The mPOLS are the mid year presentations of learning that the entire PLP does. I have to cover all PLP subjects but…

The first subject I will talk about is humanities. The socials and English portion of the first half of the year. The first unit of humanities was advertising. We started of the year in humanities learning about each other and meeting each other and learning how our iPads work. Then we started on the advertising unit by doing worksheets. Some of the sheets were about what is advertising and thing like that then we started doing more stuff involving ads like watching ads on tv and writing about them. We were told that we were going to make a advertisement for a deep cove company. This would be the main project leading up to the Oregon trip. So we ended up calling nine company’s before deep water micro eatery finally accepted us. We were so happy to finally have a company to accept us for the interview. On that Thursday we went to deep water micro eatery and got to interview the owner. The owners name was Seth and he was really cool he gave us some fries and offered us a drink and happily answered our questions about his company and his advertising. So then went home and went to school the next day and got working on the criteria for the ads that we would make. So I got right to work on the ads and my first draft was done. It was a last minute thing so it was terrible. We had to make more drafts and my second one was so much better.  All my other drafts resembled my second one. The third and the fourth drafts were pretty good, we had one more draft to do and this time the feedback came from pound and grain. They are a Vancouver based advertising comapany that had done ads for big companies like Arcteryx. Before we left our group chose an one ad from our group and our group chose mine(:  Then we took the first PLP field trip to downtown. We got to pound and grain and went to the conference room and they answered all our questions and gave me feedback on my ad.

We knew we were going to Oregon from day one but we finally went into the last week of normal school before going to actually going on the trip. And in this week we were scrambling to prepare for everything. And then boom before we new it we were on a bus and going across the border. Our group was announced that we were the first to interview a company. Our company was called Clark’s and it was an old style burgers and fries restaurant. They were very nice and were very accommodating. With all our information we left and got to enjoy the Oregon field school and watch our friends interview other companies. When we got back from the Oregon trip we started on the the Oregon ad drafts. Again my first draft was terrible and I took my feedback and did my second draft which was so much better again it had room for improvement  so again I got to work. On my third draft grade elevens came in and gave us feedback. So finally On my fourth draft I to the okay to stop making drafts. Now that was then end of the advertising unit but still we had to do the religion unit. The advertising unit taught me so much on how to take critique and make the best of it to make a newer and better product. This is a crucial skill for PLP and the rest of my life.

the religion unit started in late October and went all the way to the winter exhibition. We did many thing for the religion unit including using new apps such as explain everything. We started the religion unit with the winter exhibition and the driving question “how is religious worldview represented in the real world” in mind. We learned about the eastern religions first then we learned about the western religions. The first religion we did was Hinduism. We learned that there are many gods and that they believe in reincarnation. We did a couple worksheets  and then moved on to Buddhism where we learned that Buddhism has the eightfold path and the wheel of suffering called the wheel of dharma. Then we finally did Sikhism the last of te eastern religions that we studied. After doing all of that we were finally told that we would be doing a field study to each eastern religions place of worship. for the field trip we went to the Hindu Vedic center. Then we went to a Buddhist monastery, after we went to a sheik gurdwara and finally we went to another Buddhist temple. We learned a lot in these places and it took our learning of  religion up a level.

Then we learned about western religions. We started of with Judaism and learned about the western wall and the temple. After we learned Judaism we went into Christianity and learned about Jesus and the New Testament. The last western religion we learned about is islam. We learned about Muhammad and Mecca. After this we were told that we would go on two more field trips. One to a Christian church and another to a Muslim mosque and a Jewish synagogue. We went on the field trip to the Christian church first and learned about what happens there and who is Jesus. The a couple of days past and we went to a synagogue were we learned about the Jewish religion and why them and Christianity are different. Finally we went to a mosque and learned about islam and their beliefs. After all of this we went to work on the winter exhibition.

The winter exhibition took place in the end of December. This was the big project el numero uno and then pow, if you read my last post you’ll have known that I missed it and went to Thailand instead. This was good but not good because I got to miss school but I also missed a lot of work. This was not good but my group did amazing in the winter exhibition so gooooo group. See Emily, Anders, Emily, and Ciara. The religion project was a really fun team thing and it was awesome to bond and all that stuff.

Then boom before I knew it winter break was over and then we were told about the end of the world as we know it. This was a new project on how are transition from grade 7 to grade 8 affected our worldview. We are currently working on this and the fall of Rome and how it affected Middle Ages Europe.

