REFLECTION- PLP

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Reflection
Personal Learning Plan

11/7/2013

Communication

During the semester, we have had many opportunities to interact with people outside of school. Most of them were aimed at our futures, helping me discover the paths I would want to choose in the future. The careers expo was a major event when we had the opportunity to talk to career experts from all different industries from Coles and Woolworths to major university representatives. This helped me explore some career paths that I had not even thought about, the strengths and weaknesses in some careers, learn more about university courses and what each course requires and even suitable part time jobs. One of the conversations that was very useful to me was with a woman that worked at the Flinders’ University. I talked to her about the medicine course. She told me about the different options Flinders’ has to offer to its students. I also got to know that I can do the medicine course in Charles Darwin University and graduate with a Flinders’ degree and also that doing the Flinders’ course in Darwin is quicker time wise. I also got to know that taking the IB will make the medicine course easier for me. Talking, to other university representatives, I also got an idea of other courses that I could consider. I also saw some companies that offered part time jobs. Talking to these people at the careers expo was a very good experience as we all learned new information and I did consider some courses and plans that I did not even know about.
The other major communication aspect was the work experience we had to do. The week was tough with conversing with everyone and trying to fit into the work space. I improved my social and communication skills by doing this. My supervisor gave me a run through of what everyone does and this was very interesting and most of this was based around the medicine area. I learned about new equipment, what the university courses are like and also about the kind of work that they do. In the communication aspect, I had to learn to fit in which increased my socialising skills and interaction with other around the workplace.

Personal Development

Throughout the year, I have developed new learning strengths and also tried my best to improve the strengths I had. Some of my learning strengths are that I am a quick thinker, I am good at exceptionally strong at both literacy and numeracy, and I am good with advices and also good at analysing. These strengths help me both with my school work and also social life. Of course, the literacy and numeracy help me out at school a lot, especially literacy as it is needed in all subjects for assignments. Analysing is also a skill that is very useful to me both in and out of school. It helps me as a person to study things well and analyse them to a point where it makes my understanding and knowledge on the topic deeper. It helps me with my activities outside of school as well including the various service projects. These strengths give me a good overview of my capabilities and interests and what I should do in the future in order to succeed. The analytical side helps me value my choices and make good decisions.
I have developed my numeracy skills and dance skills a lot. I improved in numeracy through doing a lot more work at home and working harder in Maths classes. This will help me with the next two years as I am doing standard level Maths in the IB and the university course I plan on doing requires high mathematics. I have focused this year on improving my maths. The improvement in dance was not fully intentional. I practised a lot and I also did dance at school as a subject and for the Kormilda dance club. I want to continue doing dance in the future as well as a part time job or at least participate in events that include dance and I do not plan on letting dance slip out of my future life.
I want to strengthen my qualities as an individual, improve in Science and also improve very much on time management. If my time management is not improved, then year 11 and 12 IB and university life would not be too good as those three parts of my life definitely do need good time management. To strengthen this, I need to make timetable, study tables and also have self-control to help me prioritize what I should do with my time. I can ask my parents to be more strict on me with my internet time and actually remind me to work until I get into the habit of doing it myself.
During the next two years, I want to be able to learn to prioritize my choices, focus solely on schooling and education and achieve the best I can. I need to do more homework, reduce my free time on the internet and have a timetable to manage my time wisely. I also want to be able to stop procrastinating and get all my assignments done beforehand so that I get to do catch up study on all the subjects. All these goals add up to my main goals of being a better and organized person and mainly, doing the best I can with my education and getting a good result.

Citizenship

Throughout the year, I have done a variety of activities outside of school and within school. I did dance club throughout the year at school, participating in performances and competitions at school and outside of school. I also do a 3 year programme called the Junior Youth Programme. The aim of this programme is to develop as a person by doing services for the community. We have done various fundraisers, community voluntary work and events. We did a fundraiser for Comic Relief: Kids in Africa. We did this through baking brownies and selling them around the street and it was a successful activity raising more than we expected. We also hosted a fun day for kids and earlier in the year taught African Refugee children some English. These activities I am sure were important to others as it was to us. Though it was small contribution to a big problem, we got the satisfaction of knowing that we might have saved he lives of some kids and also made the life better of a few others.
Of course, I help my mother out around the house and also do a little bit of babysitting for free during the holidays. I help my mother not to get anything out of it but because, I get the feeling that the polite thing to do is to help her when she is doing so much for me. I do babysitting for some family friends for free. They drop their kids off at my house and I look after them till their parents come to pick them up after work. I do it for free because there is no loss from my side as I can still carry on with my daily activities while having someone else to keep me busy and give me company.
Work experience was also a good way of contributing towards the community as I did my best every day. I think I did make myself useful as well as educate myself about the work place and the different professions by watching them and also doing practicals. I made sure to all my tasks as well and tried to keep small talk with the patients. I think someone unprofessional talking to them did calm them down a bit and helped them have more fun.

