Hello all, and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be presenting my tPOL for grade 10! This has been a crazy year, and I’m so ready to reflect on it. Over this year, I’ve faced many challenges and kept going despite them. Today I’ll tell you all about my success behaviours that I’ve utilized this year to complete quality work, and even which ones I am more lacking in and stretching to try and get better at to make myself an even better learner.

Declaration: 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.

The first success behaviour I’m going to talk about is ownership and responsibility. This one is a bit tricky, as it is not really my strong suit. To have ownership and responsibility means to take responsibility for my work, which involves things like getting it done on time. That’s not something I’m very good at. Sometimes, though, I’m really good at taking ownership for my work and just doubling down and getting it done.

A great example of this was my work in the project “who am I going to be?” Personally, I absolutely loved this project. I think it jogged some great reflection for me on who I am and who I want to be as a person. For my blog post on this project, I took responsibility for my own learning and I got it done on time, with quality that I was very happy with. In that blog post, I shared who I want to be as a person with my audience, making deep reflections on the work that I had done for the project. I feel as though this project defined who I CAN be when I put my mind to it. In this project, we also read a book. We all got to choose different books and I chose a book called “Between Two Kingdoms.” When reading this book, I immersed myself in my learning and allowed myself to demonstrate the enthusiasm I had for my learning. I took ownership for my learning and got things done: finished that book, and wrote that blog post.

Unfortunately, there are many more projects where I FAILED at this behaviour. Now usually, FAILing means First Attempt In Learning. Devastatingly, this wasn’t just my first: it was my second, third, fourth, and so on. An example of how I managed to pull this off is my work in our most recent project in humanities: Chasing the Canadian Dream. In this project, I have done the opposite. I did not get things done. While I have worked hard in all my classtime to finish my book with quality, I did not finish in time for the Monday morning due date. Instead of taking agency for my learning and finishing it up at home, I let it pile up and didn’t finish it.

I think a goal of mine that I will work on over the summer and for next year is that I want to take agency for my work and be able to get things done with quality, like I did in “Who am I going to be?”

The next success behaviour I am talking about is contribution. This behaviour is a part of the engagement category. I think that I am often very engaged in class: when we are talking and learning, I am constantly reflecting on what we are learning about and contributing my ideas to the class.

A great example of this was our Romeo and Juliet project in humanities. In this project, every time that we would do readers theatre in class, I volunteered myself to read for the class. When we did class discussions, I would contribute my ideas.

Another great example of this behaviour is my most recent work in PGP on the project Back to the Future. I think that I contributed to my class’s success in the spring exhibition.

During this project, I was passionate about what I was talking about, and it reflected in my work and my contribution to our area. I was able to contribute my thoughts and ideas and present them to my audience without interfering or getting in the way of my peers. I think that this is a great skill of mine, because I’m really good at sharing my ideas without overstepping and taking from someone else’s. This is a good behaviour to commonly demonstrate in PLP, because it’s always people trying to speak their mind, and it’s easy to take it too far and take away from your peers.

The final behaviour that I’m talking about today is citizenship, which is under the category of conduct, ethics, and integrity. In our success behaviours, citizenship is defined and expressed by demonstrating leadership by setting a positive example, and encouraging and supporting classmates in their academic and personal pursuits.

After reflecting on this for a bit, I think that I stand somewhere in between on this behaviour. I consider myself to be a pretty supportive classmate and friends to my peers, but I’m not so sure about the leadership part. This is a hard pill to swallow, for a few reasons. For starters, this may seem surprising, but I have always considered myself to be a bit of a leader. As I’ve started to get older, I stopped filling that role of a leader because I started to get more self conscious about what other people think. Another reason this seems odd to me is because in many other aspects of my life, I do fill leadership positions: for example, my gymnastics and coaching, but at school, I’ve stopped doing that. 

I think this is something that I want to stretch for in my following years in PLP: I’d like to try even harder to set a positive example. This is something I especially want to work on because it not only benefits me but it can benefit my peers, too. I think that that’s really good because I love helping other people.

Thanks for coming to my tPOL! See you next year!

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.

