POL Declaration 

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. l am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

Learning plan

I would like to start off my by talking about my learning plan. I have chose three main points that I would still like to work harder on for the rest of this year. These are communication and collaboration, agency, and preparation. I would like to communicate better with my teachers and ask for help when I need it. I need to be more organized with my school work, and I have started to use a calendar to plan my days. This will help me to stay on top of my work and to stop leaving my home work until the past minute, or even handing it in late. I would also like to improve on asking more questions in class if I am unsure of my assignments. Of course I still need to improve on all of the categories on my learning plan. 

 

 Humanities

The two humanities projects that really stood out to me this year are It’s the End of the World as We Know It and Power Play or How It Started. Since Power Play or How It Started and Radical Innovation or How It Is Going both contributed to one end product, I will be talking about them both. These projects stood out to me the most in humanities so far because they were the most enjoyable for me. (Even though the song my group made in “Its the End of the World as We Know It” was embarrassing”

The driving question for It’s the End of the World as We Know it was “How can a text help me understand myself as my worldview is changing?”. We read the book The Outsiders and our end product was a song about how our worldview is changing. In this project we learned what Worldview is and how it impacts us. We also identified the worldview of the text or characters in The Outsiders. We did this by filling out investigations and sharing them with our group every week.

Here are some of my investigations I did while I read The Outsiders. What I struggled with a lot while reading was getting all of my investigations done on time. I often left my reading to the last day so rushed the investigations. I think if I were to do a project similar to this again I would really take more time to be more detailed in my investigations, which I could only do if I gave myself enough time to make do them. While reading The Outsiders I was able to understand how differently people thought back then, showing me how much worldviews can change. While reading I was subconsciously forming opinions about what the characters would do or say, I was even forming opinions about the book itself if I liked it or not.

Writing the lyrics with my group was enjoyable. We chose to make our lyrics a lot about going from elementary school to high school. While writing the lyrics with my group I thought about how much my worldview has changed as I’m growing up. Reading The Outsiders and completing the investigations helped me to write lyrics by helping me understand the worldview of the outsiders so I would be able to understand the worldview of myself. 

Power play or how it started and radical innovations or how it’s going really stood out to me because they were both contributing to what I would be presenting at the winter exhibition. Similar the project before where we identified the worldview of The Outsiders, in these projects we identified the worldview of the Middle Ages, The Renaissance, and now. The driving question for Power Play and Radical Innovations was “What can we learn from the past, and why does it matter to us today?”.

In both of these projects we combined art from the Middle Ages (for power play) and from the renaissance (for radical innovations). I really enjoyed combining the art because it was fun to find art and then put my face on it and make a whole unique art piece out of multiple pieces. 

                 

I really liked learning about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We can learn so much from the past. While I was learning about these I really saw a lot of growth that happened over time. When we reflect on the growth that has happened it can help us to continue growing and it can help us to know that we can improve on the things we are not as good at now. I love doing art. Sometimes I stumble across my old drawing and sculptures, and at the time I was so proud of them and I thought they were so amazing. Now looking back at them I see how much I have grown, and it helps me to keep going because I know I will keep getting better at art. when we reflect on the Middle Ages or renaissance we might laugh at how strange it was but when we reflect on how much we have grown since then it makes us realize how much further we can grow to. But plants only grow when they have the proper nourishment and I will only get better at art when I practice.  

Maker

Maker has helped me realize a lot of my strengths. When I did the Who am I as a PLP Learner project, I enjoyed using Keynote and designing my slideshow. Here is a short clip of my reflection on my Keynote presentation.

I really liked maker because I got to do a lot of things involving design and drawing. Maker was mainly just helping me get used to some of the apps used a lot in PLP and it was kind of getting me used to using my iPad. The projects we did in maker this year were independent so it aloud me to make any choices I wanted.  

Science

Science has been really fun so far. I especially liked making observations when we did experiments. 

When making my game I struggled a lot with finishing my game. This brings me back to what I want to work on from my learning plan.

I think I could have put more effort into my Mind Over Matter project because I don’t feel like I did my best. I hope to improve and do my best on all of my projects going forward because I want to be proud of the work that I accomplish.

In science I also just really enjoyed looking at pond water under a microscope. It was so cool to see all of the tiny organisms living in the water.

 

Conclusion 

I think I have grown a lot this year. I’d say the two largest areas I’ve grown is with being engaged in lessons and conduct ethics and integrity. I’ve noticed I get a lot less distracted during class over the months, and I use focus modes to silence notifications during school. I also think I’ve improved a lot more from the start of the year with me sharing my ideas in class. I still need to work on it a bit more but I have noticed improvement. Going forward I will continue to improve and I hope I will fulfil some of my goals by the end of the year!