A Moment In Time
In this project I chose an event in my life that was significant and helped make me who I am today. The class brainstormed different moments in their lives to write about for a while because it was important that you gave it a lot of thought before you chose one so you knew you could go in depth with the moment. We learned about descriptive writing and narrative writing and used those skills to write a great story. We refined the paper multiple times and by the end of the project, everyone had a one page story about their moment that was a beautiful piece of work. After someone finished their story they had the choice to start a challenge extension like a podcast or a painting about your story.
In this project I learned a lot about the ingredients for a story, and how to tell a good one. I learned about neuro coupling which is when the reader of the story connects with the protagonist's struggles and their brain mirrors the hero's which makes them experience what the hero experiences. I also learned about cortisol which is a chemical the brain produces when the reader is connecting with the protagonist's struggles and oxytocin which is another chemical that the brain produces when the reader is hoping the protagonist will reach their goal. I learned about narrative and descriptive writing in this project which I think will help me become a better writer in general because understanding both of them in this project and using them in my paper made my writing more mature and I think it made my story a lot better. I can use both of these techniques in other papers for humanities or papers in other classes.
I really liked how I got to do multiple drafts of this story and got to refine as much as I did. I've never refined a paper this much before and I think it really made it a lot better by the end. I also enjoyed going through my paper and trying to change things in it to "show" rather than "tell". One thing I thought was difficult about this project was cutting out parts of my story to make it fit into one page. I had trouble finding parts in my paper that weren't really necessary and that were repetitive to erase. I also didn't like trimming my story because I thought it was really good the way it was and by cutting it I was making it worse. I probably would have cut it down a little but kept most of what I had before I started trimming.
I learned a lot about how there are a lot of things you don't know about people you think you know well. I learned a lot of things about people through their papers that I never would have thought was part of their lives. I also grew a lot as a writer though this project. I learned a lot of skills that I will definitely use in the future. This project helped me think about what I'm writing and go deeper with it when possible.
In this project I learned a lot about the ingredients for a story, and how to tell a good one. I learned about neuro coupling which is when the reader of the story connects with the protagonist's struggles and their brain mirrors the hero's which makes them experience what the hero experiences. I also learned about cortisol which is a chemical the brain produces when the reader is connecting with the protagonist's struggles and oxytocin which is another chemical that the brain produces when the reader is hoping the protagonist will reach their goal. I learned about narrative and descriptive writing in this project which I think will help me become a better writer in general because understanding both of them in this project and using them in my paper made my writing more mature and I think it made my story a lot better. I can use both of these techniques in other papers for humanities or papers in other classes.
I really liked how I got to do multiple drafts of this story and got to refine as much as I did. I've never refined a paper this much before and I think it really made it a lot better by the end. I also enjoyed going through my paper and trying to change things in it to "show" rather than "tell". One thing I thought was difficult about this project was cutting out parts of my story to make it fit into one page. I had trouble finding parts in my paper that weren't really necessary and that were repetitive to erase. I also didn't like trimming my story because I thought it was really good the way it was and by cutting it I was making it worse. I probably would have cut it down a little but kept most of what I had before I started trimming.
I learned a lot about how there are a lot of things you don't know about people you think you know well. I learned a lot of things about people through their papers that I never would have thought was part of their lives. I also grew a lot as a writer though this project. I learned a lot of skills that I will definitely use in the future. This project helped me think about what I'm writing and go deeper with it when possible.
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File Size: | 104 kb |
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WWI Poet Laureate Project
In this project everyone in the class was given a different country or region that participated in WWI. We learned about the events and battles our countries were involved in and then chose one event to go more in depth with. Then, we wrote poems about the event we chose in a specific poetic form. I wrote mine as limericks. After that, everyone wrote an explanatory essay about their poem that talked about the cause of the event, the perspective of the poem, and the form they used in it. Next, we broke up into teams and started collaborating to edit, design, and create the book. The teams were fundraising, web team, event managers, global promotion, copy editors, and book design team. Finally, we created presentations on our event and presented to the class. The last step of this project was the book launch party where we read poems, sold books, and talked to the community members at the party about the project.
Project Archive Link:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8o2Y8Nfz_U8SEdWejg2MEtTX2M&usp=sharing
I was on the web team and our job was to create a website that went along side the book that explained the project and had the poems in it. My partner Ben and I worked together to create the website and make it easy to navigate, straightforward, and beautiful. We imported all the poems and essays from the class and put them together with the table of contents to make finding a specific student's poem easy. We also included sponsor logos, student made trailers, and a link to buy the book. The link to the website we created is http://ahspoetlaureate2016.weebly.com/.