Welcome to my POL! I would call it a mPol but I feel as though we’re beyond mid-year. This has been a bit of year for me and everyone in PLP I think. This year has definitely bit more difficult for me. I felt as though I had a stronger start, but I slowly started to lose motivation and cared less throughout the year. But I think I should start off with some positives about my work instead of beginning this presentation (or blog post) with a downer.
Throughout the past 6 months of school, I have been many different types of a learner. I’ve been focused, studious, distracted, and sad. I think its safe for me to say that I’ve tried many different ways of learning. One main point I’ve noticed throughout the year, is that I can be easily distracted and that I’m very good at procrastinating. My goal throughout this entire year has to be a productive learner, and was even my goal that I wrote down in my learning plan.
When I reflected back on my learning plan from grade 8 as well, I realized how much I’ve been able to build off of it. My goal was to be more confident in myself and my work and work on presenting to large crowds. I think I’ve worked on this well throughout all of last year and this year, and although I may be more talkative in class, I do feel a lot more confident with being myself.
PLP Learning Plan Template 20232024
I have worked on getting back on track, and into the right mindset for school but I do have to say I was very thrown off of track by DI. It was a very new style of learning and presentation, that I was very confused by. Although it was a very good experience for improving presentation skills and working with new people, I definitely had my struggles. My parents definitely were on the receiving end, because they had to sit through many dinner where all I would do is stress and complain on and on about DI. Although this complaining got me nowhere, it was nice to be able to vent. Eventually the stress built up, and consumed me, and it got to the point where I was consistently crying, which Ms. Willemse got to witness! Our group did pull ourselves back together, and even though we had our fair share of setbacks, we pulled through with a first place win at regionals. At the start of DI, the teachers mentioned how almost every student hated DI in the start, but came to love it in the end. I’m glad to say that I’m one of those students! It’s been quite the journey, and involved a lot of singing and improving, but I’ve come out into the other side with a better mindset and definitely a more positive attitude at dinner.
(Sorry for the bad quality, I couldn’t find a better video)
Our other trip with its up and downs, is the Alberta Field Study. This trip had definetly more ups then downs, and all the downs could still be considered positive things. The only thing I had to complain about on that trip was all the early mornings for hiking, but they were still incredible hikes, with some killer views.
Our big project for this trip was to create lots and lots and lots of videos. We made TikTok’s, silent films, and an investigative video. My personal favourite was the TikTok’s, but mostly because they required minimal effort, and got to highlight my favourite parts of our trip.
I had to add a bit more effort into my investigative video because I had to actually go around in public and interview multiple different people. This was definetly scary for me, because I’m deathly afraid of rejection. What’s even worse then regular rejection, is being publicly rejected in front of all my classmates for my project. Thankfully I got very lucky, and was able to scrap together 3 or 4 solid interviews. The best interview I got was actually with a principal from a school in Britain. He had previously taught geography, so he was able to give a very well educated response to my questions.
Along with creating 4 videos for Alberta, I also made a book that explained the 5 themes of geography. Location, which can be relative (coordinates) or absolute (landmarks). Place which describes how a place is unique through flora and fauna, climate, architecture and traditions. Movement which can be shown through the movement of ideas ( mail and books ), the movement of people ( planes, trains, and buses ), and the movement of products ( online shopping and freight trains ). Geography is spilt into 3 different types ( surprise surprise ) which are formal (borders and cities), vernacular (places with similar characteristics), and functional (school catchments). And finally Human-Enviroment interaction which is basically how we interact with everything around us and how we change it or ourselves to work together.
To finish off my presentation, I’ll talk a bit about Failure. FAIL is PLP’s signature acronym that I think can definetly apply to my work. I’ve definetly had my fair share of failures with my work, that have set me back, but are also helping me learn. How I view failure is through 3 stages. Stage 1: “OH MY GOD I JUST FAILED”. Stage 2: “eh I just failed”. And stage 3 is: “ok I just failed, what can I do about this?”. I think a good goal to create would be to teach myself to skip stage 2, and work on moving quicker with stage 3. If you guys haven’t already noticed, I’ve got quite the tendency to procrastinate. It’s seeped into my work style and did take over for quite a while. I don’t know exactly when it started, but I do know that I’ve had quite the wake up call, and am pushing myself to get back on track and ready for the end of year and grade 10!