Monthly Archives: January 2024

The Forest of My Worldview (New ebook By Madeline!)

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Yup, You guessed it! We wrote an ebook. But not just any ebook. A poetry book! It is called The Forest of My Worldview.

Through the course of a couple weeks, we worked on lots of poetry. We learned new terms, techniques, and new types of poems every day. The poems included similes, metaphors, found poems, sound poems, haikus, experience poems, imagery, and a self portrait poem.  All of our poems were focused around our worldview.

I wrote them about how my worldview is like a forest, to the topic of climate change. There are things that shape a worldview, and I thought about that as I was writing.

How might I write poetry that I enjoy and shows who I am?

That was the driving question for this project. I think that question is easy for me to answer, because I enjoyed writing my poetry because it reflects on who I am. I could just be myself through my writing. I could put my thoughts on the page. With other projects, you dont feel the same.

When I wrote the poems, I used my own thoughts, ideas, and I put in my personality. The self portrait poem was the biggest reflection on me, but in my other poems, I used metaphors, similises, and other ways to express my worldview and who I am. You need to add feeling and mood. 

Reflection

Looking back, I think that this was my favourite projects so far. I think it was the least stressful 😂. But that is not the reason that I liked it best. I feel like I got to put myself into my poetry. I got to be a bigger part of my project than usual. I really enjoyed experimenting with different forms of poetry. I learned how to add mood to my poems, so it really hits the reader. I learned how to use imagery, and so much more. Overall, This was a fun project!

So, how did your first exhibition go?

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MY FIRST PLP EXHIBITION!

After weeks of prepping, reading, research, and stressing, the PLP Winter Exhibition was finally here! It was definitely an experience that I won’t forget!

THE PROJECT

First of all, the driving question was: What can we learn from the past, and why does that matter to us today? We were assigned to make and perform a tableau that showed the Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern day worldview through a tryptich. My group was me, Emilia, Chloe, Finnley, Evelyn, and Ian.

Group work can be difficult at times, but I felt like this group worked pretty well together. There are always challenges that come with group work, but I learned that you always have to be patient, kind, supportive, and make sure that you are being helpful at all times. Something that helped was writing checklists of things that needed to be done. Here is one that I made:

At times it felt like we would never get it done, and it would be a disaster. But we managed to pull it off in the end! Keep reading to get a full walk through our final project.

BEFORE THE EXHIBITION

One of the first steps to this projects was our individual medieval and renaissance portraits. That required an art chart for each one. You can read about my medieval art on my other post. This is my renaissance portrait:

Knowing about the Renaissance times and how it connects to us today, we have learned valuable lessons on how it shaped our modern ideas of personal freedom. The last art I made was Medieval art with my face in it. I connected all the aspects of worldview back to society. This time, we had to make our art piece based off of Renaissance art. For this piece of art, I am going to connect everything back to how the renaissance times have shaped our modern ideas of personal freedom. The three aspects of my art that I am going to connect to my topic sentence today are beliefs, society, and knowledge. I will start off with beliefs. In the Renaissance period, beliefs were a big deal. What you believed in basically decided who you were in the society, and how you were ranked. I showed heaven above, because they believed that if you do not sin, you will go to heaven when you die. The church would also sell indulgences to those who sinned, giving them a free ticket to heaven.Today, people can believe in the religion that they choose. The actions of the Christian and Catholic Churches back then have lasted until now, and some of the actions weren’t good. But I feel like the beliefs and mistakes of the past have shaped personal beliefs and freedom today. Next up, society. In my art, you can see Saint Mark rescuing a slave. But I chose to use that painting because I think it shows the different roles, classes, and beliefs in the Renaissance times. The classes that they had back then were nobleman, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans, labourers, citizens, and merchants. It also depended on income, age, and place in the society. People would have to slave all day in the fields, factories, e.t.c. I learned that back then it was very sexist, and men were on top. I still feel that way today, and sadly people haven’t quite learned from the awful sexist things of the past. We don't really have classes now, but we still have royalty, politicians, rich, average, and poor. Although, I think we have more freedom as people in the society as we learned from the Renaissance. Lastly, knowledge. “The golden age of inventions!” That statement is not wrong, as some very important things were invented in the Renaissance. For example, the printing press. This was a very important invention, as it helped spread knowledge all throughout the world. You can see a man working the printing press in the background, while showing children a newly printed book. The great invention has led to the modern day, electric printers that we use on a daily basis. Without the printing press, people would slave all day hand printing words after words, just so people could gain more knowledge faster. We have definitely developed way more knowledge from the inventions in our modern ideas of personal freedom, and worldview. Those were my three connecting points to my artwork and topic sentence. In conclusion, I feel like I have learned a lot of valuable lessons in how the past has shaped my modern ideas of personal freedom. I am glad that we have taken knowledge from the past, and used it in our worldview today. Thank you for reading my thoughts!

