TPOL

Hello and welcome back to my blog. Today’s post is all about my TPOL and reflecting on the learning I have done this year. I will go over the competencies, the learning plan goals I set at the beginning of the year, areas I excelled in, and areas I didn’t.

Declaration of learning:

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I 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.

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The Driving Question of a TPOL:

Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

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Competency reflection

At it’s core, all of our learning in PLP surrounds the 3 main curricular competencies. Communicating, Personal and Social, and Thinking. At the start of the year, we made learning plans and set a goal of what profile we would like to achieve in these competencies.

Thinking

 

For my thinking competency, I put myself at a profile four for both areas. I think I was successful in achieving both of these profiles and that can be demonstrated through my learning this year.

I believe I used the Critical and Reflective Thinking competency well in my essay written on Juno Beach in humanities. Using my prior knowledge of the events of WWII alongside my newly learned information, I was able to pull from both sources to create a compelling argument against proposed modern developments on Juno Beach.

The second area within the communication competency is Creative Thinking. I think a good example of my use of Creative Thinking this year is my project from our Romeo and Juliet unit in humanities. In this group project, we had to come up with a modern take on a scene from Romeo and Juliet, so you can probably imagine the creative thinking and collaboration that went into this project. While working with my group, I came up with the main plot line idea for our project and I’m super happy with how our final video turned out.

 

Communication

In the communicating competency, I put myself as a profile 4, although I think I could’ve challenged myself by putting a profile 5. I think a profile 5 communicating competency would’ve matched some of the work I have produced this year and pushed me harder to make it all of the work.

I demonstrated this communication competency well in some parts of our Lies and Incongruencies project, and not so well in others. In this project, we had to display our knowledge of contemporary Indigenous issues through a collage. The catch was that our collage had to link to several paragraphs we had written about different Indigenous issues. In total, I wrote about 3 different issues, and I think I communicated effectively about these issues through writing.

The part of this project I think I could’ve utilized this competency more efficiently in, is the actual collage. I’m not overjoyed about how my collage turned out, and I think I could’ve used a more cohesive colour scheme and image assembly to communicate the message of it better, which is spreading an awareness of the lack of safe drinking water in Indigenous communities across Canada. I think my collage was rushed and I would’ve liked to take it in a different direction, layout-wise.

 

Collaborating:

I think a good example of collaboration from this year is the Power of Imagination tourism video I helped to created. During this project, I made a specific goal to try and contribute and not just take a backseat in the group. This was no easy task, as I was in a group with Fraser, Nolan, and Ariane. I noticed in grade 9 that when I was working with super smart people I tend to let them take on the bulk of the work because I think my contributions will just bring the project down. But in this project, I made it a goal to make my voice heard and help as much as I can. We relied on each other to make this project happen because the teachers were away.

 

In two projects this year, I had the opposite problem. During the Ology of Apology and Romeo and Juliet projects, I took on a big part in the projects and didn’t rely on my teammates. To be fair, I did well on both of those projects but it was just a stressful experience all around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal and Social

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe I achieved the profile 4 in Personal Awareness and Responsibility. This is demonstrated in our Maker project, Making Effective Personal Design Choices.

The first part of this project involved learning about and making personal productivity systems. Learning about personal productivity helped me develop skills that I used in the 5 trend videos project and I carried on this skill through future projects.

I think I could’ve used this competency better in my podcasting project. I was unprepared for the actual script and content recording part of the project which led to a podcast plan that I had to shorten considerably. I think a more solid plan for my episodes could’ve helped me make a better podcast.

I believe I showed the social awareness and responsibility aspect in my project on the Komogata Maru. In this project, I learned about an important historical event that happened in Vancouver, then had a chance to educate visitors at the winter exhibition on the event.

 

 

 

 

In the positive personal and cultural identity aspect of this competency, I hoped to achieve a profile 4. I believe I met this goal, and a good example of this learning is my recently completed “About Me” page revision on my blog. As part of our final exam in Maker, we had to revise our About Me page, which many of us (including me) had not touched since grade 8. I think this revised page represents me and some of the learning I have done in my 3 years of PLP.

