T-POL 2022

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Hellloo and welcome back to my blog! Now today is a special post and important because it’s T-POLs time! For those who don’t know what a T-POL is let me give you a quick explanation. A T-POL stands for transitional presentation of learning. T-POLs are the way to fully reflect on the learning, improving, and challenges in the year. It has been a while since we have done T-POLs since covid last year kind of messed things up. But we are back and I’m ready.

This T-POL is going to be focused on the improvement I made over grade 11. First point I want to say is this year has been difficult for me, I’ve had a lot of events happen that held me back quite a bit and effected me long term. With that said I feel I have held together and accomplished a lot given my situation. It has been a tough year, but I’m proud of the achievements I made and goals I completed. 

To take a step back and truly answer the question for this years T-POLs: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level? Let’s talk about the goals I made in my M-POLs. 

I know the goals I made were strong and important. One of the goals I set was: I will keep my organization skills up and work hard to try and meet the next level of the “profiles” in my Learning Plan. I feel I had a rocky year with my organization and staying on top of work. Although the project I feel I most improved on this goal was the Sounds of Poetry project.  With this project we worked on studying poetry and the concept behind some poems and song lyrics. We then chose 5 songs that reflected you, you could interpret that in anyway you wanted. I chose to pick my songs based on how I have many moods and “personalities” I experience daily.  I want to express how my mind is a little bit different, and works it’s own way. This project I truly enjoyed because I felt free to express myself, and I didn’t hold back.  I did well with staying on top of assignments as well as completely the main component on time and in good quality. I feel confident saying this was the project I improved most on my organization goal.

The next goal I set in my M-POLs was: I’m going to work on my time management and organization skills so I can use my time most efficiently. The project I found most challenging for this goal was the persuasive text project. The project was to choose a topic you agree on and an audience that has the opposite opinion to that topic, and then write an essay convincing them of your side.  I struggled a lot with this project because I had a really hard time thinking of a topic I was confident enough about to write a whole essay about to convince my audience. Overall I feel I could have preformed much better with this project. I’m not fully satisfied with how I used this goal. I’m not going to lie, this goal was difficult and I didn’t improve on it how I wanted. Which again, given my situation I won’t beat myself up for. I’ve struggled quite a bit in the past with time management and using my time well. It’s always been a challenge for me for as long as I can remember. And probably will always effect me. But it’s how I learn to manage and continue on with improving, that’s so important.

 If you asked me in the beginning of the year if I thought I would be happy and accomplished by the end of grade 11, I would have told you that’s impossible. But I’m happy to say I am. This year, although it was extremely difficult, I also learnt a lot about myself as a learner. Which is very important if you ask any PLP teacher. Now to clearly answer our T-POL question: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level? Even though I didn’t improve on my goals for physical work or time management. I know I’ve improved as a person, student, and as a learner. I’ve learn how I can help myself when times get tough in school, and straight up just how my brain works, which I know will be helpful for next year. With what I’ve gone through the past year, I’m glad I’m in the place I’m in now. I feel ready and excited for new improvements next year. I’ve collected a lot of knowledge over this year, and reflecting during writing this, I can say in confidence, I will make new goals and accomplish all the goals I had set. I know next year will be a challenge, and quite scary. But I am ready to learn and excited for the path ahead of me. 

Thank you so very much for listening to my T-POLs today! See you next year!

~ Emily!

Once again it’s time for mPOLs📝

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Hello! And welcome back to another blog post. Today’s post is my Midyear Presentation Of Learning! We haven’t done an mPOL for quite some time but I’m excited to jump right in. This year’s focus for the mPOLs are these two driving questions: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? As well as, How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? So tag along to find out my answers!

Something new PLP has started is individual Learning Plans. In the beginning of the year we all filled out a statement of learning intent, step by step plans to accomplish our goals and choosing “Profiles” representing different levels of the Core Competencies that we chose and aimed to have improved in by the end of the year. In this year’s mPOL, I’m going to be talking through some of these Competencies and how my progress has been.

The goal I set at the beginning of this year was to improve on my Communication skills. Meaning, speaking in front of others in a interesting and positive way as well as being informative and clear. Presenting and speaking in front of people has always been a very difficult and overwhelming task. I understand how important it is to have good communication skills to help you in the future, and I definitely want to feel more comfortable presenting as time goes on. That’s why I believe this is a good suitable goal for me to be able to successfully achieve. 

