Hello everyone!

If you’re a long time reader (or have read more than one of my posts) then you might be wondering why there’s no catchy (and possibly cringy) title. Well, it’s because I’m probably going to need to reference this quite a bit in the future so I’m just setting myself up for success you know, like a responsible learner would do. This blog post is about my tpol which stands for the transitional presentation of learning. The point of said post is basically to talk about why I should move on to grade 9.

This is my pol statement (though I had to change some words to make it work on paper).

Thank you for reading 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.

 

Did All The Work You Do Satisfy Your Standards?

The simple answer is no. Here’s the more complicated answer: at the beginning of the year I don’t think I did the best work I could therefore, it’s not up to my standards. At the beginning of the year I was new to high school and I was a bit of an anxious mess and I think that’s one of reasons I didn’t do my best work. Another reason would be that I was very new to PLP, I didn’t have as much knowledge of what was expected of me than I do now and the best way for me to work is when I know exactly what I need to do.

 

Did Your Goals For Your Work Change As You Worked On It?

I think my goals actually stayed mostly the same as I tend to set high standards for myself especially when doing school work. At the beginning of the year I set my grade goals as all extending or the 🌈 emoji and others (including myself) thought that was a bit of a crazy goal but here we are now and I’ve reached that goal!

 

What Did You Find Frustrating About PLP Work?

The most frustrating thing about my PLP work was when the people in my group didn’t pull their weight in the workload. That’s really frustrating to me because then usually it would fall to me (a lovely and responsible group member) to remind them and constantly hound them for their work. The first example that comes to mind for me is during DI we had to write/fill out an interference contract that basically stated that we would talk about our challenge solution (learn more about DI here) and one of my group member just never remembered to hand it in. We set reminders for them and messaged them but it still took too long for them to hand it in. Now that’s only one of the example I’ll share but it’s happened on many occasions.

When Did You Feel Dissatisfied During The Process Of Working On Your Projects? 

I haven’t felt very dissatisfied during many projects but, there have been a few times where I have felt that way. From all the points I’ve felt dissatisfied from seem to have one thing in common, they all happen when I feel like I’m not being there for my team or I’m slacking. The biggest example I can think of is the winter exhibition where we did our Outsiders tableau. I unfortunately had to miss the last half of the exhibition because of a performance and that made me feel like I wasn’t there for my little group but I also wasn’t there for the rest of my peers. To summarize the most dissatisfied I’ve ever felt this year was during/planning the winter exhibition. 

Overall I think the beast way I can grow as a leaner is to take a step back after each day and reflect on how I felt that day and really why I felt that way. I think that talking to my group at the beginning of a project would be really beneficial to my learning process.

 

To finish off this post I want to say why I think I’m ready to transition to grade 9. I think I’m ready to transition to grade 9 because of hard work, skills, and attitude to put it simply. To go more in depth in grade 8 I’ve worked really hard in my classes and stayed on top of my work. I’ve developed a lot of skills this year, not all of them being academic for example I’ve gotten a lot better at my social skills by that I mean that I’m better at talking to customer service workers/strangers and other people like that. Since the start of the year my attitude has improved exponentially at the beginning of the year I was very closed minded about lots of things but throughout this year I’ve gotten a lot better at being more open to different things.

 

I’m ready grade 9 bring it on!

 

Thanks for reading – Sydney🙃