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Final Portfolio(:
In middle school we are taught strictly into the essence of American History and grammar for English. No class discussions about opinions and no ideas of expression. What the teacher taught you was the way life was. &As we grew up, we took upon the role models of our parents. In my case, parents don’t show creativity or expression of opinion, so I was raised to reply on nothing being out of the ordinary. As our knowledge of World History and the fights for revolutionary change have developed, so have our minds to the ability that we can fight for something we strongly believe in. Then our brains intertwine around mazes of creativity through English that taught us that you could go beyond the normal term of an “essay” and possibly create works of art. Thus leading us to express what we have learned in new and creative formations, like the poetry unit we used in order to learned forms of writing.
If you enter the classroom of English and History you are entering a room full of doors. Doors that are all locked and wish for you too find the keys in which to open what they have held for your imagination. An imagination is a form of creativity that helps you show the person you really are and the thoughts that beg to be spoken. A door that many kids have opened was the door of play writing. As students we took topics that touched our hearts and expressed through Monologues what we feel these problems would be told in a story. It was an amazing way to let out how we truly feel in such a story after story break through.
It’s always easy to understand yourself and the reasons for things you do or make, but it’s not always easy for other people to understand the beauty of the masterpiece inside your mind. Whenever we’ve debated on Trials for who is the killer of human civilization or when we try to inform people on the customs and diversity of Religion, people might not always understand how strongly or right our points of views and sides are. In order to help them understand the best, we must give as much as detail as we can possibly give. The more details the more of a vision we can give to the people. An example of this detail would be in the descriptive essays we have created in class.
English and History both come together as partners on the road of education for us. For the past year we have learned a lot about our selves and the world. We have been taught to express and to teach. We can only hope that next year holds the same opportunity.
Sophia Henninger Q4 Work
Photo Edit 1
Before:
After:
Photo Edit 2
Before:
After:
Photo Edit 3
Before:
After:
All photos were edited on picnik.com
Sculpture/Craft:
Handmade Sketchbook
I got the idea from my brother who had recently made his own book. He took me through the steps. We used cardboard, blank paper, string, fancy ribbon, scissors, a needle, and green and black paint.
Bike - Negative Space
Bike - Contour Line
Bike - Normal
Artist Copy:
Eclipse By Alma Thomas
My Version (done with watercolors)
Humanities Portfolio 2011
When I read Lord of the Flies, I had to create a thesis paper surrounding an argument of my choice. The possibilities were endless for such a book, from barbarism to changing morals for survival, many issues arouse. What stroke me about this book was the different Political powers arising. From a Democratic party arising, to a "Let him have the conch! Let him have it!" -Piggy. (39) plead for a voice, I went over the transition in power, to a quote from Hitler relating to how Jack took on his enemy, Jack. “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.” -Hitler. When I evaluated the quote, I pointed out how Jack and Hitler had the same sort of tactics. Surprise and sabotage. Breaking the enemy down. "Jack uses many of the same tactics. His enemy inside would be Ralph. He became a part of Jack’s government, but then from within started to destroy, terrorize and create his own Government. He learned the weaknesses of others and their needs to create his own system of government that would be strong and deadly enough to take out Ralph’s. He started a war with Ralph from slowly starting it within and creating tactics against him." From writing this piece, I feel that my understanding of politics grew quite a bit. I was able to create juxtapose between a fictional story and real world politics, tying them both together, and pointing out their differences.
Earlier back in March, we were asked to write an Op-Ed on a subject of our choosing. Me, being interested at the time in the recent issue of nuclear energy in Japan, decided to do something around it. I started this assignment with nothing, but very little knowledge about energy. After researching various previous and ongoing issues with nuclear energy, I was felt confident enough to write my paper. I found not only new sources explaining to me the ongoing issues, but also Wikileaks articles stating that they were unable to- "Wikileaks, a website that's controversial for it's amount of leaked Govt. documents has information stating that these Nuclear power plants were incapable of taking hits from an Earthquake." After I talked about some pervious issues, I went into current issues such as France, "In France, they have fifty-eight operating nuclear power plants, and they get OVER SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of their countries power from Nuclear power." After doing this paper, I then realized anyone can write a piece about an issue they feel strongly about.
