“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.”
So what the heck is a tPOL?
A tPOL is transitional Period of Learning that us PLPers use at the end of the year, unless you are in grade 12 then you have an fPOL final presentation of learning and around June ish you have mPOLs mid year presentation of learning. One thing they all have in common is that they have you reflect on your learning and past experiences to better yourself. Another thing they have in common is they have students present to the teachers and parents also the month they happen in starts with a j June and January.
So lets dive right into it first I will state my goals, they didn’t change much from my mPOL except I want to get an exceeding in science. While in humanities and maker I wanted to get an accomplished. I chose them because I want to try harder in subjects I enjoy and are good at. Also the way I present things from the mPOL will be the same ish except I will not use all the projects I did, I feel that last time I had too much text and no photos.
Mind over matter-Science
So for a keystone we had to make a game about the the three states of matter, atoms, or just science that you have learned before, something I did good was making a game about dodging objects by flying around and collecting snowflakes to increase your score, on the blog post I made for this I gave myself some things I could do to make it better and I have not acted upon them but I will over the summer.
Another keystone we had to do was mostly independent and you had to develop a driving question, do your own research, and present your learning all with a partner or on your own. I chose to partner up with Quin his blog here. So this keystone proves I should move up to grade 9 because most of the keystone was independent and I think I succeeded at making the driving question and recording the events that happened, I could have made the experiment bigger used more gummy bears or something. See my blog post here.
Medium is the Message-Humanities
So for the final keystone I had to make advertisement for a business I visited in Oregon. I think this shows I can move into grade 9 because to make the final product I had to be critiqued by peers and follow through on their advice, it also shows my creativity because I had to start from scratch to make an ad of my own that looks different than others. I also had to give others advice and point out mistakes and things that would improve their ad. My ad
For another keystone I had to observe 6 ads, 2 commercials, 2 print ads, and 2 web ads. This keystone was kind of hard because we had to find 6 different ads which was easy enough but the hard part was identifying the different techniques and appeals from the print and web ads because there isn’t much to work with so you have to make decisions out on a ledge based on not much but I managed to do it and you would be able to see it on my blog if I made a post about it but I will on Thursday or Friday. One of the ads I observed was a Hienz ad to buy their ketchup.
Oregon 2023 Trip
This really shows I can move to grade 9 because we were in a whole different country and when we were questing we were basically on our own except we had a radio to contact teachers in case of an emergency. They also teach teamwork beacause if just two people are working on it you will fail but if the whole team works together you will get one of the top scores, our group was a mix of that because one member was trying to do everything themselves and running off but the other member were solving it as a group. We also had to keep a journal which teaches preparedness because you have to know what to take pictures of and take notes on. And when you were interviewing your business you had to be good at time management because there was probably notes you had to take on the place you were visiting, basically I learned how to be flexible with time and activities, like in the museum you had to look at exhibits you had to take notes and pictures on everything not just one area. Blog post here.
Spring Exhibition
So this proves I can move into grade 9 because the teachers kind of left us alone I think they did that because they trust us more and think we are more responsible after the Oregon trip and other suff we did. Also they made the grade 8s put down the floor mats, get all the desks, put stuff back in the drama room, clean up the floor mats, and put away the floor mats. See that blog post here. I succeeded at making the table looking nice, but I could have done better at staying at my station, because there was no scheduled break time everyone went away and did something else at one point and I think some people just left. Blog post here. My booth
Things to Improve
This will be about things that don’t really fit into any one topic. I really want to improve my ability to focus on work instead of procrastinating some thing that could help are going to a library where there are less distractions, have a short breaks every once in awhile, have a reward at the end, just focus, listening to music, or have parents block out games somehow. Another thing I want to be better at is looking ahead of assignments example if I finish a keystone I will put a reflection of that on a draft to the corresponding blog post, or just like knowing what I will do with the class time I have for that block. Last thing I want to improve grammar, spelling, and typing, you may ask “why that?” because I am pretty good in all of those areas but I know I can Improve so over the summer I will learn the 200 most common misspelled words 10 each week plus a bonus word, I will use a typing club account from grade 7 to get better at typing. I will start of by allowing myself to look at the keyboard envy once in a while, after I get a lot better at that I will try to type without looking.
Things I Learned From PLP 8
Stuff on field studies: Document everything by taking pictures and notes, always have your iPad on field stops unless you are at a restaurant or the teachers tell you do not bring it, go on trip 1 because something bad happens on trip 2, download music and movies prior to the trip because there will probably be no WiFi, choose the bottom bunk because you are close to your stuff and you don’t have to climb over other people to get to your bed. Blog posts- I think you should summarize what the project was, the keystones, what was the best part the worst, and add links and credit to people who helped you in the project, shorten links so they don’t look bad the will also take up less space.
In Conclusion
I would like to think I am ready for PLP 9 next year well not really next year next school year, I like to think of grade 8 as a free trial because you get to what PLP is all about and after 922 hours of PLP I really like it. Wait as I lie in bed thinking about the summer I realized “wait I think there is a thing like summer learning but to show you are still interested in joining PLP next year .”
Thank you for reading/listening my tPOL. I believe I have given an honest reflection on my learning. For the rest of my time in PLP, I want to insure I produce quality work while improving my organization. I’m wildly excited for grade 9, and progressing through PLP.
This is beautiful. Brings a tear to my eye..