The Poetry Project was our final project for the year, and in my opinion, my favorite of the year. In this project, we started out by reading a lot of poetry by all different types of authors such as Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and ee cummings. We then went on to start drafting our own poems, written using a list of poetic devices and utilizing those to create masterpieces that then went into projects that we came up with. My personal poem, titled: The Fear of a Soldier was about what a soldier goes through when he/she goes to war, and then what happens after, and the long lasting effects of the war way after that soldier got home. Then for my project I did whats called a Kinetic Typography, which is a really neat presentation created using Adobe After Effects and uses animation to animate words flying onto the screen which are tied to an audio recording. This gave my poem a really nice visual effect and I am really proud of how my final project and my final poem turned out!
Below you can find links to my Project Reflection (Growth as a Poet Reflection), my final poem and an embedded Youtube video of my Kinetic Typography presentation. Enjoy!
For this project, we started by researching a topic of our choice, we were given a list of topics to choose from, but also the option go to and explore more ideas on our own. I personally decided to research the G8 or The Great 8. We next went through an extensive research process to dig up as much information we could on our topic, we then started work on the rough draft of the Op-Ed and our beginning ideas on our political comics. After completing our first rough draft of our Op-Ed, we then started work on our political comics which had to include a number of things based on our topic that we had researched. Then after our 2nd draft of the Op-Ed had been submitted, we continued on to finish our cartoons, and finish our final draft of the Op-Ed piece.
I learned a lot about how globalization has a huge effect on our world, and how in my case, the G8 has a also a huge effect on the world. I really took away the fact that everything is controlled by this overlying power in our world, and the people who control that, dont always make the best decisions for the whole world, and that has a huge impact on how everything runs and even how people live their daily lives.
My first cartoon draft was much like my final, but my second draft was completely different, as I tried a new idea and didnt like it. I really grew a lot from this because I learned trying new things and new ideas is always good but sometimes they lead to better ideas, and thats really showed in my final draft. This is definitely something that I can use later, as going through multiple drafts is something that is essential for getting a good, well polished final draft.
The writing that I did for this was completely different than most of the writing I have done in the past, it was a lot more opinionated, and it was my job to be completely biased against the other side of my argument and make the reader believe exactly what I am arguing. This is something that I can easily use later in life, both in high school and even later, opinionated writing is something that I feel comes easy to me and is easy to master. And after multiple drafts, its definitely easy to argue an opinion and support it with lots of evidence.
The vietnam veterans history project
The Vietnam Veterans History project was our second project so far this year, and it consisted of quite a few things actually.
Interviewing local veterans and filming them and then submitting them to the Library of Congress
An in-class writing on the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that many say started the Vietnam war
A field trip to Ignacio to see the Heritage museum and meet the founder of the Southern Ute Veterans Association
Reading a book called The Things They Carried by Tim O' Brien
A Socratic Seminar on the book The Things They Carried
This was quite a big project, but the final product was extremely satisfying to have, and to exhibit. The Veteran interviews were truly an unforgettable part of this project, and its something that I will remember for a long time. Below you can find the view that was played at the exhibition, which consists of excerpts from each veteran interview. You can also find my paper on the incident in The Gulf of Tonkin, and also my project reflection.
The Creative Historians project was the first project of the year in Sophmore Humanities. Our task was to write a story that was set in WWI, but we had to craft our own characters and plot. The buttons below will lead you to my story and my reflection!
Below is my recorded presentation, our exhibition venue (The Durango Public Library) had a power outage just after the start of the presentation, but it was decided to go on in the dark, so my apologies for the bad light. If the video is having trouble loading, just refresh the page and it should work.