It’s that time of year again! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to TPOL’S (Transitional Posts of Learning). They happen once a year, and are in many ways similar to MPOL’S. TPOL’S are the blog posts of all blog posts. They are where I talk and reflect on the whole year. So without further ado;

Destination Imagination

I talked a lot about teamwork in my two Destination Imagination posts this year. That’s because there’s a lot of great things to say about it. One thing i didn’t really talk about was the “leader” of our group. There wasn’t one. We were all leaders in different parts. Some of us were in charge of the script, or the songs. Obviously there was more than just the script and the songs, but I won’t bore you with the whole list. I’d never worked in a group where there’s just one leader before. It’s really nice because you don’t have the pressure of being the leader and making most of the decisions, but you don’t feel like you aren’t contributing enough. I think it also helped that we all got along well. We listened to each other well and didn’t argue about much. We did really well in our performance and in our instant challenge. Our second performance was much better than our first. We listened to what the appraisers said and made a lot of revisions based on the feedback that we got. Since we were willing to listen to the feedback the appraisers had for us, we did much better in provincials. I have learned new ways of working in a team after this project, and i now know how much you can improve if you really listen to feedback.

Cloning

I really enjoyed the cloning project, though it was frustrating at times. I found it cool to learn about cloning plants, because I’m personally interested plants and possibly becoming a landscaper. However, (as usual) there were some problems with my group. Not everyone was carrying their weight. We tried to resolve it within our group multiple times, but the two group members continued to not do any work. Eventually I had to go to mr gross with another group member to address the situation, because we knew we wouldn’t be able to get the project done by the deadline if the other two group members didn’t start pulling their weight. This project demonstrated that I’ve learned to ask for help when it’s needed. I’m glad that we asked for help because I’m happy with the final outcome, and how things were resolved. 

Lego

The lego  project was another example of challenging group work. There seems to be a lot of that in this program. With this project, I ended up doing the majority of the work. Again, i tried many times to resolve the problem on my own, but (just like with the cloning project) it didn’t work. I could’ve gone to mr gross again, but I knew that I could get the work done in time for the presentation. I also didn’t think that going to mr gross would really work this time. I ended up finishing the project on time, and overall Im happy with the final product. I feel like this is a good example of real life learning that will apply outside the classroom. Sometimes not everyone is going to contribute and you can’t always help that. The difference between the lego project and the cloning project is that I knew that we wouldn’t be able to finish the cloning project in time without help. 

Comic book

I enjoyed this project, and learning about the treatment of shell shock. Before this assignment I had heard the words shell shock approximately 2 times. Both in Ottawa. So it’s fair to say that I  learned a lot from this project. This entire unit was very important because we need to learn about the horrible things that happened in the past so we can learn from them and not treat people that way in the future. 

We decided to make a comic book as a class, because our goal was to make World War One easier to understand and more interesting for kids in elementary school. We presented to the 6th and 7th graders at Cove Cliff Elementary. The first and second groups i presented to were genuinely interested in what I was presenting. It was easy and enjoyable to present to them because they wanted to know more and they asked questions. The 3rd (and final) group I presented to had a harder time understanding the topic, so they weren’t as interested in what I was saying. It was difficult to present to them, and it showed me that not everyone learns the same way, and that sometimes you need some background knowledge to enjoy things more. I also learned that it easier to present when your audience is interested in what you’re talking about. I will think about this for future presentations so I can try to get everyone interested. 

I learned a lot this year about myself, and others. I made many, many mistakes, but I learned from every mistake I made. As I’m sure you know by now, one of my ongoing goals is to get work in on time. I am slowly getting better at this each term, but I still need to improve. I previously mentioned setting timers for myself, to work for 30 minutes, then take a five minute break. This method has been working well, but recently I changed it a little. Instead of setting the timer for the same duration each time I break the assignment up into smaller chunks, then I give myself a time limit. I just started doing this recently, but so far it has worked.