Unit 2 圣诞节故事

今天是十二月二十四日。明天是圣诞节。明天我要过圣诞节。我和我的家人刚来新加坡，所以我们要认识别的人。明天我们有一个圣诞节派对。我请很多的家人和邻居。我希望他们送给我很多礼物。

我的派对吃自助餐。自助餐有很多的食物。自助餐有炒面，火鸡，土豆，素菜，和甜点。自助餐有冰淇淋，巧克力，和蛋糕。

在我的圣诞节派对我收到很多的礼物。我的邻居给我很多的衣服。

我的派对一定要很多的游戏。我要打篮球和打棒球。在派对上我的朋友把篮球在游泳池里。我很生气因为我的妈妈给我这个篮球。所以我说：“你应该游泳去拿篮球。” 我的朋友说：“好，可是我要先穿我的游泳衣。”

打篮球后，我们进去我的家吃午饭。我的好朋友叫 Mary，Mary 拿很多的食物，可是他不吃完。他三个小时吃食物。他不喜欢浪费食物，因为 africa 的人没有食物。吃饭的时候 Mary用勺子拿食物。

Interview Blogpost

During the month of October, news reporter for Russia Today, Sean Thomas, came in to talk to eighth grade students about journalism. On the first day when Mrs. Strydhorst-Piers told us about this unit I was really scared. How do you find reliable sources? How is news made? How do you find an interviewee? What topic would I do? How much did I have to know about the topic? By Halloween Sean Thomas had helped me build my foundation for journalism. I narrowed down my topic from a topic to an angle to a question. Lastly, I learnt what do ask my interviewee and how to pick an interviewee. Instead of a simple yes or no question like, “did you eat breakfast today?”, we learnt to write open ended questions. For example you could ask your interviewee, “why did you eat for breakfast today?”

The proper interview posture :)

Once I was done with all the hard work of doing research and writing questions based on my topic. I needed to find an interviewee who had background knowledge on my topic. For example if my topic was the importance of physical exercise I could interview a P.E. teacher like Mr. Bildfell. I finally picked to interview Dr. Rogers. I picked Dr. Rogers for many reasons, but she was one of the only teachers that hd been at SAS ever since she was in school! This would help me to compare how SAS was back then to now days.

During this unit I learnt that interviewing can be scary and intimidating. You need to have questions that challenge and show the opinion of your interviewee. My interview was at first stressful, but after we got talking, I realized that I was prepared for this. I had taken time to research my topic and write 10 open-ended questions. However, I didn't follow the exact script that I had planned out, I started to ask follow up questions, mirror my interviewee's answers, and integrated statistics into the conversation.

It’s quite interesting to see and learn about other people’s perspectives of sleep and the SAS start time. I never knew that Mrs. Rogers was such a big advocate for sleep and only absolutely critical homework. Before all the research I did on my topic, I never knew about the effects on humans with little sleep. I learnt about melatonin levels, hours of healthy sleep, and how sleep impacts the function of your brain and body. Lastly, it was fascinating to see Mrs. Rogers apply her knowledge of sleep to my interview questions and our daily lives. This helped me connect with my topic in a more captivating way.

Sean Thomas taught us that reporters are only meant to share information with the world, not their opinion. But if I could biased, I would tell my readers that sleep is vital to your health. Students need nine and a half hours of sleep daily. If they don’t get an adequate amount of sleep then their body and brain will be affected. SAS’s 8 AM start time isn’t inhumane and unreasonable. However, with student’s busy schedule regarding homework and after school activities, I think it would be more beneficial for SAS to start at 9 AM. But on the other hand, students should be able to balance social media with their homework, reflecting on the hours of sleep that they get daily.

Overall, I was really proud of myself and what I was able to accomplish. I went from not knowing how to find an angle to conducting a 10 minute interview. If I could change one thing about my project, I would tell myself to breath in and out three times before I went into room M124 and started my interview. If I had relaxed a little more, I think that I would've done a whole lot better.

Jabberwocky Critique

A) In what ways did their performance show originality?
I really loved how in the beginning it was like a fairy tale book. Three characters were lined up in three lights across the stage. The three characters stood firm, tall, and didn't move a muscle. Then someone came on stage and starting prancing around, creating the allusion that she was a fairy. I really like how acting like a fairy, sprinkling some fairy dust over the three characters bringing them to life. This was really unique and different to me and I would've never thought of that idea until now. I really enjoyed watching as the characters came to life, and how someone pranced on stage sprinkling fairy dust. It was really cool how she moved up and down the stage, around the characters, instead of just moving in one straight line as the sprinkled the dust. She also used different levels and crouched sometimes as she brought the characters to life. This scene reminded me of a fairy tale movie, like Cinderella, that starts off with a narrator reading out the first part of the story, "once upon a time, in a kingdom far away..." then they move into the actual story showing pictures and the characters soon come to life. In the ending scene, their group, did like a circle idea. What I mean is that in the end they repeated the idea of the fairy sprinkling dust and the characters coming out of the book. So the characters were back into their positions under the 3 lights, when someone pranced around them again, sprinkling dust, as the story ends and the characters go back into the story book, and freeze. Again this reminded me of a fairy tale movie, where they would end the movie and then they start to zoom out of the story, and all you can see is the lines from the story book, which the narrator reads out loud. Then once the lines are read and the story ends, the book closes, like how the lights went down. Keeping the idea of the story book, that same person that brought the characters to life, still acted as the narrator/writer throughout the performance. She came on and off stage narrating parts of the story, as the characters acted behind her. Once again, keeping with the idea of a story book. The narrator/writer is talking in movies as the characters act, but the characters still have dialogue that they say while they're performing. I also really loved how the narrator/writer said her lines like she was coming up with the story on the spot, and writing it down into a story book.

