2020 TPOL

This my first TPOL blog post for the transition from grade 8 to grade 9.

This post all leads up to 1 driving question: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

But I’ll answer that question at the end. For now, I want to talk about this past year of learning, what I’m proud of, what I’ve improved on, and what were the most helpful projects in each subject. I’m going to do this one subject at a time.

Humanities

For the past year, humanities has been a great subject, because of how much I’ve learnt in it. I’ve talked to some of my friends that go to Seycove, but aren’t in PLP and when they talk about what they’ve been learning, it’s really different, and it sounds incredibly boring. I’m grateful to be in PLP humanities because instead of conjugating verbs and taking tests, I’ve gotten to do so many fun things!

Some things I’ve learned over the past school year are; how to write a good paragraph, how to make an advertisement, I’

ve learnt a whole bunch of things about religions and the the eras of history too!

There were a ton of useful and amazing projects in humanities, but I’ll just talk about my top 3.

The first one would be The Medium is the Message. This project was all about advertising, and the part that really stuck out to me with this project was when we actually made our own advertisement for a business in Oregon. We actually went to Oregon, interviewed the business, took photos and made an ad. Here is a link to my post on that: The Medium Is The Message.

The second humanities project I want to talk about was called It’s the end of the world. This project was about 2 things, the renaissance and making a song. My favourite part about this was definitely making the song and learning how to use garage band to put together this song. We made up some lyrics to go along with the back track of Its the end of the world as we know it, by R.E.M. and then we sang along to it and made a slideshow of photos. Here is the link to that project: It’s the end of the project as we know it.

The last project that really stuck out for me was called Knocking on Heavens door, and it was all about religions across the world. This entire project really stuck out to me and I’d say that my favourite part about this project was getting to visit different religious sites and see them in person. This project really taught me a lot about religions and I think it was really interesting and a good think to learn about. Here is that projects final assignment: World religions

 

Competencies 
There have been so many different competencies over the past school year, that it’d be really hard to talk about them all, so I’ll just talk about a competency that I really understood and was proud of.

 

The competency that I understood and was proud of was definitely Identifying Continuity and Change. I think I really understood this competency and reflected it well throughout the projects it was used in, especially Middle Ages: This changes everything.

 

Maker

Maker is a very interesting class because it’s very important and useful in the department of getting new skills in technology and building. Throughout the school year we have learned so much in this class, and it’s been a very exciting class.

In this class I’ve learned so many different things, it’s kind of crazy, I’ve learnt how to take good photos, how to make a photo essay, how to use the LAUNCH phases to make a project, how to use drawing apps on an iPad, and how to use a blog!

There were over 8 different projects we’ve done this year, so I’ll just talk about 3 of them.

The first one would be the Star Wars exhibition project. This was the first project that we learned about the LAUNCH cycle. The end product of this project was the exhibition, in December. This project was really exciting and fun to do, and we put in a lot of hours and work to make the exhibition amazing. This was also a mini blue sky project, and it was really fun to make a Star Wars themed product. Here is the link to that project: Star Wars: an exhibition

The second project I want to talk about is actually one of the projects in maker that was running whilst other projects in maker were also running. This project was called the Student Blogging Challenge. This project was all about blogging, figuring out how to use a blog, and learning special features on learning portfolios. This project was really important because it really helped me learn the basics of blogging, and that’s really important because at the end of every project we have a end project blog post, to show what we’ve learnt throughout the project. Here is the link to that project: SBC post.

The last project I want to talk about for maker was called Destination Imagination. This project was actually a tournament that we participated in, and it was a really intense process. We were all put into teams, and we we had a certain challenge that we had to complete, my challenge was the technical challenge. There were 2 tournaments, provincials and regionals, but regionals ended up being online, because of COVID – 19. This project was a really good project to help build teamwork and to learn how to combine skills. Here are the links to this project: DI Provincials, DI regionals.

A competency for maker that I really want to focus on would be Research and understand. I think that this competency was a really tough one on me but I ended up understanding it and doing okay with it. This competency was featured in many of the maker projects, so that’s why I chose it.

Scimatics 

Scimatics has been a fun class because the projects are generally very interesting and they have some really cool aspects to them.

I learned about a lot of different things throughout scimatics, like how to make a budget, how cells and diseases interact, how to make a mind map, and how to do fractions.

There have been so many projects throughout the school year of scimatics, over 7, so I’ve decided to talk about 2 of them.

The first one I want to talk about is the Ultimate Road Trip. This project was really interesting and cool to do and plan out. It was all about planning a road trip and making a budget for said road trip. This one was really useful, because knowing how to do a budget is a good life skill.

The second one I wanted to talk about was called Mazer tag. This was a group project that contributed to the winter exhibition I talked about earlier. We learnt all about mirrors and angles, and how to reflect a laser into a right angle triangle. Here is that project:Mazer tag!

 

A competency that I thought really stood out from the others was called Reasoning and analyzing. This competency really stood out to me because it was very easy to understand and it was a competency that I think I improved on throughout the scimatics projects.

PGP

PGP was a very hard subject for me because we only really had 1 or 2 PGP related things throughout the entire year, Oregon and MPOLs, and now TPOLs. I think that I didn’t really show my best work through PGP because in the chances I did have to show PGP skills, I didn’t try my hardest.

The Oregon trip was a very unique and fun experience for me because it was a really good trip to practice teamwork. I think it was a really fun trip and my teamwork skills really improved throughout the trip. Here is that trip: Oregon Post.

A competency that I think really stood out was Revise. This competency was a really challenging competency for me because in all of my previous school years, we never really revised anything, it was usually just hand in something and get a grade. So when we first started revising work, I was very confused. But I think over the past school year I’ve learned to revise and I’ve gotten better at it.

The final thing I have to say is the answer to the driving question. If you’ve forgotten it by now it is Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

I think I am ready to advance to the next grade level because I have improved a lot over the past year, and I’m really ready to keep improving and keep working towards getting better at schoolwork and getting better at teamwork, responsibility and work ethic. I think that going up to grade 9 will be a really good thing and I’m definitely ready to move up from grade 8.

Thank you for reading my TPOL blog post!