Hello to every and all mushrooms! And I suppose humans as well. Welcome to my most recent (currently) blog post about my first exhibition: PLP Winter Exhibition 2022! For this project our driving question was “How does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about our own society?”.

When I joined PLP I knew about exhibitions, I had gone to one of them when I was looking for mini-schools and was quite impressed with what I saw. However at the time I had presumed that what was presented to me and many others at that exhibition I went to was what the students had been working on for the entirety of that term. Now that I am in PLP, I know that is not the case. Instead I ended up with three weeks to work on a project that I only got to work on in one class. Harder that I was expecting, but also a good challenge, so I got to work!

In PLP we use a system called L.A.U.N.C.H to how we work through a project. You’re probably wondering what that means. I should probably tell you. Huh. Interesting. Alright, fine! I’ll tell you!

L – Look, Listen, and Learn: Gaining an understanding of what we are going to be doing and some basic ideas of our topic.

A – Ask questions: Inquiring about the primary, and secondary, ideas by asking questions.

U – Understand the problem or process: basically research and discussion of many different ideas about our subject (we do like our ideas at PLP).

N – Navigate ideas: put together what have learned so far and start planning some sort of final product.

C – Create a prototype: this is where we really start planning the final product and then create our prototype or draft.

H – Highlight and fix: in this phase we critique each others work and give helpful feedback.

And that’s it! Now all you have to do is stand around for two and a half hours and present your project to dozen/s of people and BOOM! One PLP exhibition. Well you also get a pizza party, so there’s that. Now I’ll show how I followed each of these steps.

Phase 1. Look, listen, and learn

For this step I answered some questions and then interviewed my parents.

  1. Why is Avatar so awesome? What does it teach us? Why is a movie good topic focus for an exhibition? I think Avatar was a good movie because it was very captivating, I think the montage when the main character was learning to be one of the people was the best designed section of the whole movie, and also the CGI effects were years ahead of its time as well as a a good plot, like I felt like it could be from 2022. It teaches us how to be better people, by tuning in with our surroundings, and also not to be greedy. This movie is a good topic for our exhibition because there is lots of potential for variety in our projects, this will make our presentations more appealing for our audience.
  1. Who is our audience at Winter Exhibition and why are they coming? Our audience will be our parents, grandparents, guardians, and community members, as well as those who are interested in the PLP program.
  1. Why is Winter Exhibition a great opportunity for PLP learners? It’s a great opportunity because we get to see what to expect in higher grades, and we get to practice public speaking and presentation.

Interviews: “I’m coming because I want to see what my learner has accomplished, I am also excited to see what the school is like, and where my child learns, I also want to see what everyone at the school is doing” -My Dad “because it exists? Also, I hafta” – My Mum.

Phase 2. Ask questions: Inquiring about the primary, and secondary, ideas by asking questions.

For this phase we filled out some boxes of Know, Need to Know, and Next Steps to prepare for what we were going to next or in the near future.

There are four levels of questioning that we use in PLP:

Robot – how, who, and where questions.

Detective – why, and what questions.

Judge – do you, would you, and what would you questions.

Inventor – how would you, and what would you questions. 

We also had to ask a question about the movie “Avatar” and see what level of questioning it corresponded to. My question was “why did Jake Sully fight the humans”. This would be a detective level question because it used a “why” question.

Phase 3. Understand the problem or process.

In this section of our project, we explored the difference of themes, morals, and plots, and then created a theme statement about the movie “Avatar”.

We had a few themes to choose from: the conflict between humans and nature, racism, corporate greed, and militarism. I chose militarism and my theme statement that I created was  “Avatar teaches us about how humans’ greed can be overpowering and cause us to do crazy things”. 

Phase 4. Navigate ideas.

For this phase, me and a group did some brainstorming about what aspects of avatar (characters, parts of the story, and objects) contribute to the theme of racism. Here are our answers.

That’s a bit hard to read so here’s it in writing too. When we say “They” we mean the humans.

  • They did not realize the value or the home tree to the Na’vi.
  • They didn’t value the Na’vi’s deity.
  • They thought of the Na’vi as just an annoying factor.

Here is a mind map of some ideas for aspects of my final product in this section of the project.

Phase 5. Create a prototype.

For this step we first gained an understanding of what a prototype is, and what it includes. This is what I got. “My understanding of a prototype is: something that shows a plan or design for a creation. Things it features: colours, materials, and measurements, plus labels, showing people what they are”. Here is the 3D model of my box.

After that, we set ourselves some deadlines for when we needed certain steps to be complete. 

Phase 6. Highlight and fix.

In this phase all of grade 8 PLP walked around a room where our boxes were set up and wrote each other some pointers. Here is the advice that I received.

And finally, after three weeks of planning and construction it was time for:

Phase 7. Presentation.

Really it was depressing knowing that when the end of day bell rung, we were only halfway though our school day. First we had an hour and a half to completely cover the walls in paper, decorate and set up our stands. Fun. Then we had like fifteen minutes to eat some pizza. And then the exhibition began! It was pretty boring to be honest. Over the course of two and a half hours, I presented my box to around ten – fifteen people, and got a fifteen minute break right near the end. Here is a photo of my finished product at exhibition. I know the photo isn’t the best, there wasn’t much light.

And that was my story of my first PLP exhibition. So my answer to the driving question? James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar teaches us about how humans’ greed can be overpowering and cause them to do crazy things.

Thanks for reading. 

Ps. Sorry to my teachers for having to mark this wall of text.