Yay! First tpol! (I’m scared, nervous, going to absolutely sob, cry my eyes out, and the yay was very sarcastic. I really don’t wanna do this, but here I am. Anyway enjoy my tpol). The year’s coming to an end, which mean we gotta do tpols. Don’t expect it to be good, because I only got a week or so to do this. I wanted to start earlier, but since this is my first time doing a tpol, I didn’t know what to do until recently.
As always, we have to start everything off with the POL declaration: “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.”
Oh yea, there’s actually a driving question for tpols, which is ‘Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level.’ I have a very simple answer to that question. I have grow as a learner over the school year and have overcome many of challenges along the way. But of course, this is PLP, and I can’t just end it there. I gotta expand on my answer, and provide some evidence showing how I’ve grown. Here we go.
First off, I want to talk about my work habits. It’s not great, I really want to improve on it, and I think I have. At the start of grade 9, I started at PLP. There’s much difference from the normal stream, and so I wasn’t use to it. I am a fast learner though, so I was quickly able to learn how to use my iPad and do everything as if I’ve used it for a long time. Things were going great, but as the year went by, I found myself wanting to work less and just wanted to sit down and play games or watch YouTube all day. I became intrigued in the world of the internet, and I was sucked in. The homework started piling, and school became more and more stressful. The only way I was going to get out of that hole that I buried myself into, was to dig myself out. Well, I could’ve asked for help from my parents, but I was scared of asking. I know I’m not even supposed to be on my iPad unless I was doing work, but I just couldn’t help it. I was digging in the wrong direction, becoming more distant from the world. I knew I had to stop but how? How do I get out?
I found that this only happened home, where I could hide in my room and play games while my parents thought I was working on my homework. Sometimes I was, but most of the time, I wasn’t. In my head, I thought about working on my homework a lot, as I should, but every time, I try to shut it down. It would be still there, just nagging at me in the back of my head. I couldn’t get it out, and sometimes, only sometimes, would I submit to the thought and do my work. Even though I procrastinate on doing my work most of the time, I still get it done, just not always on time. I’ve talked about this on my mpol. That was what it was all about. Around half of my assignments were handed in late. I also talked about this in my learning plan that I made at the start of the year.
On the learning plan, I wrote that the reason I was handing in the assignments late was because I add lots of little details to make it look good. That is one of the reasons, but not the biggest. I feel like I should really try to improve my work habits, I want to, and I have been. Take this, the tpol, for example. I’ve been managing my time better and have started to work on it as soon as I could.
Next I want to talk about my weaknesses. Of the work that I’ve completed this year, the ones that I struggle with the most are the ones that require me to make a video. This really came as a surprise to me. I thought that making videos would be easy. It looked pretty easy to do, but I struggled. Take for example the first couple projects of Maker and specifically our first film, the video that we had to present at the Winter Exhibition.
I didn’t do that well at all. It was one of the worst works that I’ve done, if not the worst. We had a good amount time to work on it as well. I think the reason I really struggled with this one is because we had to include an interview in our video. I’m a shy person, so I was really nervous about it, and had the interview pretty late. Also, I had a plan to add some voice overs at the end of the video, but I was scared of doing that, so in the end, I scraped the plan. I got a revision sign for it, but I really didn’t want to care about it anymore. I didn’t do the revision.
Another project where I had to make a video for was one in science.
As you can see, I didn’t complete the video. It was suppose to be a video explaining everything that we learned in the project. I had everything ready and was going to record some voice overs, but again, I got scared and didn’t do it. That’s why it says incomplete. I have improved on video making and have started to overcome my fear. For the final product of Rise of the Frankenstuffies project, we had to make a movie trailer. It turned out very good, and I was proud of it. I want to continue to improve on this and hopefully make some even better videos next year.
Though I have some weaknesses, I also have strengths and good working habits. There are many works that I’ve done this year that I’m proud of. I feel like I’m a decent writer in creative storytelling. Take our Rise of the Frankenstuffies project as an example. In this project, one of our many steps to reach the end goal was to write out a short story. I did super good on it and wrote out a long short story.
I also put in lots of effort in my works, and so I spend a lot of time on it, but since I don’t give myself all the time that I need, most of them gets handed in late. Like I’ve said before, I’m working on it. Overall, I feel like I’ve really grown as a learner since the start of PLP and have overcome many challenges. I’m ready to move on to the next grade level, and I’m ready for whatever and however many challenges I’ll face in the future. No matter the size of the it.