It’s that tPOL time of year again! I think I’ve changed a lot over the past semester, and I’ve made some discoveries about myself as a learner.

Last semester, for my mPOL, I talked a lot about how I had improved from grade 8 by doing most of my work in class and being able to keep from stressing about it and letting it impact my life outside of school. Now, looking back on the whole year, I can confidently tell you that the second semester did not work out as well as the first.

At the start of this semester, I went to Mexico for a gymnastics competition. I was only gone from school for two days but it impacted two entire projects. I missed the launch of Frankenstuffies, and I was already behind. We were expected to almost be done our stuffy, but I barely knew what the assignment was. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, because I would’ve had lots of extra time to catch up. Instead, I let it get to my head.

This semester, I discovered that I cannot let myself fall behind, because if I do, I let it snowball and suddenly I’m a whole project behind. For Frankenstuffies and Building a Nation, I was constantly a step or two behind.

You might be asking, “what do you mean by letting your work snowball”? Well, what happens is I get all stressed over it even though I’m barely behind, and because I’m stressed, I start procrastinating getting my work done, and suddenly two days behind turns into two weeks behind.

How did I solve this problem? Well, by the time we got to the end of Building a Nation, I was only a few days behind. So when the weekend between it and the next project, I got down to business. I finished everything and went into Dulce Et Decorum Est with a fresh mindset, ready to enjoy the project like I did with other projects in the first semester.

How can I prevent this happening in the future? I think it’s important for me to fix my mindset. I need to stop having this idea that doing my work at home is harder, or slower, or impossible. I need to be able to take it home and have it be just as good as at school. That way, if I miss a day for whatever reason, I don’t get so completely, helplessly behind.

That was a bit of a downer, but now that I know this about myself, we can look to a future where I’m on top of my work all the time. We can also look at my accomplishments from this year.

First off, I was really proud of my book from the Power of Geography project for humanities last semester. I put a lot of thought into it and also spent some time making it look good, and I really think it turned out well. I think it was one of the best things I worked on this year. I also thoroughly enjoyed doing it, and I was actually invested on how it went, which included putting some real thought into it. Here are some of my favourite pages from it:

I’m also really happy with all the photos I put into it.

Something else that I’m really proud of that’s more recent was my final product in our project called Building a Nation. It was a board game representing Nationalism and the history of the Confederation of Canada. I found the project pretty interesting and I enjoyed making a board game. This is what the finished product of our board game looked like:

Finally, we had our World War I project, which we put on show for the exhibition. For this, I painted a mural to represent poetry created in WWI. I mostly wanted to do a painting to step out of my comfort zone, as I’m not a super artistic person and don’t usually do things like paint. I’m happy with how my painting turned out, even though it definitely could’ve been better if I had more experience painting. But I think I ended up getting what I wanted, which was trying something new for a project. Here’s what my piece looked like:

That’s a wrap of my 2023 tPOL! Thank you for coming/reading my post!

Hey y’all welcome back. Tis the MPOL season.

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.

MPOLS are all about growth, and you know what? I think I’ve grown a lot. So that’s what this post is all about.

Let’s compare: what did my work look like last year?

Last year, I wasn’t very invested in my own growth. I didn’t try my best, I didn’t care about my work, and I wasn’t ever proud of my work. Everything was a halfhearted attempt because I didn’t really care about school. An example of this is in the humanities project New Beginnings, when we made our visuals to represent an aspect of New France. I chose survival.

What does my work look like this year?

Well, I care a lot more this year. I try my best to try my best, and I work as hard as I can to hand in good quality work in a timely manner. While I don’t feel the most motivated because I’m not as surrounded by my friends in the classroom due to them being in different classes, I’ve been pushing through and I’m glad that I’ve been able to produce good work that I’m proud of. For example, I was really proud of my work in the Power of Geography, because I feel my finished product really showed my thought process throughout the project.

What do I want my work to look like in the future?

So right now, my work is something I’m proud of, and I put a concerted effort into the things I do. In the future, I want it to stay that way, but I also want to make use of my time better as well. I want to be able to get all my work done in class, and I want to be happy with my work all the time.

