The last few months have been jam packed with learning. In this post and presentation I will be covering the most important milestones, projects and my overall studies as a learner. To guide us through this post and presentation, I will keep coming back to the driving question: what is the learning goal that I want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will I meet it? My biggest learning goal this year is to complete my homework before it is the last minute. Basically time-management. A couple ideas I have already to reach this end goal is to ignore and eradicate any distractions. A couple strategies I could use might be putting my phone in a place where I won’t feel the urge to use it. Another strategy I could use might be doing my homework in a public but quiet place like in the kitchen. This way, if my parents catch me on youtube or doing something other than homework, they can help me get back on track.

Humanities: The last term in humanities, I’ve been working hard and reflecting about how my experiences so far in grade 8 have opened up new opportunities. Over the many projects we’ve had in humanities, I’ve been working hard. I’ve earned two extending rainbows as a reflection of my hard work. An Example of my hard work is milestone 3 in our advertising unit. Milestone 3 was a persuasion chart that showed 3 real life examples of 3 different types of advertising with a description. I worked extensively on this milestone as I knew it was something I could do well and something I enjoyed. Because my hard work reflected the end product I received a rainbow for that milestone. In the future, I could research and create a better understanding of our topic and receive helpful feedback to continuously create better work.  To complete my learning goal in humanities, I could become interested and invigorated in the topic by researching extensively. This way I will want to do the homework instead of leaving it to the last minute.

The Final Product Of Our Advertising Unit

Maker: In maker we’ve done multiple projects where I’ve shown my great work-ethic. Take the power of the pencil for example. In every piece of art that I created. I didn’t stop until it looked the best it could be. I handed in every single assignment on time which shows my drive and passion for these types of projects and school in general. I feel like I worked to the best of my ability and it shows in my grades. In milestone 1 I received a rainbow. At the end of the project we had to compile all our learning and choose one style that suits us. I chose the style of trace as it reflected my personality. I worked on this piece every chance I could so people could see how my work ethic reflects the end product. Next time, instead of mucking about while the teacher was talking like I was a lot during this topic. I could make smarter decisions with who I choose to sit with and that might be the tiebreaker between a sun and a rainbow. To complete my learning goal for maker, I want to use things a lot more. Maker tends to have easier homework but a lot more assignments, which means I forget about them easily. If I use things to keep track of my assignment I feel I will complete it with lots of time to spare. 

A Piece I Worked Really Hard On

Sciematics: In sciematics I feels I am always 1 step ahead of the game and always hand in my work on time. Science and math are 2 subjects that really interest me and they are something I could take further in life. My work in sciematics is always used properly and efficiently so that I have the least amount of homework possible. I am interested in sciematics so I always work hard on the milestones and use my time efficiently.  My grades echo that as I have multiple rainbows in that class. Especially in our mazer tag project, which I put tons of work into. In the future, I could spend more time researching to topic instead of “roboting” the work. If I spend more time on the actual topic I will retain more knowledge that we learned. I feel like I do my sciematics homework as soon as I get home and don’t need much improvement in that are but if I were to improve on it, I could time-block my homework in things. If I time-block my sciematics homework it will streamline my whole work cycle which will in turn keep me interested and I won’t leave any homework to the last minute.

The Final Product Of Our Mazer Tag Project

PGP: PGP means “personal growth plan”. PGP is basically a class where we organize and reflect on all of our classes combined. We’ve only had 2 PGP meetings so far but they’ve both been very meaningful to me and have definitely helped me grow as a learner. The first thing that I want to talk about in PGP is THINGS. Things is a godly app that helps me organize my life. It’s basically a homework reminder app that helps me stay on task and keep up with my schoolwork. Things is definitely the first step for reaching my learning goal and having a more meaningful experience in PLP. Another thing that we learned how to use efficiently in PGP was TIME-BLOCKING. Time-blocking is another way to keep track of your homework. The only difference is that time-blocking is a bit more advanced. When you time-block, you set up your entire day so that you stay organized and know everything you have to do for that day. Time-blocking is also another way for me to reach my learning goal. The final thing that I will talk about in this PGP segment was our trip to OREGON. Oregon was an extremely meaningful experience for me. It meant a lot to get to know more about the class and that definitely contoured the process in which we get to know our class-mates. In oregon I learned so much and it was much better than simply writing a test or creating a poster. It created new opportunities and helped me understand our unit much better.

So far PLP has been an amazing experience for me and I hope I can get in again next year. All the amazing projects, teachers and field studies that I look forward to. Everything comes together to form an awesome experience in PLP that can translate into the real world, which is really valuable. Through my time in PLP i’ve noticed that it pushes me to be the best possible and hand in my best work. Every day, I come home with lots of homework, which makes me work harder. I come to homework with a more open mind-set now. I definitely still need to work  on my time-management and my use of things and time-blocking, but overall I think I’ve been a pretty proficient learner throughout this half of the year and I hope to keep that up for the next year.

Now to get to the best but hardest part. My question. I thought long and hard about how to form an intricate, meaningful question, and I think I finally came up with one. “How can I give my group members the same experience as myself”. I chose this question because I’ve noticed, and my teachers have noticed that when I’m in a group, I tend to take the whole project to myself and don’t dish out portions of the work that my group should work on. PLP is based on group projects so I thought this would be a good question that I could come back to in my time in the Performance Learning Program.