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.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post. This blog post is going to be a tPOL. A tPOL is your transitional presentation of learning. The driving question for a tPOL is: Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade? A quick answer would be something like “I feel I am ready to move on to Grade 12 because of the skills that I have learned in Grade 11”. However, I want to go more in-depth and really show my learning and growth as a learner. So, that is what I plan to do in this post.
To start off why don’t we re-visit my Learning Plan? I’m proud that I feel like I was able to grow and reflect on the different success behaviours. I think that by having my learning plan guide me throughout my year, I was able to set goals for myself. This boosted my sense of accomplishment and helped keep me motivated throughout the year. Some of the growth that I think I have done from the beginning of the year is:
Agency –
One of my goals in my Learning Plan was to seek help when I needed it rather then just suffering in silence. As well, during my RC meeting, I told that I needed to actively ask for feedback more then I already was, this was specifically for BCFP but I also applied this feedback to Humanities to try and push myself. With this in mind, I really wanted to push myself to that extending level and one of the ways I did was through actively seeking out feedback and revisions. One of example of how I did this was through the project Cat and Maus. In past projects (LOTF), I had gotten feedback that my analytical skills were not the strongest. I really didn’t like that so I was determined during this project to do a better job. So, during the project Cat and Maus when we were building on those skills, I went into tutorial times more then I can remember if I’m being honest. Actually, I remember for a whole week everyday I dragged my mom and sister out of the house at 8 in the morning so that I could work on these skills.
After taking a closer look at my analytical skills, Ms. Madsen helped me see the error of my ways. My thinking was preliminary. I was getting the big ideas of texts but I couldn’t quite figure out how to push my thinking until she told me a very helpful trick (which I probably should I have been doing before). This trick was asking myself ‘why?’. An example of where I really saw this working was in one of the pieces of writing I did for extra practice. This was the original sentence:
Hearing about the horrific events like women’s hair being turned into felt helped me to connect with victims on a deeper level because I could better imagine the pain and suffering they endured.
Then, after applying what I had been learning and practicing in tutorial time I added:
Hair in society is seen as a beauty standard so it holds value – whether we like it or not – so by cutting women’s hair and turning it into something almost worthless, it demoralized this group of people. This realization really stuck with me, as it made me think about how something as simple as hair could be used as a tool of humiliation and degradation.
Clearly there is a big difference in the level of thinking and all of this came from actively seeking feedback and help. Because of this difference, I feel like I extended at this skill and reached my goal.
Engagement –
One of my goals for this part of my Learning Plan was to work more at putting more effort into my blog posts. For me, I usually write a lot but it’s not always good. So, I wanted to work on quality over quantity for my blog posts. I think that I accomplished this goal and grew throughout the school year on it. In grade 10, my blog posts were so long and full of non essential things that the actual meaning and what I learned from projects got lost. This year, when I felt myself starting to write to much, I took a step back and picked out the most important things that I learned so that I could get my point across more clearly and concisely. I also made sure to include more visuals and examples to help illustrate my points and make my posts more engaging for readers. It was a challenge at first to balance the amount of information I wanted to include with keeping it concise, but I feel like I have improved a lot in this area.
An example of where I wrote a short but quality blog post was The Great Debater project. My first draft of that post was probably over 1,000 words. After seeing this, I tried to cut everything in half but still keep the important learning. I can confidently say I successfully did this! The reason that I’m choosing to talk about reflection right now is because by cutting down my blog posts I know for a fact that more of the project because my thinking was/is less muddled. I was forced to really think about what I wanted to convey and how to do it in a clear and concise way. This process of reflection and refinement not only helped me improve my writing skills, but also allowed me to better understand the learning outcomes of the projects I was working on.
Overall, focusing on quality over quantity has helped me become a more effective communicator and writer. I plan to continue working on this skill in the future and produce even better blog posts.
Conduct, ethics, integrity –
One of my goals for this year was to not talk over people in class. This is definitely one of my weaknesses. I know that sometimes I can get really riled up about certain topics and I have a tendency to get loud and talk over other people. This is something that I worked on this year. Specifically, I tried to work on this during the time we spent in Socratic seminars. The first I did one was during the project LOTF. During this discussion I didn’t totally assert myself because I was trying to be conscious of what other people were saying and was trying not to cut anyone off. This didn’t work in my favour and I realized that because I couldn’t get any of the points that I wanted to out which was really frustrating. So, the next time I did a Socratic seminar for Fear Factor, I took what I learned from LOTF and asserted myself way too much to the point where I was cutting people off and accidentally talking over people. I felt pretty bad about this and I could feel the stink eyes from my class mates. Ultimately, I thought that I just didn’t understand how to advocate for my ideas without being obnoxious.
