Bonjour!

Welcome to my first mPol ever! In this post I will be reflecting on my growth as a learner so far and how I can continue to improve for the rest of the year. 

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.

First my learning plan… I set extending as my proficiency for all of my PLP classes, which I have been maintaining so far. At the start of the year, I also chose competencies for communication, thinking and personal and social.

COMMUNICATION

Throughout the first part of the school year, I have really improved on my communication with my teachers and peers. Some examples for this include contacting my teachers about catchup work when I miss school, asking for clarification on a project or assignment as well as planning and collaborating with other students.

I think I still need to improve on communication to achieve my profile 5, especially around confidence speaking to those I’m not as familiar with.

 

COLLABORATION

Though most of the projects so far were individual, I have definitely improved on my collaboration, especially because last year I struggled with group work because I am a perfectionist and like to have everything done my way. One of my main opportunities for growth on this was the winter exhibition, because I collaborated with a group of both my grade and the grade 9s. Though not everything was exactly how I would have liked it, I was very proud and happy with how our exhibition room turned out, which helped me realize that not everything has to be perfectly how I envisioned it and making compromises to satisfy everyone can still lead to a great final result.

 

CREATIVE THINKING

Though I have always been a very creative thinker, this semester has encouraged me to improve on this even further. For example, for the Pandora’s box project, I quite literally thought outside the box when instead of using a typical square box, I created my own round box to better represent my message.

I think that I have mostly achieved a profile 5, because I also had a few struggles with the creation of my box, but managed to persevere through them.

 

CRITICAL THINKING

For critical thinking, I have improved a lot but still have more growth for the rest of the year. I think that my most recent project about the renaissance is a good example for this. For this project, everyone created a triptych, showing pre-renaissance, renaissance and the present. I had to think of what themes/aspects to include to represent the different eras and then research what those things were like during each time and how to represent them. I also did a lot of research, which helped me improve on choosing the most important and useful parts to note and connect the ideas/learning from different sources to make conclusions, as well as branch out or elaborate on certain parts. 

 

PERSONAL & SOCIAL

Though I planned habits and systems at the start of the year for time management, I didn’t really end up using these.

Because of that, I struggled with time management, mostly putting too much time into one assignment and therefore not having enough time for other assignments. An example of this is the Big Life Journal, which I put a lot of work into some parts and though I was very happy with those parts, the other bits did not reach my standard. For the second semester, I think that I will try to use my systems, because I think that they will improve my time management, not so that I won’t put as much effort into work, but so that all my work will closer reach my standards.

Now I am going to reflect on some other projects that I haven’t really mentioned yet.

 

MEMOJI & USER GUIDE

One of our first projects for Maker was the laptop Memoji and user guide. Both of these were assignments that I was mostly happy with. For the Memoji, I think that I had a lot of stickers, but it wasn’t over-crowded and the stickers were unique to me. The only thing I would change is to make it even more visually appealing, probably by choosing a colour scheme or aesthetic to follow.

The user guide also represented me well and there was a good amount of text under every section. In this project, we also had to refer to ourselves in 3rd person, which was different than normal and kind of confusing, however towards the end, it became less challenging.

MAKING INTERESTING IMAGES

In November, we did a little week long Maker project about making interesting images, which consisted of learning photography skills, testing and reflecting on them and then finally compiling all the work into a small book/presentation. Unfortunately, I felt really rushed for time and I did not at all produce my best work. I think that my photographs could have been a lot better, because I really enjoy photography and in the past have created some images that I am super happy with.

Once again, I think that if I had used my time management systems, I wouldn’t have felt as rushed in this project, or at least not as rushed for other classes so that I could focus more on the photography.

 

GEEK OUT CHALLENGE

The week after this, we had another project in Maker, called the geek out challenge. Though this section was also only a week, it didn’t feel as rushed as the previous one and I was much happier with my work. For this assignment, we chose a topic that we, well, geek out about and wrote two blog posts about it (and then a reflection). I chose French, because I am really passionate about it and it isn’t very commonly liked. It was easy to write about and I didn’t ever struggle for ideas because it’s one of my interests, therefore there was more to say. It can also be hard to explain why you love something, but I was eventually able to identify some of the main reasons. At one point, I had an issue when the document didn’t save and all of the draft for my second post was deleted, however I managed to rewrite it and it was probably better than what I had originally anyways.

 

THE MIDDLE AGES

In late November/early December, we did a humanities project on the Middle Ages, where we created two presentations, one on the feudal system and Middle Ages and one more specifically on the Crusades. The first one, I was very proud and happy with and I think that it shows some of my best work. I thought that I had a good use of animations, as well as the little drawings done by myself and there was a good balance of text and visuals.

(Low quality due to being a GIF)

The second one was almost the exact opposite. I felt much more rushed making it and though I met all the criteria for an extending, I was not as happy with it. I did not make my own visuals, the slide layout was kind of boring and there were no animations (though, I did export it as a pdf).

In conclusion, through many success as well as FAILs, I have definitely grown a lot as a learner so far and will continue to grow in the next semester. Thank you for coming to my mPol, that’s all for now.

Kaia out ♥︎