Bonjour!
In this post I will be reflecting on my first winter exhibition ever as a PLP learner. I already knew a lot about the exhibition process from my brother, Fraser, but I learned some more too.
Our theme for this exhibition was Avatar. The driving question for this project was what does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about our own society?
For grade 8s, our final product was a box, that represented our theme statement. Before I explain what a theme statement is, it’s important to understand what a theme is. A theme is a main idea or message in a story (but it is not the moral or the plot). The main themes that we extracted from Avatar were conflict between humans and nature, racism, corporate greed and militarism. I chose to focus my project on the conflict between humans and nature because it’s a very important issue to me, both in Avatar and the real world. A theme statement is the answer to the question: what does the movie (or whatever the theme is from) teach me about the theme (insert the theme here).
Here is my theme statement:
Some humans focus on the profit from nature’s resources over its spiritual value and the consequences that their actions may have on the future.
Next, we planned out a prototype, before starting to create the box. This is my prototype:
The process of making the box went pretty well, I think that I worked hard and managed my time well. Unfortunately, my box didn’t turn out as round or smooth as I was hoping (I popped the balloon while it was still a bit damp, which made it a bit deformed when dry), but I managed to sort of fix it. My final product changed slightly from my original plan. There are photos of the final box in the slideshow down below.
I was really happy with the way my box turned out. I think that I did a good job of representing everything from my theme statement, with some deeper or metaphorical too. If I had more time and resources, I would try to make the trees a bit more realistic. As well, the box could have been a bit bigger and as mention before, rounder. I would also have more light for my box, because the combination of circular box curving in towards the top and the dark room setting, it was hard to see unless I used my phone flashlight.
After we finished our boxes, we started preparing for the exhibition. We were split into groups by our theme (there were two groups per theme) and theme statements, with some grade 9s too. In my group, I think that most of the 8s and 9s collaborated really well together. We brainstormed and decorated our rooms, planned out food and an interactive station for the audience and thought about our presentations.
I feel like the exhibition went pretty good, especially considering it was my first one. My room was based on the theme of conflict between humans and nature (especially it’s spiritual value). We used large fabric scraps and wrapped them around the post in the middle of our room (the annex) and then added some green spreading out onto the ceiling, to represent the Home tree. We also turned off all the lights and put black light bulbs into lamps we borrowed from around the school, to recreate the bioluminescence. We made some little woodsprites (the air jellyfish) out of white pipe-cleaners and hung them around the room too. For food, we had gingerbread cookies decorated like trees, pretzel sticks, blue Gatorade and tonic water (which glows in the dark, but tastes disgusting apparently) and our interactive station was face painting.
At first it was a bit awkward and stressful presenting to people, but later on it went better, because I started memorizing what to say. Sometimes it was also hard to tell if they were just quickly looking at my project or wanted an explanation.
I also found it hard standing for a long period of time, because I have knee problems and they were very sore the next day. Though the presentations look better standing up and I look more engaged and excited to talk about my work, it would have been nice to have a few chairs for a short break when there wasn’t anyone around my station, especially because everyone only got one break. However, there were a LOT of self-assigned breaks, which was another issue. And finally, there were some problems with navigating the rooms, because there several people who came but couldn’t find who they came for. Maybe in the future, it would be helpful to have lists in a main area of the locations and members of each room.
Anyways, that’s all for this post!
Kaia out ♥︎
Here are the links to my group members blogs: