To be honest I thought I had way more time before my Tpol happened. It probably didn’t help that I left the country for a week. Instead of writing this Tpol as a way to talk about what I’m not good at, I would rather write my Tpol about how I’ve grown and improved from my Mpol.
Our driving question is “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”
Over the past year I’ve experienced so many different emotions- joy, stress, anxiety, excitement- you could pretty much name any emotion that is related to school and I’ve most definitely dealt with it. This has been my most chaotic school year to date, but its also been my favourite because I’ve gotten such a fresh start which all new teachers and friends so that I could rethink how I am in school. In elementary school I was so quiet and quite out spoken but ,as my teachers probably have noticed, I am quite talkative and stalk to everyone.
I think that can relate to my Learning Plan because one of my main goals was to become a more confident learner and presenter. I would say that I have accomplished it this goal because I’ve gained so much experiences and and learned to adapt in new environments. Over this past year, I have been able to put myself into situations where I have to speak for myself and put myself into environments where I am out of my comfort zone. PLP has been great for teaching me to step outside of my comfort zone to learn whether or no that experience has to be outside of my comfort zone.
The main project that has helped me improve was the Oregon Trip and advertisements. I would like to start off my apologizing to whatever teacher had to read my blog post that I wrote about Oregon. I realized very quickly after I submitted my blog that I wrote way to much. So to whichever teacher I subjected to reading it, I’m sorry for making it over 2000 words long. But I would also not shorten it because it ended up being so long because I had so much good stuff to say about my trip. I learnt so much about myself and my classmates. I learnt about my independence, confidence, and my new found fear of people in Sasquatch costumes. I don’t want to talk to much about the Oregon trip because I think I’ve already written everything I want to share in my other blog post. I will still link it right here.
One of the main things I talked about in my mPol was the fear of failure. Up until a week ago I was safe from failure. And then we had to create advertisements. On our Oregon trip, the main goal was to advertise a business during our trip. The business I got assigned was Astoria Column. My first thought when I got my business was “ how am I supposed to advertise a column?” But the more research I did the more I realized what an interesting landmark Astoria Column actually is. My main problem was that Astoria Column is really hard to photograph. I originally was using photos from the first group because when I went there is was really cloudy and grey. In the end I did end up using my own photos because the grey sky contrasted with the blue text. Except the problem is that my ad wasn’t good enough. I knew that I could do better, and the teachers definitely knew I could do better. They decided to push me to create a better ad my putting some pressure on me. Getting a revision 3 days before the exhibition definitely freaked me out and pushed me to put in 110% effort to get a perfect ad in before the exhibition. I think I can carry this learning and understanding with me to grade 9 because I’ve learned how important it is to except failure and to build off of it so that I can make my work better.
To get back on track with a more positive note I’m going to talk about my science classes. Before high school science was one of my least favourite subjects because I wasn’t that interested. But since the start of the semester I’ve loved science class. Our projects are really intriguing and Ms. Kadi allows for a lot of personalization to make everyone more interested in the work. My favourite project to create was the Immune system characters. We were allowed to base the drawings off of anything we want so I chose to make all of my drawings based off Taylor swift characters that correspond with the specific cells. As I mentioned in my mPol I will take any opportunity to make a project about Taylor Swift. What I loved about this project was that I was able to to express my creativity and also learn how to properly take all of the information I learned to express it in new ways to help myself remember the information.
We also got to make a video game as a project. This was such a building experience for me because I got to create an entire game by myself and created entire lines of code just by using my own logic and skills ( which I have to say were next to none ). Not to brag ( I’m totally bragging ) but I’m quite proud of how I was able to figure out how to create each code and what codes I needed to create for my video game to function. I want to thank scratch for creating a bunch of beginner videos to help me start my video game.
To conclude my tPol I would say not I am ready for grade 9. I wouldn’t say that I’m fully ready but I don’t think you can ever fully be ready because you can’t predict the unpredictable. There is so much that I’ve learned and plan on learning over my time in PLP. I’ve learned how to be confident in my expressing myself, to being comfortable with being myself around people other then my family, and even just learning how to creatively show my personality in my own work. I think in these blog posts I can seem a bit serious but I still am learning how to mix my own personality with having professional work. I don’t think I can ever fully be prepared for moving up a grade, but I know I can adapt and learn quickly to be accomplished in what I do in life.