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2024 TPOL

2024 TPOL

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TPOL 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.

TPOL 2024

Only a day left of grade 8! Can you believe it? 

As I look back on this year, I am amazed at how much I’ve grown not just as a learner but as a person. This year has been a drastic change in almost all aspects of my life, I have had to navigate through so many new experiences, and it is these experiences that have prepared me for grade 9. 

How can I showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP success behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?  This is the question I am basing my TPOL on. We were given a checklist to evaluate ourselves on the behaviours we show consistently, sometimes, and rarely, here are my answers:

I have chosen three success behaviours to focus on: agency, communication and collaboration, and self-regulation

Agency

First, I want to highlight my success in accepting feedback and making revisions. Revision is something that was a very big shock and struggle for me at the beginning of the year. My whole school career I have required everything I do to be perfect. Because of this I often hyper fixate on projects and work long and hard on them to make them perfect. 

The first project I ever did in PLP was the ‘It’s the End of the World’ project where we had to rewrite the song It’s the End of The Word as we Know it in a way that displays our worldview. I worked long nights in making my song perfect. After doing this I was introduced to PLP’s Idea of how everything can be revised. After working so hard to make a ‘flawless’ song I was asked  to change it. My immediate reaction was “NO!” I remember sitting on the table at home just staring at my song, my brain refusing to revise.

During my most recent project ‘The Wilderness Must be Explored’ I created an advertisement that I handed in. I later got feedback on how I could improve and revise my ad. Unlike the beginning of the year I fixed it up without struggle.

This is an example of how much PLP has helped me with my perfectionism, which is a ongoing struggle I have always faced.

 

Communication and Collaboration with Peers

Because of the many group projects in PLP, I have had to communicate and collaborate a lot this year, which has made me very aware on how much I have to work on it. 

I am a good group member when it comes to actively participating and doing work, however sometimes I participate to much. My perfectionism causes me to have a hard time trusting other people with creating work that is up to my standards which leads me to end up doing all of the work.

Here is the participation pie I created after the ‘It’s the End of the World’ project:

Although my communication and collaboration skills have grown over this past year, this is still a skill I continue to struggle with and I would like to focus on it as something to improve in grade 9.

Self-Regulation

Self regulation is something I have been struggling a lot with this year. I am a very busy person and have several commitments out of school, because of this I often find it hard to balance school and sports which leads me to often be very stressed. My stress is also an out come of my time management skills, I don’t have a hard time staying on task during school. However when I am trying to get work done at home, staying focused is hard. 

A project where I really struggled with self-regulation was the Echoes of colonization project. During this project I was in the middle of the high school mountain bike team and was frequently missing class. This lead to a lot of homework as well as a lot of procrastinating.

I am not very proud of this project, I was very rushed in doing it, and not a very present group member. 

In the future, when I miss school or have homework, I am going to have set times to do the work. This could be in the car to a mountain bike race, or just a time at home where my phone or any distractions are away.

Goals For Grade 9

This year has taught me so much about who I am as a learner and as a person. Moving onto grade 9 I want to continue to work on improving my perfectionism, I will do this by focusing on getting the work done, and then making it better or revising it after. As I continue to work on my perfectionism, I believe my teamwork skills will improve. However, I still want to work on my teamwork by going out of my comfort zone and trusting my peers. 

How am I Prepared For Grade 9

This year I have improved as a learner. I have made goals and strived to meet them. Although I have overcome so many challenges this year, I still have work to do. Having reflected on my year as well as created goals and how i am going to reach them, I have prepared myself for all of the challenges I will face in grade 9. I have a game plan and wont stop until I have become the best learner I can be.

Mid Term Reflections (MPOL)

Mid Term Reflections (MPOL)

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My whole life, school has been relatively easy for me, follow the criteria, add a little extra pizzazz, and boom I had myself an an extending. When I stepped into my first PLP class 7 months ago I quickly realized that was not going to be the case. PLP has forced me to fully adapt the way I learn, and I fully believe I have grown as a student because of it. 

