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.

Over the course of this year, and even just this semester, I have really improved on my Communication with both teachers and classmates. Now that I know everyone better, I am a lot more comfortable and confident talking to them. Examples of this include asking for clarification on an assignment, getting and giving critique, sharing my ideas or opinions and being a bit more of a leader in my groups. I think that I have mostly achieved a profile 5, however I can still improve on communication with those I am not quite as familiar with.

I have also improved on Collaboration. Especially towards the start of the year, I didn’t really like group work. Though I am still a perfectionist and like to have everything done my way, I have gotten better at making compromises. I have definitely gotten closer to a profile 4, but I often just focus on getting all the work done, and in my way of doing it, and not always including everyone or sharing the work evenly.

The Spring Exhibition is an example of these two competencies. I was in a group of 7 (my advertisement group). Since we weren’t always all together in class, it required a lot of communication, both in our one shared class and over messages to figure out what needed to be done still.  Everyone had different ideas for our booth, so we had to think of ways to satisfy everyone, which relates to collaboration. We also only had a few days to prepare, so we had to really work together to finish everything in time. As well, because of my spare, I was able to go to either block 6 or 8 and work with different halves of my group.

I have always been a creative thinker, but over this year I have become even more so. One example of my Creative Thinking was the GIFs we made in Science about one of the theories we had learned. A lot of people did the same theory and therefore had similar GIFs, so I changed Continental Drift to Swift, to make mine more unique and also relate to me and lots of other swifties. I think I have achieved a profile 5, because not only do I have creative ideas, I continue developing them further.

For Critical Thinking, I have really improved and have mostly achieved a profile 5. An example of my critical thinking was the Consequences of Colonization video script. Using my images and all the learning from this unit, I had to choose the most important and relevant parts, make connections and conclusions and combine it into a script that answered our driving question.

Next Personal and Social. In school and outside of school too, I am always aware of the consequences my actions may have and try to only be around people who have a positive impact on me.

Another aspect of Personal and Social is time management, which I have really improved on since last semester. For the most part I had a good balance between homework and the rest of my life. Towards the end of the year I was a bit busier and struggled more to get everything done in time. I made systems at the start of the year and also a made schedule recently, but I didn’t end up using either of these. An example of where I used good time management was the Renaissance project. For the first Keystone, we had to create a schedule and add the due dates and work times into Things and Calendar. Because of this, I was able to pace my work so that everything was done in time. For next year, I would like to do this again for all my projects.

Now that I’ve reflected on the competencies, I am going to talk about some projects that I haven’t mentioned yet, that are good examples to show my learning.

The project I was the least happy with was in Maker, called Making Interesting Images, which was learning and practicing photography skills for a week in November. Although I did complete all the skills, I felt I didn’t really have the time to take nice photos. I think it would have been better if I had focused on taking one quality image for each skill. This relates back to time management: maybe if I had figured out how much time I had for each image, or was at least able to have time to work on it at home.

On the other hand, one of the projects I am most proud of was Keystone 2 of the Power Play project in Humanities. After learning about the Middle Ages, we created a presentation about the feudal system and Middle Ages. I was really happy with how it turned out; I think that it had a good balance of text and visuals, including the little drawings I did too and all the animations. This project required both creative and critical thinking. I used creative thinking for the layout and design, and critical thinking for collecting and putting information into words that answered the topic on each slide and the driving question.

In Science, we have done a lot of interesting projects and I have learned a lot and become a lot more interested in science. I loved everything we did, but of one of my favourite projects was Small but Mighty. In Keystone 2 everyone created little character cards for the cells in the immune system. In this project, I used creative thinking again. The cells in the drawings all have something related to their role and have an alliteration for a name, but the most creative part was the email, which specified if they were part of the innate or adaptive immune system and most of all the addresses. For example, Watson the White Blood Cell’s street number is 911, because he alerts others. Macrophages “eat” pathogens to destroy them, and 812 sounds like “ate one too”.

Finally I am going to reflect on the Medium is the Message project and our trip to Oregon. To make my ad, I used creative thinking for the designing part. Though everyone created their own advertisement, we were in groups with those who had the same company. Because of this I also showed communication and collaboration skills, like sharing ideas, preparing for the interview and, as said above, the Spring Exhibition. This is the project we did while on our Oregon trip. Along with more academic knowledge, Oregon made me learn some life skills. I had to be more independent and organized, which kind of fits under the responsibility part of Personal and Social, as well as money management. I also improved on communication by interviewing my company. 

In conclusion, I think that all of this shows that I am ready to advance to the next grade level and the ups and downs and memories that await.