Category Archives: Reflections

Group Project, Humanities, Reflections

Who cares and why bother? post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to my blog.

Today’s post is about our most recent Humanities project, “Who cares and why bother?” This project was all about the Canadian government system and why young people need to vote and let their voices be heard. In this post, I’ll discuss what I learned and the growth I experienced throughout this project. The driving question was (the same as the project’s name, lol): “Who cares, and why bother?” There are many reasons why people and young people, in particular, should care about the government system. Firstly, voting outcomes over the next few elections could dictate how we as a country tackle precedent issues such as the climate crisis, cost of living, and rights. This is why young people must vote so that real action can be taken. Things will stay the same if this demographic isn’t demonstrated in the polls, and no changes will be made. The first thing we did as a class was an activity where you would go to either side of the room depending on whether you knew much or didn’t know much about politics. Around 90% of the kids in my class said they knew almost nothing, myself included. This activity showed how little we knew about politics collectively as a class. But that would soon change…. We then began social seminars about the Canadian government system and the different levels of government. During these seminars, we listened to Ms. Madsen’s info and made notes in the process. This helped me better understand how our government is run and who is in charge of different things.

After gathering this newfound knowledge of government structure, we were tasked with reading “The Lord of the Flies.” This book encompasses the government structure through the story of a tribe of boys stranded on a deserted island. As we read, we kept a recollection of notes that we made throughout reading the book.

After finishing the reading, we had the opportunity to share our learnings and connections in a student-led Socratic discussion. This allowed us to share our thoughts and see what opinions we had on the book. I was able to make connections during the debate and express my own beliefs. I thought this was a great learning opportunity.

Once we had gathered background knowledge from our seminars and the book, it was time to build our final product. This product was based on our fundamental question: “Who cares, and why bother?” Our main task was to create a presentation, supported by a video that convinced young people to vote, which we would present to a panel of grade 10 and 12 learners. This was a group-style assignment; my partners were Nolan and Sepaus. Cale was also a part of our group, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, he didn’t come to school or did any work whatsoever.

Our theme was comedy-based, and we tried to use a hint of sarcasm to get our ideas across. I found this to be a new and creative way of showing our ideas, and it was something other groups wouldn’t necessarily do. This was a way for our group to extend in this regard. After creating the first draft of our video, it was time to make our final presentation. The purpose of this presentation was to show why it’s important to vote. In our case, with the sarcastic approach, we wanted to show how ridiculous it would be not to vote. Also included in the presentation were three precedent issues that voters could directly influence. Our chosen issues were the Cost of Living, the Environment, and Healthcare. Once we had completed our presentation and gathered our ideas, we did a practice run for some of our fellow grade 11 peers. This allowed us to practice and get good feedback so that we could revise and make it better. When it came to the presentation day, we were prepared and ready to go. Other than that Nolan was sick, we got our boy Declan to sub in and do his lines. I think the presentation went pretty well, without too many slip-ups.

In summary, I learned many valuable things from this project, such as the structure of our government and how government can come in all shapes and sizes. In the Lord of the Flies, we learned how adversity and challenges can affect the structure of a government. Moreover, I gained more experience working with a group with its ups and downs. My favorite part of this process was making our video; it was quite the fan-favorite among the PLP 11 class.

Humanities, Reflections

Manhattan Project Project Post

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Hello readers and welcome back to the blog! Today I’ll be talking about our most recent project called “the Manhattan Project Project”. This project was about, (you can guess I’m sure), about the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. Our final product was an interactive book that explained the historical significance of the Manhattan Project. The driving question was: “How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?”
The atomic bomb had both positive and negative consequences. Firstly, it led to more scientific developments, new forms of energy, and new medicines. Secondly, it led to millions of deaths and ignited a period known as the “Cold War”, a dispute which still rages on today between the US and communist states.

This project did include a field study in New Mexico in the US. However, I didn’t go, I chose to go on a trip to Nevada which will happen in April of next year. The first step in this project was assigning groups, as this was a collaborative project. My group partners were: Teva, Dana, Theryn, and Ben T. Using Basecamp, we then created a group folder where we could assign tasks and keep track of what we were working on. I found this to be a very helpful tool and it set us on the path to success. In order to get an idea of what we were doing, we read some books from past PLP students. In doing this, we got some inspiration and also got ideas for color, theme, etc. During the week that some of our peers were away in New Mexico, the rest of us did some preliminary research on our topic. One of my main responsibilities was completing research, as well as proofreading the pieces of writing that would go into our book. We started to gain a baseline knowledge and focused in on what aspects we wanted to include in our book. Dana and Theryn collected interviews, photos, and videos while they were on the trip, and they also immersed themselves in the Manhattan Project. They visited Los Alamos, the site where the project was located, and they also visited the Trinity site, (where they tested the first atomic bomb). All of this media would be key in our final book, as it further proved the historical significance behind it.