Statement of Learning

“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.”

Things I Struggled With This Term

Perfectionism 

My whole school career I have required everything I do to be perfect, my projects have to be perfect, my art has to be perfect, my grades have to be perfect. There is a lot of ways PLP has tested my perfectionism.

 First of all, none of the work we do is like elementary, rather than filling in blanks and answering specific questions on a worksheet, we do projects that force us to create our own questions.  This has really challenged my perfectionism because I no longer receive a “yes this is correct” instead I get “do you feel like this is correct?” There is no perfect answer!

 PLP has told me that nothing is perfect, because there is always room for improvement and revision. 

Also, I have found that we are often thrown projects last minute, this has been a very big struggle because now I don’t even have a choice to go as above and beyond as possible because i simply do not have enough time. 

From the very beginning of this year, this has been my main struggle. It is hard to go from easy work, perfect grades, and praise from my teachers to struggling to do the bare minimum. 

At the beginning of the year when I wrote my learning guide, I set a goal to put aside my perfectionism and focus on getting the job done. I do not believe I have met this goal yet,

In my most recent project, Mind Over Matter I really struggled with my perfectionism. We were assigned with creating a video game on scratch that demonstrated our knowlage of an atom. During the most of this project the only thing I was focusing on was the visuals of my game, as well as how many levels there were. I spent so much time on making the game perfect, that when It came down to the last few days I hardly had enough time to add the science into it. 

If I were to do this project again, I would create the game and the science first and then once I am done, if I have time, go in and add the final touches.

Teamwork

Another thing PLP has really tested, is my teamwork abilities. Teamwork is something I have always struggled with, I have a hard time trusting other people and often end up doing all of the work. This worked for me in elementary, but coming into high school, the workload is just way to much to do everything.

 

The teamwork in my first project in PLP, the It’s The End of The World project went horrible. We didn’t communicate well, there was hardly any work ethic, I was trying to make it perfect and the whole thing ended up falling into my hands.

 

After that, I made a goal on my learning guide to put more trust in my peers, know that I don’t have to do all of the work in group projects, and to not be the leader/director in every project. As I moved through the year I have done more and more group projects It has been my biggest ambition to improve. 

My most recent group project I have done is Destination Imagination I have worked so so hard to have successful and even group work and I do believe I have improved. 

It is obviously not even close to being perfect, at the beginning of the project we have struggled with people not doing their work and doing to much, and I still feel like I am the leader/director.

However, after noticing these struggles we decided to have a team meeting about our teamwork. We started to give each other jobs, set strict rules and deadlines, and play off of each others strengths, and this help our group work immensely.

Going forwards in the year, my goal is to go beyond my comfort level and trust my my peers, and continue communicate when I have a problem.

A Project I Didn’t Enjoy

A project I didn’t enjoy this term was Power Play And How it Started. This project was a long process full of many assignments that lead up to the final project of turing myself into medieval art that displayed the medieval worldview. I am not a big fan of learning about this kind of history and I think that was a big part in why I didn’t enjoy this project. Also, we learned a lot of our information through The Book of The Lion, which I really didn’t like because it was very hard to follow.

Despite not liking this project, it taught me a lot about who I am as a learner. I learned that the way in which I learn information has to be something I enjoy in order for me to be engaged and learn somthing.

A Project I Enjoyed 

My favourite project I have done so far is the Bon Voyage project. This project was full of all my favourite things, writing, indigenous history, and storytelling. For this assignment we were assigned with creating a story about the cause and consequence of European exploration and put it into an app called AR Makr all following the driving question, How can we use storytelling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact?

Through this project I learned new tech skills, critical thinking, and a lot about European exploration and the causes and consequences of it. I learned new tech skills while using AR Makr. I used critical thinking when I had to solve problems and learn the app. Also,  I learned so much about exploration, why it happened, and what it lead to. 