Earlier in the year, I was asked to write a Monologue. I have never written a monologue before. The only thing I ever wrote even close to that was a play for Philadelphia Young Play Writes. I wrote my monologue partly based off of the idea of Danny Boyle's SlumDog Millionaire. My Monologue was on a poor boy in India living with Malaria, who lost his brother to the disease, due to corruption on a greedy Doctor's part. I decided I would keep my feedback at the bottom, just for you to see in different ways how my paper has changed, thanks to it. Towards the end of this project, it became a bit rushed, so I ended it on a happier note, "Maaran, I have good news! The Supervisor of the Hospital came by, and you’re going to get the treatment! you’ll be alright! The book? Yes, you can get it! Actually, I’ll have 500 rupees in a week, so you can get it! I have 100, see. [Waves money in the air.] Act Eight" than how the rest of the monologue was. If I were to redo this monologue, I'd change how I did the ending, and many smaller parts of the overall piece. From this, I learned anyone can be a play writer. All it takes is initiative, and in my case, some research.
In Mr. Block's class, we had many trials on a variety of issues. One issue that we did a trial on was Sweatshops. In this trial, our class was divided into five different groups, Multinationals, Poor Country Ruling Elite, U.S. Consumers, System of Profit, and Poor Country Workers. My group was the Multinationals, and we created questions for each other group, challenging their motives and asking why they would do certain things. In this, I was a Prosecutor, along with Catherine, and we asked the question this question to the US consumers, "Why do you still choose to buy from brands that use inhumane labor?" The group replied to us with these brands being their only affordable sources. From this, we learned the stories that each of these groups had to tell of why they were innocent. In the end, we had a distribution of 100 points per person to 5 separate groups to see who was the guiltiest. In the end, I believe the Consumers were the guiltiest. I learned from these trials, that we can bring real world issues into the classroom in a fun, but educational manner.
For my Quarter two English Benchmark, I had to create a piece of language. I had to create a piece showing different languages being used. My piece wasn't in the form of different languages as how we commonly expect it to be, such as how English and Spanish are different; My piece was on how sub-languages that come from Languages. Such as how some slang is deprived from English. I did this by talking about my advisory, and how "Conversation was still conducted on both sides of me by my peers. It wasn’t anything interesting, really. On one side of the room I heard more thought out
sentences like, “Haha, you’re absolutely right!” While on the other side I heard sentences like, “Haha, you so right!” This generally is how my advisory is, with some using formal English, and more broken down English. My main idea of this piece was that everyone says things differently, from sound, accent, and dialect, we all speak differently. From this I learned that I was capable of writing on language, which I was unsure of before I wrote this. I also learned that we all have different languages, and it goes well beyond English.
Over the course of this year, I learned a lot. I feel every assignment has shaped and molded by understanding to be more open, understanding, and stronger than it was before I entered the classroom in September. Many assignments made me understanding of things that I had once previously been intolerant of. I have this all to thank to Mr. Block for creating such wonderful assignments, and showing us how to apply ourselves in many ways.
Humanities Portfolio
Sophomore year was a hard year for me emotionally, the one class that
always had me thinking was English, and I felt the class related to me a lot in
a personal way. For example the journal entries, my favorite had to have been
the rant. I remember that day clearly I was in a really bad mood, I had this
rush of anger going through me, and a rant was exactly what I needed. A lot of
the other journals had me thinking too, like the “Remember when” one during the
Night course, I was also very sad that day and writing that poem came easily to
me and for some reason I felt moved after writing it.
MY favorite unit had to be the poetry unit. I really like writing poems and, at that stage of my life all of my poems had a certain theme, and that theme happened to be about my bad decisions. “As much as I hate you I can’t forget you” Looking back on my poetry it’s kind of sad to see how unhappy I was, I know I brought it upon myself but I had no idea what to do, and I think in some weird way writing helped me get through it for that moment for that 65 minute English class the poetry took my mind off of the person that was screwing me up physically and emotionally.
Art in the open was amazing. I loved working outside of the classroom, and I couldn’t possibly ask for a better group. During Art in the Open I think I was the happiest I’ve been all year; I started to put my life back in check. With the Leah Stein project I learned to not judge a book by its cover. When I first heard about this I was a little creeped out I thought it was weird. But when we started dancing and actually got to meet Leah I knew that it was going to be an amazing experience. My group Rocky Road came together and as soon as we picked our location we knew exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to move, our piece flowed together and in the end we had a great final product.
