The grade eights and nines have finally had their first PLP exhibition from the many they will have in Seycove. All grades in PLP had a big exhibition they have been preparing for, for a long time. In the Winter exhibition the grade eights (my class) was all about The Outsiders. We have been reading and studying the novel and even watched the movie. Click here to see what its about: The Outsiders movie, and The Outsiders book. Here in the PLP community we have a lot of exhibitions to show our learning in fun and unique ways. But since Covid started we have not had the chance, but finally we got to! It was the grade 8s/9s very first fair and I think it went well.
To start off this project we learnt about what worldviews are and what they do. Worldviews have been split into seven main sections: Geography, Time, Beliefs, Knowledge, Values, Society, and Economy. 
Your worldview is your philosophy on life or how you view the world. For example a young child and a older adult get the option to go to the dentist or not for free and the child would not go because the way they see it. They see a not fun thing and would get out of it if they had the opportunity. But a adult would go because they know its in their best interest and it will help them even if its not fun. The child and the adult have different opinions on going because of their age and values. The adult values their teeth and health but the child is younger so they see it differently.
A worldview is your perspective on things, everyone’s is different and can change through out ones life lots of times.
We learnt about what a worldview was because the driving question for this project is “How can The Outsiders teach us about worldview”. I’ll answer that question at the end of this blog once we go through what we did in this project and what we learned.
As a class we started reading The Outsiders book for a couple weeks. Every class we came prepared with two chapters read and a summary written. At the start of each class we got together in our assigned table groups and talked about the chapters we just read. We went around with questions and reflected on interesting parts. I found it very cool to listen to peoples thoughts on the book throughout the process of finishing it. Along the way of reading this book and learning more and more about the characters in it we filled out a character deck of every main character. Every time the book talked about the characters if we felt it was important we wrote it down and collected a portfolio of each character.
Heres my character deck:
Once we got a good understanding about the characters in the book and what a worldview is we did a project to solidify our understanding of it and show what we know. We used the app keynote and then:
Step 1: Chose a character from the book (I chose Ponyboy)
Step 2: Think of four personality traits they have (I picked out active, brainy, young, and kind-hearted)
Step 3: Write down evidence of why they have that personality trait
Step 4: Fill out the last box ‘How do these character traits help shape the characters worldview’
Step 5: Make it unique and personalize it
Apart of doing this project was learning about what personality traits are. We got a list of examples for this project and tried to include them. Heres what we got to read over:
Doing this project taught us about worldview, personality traits, and more about the characters in the book. Which is a lot for one sheet of work.
My favourite part of this whole project was when we made a Worldview Mindnode. We used my favourite app Mindnode and made a mindmap of our worldview. I made a long detailed map of my opinions and views on every topic of worldviews. 
I spent a long time on this project and I like how it turned out. I took lots of breaks and every time I came back I had more ideas of what to write. I hope we do more work on the app mindnode. I explained a lot in this project of my worldview and even learned a little bit of myself.
After studying The outsiders and learning about what a worldview is we finally were ready for the last part of this project, we were ready to present and reflect.
We first learned what a tableau is, so what is a tableau?
A tableau is a portrayal, picture, human representation, or a scene created by a group of people together making a still image to represent something of importance.
Here are some examples:
There are six main components in tableau’s that make them look good:
- Different body shapes (people opening their bodies or closing them)
- Different levels (people in different positions high, medium, or low)
- Effective use of space (balancing the area and being visible)
- Strong poses from the people that communicate a story
- Strong facial expressions that convey emotion
- Focus is appropriate and in character
To practise our acting skills and get ready for the next part of this project we played a few games with Mr Harrison like charades, improv, and a couple others just for fun (frog in the pond, body parts, and freeze). Charades taught us how to act out certain scenarios but also helped us work together as a class. Improv taught us how to come up with scenes on the spot and act out multiple different things very fast. I really liked playing these games and found them very fun and helpful. I liked how we played them at the start of the class because I think it started the class off on a good note. (Heres some background on charades and improv). Playing these games also brought the class together as well. I think we learned a lot about acting but also a lot about each other. We also became more comfortable with working together and more friendly because of the groups and teams we kept being put in. 
One more thing we did to practice our acting skills is write and produce a trailer for a made up movie. We got together in groups mine was with
then thought of a idea for a movie. We then used the app IMovie to put it together and film on. We had a lot of fun making it in the short time span we got. Heres how the movie trailer turned out: https://youtu.be/gT-Y5EGKPKU
After learning about what a Tableau is, finished reading the Outsiders and watching the movie, and practised acting, we got told the final part of the project. We learned about the PLP winter exhibition and we got to plan out what was going to happen.
The plan was to start setting up right after school. Then the parents get there at 5, and we start presenting. We continued introducing our Tableau and performing it to the parents over and over and over until every group of parents and audience members witnessed our performance.
In the library my class split up in our groups and set up. Heres the floor plan we got, my group is number 3 ‘The fountain’.
Also heres the plan my group made for our scripts and what to prepare with. We wrote down our costumes, the props to bring, and who was going to do what.
Heres a video I put together of what we did that night of the winter exhibition:
So, how can the Outsiders teach us about worldview? That has been our driving question this whole project and I’m finally going to answer it. In the book every character had a strong individual personality and the writer (S. E. Hinton) made sure the readers understood that well. She made sure we knew what kind of people the characters were but also their worldview. Each character acted on the worldview they had. For example when Johnny killed Bob by accident with Ponyboy they went to Darry for help because they knew he’d know what to do. But if Darry was the one who killed Bob he wouldn’t have gone for help he would have made a decision and followed through with it. These characters acted differently because they had different worldviews. Johnny and Ponyboy were younger and didn’t have any experience with such bad situations so they went to someone they knew could help. Darry on the other hand knew what do to because he had done things like that before. Also in the book it seemed the Soc’s were the bad guys which yes they mainly were but in the book it showed their side also. It showed that not all Soc’s were mean and they had problems too. The Soc Cherry explained that just because they lived on the rich side of town doesn’t mean their lives are perfect. So you can see the different kind of characters worldviews. I think that the way this book was written really helps teach us about worldview because it explains why the characters did the things they did.
Heres a Venn Diagram on Greasers vs Socs
We did a lot in this project for a long time but I think we also got a lot out of this. We learned all about The Outsiders and all about worldview. We learned these things by doing fun things like making a tableau. I enjoyed this project and I think my team worked well. Hopefully we get to work in a similar group again.
Thank you for reading my blog post, see you next time