As one as my last posts of grade 8, I thought I would take the time to reflect on all of my learning during my first year of PLP. This year I learned so much and I have had the pleasure of being able to show off all of my work to the entire world through this very blog. This end of year post is what we call a TPOL (Transitional Presentation of Learning) in PLP. This is something that is done at the end of each year and is very similar to my previous MPOL. In this post I will go over some strengths, some areas for grows, and some areas that have been improving with my leaning over the past year.

My Goals:

In PLP, things aren’t marked with letters or numbers. Instead, we use emojis. This is what the marking system looks like:

At the start of the year, we created something called a Learning Plan. In this we went in depth about our learning goals and how we wanted to achieve them. Here I will talk about each subject area and how I progressed towards my goal.

Humanities:

My goal for humanities was to receive an extending. At the start of the year, my work was at an accomplished level of success. However, as the year went on, I started to put more care into my work. Out of all six humanities projects we did this year, my best work had to have been during the Renaissance: a Change Engine project. In this project we wrote a paragraph and created an image as our final products. I think that they both showed a sophisticated level of knowledge. I made sure to do lots of research and ask for lots of feedback from peers, teachers, and parents. I am very proud of my two final products.

Click here to read the paragraph.

Scimatics:

My goal for scimatics as also an extending. I think that in the early stages of scimatics I was definitely at an accomplished level of success. For the first three or so projects, my work was good, but it wasn’t extending by my standards. As we got later on however, I started feeling more confident about what I created. My favourite work I produced in scimatics was my Chemistry Coding game. I spent so much time making sure the game was as proficient as possible. I am very proud of that project and had a lot of fun with it.

Maker:

My goal for maker was once again, an extending. And I think that I accomplished that. Even though maker was only half a year long, showed a high level of success. I believe this is because in maker, I had more creative freedom and I didn’t have to work in bigger concepts that were part of each project. My best work in maker was definitely produced during the Constructing Creative Communication project, specifically the Herzog part where I got to explore some photography skills. Most of the works that I produced during that project made me very proud.

Areas For Growth:

I think that my greatest weaknesses when it comes to work are mostly based on focus and motivation. When I sit down to start a piece of work, there are a million things around me to distract me. When I do get distracted, it makes it harder to start the work because I keep getting distracted. When I eventually do start my work, I don’t have enough time to do my work. This makes my work lower quality. In the earlier parts of the year I struggled with this quite a bit. However, as time went on I got a lot better at focusing and getting my work done. I still do struggle with this problem, but not quite as often. I will continue to work on this in future years.

Another thing that can lower the quality of my work is my ability to communicate fairly when in groups. When I work with a group, I constantly want to be the one in charge in order to execute my vision. This can be counter productive to the assignment because that way, my group spends time arguing. I have really been changing to a more laid back group member in the past year and I think that that is important to the creation of better work.

What I Have Learned:

In my first year of being a PLP learner, one of the biggest things we were taught is that its ok to fail. Failure means making mistakes in order to grow your work. When you fail, you keep trying until you succeed. An example of something in which I failed many times in order to produce was my Medium is the Message ad. This ad went through many phases before being complete. As my first project at the start of the year, this really taught me a lot about the process of revisions and the importance of failure.

  • First individual ad

Another thing that we learned was to extend our learning beyond the classroom. Even when you aren’t in a classroom setting you can still learn just much, if not more. This means finding people who can teach you anything and asking them what they have to say. You should always strive to learn all about the people around you. A great example of learning outside the classroom was our Loon Lake Field Study. I got to learn so much while still having a ton of fun.

Conclusion:

As my first year as both a high school student and a PLP learner, I learned a lot about my personal and social identity and my cultural significance. In future years I believe I will continue to learn all about who I am as a person and what my place in the world is. I am exited to go into grade 9 and am exited about what is to come.