I think the greatest thing that I learned in this class, was about myself. I didn’t know my limits at the beginning of the school year I thought I was indestructible; I thought I could handle anything that came my way. But after millions of journal entries and Mr. Block saying, “make smart decisions” I think it finally stuck with me, it may have taken 8 monthes but it happened. Mr. Block I’m going to miss you dearly thank you for everything, you may have not realized it but your class helped me so much this year, and I’m truly thankful.
Confessions of a Jailbird
Humanities Portfolio 2-11
Change; it’s not something that happens overnight. "Change is an intellectual thing. Change is the epidemic." It happens through time and experience. One simply does not decide to transform and viola, it happens. You need to have motivation and determination."People have the choice to enlighten themselves but they use the crutches of people in power to guide them."
Before I began sophomore year, I didn’t have much of an interest in history and dates. I enjoyed English class very much, but the same wouldn’t be said for History. You know what they say, you have to put your mind into something if you want to get the feel for it. With the learning experience in Mr. Block’s class, I was able to think as those historical figures we were learning their positions. It’s not like a typical History class where you hear, “These are the good guys, and those are the enemies.” We can make our own opinions based on how we feel and listening to each other’s view on someone. We don’t listen to one person explain and persuade us one way. The interaction in our mock trials (Cortes Trial for example) and us being assigned parts as a certain social group in an issue whether or not we believe our issue is a great way to not be biased and learn all sides of something. "It's easy for me to listen to both sides of a story and generally, I hate to admit that I'm wrong." The main lesson through the unit was everyone has their own reason behind their actions. Research is the key to history and if you don’t understand a fact, research. If you need want to prove a point, manipulate your research to follow through with your point. It’ll clarify everything up and after a while, you realize history isn’t all about dates and deceased presidents. It’s all about why and how we all got to where we are and how we’ve all become us.
English, as I stated above was a very interesting class for me because I love reading and writing. Ever since my first assignment in English class, I've grown as a writer. However, English class the way we did it this year was new to me. We’ve even incorporated History into English, which I usually never do. It’s typically lessons in English and facts in History. Meshing the two seems different. That’s exactly what this year was; different. We read many stories and we always found a way to relate to the story no matter how chaotic the character's situation was (Short Story Letter to a friend). As we read stories about people having spiritual beliefs and we had our religion unit in History. We contrasted the two and realized, spirituality and religion are two different things. You can be spiritual, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be religious. You can have hope in something and not praise a ‘God.’
So basically, this year with English and History being taught by the same teacher was a great experience. To have someone being an expert in both subjects make them both simpler in order to complete work. If something you’re reading in English has to do with historical facts and you don’t know the background of the story is, you’re pretty much stuck and will have to resort to Googling for answers the way we created a large issue and mutilated the information to go along with our point in our Op-Ed assignment. Also, if you’re reading Olde English in historical documents and can’t find the word online, how will you figure out the rest of the document? It’s just so much more convenient to have a teacher knowledgable of both subjects if both are going to incorporate a little of each other in each subject.
Whitney W.: What if?
My favorite part about this project was the making of the fake primary source documents. The most challenging part was actually finding a way to display my new spin on history. My most intersing fact that I investigated was the Revolutionary War, there was no way in the world that America should have one that, but we did and thank goodness for that. If Thomas Jefferson would have left the clause which denounced slavery out of the Declaration of Independence, then the Conferderates would not have signed, and we would have certaintly lost the war. One change changes history. Whether it was changing a clause or taking it out all together. History would have changed. I could have improved my project by finding a better way to set it up and display it sooner. If i could re-do everything. I would have picked a new point of divergence. A more creative point of divergence.
Primary Source Documents:
Cecelia's Spanish Quarter 4BM (:
Telling the past present and future of Cecelia Catalina Baez :)
I love the fact that I placed it in a sense where I speak, show the words, and give detail to all of the moments in my life that meant so much to me. & Are soon to come for the better :)
In the future... I would maybe try to ... Speak in each set rather then just the first and make the sentence break ups a lot easier to understand.