Once we built our knowledge it was time to put it all together…

Completing the book took lots of work and collaboration between our group, everyone had important tasks they were responsible for. My role was to complete pieces of writing, and then insert them into the book. Once we felt like we had a good draft we did some peer critique as a class. We got some helpful feedback from some other groups, their main focus points, were to limit text and make our visual aspects more organized. We acted upon this feedback and created a beautiful final draft!

In conclusion, I thought this project was difficult yet it focused on a topic that I had an interest in. Competing for the book was a grind, but it was all worth it in the end, as we had created something that we were all proud of. The field school in New Mexico looked fun, I’m super hyped for when we get to go to our field school in Nevada!

Thanks for reading!

Humanities, Individual Project, Reflections

Letter to Grade 8’s

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For me, grade 8 was overwhelming. Based on some of the conversations from last week, it seemed like most of you guys weren’t feeling the heat. Some of you mentioned that high school is the same as elementary, just with more classes. Or that the transition to PLP was easy since you had used iPads in Grade 7. Well I guess everyone has a different Grade 8 experience, some find things harder than others.

Here’s a quick list of concerns I had in my first year at Seycove:

1. Lockers (how the heck do they work) I still barely know how to open one.

2. Homework (finding the time to actually do it)

3. Meeting new friends (I had gone to a French immersion school and most of my friends went to Windsor)

Being a PLP student adds a whole new dimension to being in high school. For example, the program generates students from all sorts of elementary schools, far and close to Seycove. Over the years, I’ve grown closer with lots of my friends through PLP.

One place where you’ll bond the most is through field schools. The photo on the right is from our recent PLP 10 trip to DisneyWorld. It was an amazing experience where I got to know lots of my peers better. You guys have your trip to Oregon to look forward to, I’m sure that’ll be a great learning experience. Sadly cause of Covid we weren’t able to go on that trip…

There are some projects that will test you as a PLP learner. One to be mindful of is Destination Imagination, which is a highly demanding project. In this project, you have to solve solutions and work collaboratively as a group. When I did this in grade 8 I was overwhelmed, to say the least. There was a whole bunch of things we had to do, but it seemed to bring the best out of our group. We ended up winning 1st place!

https://youtu.be/vGGfAE-8Cfk

In summary, being a high school student is exciting and you have lots to look forward to! Especially being a PLP learner, there are so many new opportunities and topics to learn about. You have your first-ever field school, new and exciting projects, and a whole new community to be apart of!

PGP, Reflections

Finance/Exhibition Post

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Hey ya’ll, and welcome back to the blog! 

Today’s post is about the finance project we just finished in PGP 10. This project was all about finance and becoming “financially literate”. The driving question in this project was: “How do I support my career life choices?” I support them by marketing myself through media that describes my values and what I can contribute. Moreover, by learning about the world of finance and becoming financially literate. The final products for this project was making business cards and resumes. 

The first concept we learned was the world of financial literacy. We watched several videos and did activities as a class. The 5 terms of financial literacy are: budgeting, improving credit, saving, borrowing, and investing. One way that we learned about this was when we watched “Moneyball” in class. Moneyball is a baseball movie about a poor team that tries to assemble a winning team though stats and numbers. It’s one of my fav movies and has a really stacked cast. We ended up writing a reflection explaining how the movie demonstrated financial literacy:  (insert craft link here:)

Another key part of this project was our stock market simulator. In this simulator, we were given a certain amount of (fake) money, then we would invest it. The person in the class with the most money by the end would win a 20$ gift card from Mr. Harris. There was also an award for whoever invested the most “environmentally friendly”. Along with the simulator, we kept a weekly journal of our stocks. (Here’s a link to my reflections:) I didn’t do all that well in the sim, as I only made $176. When investing, I took into account environment slightly, but I mostly invested in high blue chipped stocks like Pepsi and AMD. Looking back, I should’ve done more research on my assets and kept a closer eye on when it spikes or drops.

After doing all this work it was time to show it off at the Spring Exhibition. 

Our set up was an “office” style theme.

