It’s that time of the year that we’ve all been dreading, and if you haven’t there’s something wrong with you. It’s time for Tpols so welcome to mine. In this I’ll be answering the driving question, “Why do you feel your ready to advance to the next grade level?”

At the beginning of the year, everything for my future was planned, the projects I would do and the places I would go such as the long awaited Oregon trip. But now that I reflect everything my year went very different than what I imagined at the start of grade 8. 

So this is my story of how my first year of grade 8 PLP and my learning. 

Consequences of colonization!

I liked several parts of this project but not all and I’ll explain. The ending result of this project was to create an AR video presentating your reinterpreted art. I had no problem with the learning and creating of this project because I enjoyed making my own art that was somehow related to the original but it was the timing and teaching that annoyed me. When we were suppose to learn how to create the AR video we had a sub so that sucked, but our teachers didn’t explain it either so no one knew what to do and we were so close to the finish line. But a classmate of mine figured how to do it and she ended up teaching the class the day before the due date. Overall I had quite a lot of fun but due to teachers being away and bad communication I did not enjoy the amount of stress there was to finish this project. 

This is my AR presentation of my art: 

Travelogue! Out of every project I liked this one the best because it was for me the most creative one. For this project we had to create a book, essentially a travelogue about a European explorer. I picked Jacques Cartier, and I made a book about his discovery of the New World. Parts of the book had to be authentic but other parts I got to make up such as he enjoyed looking at the stars and using them for navigation. We got to draw, add pictures and personalize the book as much as we wanted. Overall my time management was good for this project and I enjoyed learning a lot about Jacques and his travels, but this is where the fun for humanities ended for me. 

My travelogue:

https://read.bookcreator.com/Yrm5eNHn1vW6EERi32i1UgvExCT2/Z6ZGrTG1QXaM0zytLDZb8g/ZTQpopbLTRWTzEGR59RT3g

Pandora’s box Winter Exhbition: Of course this is here because this project was so much fun I actually chose to attend class. The conclusion of this project was to build a box based off the movie avatar, and it had to have a theme. Building the box was very time-consuming and it needed a lot of materials if you wanted it to look good enough. But that wasn’t the hardest part, the hardest part was you had to memorize the story that went along with your box so that you could tell it to the public during exhibition night. Even though I stayed up many nights trying to build a tree for my box I still really enjoyed this project because I felt it was more of the hands on learning I expected from PLP. After an hour or two of presenting most people got tired and at some point I just took a really long break because I didn’t wanna do it anymore, but I realized I had worked really hard on my box so I stayed for a while after because I wanted people to see how much work I actually put into it.

Winter exhibition blog post:

https://www.blog44.ca/mikar/2023/01/05/winter-exhibition-2022/

Making interesting images: This project was more on the easier side which is probably why I like it more than others. The overall ending of this project was to create a digital scrapbook basically. We took pictures everywhere, as well as we took pictures of our favourite people and wrote about them. I had mixed feelings for this project because at first I enjoyed it, but also, was it important to be learning about pictures when we could be doing some thing else more beneficial? Now reflecting I wish I had more projects like this because now we do big projects, and we no longer have something like this that we can look forward to because it’s soft on the mind at least for me. I liked taking a photo and writing whatever I wanted about it, even if it wasn’t teaching us too much. In conclusion I enjoyed this project because for the week we were doing it, everything was still, no homework not too much effort in class, It was nice to have a bit of a break from the rest of the chaos of PLP.

Cover of my scrapbook (the rest is personal) 

Video game: It’s pretty obvious what we did, we created a video game, but it was much more than that. We had to use code and design our own game showing science, especially atoms. I struggled quite a lot with the coding because I didn’t understand it, no matter how many times the teacher explained it, it just didn’t make sense. I tried and tried again, but I couldn’t get the coding to work the way I wanted and it frustrated me a lot. Eventually, I had an aid help me because I couldn’t solve it on my own. In this project, I started seeing the change in my learning, and I didn’t understand it. I kept thinking maybe I’ll work harder the next project, but same problem happened. I didn’t know what was going on or how to fix it which is where my grades dropped. This project was a real struggle, because in the end I made the bare minimum just so I could pass this project with something at least. 

Here’s my video game and blog post:

https://www.blog44.ca/mikar/2023/05/03/my-science-video-game/

Immune system characters: This project really helped my mind because I enjoy drawing. You had to create little immune system characters invite a little story about how they helped in the human body. For example, you could write about Barbara and she’s a B-cell and she helps the human body by fighting off viruses. It was fun to create a story about a character I had made, but it was also authentic because the reality of the story was true. For my characters I drew them as robots, and they’re pretty cute. This was one of those projects that made everything feel still again. It was soft on mind and let us explore on our creative sides. Overall, I like this project very much and I wish to do something like this again.

Link to my immune system characters:

From the goals I set out in my MPOL I did achieve almost all, I got more out of my comfort zone, I don’t care if I speak in front of people, I’m more comfortable working in a group, but essentially I think I stopped caring about other people and their opinions. That has its pros and cons because at some point you stop caring too much and that’s where all the drama starts.

I wish I could write more about how my year was but that’s not the point of this post, essentially. This is to show my learning and that its purpose. This is just grade 8 and I don’t know what’s gonna happen in grade 9, I’m not sure if I’m gonna keep having problems academically or if something else happens. To answer the driving question, this year I’ve gone through so much already and I don’t know whats going to happen in the future but I’m willing to go through the process with PLP because I feel there is still so many adventures waiting for me in this program.