Q4 Artwork
- Take 200 photos and edit them using a computerized program
- Create a sculpture
- Redraw a piece by a famous artwork
- Draw the bike placed in the classroom and redraw it three times.
The project I found to be the most interesting was the editing pictures that we took. i thought this was very difficult because I had to reiterate the skills I learned last year and research on my own in order learn the program. I have a few examples on the same pictures edited in different textures, and contrast
.
We also had to created a sculpture, I made mines out of cotton, ribbon, and old curtains. My sculpture was sew together as child holding a banquet of flowers. This was a great project for me to do because my aunt helped me with the cutting and sewing I learned a lot of techniques and shortcuts in order to still have enough time to do the project and have a finishing product I could be proud of. I think the skills learned with this project will be utilized later on in my life for multiple things.
The most challenging project was drawing the bike still life. I think it was challenging because drawing isn't my strong paint and details was a necessity in order to portray what I was drawing. I lost my pictures but I did my negative drawing in yellow, I used the technique of coloring the entire paper then sketch bike with a pencil then using an eraser to create the lines that weren't negative. I found that to be the most difficult. But Mabintu and I worked on our projects very hard and researched in order to complete the task because we did a lot of it independently.
I also did pointillism for my artwork I recreated, I did not pick a specific artist but I picked a genre which I feel as though shaped the way texture using paint and art was looked at. Using this technique it creates many different sizes, color combinations, and texture on paper making the art pop out more and have more character. It tells a story that only the observer knows once it is looked at. For that I appreciate the art technique. I decided to use the colors that represent the elements of life and put them all together to show that regardless of how opposite they are all four of them is needed to create a balance and understanding of life. This year has been a privilege I was able to express my art and love of poetry and gain an abundance of skills in illustration part of art. I gained the perspective of knowing art just isn't limited to one thing.
Humanities - Final Portfolio
We
were asked to write Descriptive Essay about something that happened in our life.
I chose to write about the summer earlier that year. “Out in the 90-degree
weather and a storm we were up on the roof trying to prevent the resistant
leaks”. As I realize now this
first assignment in English was really the backing of the whole year. I had to
learn to be more descriptive and creative at the same time. It was a bit
challenging at first because I did not write like this before. As time went on
and the projects called for more and more I
started writing better and better.
Oddly
enough the project that I surpassed my standard for writing was the Monologue
Project for History. For this
project we had to pick a human rights struggle. I had to do a lot of research
to understand and convey the topic clearly. I had chosen drug trafficking because of the different
reasons to do it and how some people don’t really have a choice. “I know she
needs the money but its drug money!”(Scene-1).
The daughter had kidney disease and the family needed fast money to pay for her
medical bills. This project forced
me to be very original, descriptive and creative. Though, we had a little help from Kate from Young
Playwrights. She helped most of the class and I our plays. Even still it really pushed my ability and raised the bar for
realistic fiction writing that will come in the future.
The
Sweatshop trial that we as a class did in middle of the year was probably the most
enjoyable activity for history.
The class split up into groups to take positions on the real world
problem sweatshops. Each group was
questioned on the amount of control that they had on the situation and why it
was still going on. “U.S.
Consumers - If you wanted these “sweat
shops” to end, you would have to stop buying into these companies”. As well as,
each group had to present opening and closing statements on their
position. Finally, as a class we
voted to see which group we thought had the most guilt. My group was the Poor
Country Ruling Elite. We had to
research a ton of statistics, information and articles to fathom our position
and perspective on the issue. This
assignment taught me about perspective because we had to really see from a
group of people’s point of view on a hard issue.
Overall this year has been very enjoyable and memorable. I learned many new things and polished others that we rough. I hopefully will remember the experiences or the hard earned skills. English and History class in sophomore year was a wonderful opportunity.
Rugeiatu's Book !
I like my book, it's simple and it just facts about me that has pictures of some things I like and it go alone with my story.
If I could change one thing, I'd probably write a little neat and put my picture in color ink and use my time wisely.
It's A Book !
Print Making
This is one of the pictures from the element I did. I had the element Titanium, which was the element # 22.
3 papers
Can one hold it in the palm of their hand?
Can life be as calm as the sea?