Now I will be talking about maker. Maker if you don’t know is a PLP elective that you have to do. It is where you  learn about the technology of your iPad and and things based around that. Our maker year was very much like our humanities year, we did a lot of work on worldview and advertising. We started of the year in a pretty fun fashion by do pictures and learning about applications on our iPads and doing fun activity’s on them and taking pictures of each other in different perspectives. Then we started on some more serious stuff like actual hand in’s and worksheets and booklets.

finally we started on advertising. We were doing it in humanities and then we started in maker. We really didn’t do that much on advertising in maker but it got more serious as we progressed into the interviews with deep cove Companies. Maker was the class that we called all nine companies and got denied all nine times. It was so funny walking into class and saying we got denied again. Then when. We finally got deep water eatery and we were so happy. We finally got the interview and were given time in humanities and maker to make our ads and as you read above I did some good and bad drafts. Then we went to pound and grain and got some feedback for my fifth draft and did that then we went to Oregon. Oregon was a good time but we were assigned to make a book on our experience for maker and that was mediocre. We had to do some writing and had to take a ton of pictures for it. When we got back we were started working on our ad drafts for Clark’s. Again you read above that I did multiple drafts and got feedback. When the advertising unit was done we started on some really different stuff.

When we started the religion unit we knew that we would be doing some religion stuff in maker but then we were told about some other stuff. We started doing more photo related things. We started on the everyone can create a photo apple made book in iBooks. The first thing we did for this was take a photo of something similar then we did a photo walk and finally we had to make a personalized photo of something familiar. I made a toy car into a transformer. Then we had to a blog post about it. Then boom again with the photos. We did more activity’s before ending up recreating a photo from the past. I couldn’t get photos from my computer so I did the alternative by seeing what old painting my face looked liked. Then again I had to make a blog post on it. While all of this was going on we were assigned the explain everything worldview project. For this project we had to use a new app. This new app was pretty meh, I had very mixed feelings about this app it kept glitching on me but I worked it out in the end but it took a long time to finish all the drafts but they were pretty good and made a good representation of my worldview. This was very hard because I had the photos posts due and a whole lot of other stuff due. The next thing was working on our winter exhibition. The exhibition in maker was exactly like the humanities portion of this post I left early and got lots of work overdue but my group did amazing on the presentation. Then winter break was gone and we started on the new project and one of the hardest projects, destination imagination. Now that is the end of the maker portion.

Now I will be talking about the Scimatics and what we’ve done in this half year. So far this year in Scimatics we have done tons of interesting things such as the pyagoream theory and geology.  To start of the years ear we already knew we were going to Oregon so we focused on geology until mid October when we went to Oregon because the geology in Oregon is very cool. We started the year learning about the fathers of geology and the process of the earth and how it formed over millions of years. We did a couple of worksheets on the fathers of geology and rocks and the earth and things like that. Then we progressed to the geology and rock formations around Vancouver and the west coast of north and South America. And the history and the risk of a major earthquake on the west coast of canada and America. We also saw how prepared japan is for earthquakes and how Vancouver would be devastated from the big one. From there we were told that we would be doing the main geology project soon. This project was to make a children’s book on earthquakes and tectonics and volcanos. But before we started on that we did the earthquake research project. For this we had to research a certain earthquake that was very powerful and did a lot of damage. I did the great Alaskan earthquake that shook a bunch of Alaskan towns and was felt as far of as Kentucky. Now after that we started on the geology book. I felt mine was very good as it started of and the story was a pretty good child’s book. My book was about a bear who lived in the coastal areas of British Columbia. This certain bear got caught in a earthquake and wondered about what caused it. He went to the nature school for animals and learned about our earth and tectonics. He eventually told all the animals in the forest about all of this cool information and was content with his knowledge until a volcano explodes nearby. That was the plot for my child’s book. I made it in pages and thought it was pretty good. After this book there was the end of tectonics and now the start into math. The tectonics unit was probably my favourite science unit in the past couple of years. It taught me so much more about the earth and the threat we are in by tectonics. The first thing we did for math was the Pythagorean theorem. This was quite an interesting subject in math because Pythagorean was an Ancient Greek math fanatic and he even had people killed because of math. The Pythagorean theorem is the math that states the relation between the sides of the triangle. This subject taught me about my first experience in PLP math. Then we started on two more things. One of them was cells and living things for science and surface area for math. We are still working on those two subjects as the weeks drag along.

This paragraph is on pgp. This is a more complex subject but I will try and manage it for a couple paragraphs. The first thing we did for pgp was to stay after an early dismissals and go for a group lecture on pgp. If you didn’t know pgp stands for personal growth plan. The lecture told us what pgp was and what we had to do for it. This included when we would we would meet our teachers for the meeting and what we would have to write. Then we got started on the pgp document. This was a document on what rade we thought we got and why we deserve that certain grade. This was a long sheet but I got it done. Then we were assigned a the pgp forms that we have to hand in. They are due on my mPOLS.

so that is the end of my mPOLS paragraph and what we were doing it for. I have learned a lot in my first year of high school and it has been a very cool experience and was amazing. But wait what is is my my question for you teachers? Here it is. HOW CAN I BE MORE PRODUCTIVE IN A CLASS IM NOT IMMERSED IN. There you have it my presontation.