“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.”

Intro

Hi, Welcome to my TPOL, my name is Hunter and in this presentation I will show you why I am prepared to graduate to grade 9.

Struggles

Despite how fun and easy PLP feels for me sometimes, I have also struggled with quite a few projects and sections through the year. Last summer before I started grade 8, I was really stressed by the thought of shifting into high school, especially PLP. I was really nervous after hearing friends talk about the larger work load and hours upon hours of homework. I felt skeptical. 

Through the summer, I felt like I never wanted to leave Cove Cliff. I knew it well and felt so comfortable with its environment. The building was massive, there were so many people and it was really big upon first sight. To my surprise though, on the first day of school, I just dove in! 

After a few days I didn’t feel fearful any longer. I started to love PLP more and more, felt more comfortable around the PLP teachers and favoured PLP classes more than the other ones. Despite what I had heard over the summer about a large workload, I felt the work to be engaging and simple, I think it was my learning style that set me apart from what I heard about the difficulty.

Past Experiences That Helped Me Build Skills

Throughout the years of grade 6 and grade 7 I had some challenging situations with my teachers that taught me important skills. In grade 6 I had a very strict, unwelcoming, and mean teacher. Through that time I developed important skills like independence and self improvement. I learned how to teach myself which can always come in handy later to help me solve problems to find solution’s faster. These skills of self directed learning are used a lot in PLP. 

For projects like TPOL and MPOL I had to look back and create my story without guidelines. A lot of PLP projects give guidelines that you have to follow but also a lot of freedom to make something that reflects you. Some examples of this are the winter exhibition, spring exhibition, Oregon field study journal, and The outsiders. Because of what I learned in grade 6, It has helped me with PLP in a lot of ways. 

In grade 7, I had 7 teachers which made the year really chaotic and challenging, which I think contributed to my stress of going into grade 8, but then once I got into grade 8 it was a lot less then I was used to.

My Learning Plan

At the very beginning of the school year, I made a learning plan. The learning plan was a way to set my goals for the year. In the learning plan, I set goals of the grade I wanted to achieve for each subject. For humanities my goal was to get a 🌈 because I already knew a bit of history and I saw potential to grow on that. My final grade for humanities was 🌈, so I reached my goal which I am really proud of because sometimes humanities was really hard for me. My goal for maker was ☀️ because I didn’t really know what it was and I wanted to be able to put my focus on humanities and science. My final grade for maker was what I wanted, ☀️. Last but not least, for science. I really thought I could build up my  science knowledge a lot more and set high expectations for myself. I aimed to get a 🌈. 10 months later, my final grade was a 🌈 which I am also really proud of. 

My grades throughout elementary school were not very good at all, but this year they have improved a lot. I think the reason for that is because I have value school more and that has led me to focusing on it and making it a priority. 

What Project Prepared me For Grade 9

Out of all the projects I have been assigned this year, the one that has made me feel ready to graduate is the advertisements project. This project consisted of going to Oregon, having a exhibition, and making our own advertisements, which makes it the biggest project I have ever done in my life. The project started with Sunny, James, Kai, Finn, Melissa, Alex, and me forming an advertising group. For the first few weeks we started getting a understanding of the business we were going to interview. During that time I bonded with my group and made some friends that would stick with me and help me in the future. 

Oregon was the first field study I have ever went on and it was in another country. I underestimated how home sick I would feel at the end and what the trip was going be like. When I got to the border it hit me what I was about to do. Despite my nervousness at the beginning, I started to really love the trip. I found it amazing to visit new locations, try new food, and try new activities in a different country. All within my friend group. 

The trip made me think back to one of the main reasons I joined PLP in the first place – to travel and learn outdoors. About halfway through the trip, at Cannon Beach, I had the most surreal feeling. The second my eyes saw the towering haystack rock, and the beautiful sandy beach and waves I knew that PLP was going to be something I would stick with. In that moment, I thought back to all the difficult times where I had been stuck on homework, or frustrated about PLP, and realized that it was worth it. I had made the right choice joining PLP. Because of the amazing experience I had on the Oregon Trip, I knew that I would 100% be in PLP next year to have this amazing style of learning that fits me perfectly. Towards the end of the trip, my business group and I interviewed marine discovery tours and gathered information for our advertisements. I found it so cool to be interviewing a stranger that I have never met before while on a school trip. 

With the information that we gathered from the interview, it was time to make our posters. From my point of view I thought my first draft was amazing and thought it would get approved almost instantly. When I showed it to the teacher, I immediately realized I had a lot of work to do and I needed to raise my expectations for myself. After a few more drafts, it didn’t change much and the teachers still disliked it a lot. Before I knew it, the exhibition was a few days away and I still had no poster. At this moment I did everything in my power to try and finish it. One day before the exhibition, I still had no advertisements, then it hit me! Mine looked more like a poster and not a print ad. I wasn’t using any advertising techniques or appeals. After a bit of help I got mine approved just in time for the exhibition. My main takeaway from this is to realize my full potential and use it from the start instead of waiting till the very end.

Portfolio of Media Learning

Why do I Feel I’m ready to Graduate?

This school year has been a crucial growth year for me. Comparing who I am now as a learner, to who I was at the beginning of the school year, is crazier than any other year in the past. My takeaway from my first year in PLP is that it fits me perfectly. The learning process that is used it PLP fits my learning style perfectly. So with that, I do believe I have grown a tremendous amount as a learner this year, and that is why I’m ready to graduate.

Q&A