Can life be in the swaying flowers we see?
Life - Beautiful and Bold!
Can life have any stories untold?
Can the young be more wise than the old?
Can life be more valuable than gold?
Life is Careless and Mean!
Can there really be a superior being?
Can beauty under the skin be seen?
Can world peace only be a dream?
Life is Meaningless and Blue!
Is is possible to walk a mile in someone's shoe?
Under the sun can anything be new?
Can any love really be true?
Life is Loving and Free!
Can the joys of life flow through you and me?
My cousins dropped out of skool cuz its hard to study and their attention span was way too short.. Its flabbergasting as i see their attention span expanding…. As they study the every movement of women with the fat a** are walkingggg by ….. Not accomplishing anything and barley passing at life …. they say life is to hard and they pass thats why they take a puff puff and pass …. Inhaling the vapors and swallowing the gas thats kill their a**… This is believed to be true of all black society …. So sometimes i wish a spell would come and render me unconscious and peal back my skin so you can see inside me … Swim around in my thoughts and drown in my dreams… So look and see im different from what people depict of society … Now I say people are the down fall of this society … snorting powders , popping pills, and inhaling vapors that takes away our sanity… Madness made us believe slavery was abolished and is history. Like a man with a stutter history has a way of repeating itself. Every-time our fingers cramp on that trigger or take a puff of that weed we are enslaved but we are beating ourselves.
Rick physic bm
Spanish Q4 Benchmark
La Guerra Civil en España era una lástima terrible. Mucha gente, ambos rebeldes y soldados, mueren o eran heridos. Todo el país sufrían, porque la guerra le afectaba a todos. El sol "ganador" era Francisco Franco, el hombre quien era el dictador de España por veinte y ocho años, creando un estado de miedo y odio en España. Franco uso este para controlar y oprimir a la gente de España. El tema de my proyecto era la opresión. Yo encontré muchos ejemplos de opresión en la obra "La Casa de Bernarda Alba." Entonces, usé dos personajes de este obra, Angustias y Adela. Usé ellas porque son hermanas muy diferentes, pero ambos son oprimidas por su madre, Bernarda Alba. Bernarda le oprimía a sus hijas en una manera similar a lo que Franco usaba a España. También, Bernarda celebra los mismos valores que Franco celebra, como honor, clase, y la inferioridad de las mujeres.
Me gusté este proyecto, porque me gusto escribir la poesía. Fue interesante escribir de la perspectiva de otro personajes inventadas por otro escribidor. También, no escribo mucha poesía en Español. Después de escribiendo mis cinco poesías, pregunté a Yadi Angeles-Figueroa a chequear mis poesías para errores gramáticas. Ella encontró algunos errores, y me ayudó para corregirlos. Después de este, yo puse los poesías en Pages con algunos dibujos. Seleccioné los dibujos que creé eran relacionados a las poesías, y a Franco y la Guerra Civil de España.
Soy feliz con mi producto terminado. En particular, me gusta la poesía "La Vestida," porque es corta, pero tiene un mensaje grande. También, es la única poesía que rima. Si pudiera, cambiaría el diseño de las páginas. Creo que debería haber usado fuentes más interesantes.
History of Firearms
By Sean Moss and Uyen Nguyen
Espanol BM
2)
El razón porque escogimos estos imágenes es porque en el imagen de guarra solo hay hombres y no mujeres. Hay mujeres que querían pelear por los dos lados pero no podían porque fueron mujeres. El imagen de la cocina es muy estereotípica. Durante la regimen de Franco las mujeres quedaron en la cocina casi por todo el día.
3) Primero hicimos las lineas para la actuación. Segundo ponemos los disfraces y filmamos la película. Tercero editamos y ponemos en forma de flv. El proceso fue difícil y fácil en algunos partes. Un parte difícil para los hombres es ponerse maquillaje porque nunca han puesto y fue raro ponerse. Crear y editar el video fue mas o menos difícil. El parte mas fácil fue la actuación y creando las lineas para la película.
4) Una cosa que me gusta es que el video tiene humor pero la historia también es seria y muestra que mujeres fueron inferiores en es tiempo de la historia de España. Lo que cambiare es añadir una escena con un hombre y mujer mostrando que las mujeres no podían hacer nada afuera de la casa sin que un hombre la compagina. También las mujeres solo cocinaron, crearon las niños, y hicieron cosas por la casa.