In the office there was separate divisions based on the topics of our podcast, so I was in the music division. At our respective desks we presented our business cards, and we pitched our podcast to the people who stopped by. This was an interesting layout and something unlike any exhibition I’ve been apart of. It was pretty busy, by the end of the night my voice was gone lol. Here’s a photo of Zach and I at our station:

 In summation, I found learning about finance to be practical and something that is useful for the future. Even though I didn’t do great in the simulator, I still learned lots and found the right strategies to use (better to lose fake money than real money). The exhibition was a blast and it was fun to dress up in our snazzy gear. 

Thanks for reading guys!

Reflections

TPOL 2023

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 Hello teachers and parents, and welcome to my TPOL, transitional presentation of learning. In this presentation I’m going to mention my growth and learning this year and how that’ll transition to grade 11. This year has been one heck of a ride, and I’m excited to talk about it with you!

The driving question for TPOL is: “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?” 

I think I’m ready because of the adversity and growth I’ve gone through this year. From the highs of our time at Disney, to the lows of our power of imagination videos first drafts. This year I’ve focused a lot more on my growth than in past years and it’s really showed. From my main role in Romeo and Juliet, to my hype tik tok’s with Zach in front of the castle: (export_1678289528883

 “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.”

Now to start it off, I’m going to talk about my growth in Humanities.

In humanities this year we’ve explored some new topics, such as the gold rush, Shakespeare, and the Indian Act. And with each topic that we learned, we found a cool way to demonstrate our learnings. We wrote stories, crafted short films, and created collages. 

The first skill I improved this year was my writing abilities. In the gold rush project we were tasked with creating a fictional story about the gold rush in BC. At first I was hesitant about my abilities and had little to no confidence in myself. I made many drafts and got critique from Ms. Valedictorian, a.k.a my sister Kaia. Before writing was something I dreaded, but now it’s something I genuinely enjoy. The second aspect of my learning that I improved in Humanities was collaboration. I showed this in my Romeo and Juliet project. This project was interesting to say the least, it had everything, from reading and writing to acting. There were some awkward moments in there for sure, (I acted as Romeo..) pretty self explanatory there. Nevertheless, we created a quality film that we were all proud of!

My favorite project in humanities this year had to be Power of Imagination. This was our Disneyworld project where we were tasked with creating a video that showed the psychological benefits of Disney parks. This was our first ever out of loon lake learning advance, and it was one for the ages. From our hotel room, to the early mornings at the park, this was an experience I’ll never forget. To complete our video we had to carefully plan out our shots to make sure we got everything. We conducted interviews with strangers to get their take on our topic. This was a chance for us to work on our interview abilities and being able to talk to people we don’t know well.

Now I’m going to talk about my growth in PGP. 

This year was our first time having PGP, it’s our careers credit for PLP. In this course, we learned how to improve our habits, market ourselves, and how to become financially literate. 

This year us students had to juggle our 3 PLP classes during term 2, so it was important to have a consistent schedule in order to stay on track. As part of our PGP class we read a book called “Atomic habits”, it’s all about creating effective systems using the good old 7 habits. To make sure we kept on track with our reading we created a reading schedule, my plan was to read 15 minutes a day. I learned lots in this project and skills that I can apply anywhere in my life. 

Recently, we’ve been working on finance and marketing in PGP. We did this “stock simulator” where the person with the most revenue gets a gift card. I didn’t do all that well, but in the process I learned lots about the market and when to buy or sell. Along with this simulator, we worked on marketing ourselves for potential employers. We did resumes, buiseness cards, and cover letters, all key concepts for jobs. I found this to be really fun, as it’s stuff I can use for the future and in my career beyond high school. 

Now I’m gonna talk about Maker 10.  

For maker this year, we made Tik Toks at Disney, and made podcasts. I would say it was my favorite class of the school year, as we had free choice for all of our projects, and I had lots of fun!

One challenging part of our project: “ making effective personal design choices”, was shooting the videos and preparing good first drafts. As I mentioned earlier, we created these videos during our time at Disney World, and we had to carefully plan out and schedule where and when we would shoot. Some of our videos were dances, and some were vlogs. Before we left for Florida, we created rough drafts for each of these videos. This gave us a good idea of what to expect and how to be ready….. Of course things weren’t perfect in our videos, in my “room tour” video we forgot to get rid of a garbage bag that was in one of our shots. Nevertheless, we made the most of it and edited it until we were satisfied. 