I kind of was just going to live with that UNTIL we had the chance to do one more at the end of the Fear Factor project. This is when I took the learning from my previous attempts and tried to find a balance. I made a conscious effort to listen more attentively to what others were saying and wait for an appropriate moment to talk. I also made sure to acknowledge other people’s contributions before sharing my own thoughts. It wasn’t easy and I had to constantly remind myself to be patient and respectful.
During that final Socratic seminar, I could feel myself getting anxious to share my ideas, but I held back and waited for the right moment. It was challenging, but I managed to participate without dominating the conversation. I felt proud of myself for finding that balance and I could tell that my classmates appreciated it too.
Moving forward, I know that I still have room for improvement, but I am committed to continuing to work on this aspect of myself. I believe that by being more mindful of how I communicate in discussions, I can become a more effective and respectful participant in class conversations.
Preparation –
One of my goals was to try and be on time to every class. This was a pretty big goal and somewhat realistic and life happens. However, I’m pleasantly surprised to say that I think I was only late to about 2-3 classes by 10 minuets. I made sure to set multiple alarms as I have a hard time waking up, lay out my clothes the night before, and leave early to account for any unexpected delays. It wasn’t always easy, but I made a conscious effort to prioritize being on time. It not only showed respect for my teachers and classmates, but also helped me feel more organized and prepared for the day ahead. While it didn’t work 100% of the time, it was definitely and improvement from last year. Overall, I’m proud of myself for sticking to this goal and will continue to keep this up for next year!
Self-regulation –
The goals in my Learning Plan that I set included managing my social, school, and extra curricular work like balance and identifying stressors early on.
I accomplished these goals by creating a schedule that allowed specific time slots for each aspect of my life. This is when I really started utilizing alarms for daily life so that I could have a reminder of things that were happening and due dates. One example of this was in BCFP. Every Tuesday, we’ve had to write a ‘daily note’ and reflect on something that we learned during the week. Because this was something that was optional and we had no reminder, I found it really hard to make sure it was done. So, but setting a reminder that was re-occurring, I was able to remember and not miss a day. As well as helping myself, I was able to message my friends and I’s group chat to help remind them to.
Overall, I learned the importance of setting specific goals and creating a plan to achieve them. By identifying my stressors and finding solutions, I was able to improve my time management skills and find a better balance in my life. This experience has taught me valuable lessons that I will continue to apply in the future to reach my full potential in all areas of my life.
Communication and collaboration –
I think I really worked on my collaboration skills during the project Who Cares and Why Bother? In my group I helped with communication – whether that was coordinating and enforcing due dates that we set for ourselves or making sure that we were on track to finish the project on time. Besides doing just my individual part of the presentation (researching and writing about Canada’s environmental issues, researching and writing about all the different parities views on environmental issues, creating animations for my part of the video, researching and writing about the Governor General and Head of state, etc), I also helped edit our entire slide show to make sure that the theming was consistent (colour, font sizing, amount of text). As well, I editing the entirety of the video and put together everyone’s draft videos together. Unfortunately we had to re-film everything so we had to re-edit everything again. Overall, I think that I was a good contribution to the team. Going forward I want to continue to help my groups with communication and meeting deadlines.
I found it really difficult sometimes when people weren’t putting in effort because I had to pick up their slack which was annoying and I got frustrated with. At the beginning of this project, me and one of the people I was working with got into an argument about how deadlines are important and I tried to stress to them that we actually did need their work in order to complete the project. They didn’t listen to me so we had to go ahead without their part. This made me pretty upset because I didn’t think it was fair that they didn’t have to do their work which I voiced to them and they didn’t take kindly to. So, the next time when this issue arose, I went to a teacher and communicated with them about this issues and I found this was very effective and efficient. Going forward, this is definitely something I want to emulate.
Where have I had a FAIL?
As you can probably tell, I had the biggest FAIL in my Humanities project Who Cares and Why Bother? My struggle with reading a physical copy really affected my note-taking process, leading to disorganization and weak analysis. Reflecting on this, I realized the importance of having systems in place for effective note-taking. After revising my notes and making deeper connections, I saw significant improvement. This experience highlighted the value of revision and the impact it can have on understanding and learning. I also took this learning into the next BCFP project where we had to read and analyze a book and I made sure to do it on my iPad so that I could get the most out of it having learned from past mistakes.
My favourite project this year
My favourite project this year was 1000% the Great Debaters. It was super fun working on my writing skills and presentation skills. I found the topic that Max and I chose realty interesting and engaging. As well, I love public speaking so this project was right up my alley. Another reason why I liked this project is that it helped set me up for that Barry Sullivan Law Cup and actually gave me the confidence to do it.
=
=
In the end, I think that I had a really good year. I had so much fun in all of my classes and I bonded with my classmates. I really enjoyed the work that we did and I’m super proud of everything that I did. While I feel like I did better on some projects than others, all of them taught me important things that I will apply in Grade 12 and beyond. Thank you so much for reading that long post on my tPOLS!
Best wishes,
-Dana