PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This project was inspired by the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie. As a class, we revolved this project around the theme of belonging and not belonging because the theme took such a large role in the plot of the story. On Monday, September 30, the Dr. P/ Ms. Soler team put on a performance that took the most important parts of the book and used them as a base for our performance pieces.
PROCESS
VIGNETTE PERFORMANCE
On the first week of school, we were put into groups of five people and we're assigned a vignette (or small story) from the book The House on Mango Street. We then took our vignette and turned it into a performance with sound effects to "bring the text to life". After practice with our group, we then performed our vignette in front of our entire team.
DIALOGICAL INTERVIEW
We conducted an interview with a classmate from the opposite class so we could get to know them better. While the interview took place, we took notes about what we were learning about our partners to use as a reference while we wrote out "I Sing to You" poems about our partners.
FIRST DRAFT OF OUR POEMS & PARTNER CHECK IN
The first draft of our "I Sing to You" poem was just used to get our ideas down knowing that we will then refine it later. As a process of our refinement, our partner looked over our poem and highlighted what parts of our poem were relatable. This process then helped us decide what lines we would want to be more descriptive and what lines we wanted to add or take away. You can see this draft by clicking the link below:
Highlighted First Draft
FINAL DRAFT OF "I SING TO YOU"
After multiple rounds of critique and feedback, this was the final poem I wrote about my poem. Click on the link below if you would like to read it:
Final Draft Poem
On the first week of school, we were put into groups of five people and we're assigned a vignette (or small story) from the book The House on Mango Street. We then took our vignette and turned it into a performance with sound effects to "bring the text to life". After practice with our group, we then performed our vignette in front of our entire team.
DIALOGICAL INTERVIEW
We conducted an interview with a classmate from the opposite class so we could get to know them better. While the interview took place, we took notes about what we were learning about our partners to use as a reference while we wrote out "I Sing to You" poems about our partners.
FIRST DRAFT OF OUR POEMS & PARTNER CHECK IN
The first draft of our "I Sing to You" poem was just used to get our ideas down knowing that we will then refine it later. As a process of our refinement, our partner looked over our poem and highlighted what parts of our poem were relatable. This process then helped us decide what lines we would want to be more descriptive and what lines we wanted to add or take away. You can see this draft by clicking the link below:
Highlighted First Draft
FINAL DRAFT OF "I SING TO YOU"
After multiple rounds of critique and feedback, this was the final poem I wrote about my poem. Click on the link below if you would like to read it:
Final Draft Poem
SELF PORTRAIT
This is the photo that I chose to submit as my self portrait. I chose this photo because I feel like eyes tell a lot about a person and I feel like my eyes have seen many things in this world.
Since I wrote a poem about my partner, my partner also wrote a poem about me that you can see by checking here: (Natalie hasn't made the document public yet, I will insert the link when she does that) |
READING ABOUT BELONGING
As a class we were given about ten different articles that we were able to read and I decided to read an article about Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/rachel-dolezal-nbc-today-show.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/rachel-dolezal-nbc-today-show.html?_r=1
PERFORMANCE SCRIPT
This is the script that my group wrote and performed on exhibition night. This was inspired by a set of "Unspoken Rules" that were placed in the book. We chose to write about "The Unspoken Rules of Growing Up as A Girl" because we wanted to show the way girls change as they get older, and it was from our perspectives of different time periods of our lives.
Script from Performance |
This is a photo from our performance!
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REFLECTION
How would you answer this project’s essential question, “what tribes do you belong to?”. Has this answer changed since the beginning of the year?
-I don't necessarily think that my answer has changed about what tribe I belong to, but I do think that hearing so much about others viewpoints of where they believe they fit in has given me a new perspective on the way I would think others fit in
What did you learn about “writing for a client” that you want to remember in your next project? What did you learn about descriptive writing that you want to remember about your next project?
-About client writing I learned that you have to be very specific about what you are telling the writer because if you don't give them enough information, they will just work with what they have and if it isn't enough they will make things up. For example, my partner didn't know me very well or gather much information so the poem about me didn't express much about me in the first draft.
What did you learn about collaboration that you want to remember in your next project?
-I learned that when it comes to group work, many better that one! My group mates and I got a lot of work done because we all collaborated very well together.
What’s one moment from this project that you want to remember?
-I want to remember when my group and I finally finished our poem during the performance and the audience started cheering for us. This was a great moment because it made me feel like our hard work paid off.
-I don't necessarily think that my answer has changed about what tribe I belong to, but I do think that hearing so much about others viewpoints of where they believe they fit in has given me a new perspective on the way I would think others fit in
What did you learn about “writing for a client” that you want to remember in your next project? What did you learn about descriptive writing that you want to remember about your next project?
-About client writing I learned that you have to be very specific about what you are telling the writer because if you don't give them enough information, they will just work with what they have and if it isn't enough they will make things up. For example, my partner didn't know me very well or gather much information so the poem about me didn't express much about me in the first draft.
What did you learn about collaboration that you want to remember in your next project?
-I learned that when it comes to group work, many better that one! My group mates and I got a lot of work done because we all collaborated very well together.
What’s one moment from this project that you want to remember?
-I want to remember when my group and I finally finished our poem during the performance and the audience started cheering for us. This was a great moment because it made me feel like our hard work paid off.