Another key project we did was: “Using design to influence others for good”. We created podcasts on topics of our choice, I did mine on vinyl records. We presented these at our recent spring exhibition, along with our business cards from PGP. The whole point of this project was to talk about something that we’re passionate about, not a topic that’s assigned to us. Similar to our Disney project, creating our podcasts took lots of planning and scheduling, for interviews, and for release dates. In the process of crafting and refining my podcast, I learned lots and my passion for vinyl records grew. The exhibition was a huge success, lots of people were interested and gave it a listen!

Learning plan:

 Here’s my learning plan goals from the start of the year:

As you can see I set a pretty high bar at the start of the year. One thing that I hadn’t really done in past years was push myself really hard, I was usually fine with accomplished grades. But this year I chose to change that, and I applied myself more, and was open to further feedback from teachers and peers. Recently in humanities, we did some writing pieces for our “Lies and Incongruences” project. For each piece I could never get it quite right and often found myself revising each and every assignment, which felt dreadful. I took the feedback positively and I made my paragraphs even better! 

In summation, this year has been a blast and I feel as though it’s been my best as a PLP learner. From our first out of country field study to returning to Loon Lake, this year had it all. PLP has become a trait of who I am, and a community that I’m proud to be apart of. I feel as if I’ve grown lots, and have been able to review and refine some of my skills and abilities. 

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed my TPOL!

 

Humanities, Individual Project, Reflections

Save Juno Beach Post

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(Insert craft link here)

Hello readers and welcome back to Maximus the Greatest. Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve been doing in Humanities, Save Juno Beach! This project was all about the history of WWII and discussing which events are most significant and why. The driving question to this project is: “Why is it so important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre?” It’s important because it displays Canada on the world stage and tells our story. Also, it shows how we aided the war effort in France. The final product for this project was a persuasive writing piece. 

To begin this project, we learned about WWII and significant moment of the battle. We learned about Canada’s involvement, the war in Eastern Europe, and D-day. We “made” these notes in Craft, an app that is a useful tool for notes. After gathering all of this knowledge, we wrote about the 3 most significant events of WWII, I chose the Great Depression, D-day, and the rise of authoritarian leaders. 

Here’s what my keystone 1 looked like:

The next step was to understand what “rhetoric” meant, since our final product was a persuasive text on Juno Beach. It was important to have a good understanding of rhetoric to craft an effective piece. To work on this, we did a rhetorical analysis on this piece called “thanks for not killing my son”, we also did this activity in craft. For this assignment, we had to identify how pathos, ethos, and logos were all used. 

After gaining this knowledge about rhetoric, we then began to craft our first drafts of our persuasive texts. All of us were writing about Juno beach, but we had a choice on what we wanted to write about specifically. I chose to write about how the Juno Beach centre represents Canada on the world stage. Using the knowledge I had, I made my first draft, and at first I found it to be too short and not meeting the requirements. So, I made an improved second draft and I also received peer feedback from my classmates. I found the feedback to be very beneficial, as I was able to improve and make it way better. 

By the end of this whole process, I had created my final draft:Insert craft link here)

Once we were all done our drafts, we published them on a public website. The whole purpose being to educate others about the Juno Beach Centre, and emphasize it’s importance. 

In summary, this project was interesting, and I learned lots about WWII and other important  events in history. I discovered more about Canada’s importance, and how they were key in beating the Axis powers. I enjoyed writing about the Juno Beach Centre, and conveying my opinion to the public. 

Thanks for reading!

Group Project, Humanities, Learning Advance, Pages, Reflections

Power of Imagination Post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to my blog! Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve been doing called “Power of imagination”. This project was all about Disney of course, since we went to Disneyworld! This was our first ever out of loon lake learning advance, and it lasted from February 28th to March 9th. The driving question to this project was: “How do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors?”. They do this through immersive storytelling and visual aspects that make people feel “like they’re there”. I felt this especially at Toy Story land at Hollywood studios, where you felt like a toy, since all the toys around you were life sized. The final product for this project was a video that answered the driving question through interviews, examples, and references to the past. My group partners were: Alicia, Erik, Carter, Ben T, and Theryn.

For keystone 1, we were tasked with creating a “PKM” collection. A PKM stands for “know, wonder, learn, and is a way of organizing your thoughts through notes, links and reflections. We created our “PKM’s” on craft, an app that’s somewhat new for us. For our pkm’s we had to research topics that resounded with our project topic. Since our group was Psychological, I researched on that basis. Here’s one of the PKM’s I made:

I found this keystone to be really resourceful, as I learned more about disneyworld and places I could visit. 

