The Winter Exhibition was an amazing event that showcased all of my learning over the span of 2 months. In this post I will explain to you everything we did in each portion. Humanities and Maker.

To start off we were put into 4 groups. Each group represented a different planet. My group consisted of Anders, Malaika, Alex, Jude, Anthony, Emily, and myself. We represented the Death Star.

We decided on a storyline , character, and certain scenes we were going to base our short story on.

Then we learned about the hero’s journey. A sort of “template” for stories that is very popular and is used in many movies such as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. I wrote part two. The Acceptance: In the acceptance part I have to show how the “hero” decided to take the task on. Committing to the journey.

Following, we edited and combined our parts to complete our short Story.

For Milestone 1 in humanities we had to write a paragraph about why people still care about Star Wars nowadays. I talked about how people can feel like they can relate to the characters and how the can get a sense of belonging from that. This meaning that they keep coming back to watch more movies to see what happens to “their” character.

For Milestone 2: we had a literary analysis test. This was a test on how we knew the terms used in the short stories. This is because to help us find and acknowledge the hero’s journey outline in each story we had to read stories. So, we read short stories to practice. After reading the stories we but them in a reading chart and talked about each term.

For Milestone 3: We completed an organizer for the hero’s journey. This was our first “go” at  making a hero’s journey. We made it as a group and Ms. Willemse even admitted that they were all not good. But that was to be expected because it was our first time. She asked us how we could improve and try again. Because after all that is what PLP is bashed around.

For Milestone 4: We wrote a post about a movie review. We picked a Star Wars movie and wrote a review about it. I picked the last Jedi. I talked about how they were trying to change the storyline of the Saga and many people were not happy in the direction it was going.

Milestone 5: We wrote our story. Each person made a first draft of their part of the story. We talked about them and made improvements.

Milestone 6: was about our design. We had to set a design of our table and area. This was supposed to capture the audience and make them intrigued.

And for milestone 7 there isnt much to say. It was the exhibition. I think that speaks for itself 😉 If you were there then you would know that it was just an amazing experience and I learned so many things.

The Maker portion was all bout MAKING things for the exhibition. For starters we planned out what artifact we were going to make to accompany our part of the story that we were going to explain during the exhibition. Each person had to make a different artifact to accompany their story. The trial and error I was able to choose my artifact. I made several different ranks that would be on the Death Star. I made this because during my story our character general Hurst Romodi gets moved up in the varying Death Star ranks. Therefore I wanted to show that.

I made the metal sheets with aluminum foil and tin sheets. I made a mold out of a  sharpener and was able to wrap the aluminum around it and then cut each individual block out. I then glued them to the tin sheets. I made four of these total. One for each rank.

The other part of Maker was about setting up for the exhibition. We would spend class taking things down from the library and putting things up on the day of the exhibition. Through many different trials and errors  we decided on one layout that would work. We decided to keep the lights off but that meant we had to bring more lamps from home etc because the library is very dark if not.

For the final part of maker class was the launch journal. This was my first time doing a launch journal. At first, I was so confused I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It was only until maybe halfway through the whole project where I was able to completely understand the journal. The journal helped us organize our thoughts and show them in a formatted way. The journal was focused around the artifact that we were making. Now that I look back on it, it seemed pretty nice. It wasn’t bad. It genuinely helped me.

During the exhibition we were faced with some challenges that I thought I would share as they helped us make our planet the best it could be. To start off we needed to have an interactive exhibit. This was mandatory for every planet. We wanted to make ours unique though. We decided we were going to have a photo taking station. Out of Cardboard we made an instagram frame. We added props on the side so people could add some liveliness to their pictures. Of course we “Star Wars Proofed” everything. We named it “Stargram” and added “liked by Darth Vader” and much more.

We also made a food table. We cut up black and red licorice and then made lightsabers out of them! Or we used Oreos and cut them up to make Tie Fighters.

Another challenge we had was lighting. Our original plan was to have the lights on.

As you can see, the library with the lights on is not “spooky” at all. It did not resemble the Death Star at all. So we decided we were going to have the lights off. Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemse did not like it though. They said it was too dark and we did not bring enough lights to have the lights off. I agree. This was a problem we were not prepared for. Last-minute Mr. Gross came in clutch and told us he had some lights we could use. So, we rushed up to the science room and retrieved many lights. With these lights, we were able to light up our individual table and the library in general. With these extra lights, we were able to illuminate the room enough to get the go-ahead to have the lights off.

Through all these problems we faced, we were able to pull through and create an epic exhibit that people loved!

I hope you learned something reading this post!