Winter Exhibition learning portfolio postl
Before winter break we had our PLP Winter Exhibition, and this is my reflection on it. The Winter Exhibition is where we show off what we’ve learned to our parents and visitors alike. Every year the exhibition has a different theme, and this year the exhibition’s theme was Star Wars. Now, doing stuff related to Star Wars may sound fun, but there was a lot of work we did for the exhibition, and we started out by learning about the story of Star Wars itself. We started out learning about the story spine, which is the order of events of any story. 
We also learned about the hero’s journey, which shows the journey the protagonist takes in the story, and this isn’t only in Star Wars, it’s in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and pretty much every story you could think of. 
By this point you may be wondering, what does all this stuff about story spines and heroes journeys have to do with the exhibition? Well, we were actually going to be writing our very own Star Wars short story, but we weren’t going to do it alone. Last exhibition we were put into exhibition groups, but this year our exhibition group members would each be writing a section of the story, and my group members where Jude, Alex, Malaika, Anders, Gabe, and Emily. Each group got a different Star Wars location to theme their story and actual exhibition area after, and my group got the Death Star as our Star Wars location, and the library as the place where we would actually present. We began brainstorming ideas for our story and exhibit right away, and we also started reading short stories to help us understand the different elements each of us would need to include in our part of the story, like setting, mood, point of view, and more. We practiced identifying all of these elements within the short stories we read, and wrote them down on a chart, which was pretty helpful for me personally, because it gave me examples of story elements to refer to whenever I got confused or stuck with my own story, which we had started working on around the same time. The story my group had decided on was about an Imperial officer working on the Death Star, and I was doing the exposition. Our group exchanged feedback on each other’s sections of the story, and the whole group and I had a lot to revise. Not long after the first session of feedback we had already finished our second drafts, but this time we got feedback from other groups instead. Again, a lot to fix, and after revisions, we got one last bit of feedback from our teacher. After making final revisions, I finished the exposition to our story, which you can read below.
Even though our story was done, my group was still far from finished, because we had the actual exhibition coming up. We still had to plan what the library would look like for the exhibition, and we had to work on what we were presenting for the exhibition. Yes, we were showing off our stories at the exhibition, but we also had to make an artifact which expressed our section of the story. I decided I wanted to make the letter the protagonist receives when he is invited onboard the Death Star, complete with the imperial seal. To help us make our artifacts, we used the LAUNCH process, which we recorded in a journal in six phases. This video explains the artifact I created, as well as phases of the LAUNCH journal which helped me create my artifact:
Here is the mini-video I mentioned, it’s supposed to show how we used our innovative designer competency for this project.
https://www.blog44.ca/anthonys/files/2020/01/720p.movAfter we had finished the LAUNCH journal, our artifact, and our short story, the exhibition was already upon us! My group had already planned the room design, and after we set it all up it really did look like the Death Star. I would be at the front desk of the library dressed as a stormtrooper and greeting the guests, while also showing my artifact and telling them where to check out my fellow group members exhibits, which was fitting because I wrote the introduction in our story. I had a great time, and here is some of the photos I got at the exhibition. 
Overall, I had a great time at the exhibition and would say it has been my favourite one yet, and I was also really pleased with how my artifact and my story turned out, and to top it all off we got to see the Rise of Skywalker in the theatre the day after the exhibition! Well, that’s about it for this blog post, remember to stay tuned for more!