Haiku- spring / blog 51

Take your clothes of now

Feel the warm breeze on the street

Kites are flying high

Cowslips and roses

Carnelians and rubies

Cats are chasing rats

write about a poem/ blog 50

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

          This poem is a description of a fairy's job in A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. It works as a poem because it is separated into lines but not in a paragraph, and it has poetry elements in it such as rhyming and rhythm. In this poem, the fairy described her life in a very artsy and magical way, of wandering around and drop dews on plantations to serve the Fairy Queen, Titania. Unlike humans who have to work all day for income, fairies just fly around the hills, the dales, into bushes and flowers and dew the plants. It seems like the fairies are like butterflies and bees that don't have to do any hard work and to worry about anything, which made the human talking to her very jealous.

          Shakespeare used many figurative language, such as parallelism in the first four lines and metaphor in the last few lines. He used the words "over" and "thorough" to describe how freely these fairies are, and how relaxing and meanwhile dangerous their working environments are. Besides the parallelism, he had rhymed the poem as he did in every other line he wrote in his script. He had used a lot of metaphor in this poem too, like flowers to rubies and dews to pearls. These make the world of fairy livelier and sound more magical, because flowers and water are just two very normal thing in human's world. Besides that, Shakespeare had also used personification for the purpose of showing the difference of human's world from the fairy's world. He described the cowslips as humans, and gave them human characters--ears, so the fairy could hang the dews as earrings. 

          This poem gives the audiences a wonderful picture of the exotic world of fairies, and created a realistic but magical environment for the audiences. Before I read this poem, I could hardly believe that even tiny little flowers have their thoughts and characters of human. I would love to believe in a fairy-tale like world that was created by shakespeare, rather than the scientific explanation of how dews are formed over night, because shakespeare had demonstrated everything too beautiful.

Poem / blog 49

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

This is actually a few lines of the script explaining what a fairy's job is in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this poem it tells that, the fairy wanders everywhere and dew plantations. It tells how a fairy's life is different from a human's life, and created an magical environment. Shakespeare used personification to make the world of fairy livelier, and he also used metaphor to make the dews to sound more precious and pretty. I like this poem because besides using figures of speech, Shakespeare had also rhymed the poem and even added a rhythm to it, which makes it easier to read and sounds better.

Reflection paper / blog 48

This is a formal writing assignment, so pay attention to thesis, organization, grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary. You should write about the same things you presented on (what you did, why, final product, difficulties, what you learned) but also assess your strengths and weaknesses: what did you do well and what could you have done better?

Lillian Xu

English II

Apr 25th, 2016

Reflection Paper

Pobby and Dingan is the book that our English class is reading recently. We were required to do a creative project that is relevant to the novel, so me and Kevin were thinking about making a game that is based on Pobby and Dingan. We decided to create a Monopoly at first, but after we wrote our proposal paper, we found it not so relative to the novel. In the second class period that we were working on it, me and Kevin thought of making another role playing game that is based on text and could get everyone involved. This project was challenging, indeed, but the difficulty stimulates our desire of making the game interesting and perfect.

The game is created based on the plot and characters of Pobby and Dingan. On each page of the PowerPoint there would be some text on the top explaining the situation and what had happened, and the would be two choices beneath that for the players to choose. Each choice will lead to two different pages, and it might also lead to different endings of the game. We were planning to make a PowerPoint with hyperlinks in pages to make the game functioning, but we need an outline before putting the text into it. Me and Kevin shared an google docs, so we could both edit it and correct each other's grammar mistakes and other problems. Besides the facts and the plot written in the book, we had also added our imagination into the game by adding our own thoughts and make up some facts in the story. Kevin had even add some mine craft videos into the scenes when the protagonist Ashmol was in the mine and on the funeral of Pobby and Dingan. We spent two class periods and the whole weekend on writing and revising our draft in a docs document, and then we started putting them into the PowerPoint.

After we finished our first draft in google docs, we started putting it into google slides. We separated our work on doing the PowerPoint: I copied and pasted each scene and questions into the PowerPoint and make the PowerPoint look better, and Kevin inserted the hyperlinks and made sure that everything works. After we had done inserting everything, we asked someone to play through the game. While she was playing, we found a lot of mistakes that we couldn't see in our rough draft. For example, Ashmol wanted to find dad, and he ran straight to the police office without being told that his dad was there. And there is another example, where Ashmol and mom went to the police station to take Kellyanne back, but left her in the police station. For fixing these problems, we first added a page between and inserted the hyperlinks into that page, but then we found everything messed up, because the links were leading to pages, and the pages were all different than what we set up after adding the additional pages. So in order to fix that, we dragged these additional pages to the very end of the PowerPoint to make sure that the page numbers were not changed. This was one of the most difficult thing in our project, because it is really hard to correct what you had written and what you had already finished doing.