Learning

Looking forward 3 years, I see myself taking a gap year after doing well in my high school years and earning the best result possible. If I decide against the gap year, it would be at a university studying for a degree. I would prefer a relaxed lifestyles where there is not too much going on and in which everything is settled and I would not have to be worried about assignments I regret not doing earlier or tests that I left to study for the last minute due to procrastination. In order for these hopes to come true, I do need to set and achieve highly important goals. This would include improving my time management a lot, setting and working with a timetable, prioritizing right, getting a part time job, doing more school work and also achieving good grades. I think I can achieve these goals if I genuinely put my mind to it and work towards time management through setting timetables and such. The next 3-5 years are a critical part of my life and would decide the outcome of my life so I would have to achieve these goals and succeed.
My literacy and numeracy are both very decent. I of course have strengths and weaknesses in both. My strengths in Maths are working with general numbers, algebra and statistics and the areas that need to practise more are quadratics and linear equations. In literacy, I think my strengths are, reading, writing, spelling and decent vocabulary. I am also good at essay writing and analysing. I think there is not much I can pinpoint out for improvement in literacy. I do however need to focus on building these skills to a higher levels as they could be a lot higher with practise and time. There are many strategies I could use to get better at and improve in all these areas. The best thing to do for improvement would be to practise at home even when I don’t have homework, I can just work on bettering my strengths and weaknesses. I could also read a lot more educational articles to challenge myself and instead of spending time on things that are not necessary, I could use that time to educate myself further in both literacy and numeracy.
I can use all the basic computer programmes like Microsoft and Adobe programmes. I can also find my way around the internet so I would say that I have decent computer skills and would not have to learn anything new for now. And I am a fast learner when it comes to computer as I enjoy it so it’s usually not a problem for me to try new things on a computer and learn new programmes. There is also a lot of tutorials on the internet these days about different ways to figure out new programmes and learn how to use them. I have not learned anything new this year though. I think I just worked on improving the skills that were already present.
My Semester 1 results were better than I expected for most subjects. I handed in all my assignments and did exceptionally good in the vast majority of them. I wasn’t expecting good grades for Physics as it was my weakness in Semester 1 but I got a 5 and I was surprised at that and also the teacher saying that I did good in the class. It was a proud moment. I got the grades I expected for the other subjects and I was happy with them as I didn’t try my level best but still got decent marks. I did develop a few strategies to help me get better grades in Semester 2. I followed a timetable, turned the internet off when it wasn’t necessary for the assignment as I usually get distracted by the internet and I also told my parents about the due dates so they could remind me. I also had a sticky note wall where I would stick up sticky notes of the assignments that are due and then take it off when I had finished the assignment. This way, it kept me up to date on what was due and how much was due. This did, better my grades for most subjects in Semester 2.

Work

I have done a lot of activities outside of school this year. This includes various fund rising events, work experience etc… I did fund-rising for and helped kids mostly in third world countries. I also co-hosted a fun day for kids, planning, organizing and making it happen. The fund rising had lots of planning behind it as well, including the baking of the brownies and selling it walking house to house in the streets. Work experience was also filled with work and helping me understands a certain aspect of work. I helped out as much as I can and I also made sure to do well in whatever I did and was asked to do. These few events this year have definitely increased my knowledge on the capability of work. This can definitely come as a help to assisting me with my personal and learning goals. I learned a lot about working throughout this year. There were tips as to how to become a better worker and also observing the way professionals worked also helped understand the aspect of work. Work Experience will help me as I learned that you have to be organised and keep on top of your work at all times. You have to create a friendly atmosphere to learn in and also figure out what way you work the best. If I know what way I work the best, I can use that way to study for my year 11 and 12 to get achieve my goals by working in the most efficient way possible. The fundraising also taught me how to plan well and to put a plan into action successfully and efficiently. This will come in handy a lot during the next few years. All the activities outside of school has taught me that there is no shortcut to reducing the work you have to do because it all has to be done one way or the other.