B) Watch the video- look at the lighting only. How did their lighting enhance/detract from their performance?
I feel like the lighting was nice and diverse. It used spotlights, backgrounds, shadows and cyc's. Again, I liked how in the beginning there were only three spotlight's on stage and a little bit of lighting on the full stage, so that we could see the girl bringing the characters to life. It really made the scene more powerful and interesting to look at. I also liked how this group had different backgrounds, for example they had a tree background, for the fighting scene and the tum tum tree. They also had a house background, for when the mother was talking to her daughter before she left to fight the fierce Jabberwocky. I also liked how instead of just putting a tree in the background, they added in a red cyc, this really added to the feeling of the scene. I left the fierce and scary Jabberwocky burbling up to the daughter ready to fight. They used a red cyc. Red symbolizes fire, danger, aggression, etc. In the second scene I liked how they used a light which created a shadowing effect on the characters. It made me feel like what the mom was telling the daughter was very important and he was very stern, serious, wary, and matter-of-fact. It made me feel like the mother knew what was set ahead for the daughter and that what she was going to do, wasn't going to be an easy task. Lastly, I liked how the writer/narrator stayed on stage for the whole performance with one light shining on her in down stage left, so that she could be seen, because her actions and what she was doing really added to the feeling of the overall performance as a story book. One thing that detracted from the performance, was when the lights stayed on and a actor ran off stage. It was right after the first scene ended and the Jabberwocky needed to get off stage. Instead of turning the lights off and having the Jabberwocky exit the stage. They kept the lights on which let everybody see the Jabberwocky run off stage. I'm not sure if the light person may have transitioned between scenes too fast or if that was intentional, but it just looked a little weird, and took away the magical feeling of fairy tale story book.

C) If you were part of this group, what would you do differently after viewing the video?
I feel like the theme/idea that the performers of this group had was really unique and imaginative. But, I do feel like the actors could've put in more of a effort when saying their lines. Some actors just said their lines so quickly without showing any real emotions, or stopping at any points. This made the story flow well, but it kind of took away from the feeling of the scenes and story. In one scene someone is fighting the Jabberwocky and she's talking at a rhythm for the whole time, instead of maybe pausing at parts, or saying it with a heavy breath, since she was fighting with a "vorpal" sword. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but right before the fighting scene, the Jabberwocky stepped on stage too early, when the narrator was still saying, "so rested she by the tum tum tree, and stood a while in thought." But, the Jabberwocky did understand that they made a mistake and got off stage, only coming on till it was the correct time. Also as I said above, about their lighting, right after the first scene, the Jabberwocky exited the stage when the lights were still on and the person wasn't in character till she got off stage, so it looked a little funky. Other than some of these problems I really loved the idea of writing a story book as the performance progressed, it was really unique. I loved how the writer/narrator acted like she was thinking of a story while she was saying her lines and really made me believe that she wrote the script. I also like how she moved her hand to the lines when the daughter said, "one, two, one, two, and through and through" when she was slaying the Jabberwocky, it was a really cool use of interesting body language that enhanced the piece.

D) Where you more or less critical of this group than yourself? Why?
I feel like I was pretty critical for both, but sometimes when your performing something using a script like this which you could do anything with, you might not execute your ideas properly. What I mean is that my group and me might've understood and thought that parts of our performance were clear, when the audience might not have gotten it. That's why it's good to perform in front of an audience for feedback and then learn from it and integrate the advice into your piece. I do feel that I might've been more critical towards myself than towards this group. I think that I was more critical towards myself because once I look at myself perform, I see things differently than what I thought I did on stage. Whether it's good or bad, I like seeing how I act during my performances so that I can learn from it. Also if I'm a tough critic towards myself then I can integrate what I saw to do and not to do when I'm performing to the next time I'm on stage. I think that the reason why I wasn't as tough on this group is because I don't really know them, I don't know how they think, and I don't 100% know if some things that I might've said to work on or to fix if they wanted it to be an intentional part of their piece. For example, I might've thought that the writer/narrator was sprinkling salt on the characters, this would've been weird to me. But maybe in their perspective of the script and in their minds they were sprinkling fairy dust. So basically, I learn from seeing myself perform and what works and what doesn't, but I don't want to critique people too much when I don't 100% know what they were trying to aim for in their performance.

