Around this time every year, all kids in PLP do a midway presentation of learning, an MPOL. This is a presentation of our learning from what we have already done and what we hope to accomplish in the remaining part of the year. The big question for this is, What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year , and how will you meet it? In this post I’m going to reflect on each of the subjects I’m learning in school, and how I can improve In them for the rest of the year.

In scimatics this year we have done a few projects already. One of them was about tectonic plates, and another was about the Pythagorean theorem. I think that I have been doing pretty well in scimatics this year. When we were learning about tectonic plates we were righting a children’s book about everything we were learning. We had to make tectonic Plates sound simple and still include important facts. This was somewhat difficult for me, I like writing things out and explaining them, so trying to come up with an interesting story that was simple yet including everything important was a little challenging. Otherwise so far in scimatics I think that I have been doing pretty well.

 

At the beginning of the year we did a project about advertising in Humanities. I think I learned a lot about advertising and how it can influence people, but looking back now I don’t think I did very well in actually creating an advertisement. When I was doing the project I was actually pretty interested at learning how to create an impactful ad. When I started to make drafts I didn’t think they were my best work, but I kept trying new things. I didn’t really stop and think   about what I was actually going to create, I just made something to get it done. I think with this project it was something that I just completed and didn’t stop and think about, I didn’t take a moment to realize what I was doing. Looking back on this now I think I should have stoped and seen what I was doing wrong, I didn’t even realize at the time that I was making the same mistakes over and over again.

 

So far this year we haven’t really done a tone of work in PGP, which stands for personal growth plan. After we went on our big field study to Oregon, we had to write a reflective blog post, similar to this, on how we worked and what went well and what didn’t go very well. Writing a blog post is definitely not one of my favourite things in PLP. For me reflecting on my work can be hard, and I didn’t like having to write entire post about what I think about my own work. Reflecting is something that was really hard for me to do and it is definitely something I want to get better at. In the second half of grade eight I want to be able to make a better reflection on my work and I want to be able to see where I made mistakes and learn from them.

 

Maker is a fun subject where I think I learn a lot of stuff I would learn in other places. At the very start of the year we did a project called The Big Life Journal. During this project we were reading a fill in the blanks book, where it would ask you about your goals and it would ask you to reflect on your day and what you spend your time doing. As I mentioned earlier I am not the best at reflecting so writing some of this was also hard for me, I do think this was a big learning point for me though. This was when I really started to reflect for the first time, with this project I wasn’t great at it because it was just the beginning, but I do notice that it has become a lot easier for me to look back and notice mistakes that I can improve on, not just mistakes I made.

 

In the slide show below there are a few photos from the projects I just talked about, some of it is work I’m proud of and some of it I’m not so proud.

 

 

 

 

 

As it is Halfway through the school year, I still have time to fix my mistakes, time to achieve my goals, and time to make adjustments to my work habits. In the rest of the year my goal is to be able to reflect better on my mistakes. This starts with recognizing them, then not just seeing them as mistakes but as a learning experience. I think already that I have had many experiences that I could have recognized as mistakes and learned from. I do think I still learned from them, just not in the same way I could have. This is something I really hope to get better at for the end of the year.

 

A question I would like to end with is,

How can I use reflection in my everyday life?

 

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

-Ronald E. Osborn