The final speaking component for our Lord of the Flies unit involved all students in different mock trial roles. With a strong prosecution and defense team, characters from the book giving testimonies, and an impartial jury taking notes and reaching a verdict, the class was able to bring one of the biggest and unanswered dilemmas in the novel to a final conclusion. Jack Merridew, the antagonist of the story, was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to 3 years in jail.
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For this project-based learning initiative focusing on research methodologies and creative writing, students first researched local experts on elements of Livermore's landscape, its landmarks, and its institutions. Based on this research, they then created a mythological story explaining the origins of their topic, and filmed the result to be shown at The Vine Cinema. Some topics spotlighted include: The Lawrence Livermore Lab The Vine Cinema The Lizzy Fountains The Altamont Windmills Blue Door Antiques The Duarte Garage The Livermore Hills Charlie Horse from Baughman's Outfitters The Tesla Ghost Town Mount Diablo Livermore Valley Charter School Los Vaqueros Watershed The Livermore Vineyards This event is FREE and open to the community!
The guiding piece of this project is the plaster mask they create and decorate. The front, or outside, of the mask represents either how they present themselves, or how they feel they are perceived by others. The back, or inside, of the mask should represent who they feel they truly are inside.
Freshmen love this project. Here's their feedback in their own words: "I liked examining my outward feelings and thoughts and see how they reflect my inner ideals." - Taylor "I liked exploring my identity and watching other people around me explore theirs." - Cheryl "I liked that you get to learn more about other people and more about yourself. I like that you had to really dig deep inside of your self in order to get the perfect mask. I also like that you got to know more about people and become better friends with them." - Grant Students analyzed speeches, essays and children's books to see how powerful lessons can be conveyed through words. In teams, they selected an important lesson, then taught the lesson by creating a children's book and writing an essay. The children's books are publicly available for print-on-demand purchase through Amazon.com, or directly at these links:
Enjoy Your Life! Have Some Fun! - by Harting Hung, Verona Cong, Kelly Lin, Jack Ahmat, Rose Sawut, Wilson Sun, & Bryan Mahmut Chinese New Year - by Hengjie Gao, Qingshan Li, Jiahui Lin, Yanzheng Pan, Wenhao Sun, & Jing Zhu The Rabbits' Great Adventure - by Ruiyi Shang, Tumaris Yalkun, Ruhsane Sawut, Hongru Lin, YikTing Hung Eight Planets in the Solar System - by HengJie Gao, YanZheng Pan, HaiTao Zhang, QingShan Li, Erfat Ahmat Greetings, Comrades of Cardboard!
How can we be more creative? Here in Creative Writing, we have been crafting and questing to build cardboard creations of the highest caliber. The Creativity Project, also known as "Neon Galaxy Pogo Sticks Cascading into a Kaleidoscope Airplane," is all about exploring what it means to be creative, generating as many unique, practical, and flexible ideas as possible and stretching our imaginative minds in a number of ways, including building and writing. This experimentation resulted in lots of cardboard tinkering and lots of notebook scribbling, and it culminated with pages and pages of ideas in our Creativity Notebooks (which we will pull from to write poems, stories, memoirs, and novels) AND our participation in the second annual Cardboard Challenge at LVCP on October 3, during a school-wide extended lunchtime. Students built a helmet, a series of masks, a full-size cat, a minecraft character, a train, a globe that doubled as a hat, Literary Monopoly, a large scale checkerboard, and other manifestations of the visionary mind within. Take a look! This year we hope even more classes will join in a true celebration of project-based learning and participate with Ms. Ward Kelly's art classes in the cardboard challenge! See the one sheet below for more information and enjoy our photos from last year's students who participated in art, creative writing, robotics, architecture, dance and physical education classes.
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