Quarter 4 Ryan Barksdale-White
This is my negative space bicycle drawing
This is my guitar that I made
Element Print Project 2011
Tenzin E2BMQ4 Video
For my project, I made a video. In this video,
I don't have a lot of pictures of me when I was younger because I can't find
any at home. The only ones I found are in the video. I felt as though I worked
really hard for this project because this is the last project and that was the
only way to get an A in this class. I think I did really well with the script.
That would be like the best part of my project. If I were to do this project
again, I wouldn't change much because I like the way it is right now. By doing
this project, I felt as though I've learned a lot this year because it's like a
reflection to all the things we've learned through out the year.
my Q4 Artist Statement.
I didn't like
is project that much because I feel as though we did not have enough time to
complete each parts. We were given a week to complete each parts which is not
enough time if you are trying to do it right. There are two of my arts that I
did really well on, I guess is because I spend more time's doing them than I
did for any other ones. If I were given more time, my project would have been
even better. I did worked hard on each one of my arts, and I worked best to my
ability.I would have done so much better if I had enough time to finish. I’m
every grateful for doing those arts because they make me feel like I have learn
so much about art. That I can draw a picture on my own without anyone’s help. Doing
this project send a message that I’m really doing well at drawing, I guess is
because I now understand the messages behind my arts. Art wasn’t always my
thing because I thought art had no purpose and you can’t express yourself with
art like how you can with words. I was wrong because I’m expressing how I feel
about my own work and how seeing my own work like this, affects me. I’m looking
forward to the next year.
Q4 Benchmark Reflection
What If... The Technology of Tanning Beds didn't exist?
Kimberly Parker's Artist Statement.
- Art for the last quarter was very enjoyable for me. I feel like we had ample time to complete all assignments and we had a lot of freedom with it. My favorite assignment was the photoshop assignment. I never used photoshop or a professional camera. I discovered that I liked photography and I've been taking pictures from an artistic view ever since. The projects were very diverse this quarter. The first assignment was choosing to construct a model of our choosing, and I chose to crochet four coasters. Yarn is one of my favorite tools to work with, I find it very relaxing and it is a reminder to my childhood with my great-great aunt. The next assignment was to copy a piece of art by a famous artist. I chose Mr. Ou-Yang's Koy fish pond painting. Instead of painting it, I used charcoal because charcoal is my favorite drawing tool to work with.
- I didn't enjoy drawing three bikes from negative space, shading, and line drawings. I personally just didn't like drawing bikes, I found it boring. The final project was to draw from a perspective outside. I went out in my backyard and took a picture of a wooden crate, my watering can, and flowerpot. I used green, pink and black charcoal to illustrate the scene. I am very proud of all of my artwork I completed this quarter because I know I put forth my best effort.
Spanish Benchmark Q4
Esto es el link por mi proyecto:
Reflection:
La experiencia de la guerra civil en España fue algo muy doloroso por toda la
gente pero creo que también es algo que lo ayudo mucho, la guerra civil es
historia, si es algo mala o buena no es importante. Le que importa es lo que aprenderán
de la guerra y como están ahora. Y por esto La tema de mi proyecto es “los
efectos de la guerra civil.” Por este proyecto yo no quise explicar solamente
una de todas las cosas que pasaron durante y después de la guerra, por eso escogí
hacer una Collection de poemas que representaron todo y se conectaron con una
tema mas grande, y esto es la guerra civil.
Cuando empecé este proyecto tenia “major writers block” y no sabia de que me estaba
metiendo, entonces me acorde de todas las personas que sufrieron en la guerra,
todos los niños que murieron y todas las mujeres maltratadas, y mi “writers
block” se fue. No se porque pero entonces no podía dejar de escribir, todas las
películas que vimos en clase sobre la guerra civil y todas las cosas que
aprendimos me llegaron. Y creo que por esto escribí ocho poemas de la guerra
civil. Me gusto mucho mi presentación final porque reflecte lo mucho que
trabaje tenerlo, yo creo que mi proyecto final es muy sentido y no creo que
cambiara algo si podía.