*exhales. “So what do I have to do, one last time.” “Just relax and answer the questions, tell us about yourself.” “Ok… yeah, ok.” *inhales.
“My name is James Streeter and I’m a 8th grade PLP student at Seycove secondary. This year, it’s been kinda crazy. In grade 7, the whole idea of high school was crazy. I knew I was in for a tough year when we had to do summer learning, before we even really knew our teachers; having to do a revision for a drawing to capitalize a word, on a drawing, made me realize what I had signed up for when I joined PLP.”
”So, why did I join PLP? Other than some clear benefits like the formats of the projects, and getting to work with iPads, the iPad I’m using to write this, I just wanted something different, something that just wasn’t main steam. Now that I’m going into 9th grade, I feel like made the right choice.”
“So then we went into our first projects. If you want to see more about those you can go to my mPOL blog post here:”
“Then after all that I went to semester two. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! At this point, I had learned a lot already, and the quality of my projects was definitely improving. Then we got into new projects. Those were very hard. I feel like I preformed well, but it was hard. In the first semester most of my work looked good, and you could tell I put effort into it, but it was still a little sloppy. This semester, I feel like this has been fixed. I am happy with with the quality of my work.”
“As for said projects, we’ve done quite a few now including… drumroll please” pata-pata-pata-pata-patoom!
“Ok, first, a humanities project, the Renaissance. For that project, we had to create a triptych depicting inventions through the ages. Here was the final product:”
If you want to learn more, click here:
“From this I learned about the way things have adapted over the years, and how things today are different from older times. Those same new inventions from Europe and Asia change how we see the world, and how the world is today.”
“Then we had “blue-eyed brutes and other tall tales” – a project about the vikings, and early exploration. We learned about how the vikings lived, and explored, then we created a travelogue:”
and here was the project:
Then, a science project; small but mighty.
This project taught us about germs and many other microscopic things, it really made me realize how crazy the odds are that we exist. I also took away from this that we are also small but mighty. But we are also literally had a 1/8,000,000,000 that we would
be… y’know, us. I also learned how to break down work into controllable pieces.
Here was the final product; a public heath poster:”
“Then, it was colonization. This was a fun project, but definitely one of the harder ones. We learned how the first European explorers interacted with the First Nations and how the first settlements affected life today. We also learned about trade routes, past and present, and some parts about slavery. To show what we learned, we analyzed a drawing then re-interpreted it from the other sides perspective to make sure both sides were shown:”
“Then, we created a video about colonization:”
This project taught me that many things have more factors than it first seems, and a lot of stuff in history was messed up. I also learned how to look at something from multiple points of view.
And the project:
“Then, another science project, mind over matter, all about… well… matter. We learned how different types matter work and I learned to not overdo it after spending way too long on this game! (Making it)”
And here’s the blog post:
“And this is the last one! Advertising! This was a really fun project, but probably the hardest as it included the Oregon field study. This project gave me a whole new meaning to the word “revision” and I also learned a lot of other great skills on the field study, and in this project. We interviewed a business in Oregon after learning a bit about advertising. Then after all that we created our advertisements, and revised them a bunch, here was my final version:”
And, once again, the blog post:
“That was all the projects, but we were still not done because we also had exhibition.
Ah yes, exhibition. I learned so much in such a short time fame, it was kind crazy. Here’s the post:
“Here are the main things I learned from this exhibition. First, teamwork. The extent to which everyone on my team helped and did their work is very different from some simpler thing near the start of the school year. We all worked really well together. And almost nothing was forgotten for exhibition day. The booth also just looked really good as seen in the photo below, everything was clearly on another level than winter exhibition, and winter exhibition was decent.
I also learned how good my work can be after this whole year of learning, I’m excited to see what level it’s at after next year. I am also happy to see that I took on a leadership role for this exhibition; it wasn’t the big role, the D.R.I., but it was still important, I think jumping for opportunities like that is what will get me through the rest of high school, and ready for what comes after.”
“And now you are caught up. So why do I think I’m ready to go to grade 9? Well I’ve already presented you with most of the evidence in the form of these mini project reflections, showing you the vast group of skills I’ve learned. But I will present you with a few final points. Tomorrow. It’s 9:36PM now and I have school tomorrow.”
“I’m back with the final part of this post. The project I struggled with most this semester was probably advertising, mainly because of the week without the iPad and then catchup, but also because we were expected to create really high quality work. Also having to create a lot for the exhibition in two days ways hard.
I think I’ve had some decent habits throughout this school year, I don’t use the calendar too much, but I use Things for everything. Next year, I’d like to take more notes, it was really useful in one project when we learned to take them, and then no one ever asked us to take them again, and no student ever did.
My worst work this year was probably some early humanities stuff, the work was alright, as in my medieval keynote, but with the amount of time put in, it just wasn’t worth it.”
“So I think the way I can improve next year is being more organized, especially with my notes. This will help me be ready for everything that comes in the next year.”
”And that’s it.”
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