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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.

Power Play And How it Started

Power Play And How it Started

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Try to name a medieval art piece. Hard right? Well, not for me, ‘The worldview of medieval Tyler’. That’s right, not only does the medieval artwork have my name on it, but it has me featured in it.

The Medieval World View of Tyler

What can we learn from the past and why does it matter to us today?  That is the question I aimed to answer while going forward in this project. It’s hard to believe our lives and worldview today is still effected by the peoples knowledge and life style from 1200 BC!  My art piece displays the medieval worldview and what it was like to live back then, learning and knowing this shows me how many things learned and invented in the medieval times are the bases of everything we know and use today.

So, how did I get here? 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.

The Book of the Lion

We started off this project, with yet again another book. The Book of The Lion is a book set in the medieval times and is about a boy named Edmund’s experience in the crusades. This book was definitely not my favourite because I had a very hard time understanding how the medieval  people talk, but it did give me a good understanding of the medieval worldview.

The Feudal System

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Part of understanding the medieval worldview, is learning about the feudal system. The feudal system is how the medieval people organized the roles in their society. It came with the idea that the king is at the top and the peasants are at the bottom, which also implies that women are somewhere near the bottom as well. For this part of the project we had to read feudal system and then make notes in the format of a ‘window’. While making this I learned how hard it was to be successful in the medieval times, if you weren’t born somewhat high on the pyramid, you have basically no chance of moving up. Also, I learnt how bad women were treated, they were considered property, had no chance whatsoever of success, and they were thought to be in the same area of the feudal system as the farm animals.

Haudenosaunee 

To understand how sexist and unfair the feudal system is, we also learned about the Haudenosaunee. The Haudenosaunee is an indigenous group that believes strongly in peace and unity. Also, the women were the decision makers for the Haudenosaunee and were the  most respected community members. The influence of the women in the Haudenosaunee nation has continued throughout the generations and is still at the heart of indigenous communities today. To read more about the Haudenosaunee, read the blog post I did about them here. Learning about them and their way of learning taught me how the Haudenosaunee and the lifestyle they created so long ago is still the bases of so many indigenous communities today. 

Chinggis Khan Musical

Another assignment we did within this project is making a tribute to a medieval leader. My group and I made a musical in tribute to Chinggis Khan. 

In making this video, we included the medieval worldview by talking about about how violent those times were, we displayed the significance of Chinggis by showing how he made a Mongolian empire and how he brought peace to many countries. Also, we showed how what he did matters to us today by including a person from the future who comes in and learns from the peace Chinggis brought. After finishing this, I learned how violent the medieval times really were.

Artwork Choice Chart

Getting closer to the final project, we had to create an artwork choice chart which helped us build up ideas of what to put on our final artwork. We had to connect eight different categories, geography, time, society, values, beliefs, economy, and knowledge, to the medieval worldview and then our world view, as well as finding medieval art pieces for all of them. Creating this helped me have a better understanding of how the medieval worldview translates into my worldview, also helping me complete the artwork faster.

The Artwork

After a long month of working in this project, I have finally completed my artwork. My art piece displays the medieval worldview and what it was like to live back then, learning and knowing this shows me how many things learned and invented in the medieval times are the bases of everything we know and use today. In the medieval times, people learned and collected knowledge from word of mouth and story telling, this is why I put a medieval man telling a story on my art. We still learn from these stories today, along with many more that we have collected over time, this helps us learn and build our worldview and knowledge. Almost everything I know and use today has been shaped by other peoples past experiences. Another one of the aspects in my artwork is an astrolabe, which is the medieval times first draft of a clock, but rather than showing a digital time, it displayed the timekeeping of day and night. We have taken this clock and transformed into the clock we have today. The clock is now a massage part of mine and almost everyone else’s life, the clock controls my entire of what I do, what time I have to be at school, sports, the time I wake up, the time I go to bed, etc. I put a cross necklace around my neck because the main religion in the medieval time was Christianity. Believing in god shaped the peoples worldview and how they lived life. Christianity in the medieval times was the beginning of the massive religion today. I am not Christian, but having a western worldview, it effects my life without me even realizing it. For example, a lot of my friends and people I know are Christian, therefore i know a lot about it. Also, I celebrate Christmas and Easter which are both holidays that were started and are a part of the Christian religion. Lastly, I added two men bossing around a women slave to show the unfair roles that the medieval times had in their society. People believed that men are higher than women and that men should have all of the power. This belief is still standing in a lot of peoples beliefs and lifestyle. This makes me mad because it shows how women have been on the bottom from day one and that it still isn’t fully better. 

F.A.I.L (first attempts in learning)

If I were to do this project again I would manage my time better. Often I would keep pushing aside the task of reading and then I would get to the night before it was done and have to read it all then. This lead to some late nights of working, which lead to tiredness, which lead to trouble focusing. Moving forwards, I can manage my time by keeping a calendar of when things have to be done so I can stay on top of my work.

Why Does The Past Matter to us Today?

The medieval days was the time of learning and experimenting, they were the ones who made our lives this much easier today, by forming base to everything we know and use now. They are the ones who paved a path that we walk on now, and are the ones who made it possible for us to keep learning and experimenting.

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