For keystone 2, we created a group pitch board for our final video. My group partners were: Alicia, Ben T, Theryn, Carter, and Erik. For this assignment, we made an effort to organize all of our ideas:

Our main talking point was nostalgia of multiple generations, and how Disney had influenced them. We planned to interview people from different generations, and get their opinion on how Disney has influenced them. 

For keystone 3, we were tasked with creating a storyboard for our video. This was a chance to visualize our ideas, and get an idea of what our video would look like. This is also where we assigned roles and responsibilities for each task. I was tasked with narrating and filming an interview at Hollywood studios. 

Here’s what our storyboard looked like:

Next, we had to complete our final video script. We all evenly contributed to this task, and provided our own ideas into it. Since I was narrator, I had most of the lines for the video.

On February 28th, after a false start, (our initial flight was cancelled), we got to florida on late Tuesday night. What a relief it was to finally get there…

On the first day, which was at Magic Kingdom, we all immediately felt the magic of Disney:

IMG_2893

During my day at magic kingdom, I filmed one of my trend videos which was my “just wanna rock dance”. 

The work for my trend video didn’t start until we got to Hollywood studios. Erik and myself conducted interviews while in a Walt Disney museum. We asked people about how Disney has affected them, and what makes them feel nostalgic. 

Here’s what Hollywood studios looked like:

IMG_2899

Once we got back from the trip, it was time to put it all together. We had our clips and interviews all filmed, and the hard work began…

When we started to edit we realized that there was some missing components, that would need to be troubleshooted. For example, our audio in our interviews was pretty quiet and we had to add subtitles over it. 

In summation, going to Disney world was an experience of a lifetime and is something I’ll never forget. It was an opportunity to know my peers better, as well as the teachers. As for the project, it was hard work to coordinate different shots and interviews, and we faced some adversity. In this project I got to work on my group work and communication, which was key for us to complete the video. 

Thanks for reading!

PGP, Reflections

Atomic Habits Post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve been working on in PGP 10 at Seycove. This project was all about “positive brain training” and reading the book “atomic habits” by James clear. The driving question was: “How does balance within my life create opportunities”. With effective habits that have a clear process, we are able to create opportunities. As mentioned in the book, if you keep improving and refining, the results will be remarkable. If you continue to use Habit 7: sharpen the saw, you will keep getting better at your craft. 

To start it off, we explored “positive brain training”. There are 5 ways to do this: Meditation, conscious act of kindness, excersise, journaling, and gratitude. For each day, we would practice one of the 5 traits, and we would record in our “craft daily notes”. I found this to be really effective, as we were able to reflect and mention what we could improve next time. 

We listened to a TED talk by Shawn Achor called “the happiness advantage”. This talk was all about seeing the positives in things, and that positivity=productivity. We did a “4-2-1” activity, where you take the 4 main ideas, then you keep breaking it down until you reach one summary sentence. Here’s what my 4-2-1 looked like:

We also took a look back at the “seven habits”, a topic which we explored last year. In groups, we were each assigned a habit book, and at the end we did a 1 sentence summary on how our story relates to the habit. This was an opportunity to “jog our memories” on what the habits were and what they can be used for. It was important to re-learn these, as the seven habits directly relate to “atomic habits”. 

Our next step in this project was to begin our Atomic Habits reading. But first, we had to create an effective reading schedule. My plan was to read 15 minutes a day, and to be done the book by the end of spring break. For my schedule I used things:

I found my schedule to be very effective, as the reminder would pop up every day, which made it easier to complete and stay true to my plan. 

As I began to read, I noticed the level of detail with personal anecdotes that related to habits and creating systems. He talked about his baseball career, and how he came back from that brutal injury. I liked that use of examples, cause it brought upon a more personal side. He also mentioned the idea that small habits can make a big difference. Usually, we try to do things in big steps, instead of sticking to the process. Focus on getting 1 percent better every day. 

Next, he introduced the “habit laws”, which were for making good habits, and breaking bad ones. The 1st law, make it a obvious, the 2nd law, make it attractive, the 3rd law, make it easy, and the 4th law, make it satisfying. And for breaking bad habits, it’s the inverse. 

Another point that I found interesting, was that we can always revise and improve our habits and systems. Sometimes, I find myself thinking “this is good enough”, or “I can’t make it any better”. But in reality, there’s always room for improvement and refinement. 

To summarize, I found this project to be very useful and beneficial to my goals. Through the positive brain training, I was able to find more balance and cover multiple aspects of my life. And with the schedule and task management of my reading, I became more organized and I got better at working with Things. As for the reading, I connected to the author through his in depth anecdotes and examples. 

