TPOL

Hello you silly goober! This is the blog post all about my very first TPOL! I made it through my first MPOL so hopefully I make it through my first TPOL (I’m crossing my fingers). Just kidding! If you don’t know already, POL stands for Presentation Of Learning and the T stands for Transitional meaning the transition to the next grade. In this blog post I will talk about 10 main things, including the driving question, my growth as a learner in all my courses, my work ethic, my work habits, my areas for improvement, my success behaviours, revisions, teamwork, responsibility, and my production of work. These are just some of the things that make me a learner. Like my MPOL (Mid Year Presentation Of Learning) the TPOL also has a time limit of 7 minutes. In those 7 minutes, I will tell my story of learning. I hope you will enjoy my story. 

POL declaration: 🗣️

“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.”

Science: 🦠

I have demonstrated my growth as a learner in science by applying critical thinking skills to go beyond the basic requirements and thoroughly answer the driving question. I have also been very active in the classes making it ten times more interesting then if I weren’t actively learning in the class. I think that at the beginning of the second semester when science started I wasn’t exited for science because I thought it would be boring, but as soon as we started working I realized that we were going to be doing some really interesting stuff and soon came to love science. 

Humanities: 📖

In humanities, I have previously struggled a lot with organizing my time well and I would constantly find myself being swamped with work. Now on the other hand, I have gotten much better at organizing my time and work much better. I have made out a system that works really well for me because that way I can balance my school and social life as needed. 

Revisions: My Oregon Ad 🔁

After our trip to Oregon, we were required to make an ad that displayed a certain theme about Oregon. My theme was ‘excitement and escape’ so I had to make my ad correspond correctly to the theme. I had approximately 4-5 revisions, but throughout the revisions I pushed through and came out with a final product that I really liked. You could tell that every time I made a revision, it looked better and better. I’ve always had some struggles with getting told my work isn’t good enough or that I need to re do it, but PLP has taught me that its not a bad thing to get a revision, but instead it pushes you to get your best work done. 

Before:                                                  After:

Teamwork: The Spring Exhibition 🌷

I think that one of my best moments for teamwork was the spring exhibition. Because of our group being the smallest, we all had to put in much more work than some of the other groups. I was very proud of my teamwork in this event because even though I had to put in more work, I enjoyed it and did it to the best of my abilities. I was also responsible enough to make sure that the work that I had to do was done and was also better than was expected. 

High Quality Work: Peanuts Character & Oregon Adventure Book 💯

I have two examples of some work that I am really proud of. Firstly, I have my peanuts character and although I didn’t make this during school year, I’m still really proud of it and I thought I did it to the best of my ability. Knowing that I can’t draw that well, I was really proud of this piece of artwork I made. The task was to draw yourself as a peanuts character, and I think it turned out really well. My second piece of work that I wanted to show you is my organ adventure book. Even though I got a couple revisions on this book, I am really proud of it because I worked very hard on it and I love the way it turned out. I think I put my design skills and writing skills to the test on this book, but it worked in my favour to create a really cool book to remember grade eight by. 

Work Ethic: 👍

If I set my mind on something, I’m really good at getting that done and to the best of my ability but every once in a while, I struggle with putting my best work in for something I’m not very interested in. Sometimes if I’m doing something that I am really interested in I will only focus on that one thing and then get it done really well. on the other hand if if it’s something I’m not very interested in or it’s a job or chore. I tend to have not very good attitude about it and work ethic. Sometimes I will be very obvious with my attitude towards a task or job, but other times I will just quietly judge it. 

Work Habits: 📚

As a person who likes to get something done in one sitting, my work habits aren’t always healthy. But over the year, I have learnt to overcome this and have done really well at spacing out my work blocks and break times. I’ve gotten really good at knowing when I need to stop and have a break and knowing how long I can continue working for. I’ve always been a morning person so for me it’s much easier to wake up at five in the morning to do homework then stay up until 12 doing homework. Being a morning person, I will often leave my work to the last minute and just wake up the very morning it’s due and do it all then, but I have also learnt that that is not an efficient use of my time so I have gotten much better at getting my work done in a little bit instead of in one sitting.

Agency: Seeking help 🙋‍♀️

I’ve always struggled with asking for help whether it’s from a friend, coach, parent, or teacher but over the school year I noticed that I have definitely gotten better. Many times during the school year I found myself stuck on a certain question, or task, but I have been pushing myself to ask for help not just try to figure it out myself and potentially get it wrong. I don’t know why I find it challenging to ask for help but I always struggled with it. I know many people who are told that they ask for help too much but I’m the opposite. This first year of PLP I noticed that I have been in more situations where I needed to ask for help, so that has pushed me to ask for help more often which I think really helped.

Agency: Goals and self assessing ✅

I have never been the type of person to set goals for myself, but with new opportunities like for example, the app Things has really pushed me to set goals for myself so I can grow as a learner. If you don’t know already, the app Things is a great way to keep track of tasks, chores, and of course goals. It is an app you will have to pay for, but it is a great investment. (This blog post is not sponsored). I have realized this year that goal-setting is a great way to push yourself and make sure that you get to where you want to be.

Communication and Collaboration: Peers 👂

I think that overall, I’m very good person to have in a group project because I will do the work that you ask me to do, I will put in ideas, I will provide supplies and most importantly, I will listen and be active in the group. Every single group project that we have been in this year I think I have been an asset to the group and hopefully I will continue to be a helpful and respectful group member. I have been told many times by friends that if they want an opinion on something, they will ask me because they know that I will be brutally honest and give them helpful criticism that they can use to grow. 

THANKS FOR LISTENING TO MY LEARNING STORY!

Thanks for reading all about my first TPOL! I’ll see you silly goobers next year!