Goals

My goals for the rest of the year is to go through a group project and not do everything and control everyone. I am going to do this by going beyond my comfort level and trusting my peers and communicating my issues when I have a problem. Also, I want to start putting aside  my perfectionism, I am going to do this by focusing on completing the task at hand first, and then (if I have time) going in after and making it better.

I Became a Learner in the PLP Program

I Became a Learner in the PLP Program

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Who am I as a PLP learner? Have you ever wondered what skills you need to have to be in PLP? Well here is my first project ever in the program and the things I learned that will help me be successful in my PLP journey.

My Assignment

For My first project in PLP, I was assigned with making a Keynote presentation answering the driving question, Who am I as a PLP learner?
Here is my presentation:

 

In making this presentation I learned many skills that will help me throughout my time in the program. When I first entered PLP in September I was only equipped with an iPad and basic tech skills. After completing this project, I have a such a more thorough understanding of my device and how to use it.

Skills I Learned and How I Can Apply Them On to Future Projects

While working towards answering the driving question, I learned many important abilities that are necessary to complete assignments in the program. 

 I learned how to use all of the drawing tools on the iPad, such as colour fill, pencil, marker, crayon, gradient fill, image fill, etc. These are very essential skills that I will use in several projects in the future, such as other presentations, drawings, editing photos, and much more. 

I learned my way around different apps on the iPad, such as Keynote, Wordpack, Pages, Photos, and emoji. This will help me in future presentations, design projects, any writing projects, when I’m editing photo’s and lots more.

I also learned how to animate my drawings and photos, and add transitions on my slides. These skills are very important for future presentations and videos.

What I’m Proud of

During this project I created many things I am very proud of. I am very happy with my Nike shoe, I was giving full creative freedom to colour in a Nike shoe as my dream shoe. My shoe is inspired by the famous ‘Lightning McQueen Croc’. To make this I found a picture of Lightning McQueens number 95 from Safari, I then removed the background using ‘remove background’, and I coloured in this shoe using trace and colour fill. I am proud of this shoe because it looks a lot like the ‘Lightning McQueen Croc’, it has a lot of detail and it is something I would one hundred percent wear. While making this shoe, I learned how important detail is to me, I believe it makes designs and drawings so much more interesting.

I am also very proud of my character settings, I believe they are very well written and take on my moods perfectly. While completing these settings they made me think hard about the four main values that are the most important to me. Read more about me and my settings here.

My First Attempts in Learning (F.A.I.L)

Almost everything in this project I could improve on, because nothing is ever fully perfect, but one thing that stood out to me is the aesthetics of my presentation. I dislike the dark colour palate I chose because it isn’t very eye catching. I also believe it is a bit messy and I could clean it up a bit. If I were to do this project again I would chose a more light and pastel colour theme. I would also type the titles rather than doing it by hand to make it more cleaned up.

What I Learned About Myself

During this project I learned how important aesthetics are to me. I believe that the content of this project is fairly good, but I am not very proud of it because the aesthetics of it aren’t on point. This project also forced me to think more about my values and the things that are most important to me. While writing my character settings I had to brainstorm my four main moods, this helped me learn more about who I am as a person and how I act. Also, when I was adding the stickers on to my MeMoji, it made me think about all of the things I love and cherish.

Who am I as a PLP Learner?

A big part of being a PLP learner is reflection on the work I do, now that I have finished my first maker project I have to reflect on what I have learned and created. I am a self motivated, hardworking, and creative learner, and I always try my hardest to bring something new and different into everything I do. After finishing my first PLP project in maker, I have learned many important skills throughout the process that are necessary to complete assignments within the program. I learned how to use all of the drawing tools, such as colour fill, pencil, marker, crayon, gradient fill, image fill, etc. I learned my way around different apps on the iPad, such as Keynote, Wordpack, Pages, Photos, Emoji, etc.  I also learned how to animate my drawings and photos, and add transitions on my slides. I really value equity, and making a change is very important to me. I also learned how essential good aesthetics are to me. In the last month I have been working on learning the basics that will make me a PLP learner, not only did I learn tech skills on my iPad, but I also learned lots about myself, my values, and who I am.

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