Thanks for reading!

Individual Project, Learning Advance, Maker, Reflections

Five Trend Videos Post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about s project we completed during our field school to Disneyworld. This project was called “five trend videos”, and was all about making trend Tik tok’s during our time at disney. The driving question was: “How do I make effective personal design choices?” I can do this by finding trends that coincide with my interests and passions. Also, by researching and planning out what my videos will look like.

The first “investigation” was our Personal productivity system. This was all about setting up the tools on our iPads, and using them effectively. This included organizing “things”, clearing our inbox, and setting up our calendars. This was getting us ready for Disney world, as we would have to carefully plan out our videos.

Here’s what my maker section in things looks like:

The 2nd investigation was all about researching and planning our videos. We used the web, and examples from our teachers to conduct thorough research. The requirements for our videos is that 3 had to be independent and 2 had to be “squad videos”. Here’s a link to my document of video ideas:

I tried to make my video ideas trends that were well known, and that people could relate to. I also wanted to have a mix of comedic, dramatic, and serious videos. 

The 3rd investigation for this project was to make our video prototypes. At first I was confused as to how we would do this, since our scene looked nothing like it would at Disneyworld. However, the whole purpose of this was to visualize and see what we could fix in our videos. Here’s an example of one of my prototypes: IMG_2852

We made do with the PLP classroom as our scene, and performed our great dance!

Then for the last investigation, which was making our final drafts! We arrived in Disney and we began to craft our videos. We had to make sure we were diligent with our time, and didn’t get carried away in the magic of Disney. On the first day, I filmed my first video in front of the magic kingdom castle: Just Wanna Rock dance

Here’s the rest of my completed trend videos:

Biergaten review

Blizzard Beach vlog

Disney Hotel Room Tour

Me vs. What’s playing in my AirPods

To summarize, this project was lots of fun, and I learned about video editing, and video creation. Doing this project made me realize how much effort has to be put in for these “influencers” on Tik Tok. I found that it took lots of planning, organization, and putting our plans to action while we were at Disney. Looking back, I could’ve planned things a bit better, as I sometimes found myself doing things on the fly.

Thanks for reading!

 

Group Project, Humanities, Pages, Reflections

Romeo and Juliet Post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve finished in Humanities. This project is all about Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare. The driving question in this project is: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling? Although the language is very different today, you still see similar variations of his storytelling. For example, you see many variations of the infamous balcony scene, and the final death scene. The final product for this project was to recreate a scene from the play with modern aspects…..

We started off the project by reading scenes from the original play. In the process of that, we explored the language, and what it really meant. There was many words that meant no sense to me, and when I saw their definition, it really surprised me. Words such as, “hither”, and “Thither”, seemed pretty out there to me. Also, we did a “Elizabethan roast” activity where we combined different terms to create the perfect roast!

Here’s a few of my burns…

“You fawning, crook-pated, bugbear!”

“You saucy, dizzy eyed, giglet!”

As we read through the story, I discovered more about the story as a whole, and also the language used. It also gave me an opportunity to see which scenes I liked beast, as the final product was to recreate a scene of our choice.

For Keystone 1, we were tasked with creating a themebook, that explained each scene, and included evidence from a adaptation. To complete this, we watched “Gnomeo and Juliet”, and “warm bodies”, in class. Both films are adapted from the play, and both follow similar storylines, other than the fact that one is a zombie movie!

After completing keystone 1, we were put into our movie groups. My group was Alicia, Fraser, and Makenna, and we chose to recreate the “balcony scene”. Right as we were put into groups, we had to create our “film pitch”. We chose to center our scene around two teens, Rowan and Jessica, who fall in love through Snapchat. After finalizing our plans, it was time to put them into action.

My role in our scene was Rowan, the main character, and it was quite the experience. There was few “cringe” scenes in there, that took a lot to film. But you can judge for yourself: Rowan and Jessica, a Romeo and Juliet recreation..

The filming process was fun, as I got to have fun with my friends and create good work. The best part to me, was the credits scene where Zach and I broke out into song. It was an off script moment, where we were just screwing around, and Fraser thought it’d be cool to put in.

In summation, this project was a blast to do with Mr. Harris. We learned about old language, and how it’s evolved over time. And, how one story has been incorporated in hundreds of movies and films. I liked how we had little to no limitations, and could really release our creativity into our scene.

Thanks for reading!