We finished our final project about an hour before class. We had made edits and corrections at all of our free time to make it perfect, and the final product comes out wonderful. The reason we chose to make a project like this, was to create a fun game that everyone could get involved, and also to make this project relate to academic work. We had learned that teamwork is really important while doing a group project, because everyone has the responsibility to contribute as much as they can. I think our project comes out pretty good; everything is stated clearly and the additional plot seems to be very reasonable. The game is academic and interesting, and meanwhile closely related to the plot of the novel and even accompanied with our own imagination. Everyone seemed to be involved with the game, and I believe that they love it very much. The only thing that we could have improved is that, when the players are playing, it might be a little bit boring without visuals and feeling from other senses such as hearing. Maybe we could add some sound effects and even BGM into it to make it more interesting. Overall, I think we did a fantastic job and the whole project is a success.

Reflect on what we had done during the weekend / blog 47

Our creative project is a role playing adventure game about the novel Pobby and Dingan. We have the protagonist of the book Ashmol as the character that the players are playing with. We had done writing the plot, the questions and the answers in a google docs during last weekend and had my friend revised through it. Me and Kevin are going to put our writings into a PowerPoint ( maybe on google slides), add some pictures and a citation page at the end, cut the videos that we are putting into the slideshow(we had filmed them already), and have someone play it to see if the hyperlink and the whole thing functions. We have more than 40 questions(scenes), which means there are 40 pages of the PowerPoint. The number of questions that everyone would have to make choices of varies based on the answer each person chooses. We need maybe 4-5 more hours of working on it, and I think we had spend plenty of our time on it already( approximately 5-6 hours).

Proposal for Creative Project(second draft) / blog 46

XI Proposal for Creative Project / blog 45

Lillian Xu & Kevin Li

English II

Ms. Guarino

Apr 10th, 2016

Proposal for Creative Project on Pobby and Dingan

Instructions: 

          You will need to submit a proposal (one per group) that says exactly what you plan to do, how you will do it, why, and what you hope to learn from it. Also discuss the estimated amount of time you think it will take and how you will break down the time into a project noting the days and times you will complete each part of the project. If you are working in a group, please specify exactly who will do what and when.

Overview:

         Me and Kevin are going to create a role playing adventure game related to the novel Pobby & Dingan. It is a game in first person, in which the players could decide what the character would do while facing different situations in the game. The main character of the game is Ashmol Williamson, s member of the Williamson's family. His dad is a miner in Lightning Ridge, his mom is a salesperson and his sister is a student. The storyline is about his family's mining life.

Background:

        The Williamson's family immigrated from Britain to Australia for father's mining work. They used to have a wealthy life in England, but father's decision changed the life of their family. They became very poor because of the immigration, and the family's hope is all on father's mining work. Mom had a ex boyfriend that was really rich, and whenever mom and dad has an arguement, she would look at the picture that she and her ex boyfriend took in England. Ashmol's sister, Kellyanne has two imaginary friends because her parents are too busy working, which caused her to feel very lonely. One day, dad lost Pobby and Dingan while bringing them out for exercising. Kellyanne became very anxious and sick due to the lost of her friends, so the whole family decided to look for Kellyanne's friends.

Rules for the game:

• Read the context and the multiple choice terms below.
• The context tells you the plot and scenes, and you have to make a choice out of the two choices below to go to the next scene.
• Click the term that you want to choose.
• Then you are on the next page. Now it starts over.

Purpose (Why and What to learn from it):

          Our purpose to make this board game is, to let the readers understand the plot better and to make them feel like they are in the story and feel the emotion of the characters. In the process of creating this game, we are hoping to learn about how the characters are feeling when they meets certain situation and how they would resolve the conflicts.

Time Scheduling:

          Since we changed the project that we a doing, we had lost one class on doing it. Me and Kevin decide to spend the class period till Friday on drafting, and our first draft would be done by Friday. We would spend the next few weeks on correcting and adding things into our drafts and have other people revise it. Maybe we could find someone who doesn't know the story to try this game first and to see if they could understand what had happened in the story. We would do the planning together, and each of us would revise a half of the project. Because this game is only related to the text, so we would add some pictures into it and have a citation page at the end of the PowerPoint.