With our groups we compared all of our portraits, and thought of ways to blend all of them together to make our tryptich. We then created a digital tryptich for our group, to give us an idea. We also gradually worked on the process of creating scripts, props, and lists. Here is the final digital tryptich:

We also did many rehearsals, and if we hadn’t it would not be good. Rehearsals were tough, because there were so many props, and costumes that we made. That was hard because we only had 20 seconds to set up while one group members reads the script. Here is one of our first dress rehearsals in action (Renaissance)

 

Now, let’s  jump in to the exhibition itself.

THE EXHIBITION

The teachers were preparing us for “Chaos”

It was most definitely chaotic. But we all worked together to set up the gym, roll out the mats, and set up the curtains, so it wasn’t too bad. We all headed down to eat dinner, and fuel up before the big night. (We were there from 3pm to 9pm).  It was stressful, because at the last minute one of our group members was sick so we improvised around that. We thought of a good solution in the end. People started arriving, and we were ready (Sort of….). The first show was a bit of a mess, but as the night went on we became professionals 😂. The other challenge was navigating our backstage, because we had SO much stuff.

But we had a good system going eventually. Something that I regretted was not getting photos or videos of us in the actual exhibition, but I will show the photos from the dress rehearsal.

 

 

MEDIEVAL

We had to include the seven aspects of worldview into our tableau. Time, society, geography, economy, beliefs, knowledge, and values.

We demonstrated time with the sundial that I am holding, and geography with the map. Society was showed with the king 👑 , economy with the feudal system. For Christian beliefs we showed the cross, and the knights fighting in the crusades. We showed the medieval worldview, and how it was back then. We had all sorts of creative props, and costumes. I was the nobleman holding up the map and sundial. The painter was painting the scene, to show how they captured moments.

Here is our rehearsal video:IMG_9225

 

RENAISSANCE

The second section of our tryptich was the Renaissance time period, also known as ‘The golden age of inventions.” That is not wrong, and we demonstrated why in our tableau. One of the big inventions was the printing press. We used a desk with a cardboard handle for a makeshift printing press. We also showed the telescope, and a cardboard clock. That shows economy, knowledge, and time. We also had a sun and moon that carried on throughout the whole presentation, for something that didn’t change from the past. We found ways to use some of the same costumes for the medieval and renaissance section. At some point in our presentation, we had to hand out some sort of food, and we chose renaissance biscuits. The lady at the printing press skipped up with her basket of biscuits and offered them. It went well with her character. Once again, the painter was painting the scene.

Rehearsal video: IMG_9230    Please note- we had improved a lot from the the rehearsals. After all, that’s what rehearsals are for!

 

CONTEMPORARY (Modern)

I found this the easiest time period to re-create because it’s the one I have lived in all my life!

Once again, we showed the same sun and moon to show time. For economy, we had someone holding a shopping bag to show how people spend their money these days. For knowledge, we turned around the printing press to make an office desk with a laptop. To show society, we had the president with a protester. A lot of the audience got a laugh out of how we were showing worldview today, because it is so different from the past. And for the third time, the painter was capturing the scene. Except, this time he was taking a photo, to show how we have advanced so much with technology.

Rehearsal video: IMG_9233

And with that, we concluded our tryptich with a bow!

 

REFLECTION

I think that we have definitely learned from the past, in both good and bad ways. We need to remember the mistakes that the world has made, and we need to learn from them. This project has taught me so many skills, and bits of knowledge that I will always use in life, and remember. I learned how my worldview connects to a worldview of a person back then. I really enjoyed the group work, because it helped me get to know classmates that I havent really interacted with before. Even though it was very stressful at times, it was also fun to experience what being in a PLP exhibition feels like! Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibition, and getting a feel for the PLP community.

THANK YOU!