The Winter Exhibition 

Twice every year, we have an exhibition were we get to showcase our learning. At exhibitions, we have a different theme; this year it was Avatar. The driving question was “What does James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ reveal about our own society?” Here is the process of our project and the winter exhibition.

The Project 

For the grade 8 project, we made a theme box to represent a theme present in Avatar. I chose corporate greed for mine. Then we had to actually make the box. 

First, I found a box, then went to Michael’s and bought paint, fake trees, and a cool piece of glass that I planned to use as unobtainium. 

Then, the next day, I started to paint my box grey and brown, which took about 2/5 days. I also started to 3d print my trees that day. 

The next day, I put on fake grass and started to paint and cut out my background, which was the lid of my box.

 On day 4, I realized that I had nothing to put on my trees and no light to light up the background! So we made an emergency trip to Michael’s and got fake candles, some more paint, and a bag of moss. 

The day after that, I glued the trees on, put the moss on, and also drew money signs in black light pen, and then, my project was basically done.

Planning For The Exhibition 

Planning did not go great in our room. Nobody wanted to talk and only 4/9 people were there. We made a “game” were you dig through rocks with a spoon trying to find crumpled pieces of paper that we made look like shiny rocks. We did eventually figure out what we were going to bring. I thought I was bringing the rocks for the game and tools for decoration. I went to the beach, trying to find good rocks. When I had filled my Safeway bag halfway full of the finest rocks around, I couldn’t feel my hands. The next day I had my bag full of rocks and tools, when I realized that I wasn’t supposed to bring the rocks. I didn’t know what to do with my bag full of rocks, so I dumped them in a pile in the woods, were they still lie to this day… “Am I supposed to be a man, am I supposed to say, ‘it’s ok, I don’t mind?’ Well I mind! I mind big time! And you know what the worst part is? I never learned to read!”-Wayne’s World

 

The Day Of The Exhibition 

For the first 3 hours, we mostly just cleaned up rooms. After school ended, we started to decorate our rooms. I brought pretty much all of the tools, gold pans, and vests. First we took everything down from the walls, and then we hung up the few props that we had. Our room was lacking in props so the principal had to help us out by getting props from her car and the office. After that we had dinner, and then, 10 minutes before the exhibition, we decided that it was to bright in our room, so we quickly put up paper on some of the lights. Then, the exhibition started. People seemed to like my project, and I even had a conversation with someone! (Yikes!) I was nervous at first, but then I got better at presenting my box. At around 6:50, people began to leave, and by 7:20, pretty much no parents were there, so we started cleaning up early. The cleanup went by pretty quick. We had to get our tables and wall stuff back from the textiles room, and we did that pretty quickly. Because our room was put back together, Mr Hughes let us go at around 8:10.

What Went Well

I think that the takedown went very well for our group. We were quick and we were able to go home early because of that. We also did well at presenting our boxes to people. At first we were nervous, but as the night went on, we got better at presenting.

What We Could Have Done Better

I think our group could have done better by communicating our ideas for the room earlier on. I could have contributed more to the development of our ideas. When we were setting up the room, we didn’t have much coordination, and we just stood around in most of the time, not knowing what to.

All in all, I think the winter exhibition was a success. I learned a lot, we got to see two movies, and I think that the audience enjoyed our projects.