I’d like to especially talk about how much better at time management and organization I’ve gotten since last year. I’ve handed in almost nothing late, and I’ve given myself enough time to create work that I value and I’m happy with. I feel on top of my work, and it’s really helping me with my mindset at school.

Last year, we learned all about growth mindsets or the “PLP mindset.” This is a mindset of growth, a mindset where you’re ready to tackle the tasks you’re given, and try your best in the things you do. It’s also about looking to the future and knowing how you want to be, and making a plan for yourself to get to the point you want to be at. When we first learned about the PLP mindset, I thought it was a bunch of junk that we get told to motivate us to put more effort into our work. Or at least it was something I didn’t have and I’d just have to go on the way I was: handing in my work late, it being rushed, and not being happy with it. Somewhere between then and the start of this year, I lost that mindset and took on the PLP mindset. I come to school ready to try my best and put in a real effort. I actually care about my work and doing my best, and I really try to hand everything in on time.

Looking to the future, I’m ready to head there and see what it has to offer. I’m excited to grow as a person and a learner, and I hope I improve in the same ways that I already have. 

One thing I could really grow on is my interaction with my peers and teachers. Sometimes in class, I’m really distracting to people because I get off task. Usually, I can redirect myself and still get my work done in class, but it’s really distracting to the others. It also comes off as disrespectful to my teachers when that’s not what I’m trying to do. My goal for the rest of the year is to improve on this by always making sure I’m working on what I need to get done for the class while I’m in class.

I think that over the course of this semester, I’ve grown a lot, not only as a learner but as a person, too. And even though I’ve grown a lot, I also know that I can still continue to grow, learn, and thrive throughout the rest of the year and even farther into the future. I’m excited to see where my growth takes me.

Thank you, 

Susan

Hey y’all, welcome back to my blog! This is the blog post for my tPOL. 

Declaration:

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I’m 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.

The projects I’m going to talk about Becoming a PLP Learner, Comic Cells, New Beginnings, The Outsiders, and Laser Laws. Then I’m going to talk about my growth this year by comparing how I did in different core competencies in different projects.

Becoming a PLP Learner

Becoming a PLP learner was a big project for me. At the time, I was just starting grade 8, and barely knew what was going on. I did really well in that project, which gave me the confidence boost that I needed for the year. In this project, I especially did well in the communication competency. I was easily able to express myself through works such as my user manual and my bitmoji sticker.

Comic Cells

Comic cells impacted me a lot as a learner. In this project, I really struggled with time management. I almost always had to do most of the work at home, and I handed most of it in late. This means that there’s definitely room for me to grow as I go into grade 9. 

New Beginnings

New beginnings was a great project for me. I was interested in most of the subjects we learned about, and I learned a lot of new things. I was able to grow as a learner and focus and work hard on all the work I was assigned.

The Outsiders

The outsiders was a big project for me. It was my first full scale exhibition, and I think I did pretty well. I was able to work well as a team, and the project allowed me to grow into a better team member.

Laser Laws

In laser laws, I grew as a learner in the communication competency. I’m proud of my work in this project because I think I explained my learning well in my presentation. I also excelled in the personal and social competency, because I worked really well with my group to create a nice presentation.

Here’s some evidence of my growth this year:

Thinking

Laser Laws

Oh, to think about my thinking in laser laws. In laser laws, I demonstrated that my thinking was definitely in need of development. My group’s creation of the laser display was pretty good, but it definitely could’ve been better. If you look at my projects further on, they’ve definitely improved.

Chemistry Coding

Chemistry coding was a big think project for me. The creation of my game was a bit rough at first, but it improved over the project. Eventually, I was thinking at my fullest, creating one of the best end products to a project that I’ve created all year. And that’s on GROWTH!

Communication

Becoming a PLP Learner

Oh wow. This project was a bit rough in some spots, but at the same time I excelled in it. For example, my keynote was not very good. It was messy and hard to look at. But on the other hand, my user manual was really good! It was fun to read, and easy to understand.

Comic Cells

In this project, I totally upped my communication game. I was able to clearly express scientific ideas, as the project criteria said. This shows a lot of growth in my communication.