          

Proposal for Creative Project / blog 45

Lillian Xu & Kevin Li

English II

Ms. Guarino

Apr 10th, 2016

Proposal for Creative Project on Pobby and Dingan

Instructions: 

          You will need to submit a proposal (one per group) that says exactly what you plan to do, how you will do it, why, and what you hope to learn from it. Also discuss the estimated amount of time you think it will take and how you will break down the time into a project noting the days and times you will complete each part of the project. If you are working in a group, please specify exactly who will do what and when.

Overview:

          Me and Kevin are going to make a board game-monopoly based on the novel Pobby & Dingan’s plot and characters. The four characters, Mom, Dad, Ashmol and Kellyanne are competing on the board by the players, and they move with the instructions on the board and the number on the dice each player rolled. The first player to reach the starting point wins the game.

Rules for the game:

• Players go through the board with certain steps everytime depending on the number of dice they rolled.
• As the players going forward, they have to follow different rules that are written on the board. Many instructions are for individual players, but in some occasions where are written on the board require everyone to follow the instruction.
• When players are going through the board, they might halt on a square where it has a star on it. This requires the player to pick up a certain note card and read it out loud. It tells the players what happened in this point of the novel as they move on.
• The first player reached the starting point wins the game.

Purpose (Why and What to learn from it):

          Our purpose to make this board game is, to let the readers understand the plot better and to make them feel like they are in the story and feel the emotion of the characters. In the process of creating this game, we are hoping to learn about how the characters are feeling when they meets certain situation and how they would resolve the conflicts they met.

Time Scheduling:

          Me and Kevin had spent one hour on planning for the instructions on every square, and I think we would spend approximately four hours on making the board together and adding the instructions onto it, four hours editing the note cards, and one hour on checking if there is any error of the game and fix the problems. We are planning to make about ten note cards, and each of us would be making five and we will correct the grammar and errors for each other.

Meaning of Opals / blog 44

Why are diamonds so precious? Because it is a very rare stone that can be only found in certain places. Even though diamonds are very expensive, I could hardly tell the difference from glass and diamonds not regarding their sizes from my naked eyes. It is a representation of eternity, because it takes millions of years to form underground by pressure. Diamonds also represent romantic and love, because every girl wants a diamond ring from her love, to show that she is beloved forever and their relationship is as hard as the diamond.

In Lightning Ridge, opals are like diamonds to them. Opal is a kind of very beautiful stone with bright colors. They are found in the mines in middle rural area of Australia, but they are very rare. If you find an opal, that means you don’t have to worry about money in your whole life. Many people come here, seek for opals and money even if they know that there is only a little chance of finding it. Ashmol’s father is one of them. He brought his wife and kids to Australia, and wished to find an opal, for his dream and also for his family.

“The secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absences.” There are many beautiful things in the world, but opals are both beautiful and rare, which makes it more precious than others. Many miners doesn’t care about what opals look like, because all they care is the money they get from it. Maybe it is the same for Ashmol’s family, because they are not really wealthy, and his mom is the only person that has a proper job that gets income every month. Instead of calling it a work, dad’s job—mining sounds more like a dream. He is one of the miners that are dreaming about getting rich, and his son Ashmol thinks of it as his dream too. The plot of the story is around opal—dream of the miners, and how the family struggled with the opals and their own family members. Dad and mom are too busy working, which left their daughter Kellyanne staying alone and felt lonely. To get rid of the loneliness, she made two imaginary friends and played with them. Because dad was too busy working, he had even lost her imaginary friends in the mine, which made Kellyanne really sick. Her sickness had shift the focus of the family from the opal dream to their family member’s feelings. It also made Ashmol’s family realized that, comparing to the untouchable dream, family members are more important.

For dad, an opal means wealth and his family’s future. He could be wealthy because of the opal, and he could be able to feed his family. This could be the responsibility to be a man in his family. For mom, an opal means wealth too, but more likely to mean that she hadn’t picked the wrong person. She doesn’t have to look at her rich ex boyfriend and miss the life before she came to Australia, because she is now satisfied with love and her excellent husband that provides her a good life. For Ashmol, an opal means that his dad had accomplished his goal and mom would not be complaining about dad anymore. Their family would be peaceful and full of happiness. For Kellyanne, opals do not mean anything to her, but Dingan’s bellybutton means a lot to her. The color of the opal Ashmol found is an identity of her imaginary friends. Because of this, the Williamson’s family learned that family should be always superior to the dreams, because any accomplishments of dreams are meaningless without their family being complete.