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.
Over the year so far I have learned a lot, but in this blogpost I am going to just focus on 3 main areas.
TEAMWORK
First, I think that through both FAILS and successes I have really improved on Teamwork. The most challenging situation of teamwork for me was during DI. My group struggled to work well together as a team in a lot of ways. First of all, my team struggled with communication. In Basecamp, nobody ever responded to each other and some people would get sick or be away for over a week with no explanation. As well, we didn’t really brainstorm ideas for certain aspects of our challenge together so they didn’t turn out as well as they could have.
Another problem was that the grade 10s in my group did not do their share of work; in fact, they barely did any work at all. This led to everything being loaded on to me and the two other grade 9s. I found this very stressful throughout the whole project, however I didn’t really do anything about it. When I found out that those two helpful group members were at first both not able to come to the provincial DI tournament, I went to speak to my team leader as soon as possible to get support. I think that in future situations similar to this, I would go ask for help sooner, because it helped me feel much less stressed knowing that I only needed to do my share of the work. DI might have been stressful during the process, but after reflecting on the experience, it was a very important project that helped me grow as a learner.
An example of when teamwork went really well was during the “Thrill us” project. For this project, we got to pick our own groups. This made teamwork easier for me because I could choose people that I connect with and work really well with. We had similar ideas that we put together first into a storyboard and then into a film.
The day after the first filming attempt, we looked back over our videos and realized they weren’t good quality shots and that we needed to revise. Having a group that worked well together was important for this because we had more motivation to redo it and do so efficiently. We slightly edited our storyline to make it more clear and also reduced the number of spoken lines because the previous lines had just taken away from the eerie atmosphere we were trying to create. We also reflected on how to improve the shots, including the angles and lighting. Because of this, our second video went much better. From there, we found sounds to match our video and edited everything together. All of us were able to create a movie that we were proud of.
However, since it’s not always possible to pick our own groups, an important takeaway for me to remember is to try to find at least one person I can connect to in a group, like Alva and Aiya for the “Thrill us” project or Evelyn and Alex in DI.
In general, PLP really encourages me to improve on my teamwork since we do a lot of group projects and sit in random seating. This helps me prepare for the world outside of school, because I am not always going to be with people I work well with or like.
PREPARATION & ORGANIZATION
I think that I am really good at being prepared and organized, however I still have goals that would help me improve. I find it really helpful to have systems to keep myself prepared for school. Every night, I plug my iPad in before bed so that it will be charged for the morning. When I pack my backpack, I put my iPad in and then go downstairs where I pack my food and make sure my water bottle is full before packing it as well. Though I don’t usually drink all of my water before class, if I do, I make sure to fill it up during the break between classes. To manage my homework I sometimes write down what needs to be done and any extra details in Notes on my phone. However, sometimes I forget to look at the notes or just try to remember everything in my head without making a note. Instead, I would like to use an app like Things or Reminders or Calendar. That way I can get a notification to remind me. As well, in some of those apps, I’m able to time block out when I will work on each task. I think that this will help me manage my time better to make sure I work on everything, especially the parts I’m not looking forward to. I find that I can spend too much time working on something, or even just procrastinating because I’m worried it won’t be good enough or it’s not meeting my high standards for myself. This ties in with my last area of growth.
PROCRASTINATION/PERFECTIONISM
Procrastination due to my perfectionism happens a lot and I would like to set goals and systems to help with this. As I said above, sometimes I won’t even be able to begin work because I can’t figure out how to start, whether it’s the first sentence not sounding right, or the layout of a design not looking right or something else. To overcome this, I will set an amount of time that I have to work on it and just try something – try it all y’all – even if it’s not perfect. As well, I could try skipping ahead from the first sentence and working on a different part or try finding inspo for a design. It’s also important for me to remember that I can get support from my family and teachers.
In conclusion, I have grown and learned a lot so far this year and I still have more goals for the rest of the year to continue to improve as a learner. That’s all, thank you!
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