In preparation for my mPOL, I decided I wanted to take a different approach to it then I have in the previous years. I began to review my past mPOLs and what I noticed was I mainly focused on the specific projects we did throughout of the year. While that is clear and helpful, this year I feel as though there are much better ways to self reflect on my progress with Core Competencies and my chosen goals. I did not want to solely choose projects to reflect on. I wanted to be more wide range with reflecting on the year so far. So I decided I would focus on my Learning Plan, the goals/competencies I feel I could improve on, and examples to show my improvements.

Looking back at this school year so far, and I believe I’ve shown some promising improvements in the Communication Competency. While presenting to my peers about my “Playlist of My Life”, I felt way more in control and calm as well as confident in what I was speaking about. I focused on practicing presenting and making sure I’m fully aware of the Core Competencies I needed to achieve so I could submit a project I was very satisfied and proud of. Although I still have much more to improve and revise on, for our first semester I feel fairly proud of the progress I’ve made. I look forward to see how my skills will evolved by the end of this year.

The next thing I’ve been really working on this year is the Collaboration Competency. To break that down, I wanted to get better at successfully and effectively working with my peers. I’ve never had a problem with getting along with my group, what I struggled with was expressing and sharing my ideas, and giving helpful and specific criticism to ideas I had opinions on. I had a tendency to not share my thoughts because I felt they could be “wrong” and “bad” or not creative enough. I have come to the realization that there is no such thing as bad ideas. When we did our Political Party project, I had a difficulty finding my voice and the strength to speak up. I was concerned about the reactions I could get if I spoke up about my thoughts, but once again to my surprise I was welcomed by a helpful and supportive environment. I only wish I would have stepped out of my comfort zones earlier. But I’ve learn to not be afraid to express my thoughts because although it might be scary at first, the feedback and helpful criticism you receive it’s extremely useful and supportive and will only help you improve!!

Now that I’ve gone over and explained my answer for the first driving question: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? Let’s answer the next one. How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? Overall I’ve made strong progress on my goals, I understand there is much more room for improvement and I’m eager to keep on improving. I aim to reach the levels of “Communication” and “Collaboration” I set in my Learning Plan by the end of the year. I will continue to make good progress on my goals, I will keep my organization skills up and work hard to try and meet the next level of the “profiles” in my Learning Plan. I’m going to work on my time management and organization skills so I can use my time most efficiently. I aim to become the best version of myself, with lots of practice and determination I’ll make it. 

Thank you so so much for taking the time to learn about my progress so far this year. I hope to see you around!

The Egalitarian Party of Canada⚖️

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Heyo! Welcome back to my blog! Todays post is about our newest project. The recent Canadian federal election just took place, so for our first big project this year, it’s all about creating our own political party, and our views and ideas on how the government should be run and structured. We use the information we learnt about the Canadian government and its structure from our classes, and lectures. We were put into groups, with similar views. My group consists of Ciara, Kaia, fraser and me! 

The party we created is called the Egalitarian Party of Canada, EPC for short.  Our party is based on the principles of equality to bring all of Canada together. Take a look at our statement of intent poster “Our mission is to build an economically strong, environmentally sound, and increasingly diverse Canada through our political plan”

Our party is unique and special because, instead of forcing people away from each other based on wealth, and taxing the wealthy out of all their money. Our mission is to set up government programs where the more wealthy can donate straight to the less fortunate. These programs will impact them and their communities greatly.

We plan to make sure diversity at many levels of government by making sure that all the people of Canada, with different backgrounds, ethnicities, gender, sexuality, that they are included in every government establishment by providing education, training and making sure opportunities are there for everyone, and anyone in need. 

We will also correct the current unsuccessful voting system that we use today. The Canadian people actually choose to vote for the party more precisely represented, not only federal but local as well. 

The Egalitarian Party of Canada is a open minded liberal party, who’s goal is bringing Canadians together through equality and diversity. 

Our main and more important priorities are, allowing the more wealthy the chance to give of their own free will instead of taxing out of it, changing the electoral system to a Proportional Representation system, ensuring diversity in all governmental institutions by providing the necessary tools to those individuals.

Thank you for learning about our political party today! I hope you find an interest to our party, vote EPC!

2021 Election!

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Hellooo and welcome back to my first blog of the school year!! I know I’m not the only one noticing the blue, green, red, and orange signs everywhere around the community because of the recent Canadian Election. Most of you know that the election starts in October not September, but in August the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau called an election early for September 20th, hope to gain a majority government.

