the most important things I have learned this year is how to grow a Growth Mindset. At the beginning of the year I had said things like “I will never be good at that” or “Oh I suck at this” which showed a mindset that is fixed. One project that helped me grow a Growth Mindset was the advertising unit. This unit was very important and helped me understand the importance of drafts. We were asked to make three different kinds of ads, one for a local business, one for a local area, and one advocacy one for earthquake preparedness. I learned to take feedback in a growth Mindset kind of way, and not get defensive. Getting feedback from my peers such as my friends, family and teachers helped me improve my ads and make them more effective.

The link to see my ads is here

It is very important to set goals for yourself. This can help you reflect and use what you have learned in the future. My first goals that I have set from now until June is that I want to be less of a procrastinator. I know that this is a common one but it really applies to me. I like too push off work until the day before, especially when its not something that interests me. I also have a tendency to think that I can do more things in a less amount of time. For example I will say “Well, this worksheet will take like 5 seconds” when it would take a whole lot kore than that to get a good grade. How I think I am going to achieve this is my making lists or timelines. I have tried it before but never really committed to it. Timelines can be very helpful because they can help plan out realistic blocks of time and help get a sense of organization. My second goal is to be more self-motivated. I set this goal on my Growth Mindset Selfie which I talking about in my post “Growing a Growth Mindset“. I want to be able to look forward ton learning and not think about school as something boring. I want to try my best to dig deeper in a topic if I find it not interesting. And as I said in my selfie, I want to see school and learning as the ” key to success”. Last but not least, is my goal to use class time wisely. This goals kind of ties into my first one because I need to stop overestimating myself and how much work I can do. I always say to myself that I can do it at home and just finish it later. Instead, I want to save my free time and finish things when they are given and focus on getting things done so I don’t have to work on them later. I want to achieve this goal my not getting distracted and staying on task, which is sometimes really hard sometimes.

Overall, I think that this year has been great so far and that I have learned many valuable skills that I can apply to many other things in life.