Jabberwocky Self Reflection

A) In what ways did your performance show originality?
I felt like our performance really portrayed the kind of enchanted forest them. In the beginning we had one main spotlight on the stage and were wearing bird costumes. One by one we all came on stage and starting making bird and animal noises while dancing and moving around the stage. Then once everyone was on stage and there were sounds that an enchanted forest would make echoing off the stage, we one by one walked into the spotlight and said our lines. Once our lines were done we would go off stage one by one. This was to make the feeling that the enchanted forest was getting softer and softer and distant and distant, as Jessica and Kestrel started their scene, in the town. When the birds and animals were getting softer, it was like the jabberwocky, a huge, and very scary creature, was crossing paths with them and forcing them to run and hide. Showing how big of a victory it would be for anyone to slay the Jabberwocky. We also played a background noise of an enchanted rain forest, with birds chirping, leafs blowing in the wind, etc. The noise started out loud as the animals were in their enchanted forest, and then after we said our lines, and one by one exited the stage, the music faded away, showing that the Jabberwocky had come and we were moving away from the enchanted forest into the town. I feel that this first and last scene of our skit, was never done before, and I really liked it. We also managed to use this idea of the enchanted rainforest, as Elaina and I, the narrators, were kind of mysterious and creepy.
Another reason I would say that our group was unique. Is because we were able to use Sarah's acrobatic abilities in the fighting scenes. This really added to the excitement and interest in the scene. It also showed how the Jabberwocky was an enchanted creature that could do such amazing things, like back bends. Sarah and I also integrated the idea of enchantedness and using the dancing/acrobatic feel into our parts, when Jessica was telling Kestrel about the Jabberwocky and Jub Jub bird. We danced on and off the stage, and then played with our body positions as Jessica described us creatures, "the frumious bander snatch!"

B) Watch the video- look at the lighting only. How did your lighting enhance/detract from your performance?
I feel like our light was pretty good, but it could've used more colors. I like how we used one big spotlight in the first and last scenes. The animals flashed in and out of the light and then, we recieted our lines in the spotlight. I felt like that added an effect to the audience. Also sticking to the theme of mystery, enchantment, etc, the lighting the first and last scenes were only showing a little bit of the stage and the rest was black. This kind of reflected on the fact that the forest is very mysterious and there's only so much you can see. I also like how we didn't always light up the whole entire stage, because that would've been a little boring. I also like that we changed our lights a good amount of times, not to much or too little. We didn't have the same light on the whole time, because that wouldn't show how the setting and feeling of the scenes were changing and varying. But, I feel like we could've maybe added some colors, or used some cyc's to add to our lighting because too me, as I watched our video, I felt the lighting at times was a little bland. Maybe in the scene where Kestrel is in the forest, we could've had a green cyc or a tree representing the Tum Tum tree. That way it would've really added to the feeling off an enchanted forest. But I understand why  the lighting in the fighting scene wasn't to much, because we really wanted to focus on the gymnastics that Sarah was doing all over the stage and if we only had two splotlights as our lighting for this particular scene, then Sarah's cool moves wouldn't have been seen as well. Overall, I think that our group could've enhanced our performance a little more, with the use of color cyc's as part of our lighting plan.

C) What would you do differently after viewing your video?
I feel that I and everyone else in our group could've used our body language better to make the feeling of enchantment, mystery, and creepiness. When I was narrating with Elaina, I could've crouched a little, to add to the levels, and maybe moved my hands around a little. I also could've used my facial expressions better while I wasn't talking, but still on stage with Elaina. I think that we could've added some color cyc's into our lighting plan, to give the performance more depth and add the the feeling of an enchanted forest. I also think that we could've gone a little further with our costume, because some people might've not really understood who we are. The might've gotten the fact that we were narrators, but wanted a link to how this connected to our performance. What Elaina and I were really trying to represent, is the dark and mystery, basically the places of the forest that the light isn't shining on.  We were like the people hidden in the shadows, and were watching carefully, but silently. That's why we wore black head to toe and didn't want to dress up too much. But, I think that this might've not been understood in the way we thought, and people might've just wondered why we were wearing such plain and uninteresting clothes. 

Unit 2 Grace 去超市

          Grace 是一个美国女孩儿。她常常去超市买东西。她最喜欢去 Cold Storage 超市。明天 grace 有一个感恩节派对。她要请很多朋友去她的感恩节派对。

          Grace 看看她的派对菜单。她觉得她要买很多的食物。她要买火鸡，土豆，和主食。所以今天晚上 Grace 要去超市买食物。

          Grace，一个人，去超市买东西。超市很大，所以 Grace 迷路了。Grace 快快的跑步，可是她不知道怎么回家。超市有一个鬼。鬼是一个中国鬼。

          中国鬼说：“我可以帮你回家吗？可是你要吃中国的食物。你要吃粥。”

          Grace 说：“好，我可以吃粥，可是你要帮我回家。”

          中国鬼说：“你要吃甜的粥还是咸的粥。”

          Grace 说：“我要吃甜的粥。”

Grace 吃了粥。Grace 不得不付钱。付钱后，grace 可以回家。中国鬼帮 Grace 回家。