It is now past the election since the Canadians voted on the the 20th.

Free and fair elections are one of the main and most important part of a Democracy. Although, not all Canadians are eligible to vote in elections. I believe that you need to be motivated to vote, people need to agree and understand about what the parties are advertising. And by voting it not only elects the party but you helped and now have made a big impact. People not interested in what the parties are saying, prevents people people from voting, if the people don’t know or care about what they’re voting for. They have no reason to vote. Which impacts the community in not a great way.

Something that could help motivate people to vote is to give them the right to, they want to have the chance to vote. Voters can also be worried and unsure about a topic that a candidate or party says they want to work on. Something not all people realize is, not enjoying or being for the way the government is being run, is also a motivation to vote. They don’t like how things are being run, then they vote and make that change.

I think people expected the results of the election to be as most people were saying. The Liberal Party had won, but without a majority. It would have been pretty hard for them to gain a majority because a lot of people were not happy, and disappointed that the election was called because of the pandemic. I understand how they are feeling, it was a bit of a waste of money, not to mention unsafe. But it also wasn’t completely useless, because it did help out government.

This years election had a pretty low result for Canada, possibly the lowest since 2008 when it was 58.8%.  I think that that this year people didn’t vote, because they didn’t want an election to happen, they were already content with how everything was and didn’t really care about the results. These different levels of how much people cared about voting could be seen in a student election at my school too. Some people did research and wanted to voting so they are prepared when they are old enough to vote. While others weren’t thinking about that. I learnt that this election was just learning more about the election process and observing it in real time.

Continuity & Change

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https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/nonsense-with-emily/id1544607276?i=1000523460245

Hello and welcome back to another blog post. Today’s topics is very interesting. In class we learnt all about continuity and change from the 1950s to today. The Deep Cove Heritage Society, has been making an effort to preserve Deep Cove’s history since 1985. What is Deep Coves history? Deep Cove has changed a lot from back then to today, and to record these changes my whole class did archival interviews for the Heritage Society. These interviews were the base and start of this project, when the driving question is, “How did Canadian life develop after WWII?”. 

That’s a pretty big question to answer. And needs more thought put into it for a good thorough answer. In order for that I’m going to talk about the highlight assignments we did during this project that’s truly helps show how I got my answer for our driving question. 

The first assignment I’d like to talk about is my keynote presentation explaining my choice of topic for my podcast. I chose this because I believe it clearly show off one of our competencies, continuity and change. This assignment I think was a really important milestone we did. It gave us a chance to present our ideas and thoughts which can give a whole other perspective on your topic. For my podcast topic I decided to talk about gender roles and equality with woman, my main focus was the housewife and how that was portrayed in the 50s to now. My overall presentation definitely was a big help for me and my podcast, not to mention how much I learnt about the 50s that I never knew about. It’s very interesting learning all these new things about our world, it’s crazy to think how much has changed and how much has stayed the same.

For my second assignment I chose my notes from when we watched pleasantville. A movie about two kids from 1990 get transported into a tv showed based in the 50s. Watching the movie was not only entertaining but extremely interesting. We got a whole other perspective of continuity and change from the 50s, but this time in the 90s. I enjoyed watched and learning how people lived back then. For the kids from the 90s the 50s was so weird and different, I can’t imagine how different it’d be for us to go to either decade. The world has evolved and changed a lot, but also many many things are the same, little details that are still very present today. 

Pleasantville notes

For my last and final assignment I’m going to talk about my script. This covers the discuss listen, and speak competency. Of course the script is the biggest more important thing for my podcast, it’s the entire whole of it. It not only was the start of my podcast, but also part of my conclusion. Talking and discussing what I learnt with my interviewee. Hearing her interesting stories and perspective on it. It helped me gain another look on this project from someone else eyes. 

Now for my conclusion. The answer to the driving question. The thing leading this all. I enjoyed this project, I learnt a lot and I’m glad I did. The driving question for this project was definitely a big one. Took a lot of thought. My answer is… 

How did Canadian life develop after WWII? That’s the question we’re answering today. Canadian life changed and evolved so much, and in many ways. When the war ended Canadians realized there were many opportunities for products that will help shape and grow our world. They realized this when the baby boom came into act. 