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Now that I’ve discussed the competencies, I’d like to write about my learning plan, which I set at the start of the year, and adjusted halfway through. In this learning plan, I set specific goals of where I would like to be in my courses, and now I can reflect on those goals and find out where I excelled in, and possibly some areas that I could have worked on a bit more.

 

The first thing in my learning plan is my statement of learning intent. This is a few sentences of your learning intentions for the year. At the start of the year, I had hoped to earn accomplished in my courses, which didn’t challenge me enough, so I adjusted it to extending. I have achieved the first intention of earning extending in my PLP courses this semester. The second intention was to utilize my learning supports to complete work, which I also did this year. This year I started using tutorial time a ton, which was super helpful for getting stuff done. The organization tactics I started using this year also helped me with my workload. I learned how to properly use Things and it made all the difference.

 

My goal was to achieve extending in humanities, which I accomplished.

Growth:

To quickly summarize where I wanted to grow, this is what my goals were:

• Grow my writing skills

I think my writing significantly improved this year. You can see this demonstrated through several projects, including, Gold Rush, Juno Beach, and Lies and Incongruencies. I worked specifically on my summarization and persuasive writing skills.

• Go beyond my comfort zone by taking on bigger roles in group work

I certainly took on some bigger roles in group projects this year. This is shown in Ology of Apology, Romeo and Juliet, and the Power of Imaginations projects.

• Learn how to do effective group work with all kinds of peers

Throughout the three projects listed above, I worked with all kinds of peers. I will admit that this is still an area where I struggle and a goal I will carry on with me into grade 11.

Support:

• Always have my school focus mode on when in class or working on homework

This goal was pretty easy for me to achieve. Most of the time, I just forget that it’s on and it helped to avoid distractions this year

• Go to tutorial time when necessary

I’m super glad I decided to use this support as much as I did this year. By regularity going to tutorial time, I was able to get lots of work done, and access more one-on-one support from teachers.

• Ask for help from teachers when I need it

This is something that I have been struggling with for a while, I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned in all of my presentations of learning. I think this year helped me gain more confidence in asking for when necessary mostly by going to tutorial time.

 

Growth

• Grow in my leadership abilities through group work

I was honestly expecting more group projects in Maker this year, but we didn’t do DI. This goal was more specifically for DI, but we didn’t end up doing it. I think that while I didn’t get a chance to explore this goal in Maker, I got to in humanities.

• Grow my organizational skills

As I mentioned previously, I absolutely achieved this goal. I think the most PLP thing I have ever done is when I downloaded Things on my phone as well as my iPad. Learning how to properly organize all the areas my life made such a difference in my productivity this year,

 

These habits and systems have worked well for me this year and I plan to carry them into grade 11. _____________________________________________________________________________

Out of all the projects completed this year, I think I am the proudest of my Juno Beach Essay. I think this essay showcasing my revision skills (8 drafts were made in total!), and my argumentative writing skills. All of the revisions I made helped me create a strong, cohesive argument that I’m super proud of.

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Moving Forward

For the majority of this school year, I was set on quitting PLP. But as PLP always says, learning doesn’t come from experience, it comes from reflection. So after the exhibition, about a week ago, I was reflecting on this year in PLP. It certainly had its ups and downs, but in the end I decided that staying with the program for grade 11 was the right decision for me.

I would like to carry on the writing and organizational skills I learned this year into grade 11. Next year, I really want to focus on truly effective teamwork and learn how to properly delegate roles and responsibilities.

That’s everything for my TPOL blog post! I hope you enjoyed this reflection on my grade 10 year in PLP. Please let me know and comments, questions, or suggestions you have for me. I hope through this post and presentation, you can see the reasons why I am ready to advance to the next grade.

Sincerely,
Me