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.

Overview

As another eventful semester comes to an end, the time has come for me to do my Presentation of Learning. Last year, this was something that I have dreaded. It was something I hoped would be done and over with quickly so that I could go home and enjoy my semester change break. But this year, I have come to embrace my Presentation of Learning, because I realized that this wasn’t supposed to be something to be nervous about. The seven minutes that I have right now is so that I can talk about me, my learning progress, and a way for me to reach out to you, my teachers and parents for help if needed. So this year, I am happy to say welcome to my POL of 2024.

Learning Plan

Just like last year, we started this semester with our learning plans. But unlike last year, the categories of our learning plan was different. My grade 8 learning plan had categories divided by our PLP classes. Our Strengths, Growths, and Supports in each subject. But this year, the categories were sorted by success behaviors. We had to talk about our strengths growths and support about characteristics of a efficient learner. I found out that I am a very strong self-regulator, knowing when to ask for help, and remembering to take care of myself. I have also learned that my greatest weakness lies in agency. I learned that I have a hard time accepting feedback and working on things to improve on. So I put it down on things to work on in my statement of learning intent. And through out our semester, as a PLP 9 community we continued to go back on our learning plans to take a look at these success behaviors.

How Have I Demonstrated Growth as a Learner so Far This Year?

Something that I have gotten better at since the beginning of this school year is my class participation skills. Last school year, and even at the start of this semester, I found it a little difficult to put my full undivided attention in to class. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t do the required work, or ignored the teachers, or was unenthusiastic about the work we were doing. It means that after I finished the work for the day, instead of using the leftover time to look over it, or revise, or try to make it better, I would say that the work I had was good  and then go on my phone, or talk with a friend for the remaining class time. It’s still a work in progress, since I am a phone addicted screen-ager, but I have definitely grown from it since the beginning of this semester. Now, I’m working on becoming an extending learner on my own, instead asking someone else to tell me what to do, or not even trying at all. Something that shows my growth is my Mentor text 3 C’s paragraph from my Maker project. Once I was finished with a decent looking paragraph instead of stopping there, I worked on it a little more, changing and adding things to make it better. 

How Can I Sharpen My Learning Plan to Ensure I Will Reach My Learning Targets by the End of This School Year?

So far we have gone over last semester, and what I have already done. Now I am going to talk about what I will do. As I’ve said before, we have already started to go back on our learning plans through out the semester to take a look at our success behaviors. And I will continue to do this through out next semester. This year, I want to use my learning plan as some sort of journal. I want to check back on things that I need to grow on, and ones I have grown on that, I will replace it with another growth that I have discovered about myself along the way. This will be very helpful for me, because it will be constantly pushing me out of my comfort zone to make me work harder. 

How am I Planning to Overcome Future Problems as a Learner?

So far this semester, I have not run in to many problems that have held me back from doing what I needed to do, until DI came along. I think that I have struggled with Destination Imagination a lot, and it has put me under quite a bit of stress. To deal with this problem, I chose to talk to my peers and let them know how I was feeling. When I found out that my peers felt a similar way to how I felt, we worked together to figure out how we could help each other. So in the future if I run into similar problems, or any problems at all, I will ask for help from someone else, because we might be able to help each other out. 

Conclusion

So much has happened this semester that I can barely keep track of it all. And it’s only half of what’s to come! I have grown as a learner and learned to over come new problems on my own, and I can’t wait to see how I’ll change throughout my time in PLP. Even when I’m in a class that’s not part of PLP, or if I’m not in school I know that I will continue to use and grow these skills on my own. Thank you for coming to my POL, and I can’t wait to talk about the new ways on how I’ve continued to grow in the future.