This benefited Canada a lot after the war. More lives meant more job opportunities opening up, more technology was created, and lots of mass production that was needed. The end to the second World War was a big turning point. I believe that Canada knew a big change in society was needed. So many brilliant people started creating these remarkable things, things that seemed like a dream back then. When they came out with the fridge, and television that was one of the biggest changes, and did a lot for Canadians.

Life developed so much when the war ended. It opened up a whole new perspective on life, and many life changing creations. Things we still use to this day. Over time we became smarter and started making more things that would benefit society. Im proud of how far Canada has come.

Thank you for tagging along with this blog post. I hope you found an interest in this! If you curious for more information about this topic I highly suggest you check out my classmate Malaika’s blog and listen her podcast!!

– Emily

Disney and it’s “Happy” ending

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Are those endings always so genuinely happy? Does Disney ever have a sad ending? Is there ever a moment of emptiness when the movie never ended the way you hoped? No, because that’s the point. It’s suppose to take you into this wonderful fantasy reality. Make your worries disappear. For that brief moment , you keep complete, happy, fulfilled. But what next? That perfect reality is over. After the war no one wanted to hear the horrific stories, the terrible scary reality. The war was over, why continue to talk about it. Disney gave everyone that perfect escape. Who wouldn’t want to escape their problems and worries? The perfect fantasy for anyone.

In Their Own Words ~ WWII

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Hello and welcome back. This past month we’ve been working on a super cool project called “In Their Own Words”. The driving question for this project was How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of WW2.

World War Two is a very interesting event of our history, but it’s also pretty confusing. After all it was a world war, there are so many of important dates and battles.

In this project we would answer that question in our second podcast episodes. A lot like our most recent episode we would include a interview. It wasn’t just an interview though of course. In PLP there’s always competencies. These competencies were:

Using evidence and resources

Throughout this project there were many times I had to do research and use different sources. The way I feel I used sources and evidence best was in Milestone two. Milestone two was all about research. This Milestone was really important because all the facts and information we found is very crucial to writing and producing of the podcast.

By this time I had decided on the topic I would base my episode off of. Since my podcast is about quite literally anything. I had a very wide variety of topics to choose from. Now for some people they would like to have a big option. But for me I found it very hard to choose a topic as well as an interviewee that knows about it.

I eventually decided to go with teenagers in World War Two. How they acted and were effected by the war.

Global collaborator

We didn’t just have to do some reach and learn a couple facts about my topic, we needed to find an outside source. Someone who could back you up and teach you more. I unfortunately could not find anyone available to interview but of course we had a plan B. Instead of interviewing someone live, I found a very helpful audio clip provided by The Memory Project.

Analyzing cause and consequence

Analyzing cause and consequence was something we had many chances to revise at. Events are important but they mean nothing if you don’t understand why they began and what happened after they ended. That is why Cause and Consequence were so important to understand. The milestone I improved in this competency the most was milestone five. Milestone five was the completed podcast episode.

Responding to Text Have I constructed an original connection between myself, the text, and the world?

I believe I have made good connections to the text, as well as relating back to life today and me personally. I think I accomplished this competency in milestone 4, which was the scipt.

I feel I reached a good understanding of the causes and consequences of WWII. Telling the story gave me the chance to share facts and my thoughts on the causes and consequences. Overall I believe I learned a lot in this project and all the work we completed in this project.

After all the research, recording, writing and editing my episode is complete. I feel very proud of how it ended up. I think it answers the driving question well.

~ Emily

Identity

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What is identity? 

It can mean many things from different peoples perspective. I personally think identity is many many things.

Identity is who you are. It’s your race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, beliefs, values, appearance, career, upbringing, worldview, location, name, age, and everything else that makes you, you.

Such as where you’re from. Where you were born or where your ancestors are from. It can also mean your interests, whether it be the sport you play or your hobbies, what you’re known for in school or your biggest accomplishment. It’s how you identify yourself. Whether you imagine yourself as maybe short and friendly or you’re super tall and kind of shy, but when you’re near people you know like your friends or family, you’re the friendly person there.

Identity means a lot of things. I think it’s mostly what you think of yourself, how do you identify yourself. Just like it’s your choice and your challenge if you want to change your identity. Your identity is customized to be you. Your unique and your identity is unique. Never be ashamed of your identity, be prove of who you are. 

Here’s how I imagine a little part of my identity in a picture. It’s hard to express who you are in just a few images. Here I show two things I think are a big part if who I am.

*Peep Ciara in the bottom corner :)*

~ Emily