Politics, Poetry and Punchlines
For my first semester as a freshman at High Tech High, I did a project based on three topics, politics, poetry and punchlines. In this project, we had to write a slam poem about any topic and we performed them in front of the class. The top five poems got to share their poems in front of the whole team. We also learned how to work as a group and create a comedy skit based on a topic that we chose. The final part of the project was to create a political satire cartoon and write an essay including our opinions and facts about an issue we picked from three choices, the issues were immigration, gay marriage rights and drones. Click Here To See My Finished Project
Politics
One of the main and final aspects of this project was politics. We started off this portion by doing three QQC's ( Quote, question and comment). We read three different articles, the topics of the articles were: gay rights, immigration and drones. For my topic I chose gay rights because I felt it was a very important topic and my friend went through an experience with the gay rights issue so I felt as though I should express my opinion on the subject. He is gay and not a lot of people accept him for it which I think is very unfair, you should be able to love who you want to love. We also had to write an essay including facts and our stances on the subject which you can read below:
Marriage Rights: Equality For All
My favorite fairy tale growing up was Cinderella. From this, I always thought love was when you found someone special and spent the rest of your life with them. You could share your secrets, show off your loved one, and you would always be happy . Being older, I realize my perception was sugar coated. For some people, loving someone is like being on a battlefield. When people of the same sex love each other everything seems to get in the way. Taking away people’s marriage rights, just because you don’t agree with who they want to be married to, is morally wrong.
Click Here To Read Full Essay
My favorite fairy tale growing up was Cinderella. From this, I always thought love was when you found someone special and spent the rest of your life with them. You could share your secrets, show off your loved one, and you would always be happy . Being older, I realize my perception was sugar coated. For some people, loving someone is like being on a battlefield. When people of the same sex love each other everything seems to get in the way. Taking away people’s marriage rights, just because you don’t agree with who they want to be married to, is morally wrong.
Click Here To Read Full Essay
Poetry
Poetry was the first thing we worked on for this project. We created slam poems, poems about a certain topic we chose and a sonnet. We preformed our slam poems in front of the class and the people who's poems got a high rating presented them in front of the whole team. This portion of the project was my favorite, I never really liked poetry before but this time it was different. I got the chance to create poetry on what I was interested in instead of a topic that I was forced to do. Here is an example of one my poems:
I love him
Don’t worry It’s not one of those sappy love poems It’s quite the opposite Let me begin again I love him But he loves her Click Here To Read Full Poem |
We watched some examples of slam poems so that we could get an idea of what we were going to be doing. We watched about 5 slam poem videos but this one above was definitely my favorite.
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Comedy
For the comedy portion we got put into groups of five. We chose a topic for our skit to be based on, my groups skit topic was unrequited love. We created the characters, the plot and the script. I was in a group with Gabe, Jesus, Bijan and Garrett. We spent some time in class working on improv so that we would be comfortable and be able to get some practice before we actually had to present our skit. Below is our first draft of our skit:
Unrequited Love
( Gabe, Jesus and Kailee open door) Invited in. Hugs, greetings, etc.
Bijan- Mom, Dad, CJ, This is my girlfriend Sally til death do us part forever.
Garrett- Hi, I’m Sally (To Gabe) It’s so nice to meet you. (To Parents) When ZJ told me his father was THE Jesus I just HAD to see it for myself.
Jesus- I’m not that Jesus. ZJ, did you tell Sally?
Bijan- Uh.... airplane!
Click Here To Read Full Script
Bijan- Mom, Dad, CJ, This is my girlfriend Sally til death do us part forever.
Garrett- Hi, I’m Sally (To Gabe) It’s so nice to meet you. (To Parents) When ZJ told me his father was THE Jesus I just HAD to see it for myself.
Jesus- I’m not that Jesus. ZJ, did you tell Sally?
Bijan- Uh.... airplane!
Click Here To Read Full Script
Physics
One part of the politics portion was to create a political cartoon containing the six simple machines, projectile motion and conservation of energy, the cartoons also had to include our stances on our topic. After our cartoons were as perfect as they could be we started to work on our physics explanations which are linked below:
Projectile Motion
Projectile motion is a form of motion in which an object is thrown near Earth’s surface and moves on a curved path due to Gravity. For example if you are drinking water from a water fountain the water stream goes at a curved angle, which shows the curved path of Gravity. Click Here For My Physics Writing |