Personal and Social

Medium is the Message

In this project, my teamwork skills were… not there. I helped, but definitely not as much as I should’ve. I was terrible at compromising, so many decisions turned into arguments. 

Destination Imagination

My teamwork skills definitely improved when I did this project. Our team worked together pretty well to come up with a solution for the challenge. Obviously I have much more room to grow, but this project was definitely a jump up from medium is the message, at least in the personal and social competency.

All in all, I definitely have room to grow, but I’m comfortable with my learning and growth so far this year.

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today is a more special blog post: I’m going to be talking about my very first field study, the Loon Lake Learning Advance! In this post, I’m going to be reflecting on my learning while I was there.

Day 1

We started this day at school. The assignment of our Book Creator book was introduced to us. At around 12:30, we left the school and started heading towards Loon Lake. As soon as we got there, we went to the amphitheatre and went on our photo walk. I took photos of different parts of nature during this walk.

In order to get to the path, we had to pull a cool rope barge.

After our photo walk, we went on a ‘quest’ to get used to the area. At one of the clues, we took a photo of ourselves as a human totem pole. 

My team for this activity was Daniel, Caitlin, Kira, and Hannah.

After that, we settled into our cabins. I shared a room with Kira, Brooke, Kai, and Gwenyth. Once we put our stuff away, we headed to the gym for a team building activity. Our activities included a few games. For the first one, we had a partner and we walked around the gym alone until Mr. Harris called out a scenario (for example, a frog on a log,) and we had to find our partner and act out the scene. Another game we played was a fun drawing game. We sat in a circle with a small group and had a piece of paper and a marker for each person. We drew one shape 3 times on our piece of paper, and passed it to the next person. Then you draw different shapes on the paper passed to you, and so on. We ended up with some fun artwork.

After we did these activities, we ate dinner. We had some delicious lasagna! Once dinner was over, we had evening fun. I chose to do games night and I had fun playing cards. After evening fun, we had our first advisory group. We called our group the Wolvefishes.

After advisory, we went to sleep, excited for the next day.

Day 2

On day 2, we woke up bright and early to have a delicious pancake and french toast breakfast. Directly afterwards, we had advisory. After advisory, we headed to the forest to build shelters. My group for this activity was Daniel, Callum, and Chris. 

After that, we did our first learning block with Mr. Harris. In this lesson, we learned all about the NAME acronym to determine historical significance: N-novelty, A-applicability, M-memory, and E-effect. I think I did really well in this activity because I was an active listener throughout the video we watched. We had a productive conversation about the NAME technique and events throughout history that I took a big part in. Anyways, after all of these events, I had the DI Sweatbox. Basically this was an activity where way too many kids chill in a room with a painfully hard floor and no chairs to work on Destination Imagination for 2 hours straight. So that was SUPER fun. My team finalized our script and practiced it, so at least the painfully slow 2 hours weren’t completely in vain. After this we had free time and finished the part of the day where we had to think properly with dinner. After dinner, we had evening fun, where I played cards again, and then advisory. With that, we finished our day.

Day 3

We started day 3 with breakfast at 7:45 again. (I call a riot. We should’ve eaten later!) After that, we had advisory as usual, and started our thinking time. Our first non-routine activity was silent ball in the gym. After that, we had another lesson with Mr. Harris on how to mask with the app SuperimposeX.

Next, we ate lunch and continued with yet another DI Sweatbox. We continued practising and improving our script until we moved on to free time and then dinner. After dinner, we had advisory and then our final evening fun, which was a movie night. We watched Back to the Future. After that, we went to sleep our final night at Loon Lake.

Day 4

On day 4 we started our day with breakfast 15 minutes early (seriously, why did we have to wake up so early ahhhh!) After breakfast, we had our final advisory, and then packed up our stuff. Finally, we played capture the flag (grade 8’s vs grade 9’s) and finished everything up with chicken burgers for lunch. After that we loaded back onto the buses and headed back to school.

Overall, I loved going to Loon Lake! I learned all about historical significance, and my knowledge on SuperimposeX is much more vast than before (though I didn’t know anything beforehand.)

Finally, I can’t forget my book! During our time at Loon Lake, we worked on a book in the app Book Creator about our time there. Here it is!