Hello everyone!

I’m going to start this post with the POL declaration.

Thank you for reading my presentation of learning. I am the expert in 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 reading and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

So now let’s get into this post.

I’d like to start by talking about my learning plan, specifically the core competencies.

As you can see I chose profile 5 for all of them and I think most of them were correct but, there is one I think I could make a profile 4 which is the social awareness and responsibility column because I don’t think I’ve been enough of an advocate for my community this year and that’s something I want to work on next year.

How have I failed (first attempt in learning) this year?

This year we did a project where the end goal was to build a rollercoaster model out of very specific materials. We learned about budgeting and about using all of the resources we had in different ways. When my partner and I started building our rollercoaster we found that our plan needed some tweaks to the original plan so, that’s what we did. Once we had built the rollercoaster and we thought it was good then we tested it. Unfortunately, the marble we used didn’t quite get around the loop and instead just fell out of the track so, instead of taking out the loop from the track we decided to use the jump to our advantage. The rules never said that the marble had to touch all of the track, it just had to complete the course. We tweaked our track so that the marble would skip over one side and continue along the track and it worked! If you want a more detailed explanation then check out my blog post about it!  I failed in this project because my original idea didn’t work and my original model didn’t work either but I tried again and didn’t give up. 

Now, I’d like to talk about my classes.

Humanities

We’ve done so many things in humanities this year and all of them have been so different my favourite has been the full steam ahead because I love slam poetry and I’m excited we got to learn about it in school because I don’t think enough people know about it. 

Even though I’m very ready for summer break this year I don’t feel nearly as burnt out now as I did last year. I think that taking breaks when I’m working has really helped me manage my time better and has helped my mental health as well. In my growth plan, I wrote that I wanted to speak up for injustices more and while I’ve done that more this year it’s still not as much as I wanted so, I think I’m going to work on speaking up more next year. 

Maker

Versus last year I think I’ve been a lot more positive and open to different things and I think that has made my work quality better and has made my year better. Another place I’ve noticed I’ve been a lot more positive in is dance. Something my dance teacher has said to my class is that everything you do is an opportunity, when you get a correction then it’s an opportunity to improve and when you do an exercise then it’s a chance to practice, she also says it’s a privilege to come to class because not everyone gets that chance. I think all of that can be applied to school and I think it’s really helped my view on growth mindsets. At the beginning of the year, I honestly thought growth mindsets were kind of stupid but, now I can see that their not and having a growth mindset has helped me improve on a lot of things in school, and other things.  

A project I’m really proud of is the first film project. While I’m proud of the final product I’m also really proud of the planning that went into it, I had to write emails to different people and when that didn’t work I asked for help and I problem solved and, in the end, I made a pretty good movie.

Science 

At the beginning of the year, I was really nervous about not having Scimatics because that meant that I was going to have to take mainstream math and that meant I was going to have to take tests which was a very scary thing at the time. Even though I wasn’t sure about it at the beginning I’ve actually really enjoyed having them separate. My favourite science project we did was the exciting electricity project because I found it really interesting to learn about electric currents and all of that especially because my dad is an electrician so I could talk to him about the project and relate to him for once with school work. I also really liked making the circuit for the operation game which came in handy because my brother did an electricity unit and I was able to help him a bit. 

Unfortunately we didn’t learn much about space but, the other units we did were cool as well. I think I accomplished my goal of not overdoing things and not going for perfection on all my work (I still did my best even if I wasn’t going for perfection!) since not going for perfection helped me a lot this year I think I’m going to keep that same goal for next year.

Disposition, Habits, and Systems

The last thing I’m going to talk about is my disposition, habits, and systems. I think I’ve accomplished being someone that people can ask questions to because I’ve had lots of people ask me questions this year. I’m still working on managing my workload and that is going to be a big challenge next year especially but, I think I’m getting better at it. Structured and things have been really helpful this year and they take the pressure off my mind to remember every little detail. I’ve also started using the calendar app more often so I don’t have to constantly ask my mom whether I’m free or not.

 

I’ve had to make a lot of really hard decisions this year. Leaving PLP has been one of the hardest ones, this program has been so helpful these past 2 years and I’ve loved every moment of it. I’ve made so many friends and have found a supportive and kind community. I’m leaving because I’ve decided to pursue a lot more dance and unfortunately being at Seycove wouldn’t let me do that. For me change is very scary but, I’m also really excited for next year.

Thanks for reading -Sydney🙃