Animal Farm Video/Reflection

For this assignment I utilized the Core Competency Communication.
Our job was to take an animal from the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, and create a political campaign in order for our animal to become the leader of Animal Farm. Our group-me, Bella, Olivia, and Matthew- chose the animal Moses. Moses is a raven, and described as ‘tame and cunning’ which lead us to advocating for him as leader.

The Competency Communication is obviously communication with peers. But breaking that down, its asking simple direct questions and being an active listener. When disagreeing, its sharing your opinion in a respectful way and building on other people’s ideas with speech. I think our group was fairly good at communicating. Quickly, we were able to assign parts, Olivia on poster, Matthew on video, me on the good things about Moses, and Bella on bad things about all the other animals. We built on each others parts as well, asking questions that opened to more information, and getting rid of irrelevant or repetitive information in our pieces of the project.

Communication isn’t just between people you know, it’s also being able to share your information with other people. To show our work, we did a presentation in front of the class showing all the pieces we did separately into one project. We also handed in all of our written work to Mr. Bell. To be marked accordingly, Mr. Bell has to be able to see the work we talked about on stage, in those stacks of paper. For his ease, I organized my notes in simple point form, clearly demonstrating why Moses should be the leader of Animal Farm.

We all did our separate parts, just as we did in our ‘Afrika Road Project’ and combined them at the end for a finished project. Although we did split the work into separate tasks, we got help from other members to help each other complete our sections on time. Although, we did make a mistake which I’ll explain in the next paragraph.

I think our weakness as a group was Critical Thinking. More specifically, ‘experimenting with different ways of doing things.’ When Matthew turned out to be sick on the day of the election, we weren’t quite prepared for what to do, as we hadn’t sent the video presentation to anyone else. We were able to call him, and after many tries we were able to get the video and present. However I think we now know how important it is not to leave your project with just one person of the group. However, due to our communication, we were able to win the election, and Moses became leader of Animal Farm. Our strength was communication. When we were unsure, we could ask others for their ideas and opinions, and incorporate everyone’s voice into the project. We were able to voice our strengths, and assign parts in a way that would benefit the things we were good at, making completing the project easier.

Afrika Road Competency Write up

Video
(rap song presentation video)

As an English assignment I was paired with two other girls in my class- Bella and Kiara- to present a rap we wrote related to the short story Afrika Road by Don Mattera. The story was one about a protest, by the unique perspective of the road which the protest danced upon. We had to use poetic devices, and creativity to present our song in front of the class.

For this project I demonstrated the Core Competency of Communication. Some examples of this include giving feedback, presenting in front of people we don’t quite know, and being part of a group.
Besides knowing Bella from Girl Guides when I was younger, we were all with people we didn’t quite know yet. However quickly I think we were able to work as a team, and I got to know Kiara better. To write the rap we assigned parts of the short story to each of us, then taking the paragraphs we each wrote 8-10 lines before putting them together. We believed this was the most effective way for us to achieve our common goal.

The day we were assigned this project was a friday, so we exchanged numbers for over the weekend. During the weekend we could update each other on our progress, and present ideas. Then we could bend each others work so the pieces would fit together easier when we combined all our parts. I thought this was cool because we all have different styles, different ways of writing. But after writing our separate sections we combined them and switched out words, fine-tuning it so all of our words would work together. It was a team project that could still showcase our individual talents.

I think our rap was pretty good, besides the fact that we forgot to underline the poetic devices which cost us marks. Besides going over the criteria again before handing the project in, I think we could also work on our presentation skills. Specifically, bringing in props or costumes, interacting more with the audience and simply aspects such as posture, tone, speed, movement and eye contact. I also think a possibility we could’ve considered was playing music in the background which would contribute more to the fact that it was a ‘rap song’ instead of just a poem.
There are actually a lot of things we should’ve gone over related to our presentation, and it would’ve been helpful to go over the script a couple more times. Next time, I think we should meet up at lunch or flex, and think about simple things we could bring that as props, to add to our story. There’s a lot to consider for our next project but this was an interesting assignment that I’m thankful for because it allowed me to communicate with my teammates and get to know them better.

What I hope to learn in English 9

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The core competency I utilized for this assignment was Creative Thinking, which I think relates strongly with my usual style of writing.

Some aspects of Creative Thinking includes: I can build and be inspired from other people’s ideas. I generate new ideas as I pursue my interests, I figure out ways to make my ideas work or I know when to change something to make it better, I take in people’s feedback and improve by bouncing ideas off of my peers.

I think this assignment really showcases this competency mainly because I think the biggest thing that pushed me to writing was one of my friends from Elementary school.

She wasn’t positive feedback, she could really pick apart my work and give ideas to make it better, which strengthened not only our friendship but my writing as well.