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A Series of Unfortunate Event

Purpose: Kids should be able to demonstrate why leaves change colors in the fall 

Objective:Kids will learn the science behind colors and leaves.

Question:How do leaves change color in the fall?

Materials: 

Leaves

Small Jars

Plastic Wrap

Rubbing Alcohol

Coffee filters

Shallow pan

tap water(hot)

tape

pen

plastic spoon, clock

Procedure:

1)Collect leaves(different leaves from different trees)

2)Add rubbing alcohol to fill the jar and leaves

3)Cover the jars but not to tight and place jars into shallow pan with 1 inch of hot water

4)Keep jars in pan for 1/2 hour

5)Remove jars and uncover while placing thin strips of coffee paper in, so it's touching the alcohol

6)The colors should travel up the paper and you can see the colors

7)Remove the paper let it dry and hang it where you want.

1st General understanding 

                One of the topics of study that stood out to me the most were talking about a world renowned author named “Edwidge Danticat”. She wrote a book called Create Dangerously that is a collection of essays. The essays were essays she wrote in the past and incorporated in her book. She talks mostly about her life in haiti and in the united states that involves lots of personal struggle. One thing that i noticed from reading this book is that When there is personal Struggle, successful people seek outside help to change their reality. In the first chapter of create dangerously she writes, “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.” When i first read this quote it had me thinking, and that’s exactly what our year had in it, topics that had our brains thinking wildly. I wrote about this quote in one of my journal entries. I said “how about you think deeper than face value, when it first says. “Create dangerously is for people who read dangerously” and before reading anything else in that quote to me it said that the book create dangerously is for people who are willing to risk something and be in danger to read that book, because that’s what it was about. Then later on in that unit the class wrote a letter to Ms. Danticat and in my letter i made an honest statement and said “I have told my grandpa about you and some essays in the book and he seems a little less interested. But then I told him to give reading it a try and he honestly fell in love with it. I barely have time to read it my self, it’s always in his hands.”  Now looking back on it i was interested in the book a lot. 

2ndGeneral understanding

Throughout the year in English/History I have learned and experienced through many different and disputable topics. On the very first day as I entered through Mr. Block’s classroom and as several weeks gone by, I was still uncertain about the expectations in his classroom. Later in the year, at some point there were times when things had came to mind on many controversial lessons that was taught in class, and I have always questioned myself because of these classes. How are these units that we are covering in class going to have an impact on me? In many substantial ways, it did had an impact on me and I was struck by it, especially through written essays, the poem studies unit, as well as The Art in the Open Festival, and all of these controversial topics has lead me to the general understandings of struggles, challenges, and hard work.

One of the greatest understandings that I have experienced and learned from was Struggles, and all of the struggles that I had gone through was told through written essays that were assigned in class. In English class, we are often given a writing assignment on a topic that addresses to our ability of understandings in the storyline of a book, which can also correlate to our own life, or a written  essay of a reflection from our past experiences that we struggled through in which can be learned from when is expressed through writing. At the beginning of this year, the very first day of school, Mr. Block assigned us a “One page” paper that night where can just write about anything; your intentional thoughts, current situations, life, anything that you want to put down in that one page, and the next day in class, we would have to gather around in a circle to share out a part of out one page story. The start of this assignment started out as, “The instructor said Go home and write A page tonight. And let that page come out of you --- Then, it will be true.”  Before Mr. Block gave us the writing time in class to get a head start on this one page assignment, I thought it was going to be easy since it was only a page of a writing. I though I could write this paper and get it done in less than twenty-minutes, but as writing time as come, I struggled through the writing time we had in class and several hours at home as I tried to think of what I wanted to write down for this one page. I came to an idea after several hours later thinking in mind, “This is my sophomore year, I am in a new stream, I will be in a same classroom with different faces that I have not met nor worked with last year, I am in a new learning environment, and with a different teacher who will be instructing me for the year.” This gave me an idea of wanting people to know a little more about me. I started this paper off as a basic intro, then worked my way through the life in crisis which was such a hassle for me to go through. Sharing was one of my biggest struggles in the beginning of the year. I can confidently say that the struggles had impacted on me from wanting to share my stories, but one of the greatest release from those struggles were having some feedbacks from people in the classroom, and feeling good about expressing what I wrote, which made me had more confidence to have my voice be heard. The only reason that held me back from speaking up was the thought of judging from people’s opinions, but those were the main reasons from how I managed to break out from my own little bubble and had more confidence to share out some my own thoughts. 

Another general understandings that I experienced and learned from was challenges and hard work. As I already said before, the topics that was taught in Mr. Blocks class are controversial, which made some of the assignments difficult and challenging for me. There was one project that I had a very hard time with was the project to The Revolution Guidebook. For the Revolution Guidebook, we had to design and create a guidebook that presents unique perspectives about revolutions in the world, it was more of a project as a creation of “Revolutions For Dummies,” in a slides/presentation format, and in a way to show our project, we would have to present it front of class along with a voting on the best project presenter to present again at a final round. It was one of the most challenging projects I did this year for History class. It took me several days to adjust the point of this project. Although it took me rigorous time to figure out the point and what to do for this project, I managed to put in all my efforts complete this project the way it’s supposed to be done. 

Another example of a challenging process in English/History class was the dancing performance that was coordinated by Leah Stein group.  From the very first day ( when we started our first steps by introducing ourselves using our own movement that matches the syllables of our names, first workshop at the Amorine, and working our way towards to put together this dance performances, there were many expectations that I had in thought, that changed my mind into thinking that there are many other ways where you can possibly expressed yourself through dancing (freestyle) than just dancing in general. Working with many different objects to make sounds, using different techniques to express yourself in a way you want others to see, and many of things which makes your movements seems unique in other people perspectives. Before we started this whole process, I thought dancing was more like a technique where people would danced to or follow by the rhythm of a certain song; more like free-styling in some sort of ways, but it has changed my perspectives in many ways. The most challenging part of our Art in the Open performance was coming up with various techniques that we want to show the audience. I thought I couldn’t do the dance that my group came up with for the performance, but all it takes was practice. During the performance, I gave in and pour out all of the energetic power inside of me to my dances as the audience glides their eyes towards the performance, and it was the greatest success that I was very proud of al wished to go back to the beginning and start over at the very first step. 

This year has been one of the most struggles and challenging for me, but all of these determination to hard work has been the greatest success for me. I would also like to thank Mr. Block for teaching and showing me an open door to my comfort zone in sharing, as well as speaking up, and the experienced from classroom in which I have learned more from. this one one of the greatest learning experiences and I will never doubt any of the works I have done, hard work pays off. 

Go read Soulkeepers 

God, Love, Death and Mystery

A teen Fantasy

Mother gone missing

Danger Paves the ground and sky

The Magic Defies

All laws of Reason

A tree warps time and season

Cat with mind of man

A knight with aquatic hands

An innocent heart

You best be quite smart and 

click here for a deeper start

  Sophomore year with Mr. Block was one of the most eventful years, with both classes! From the egg on the floor to Art in the Open, nothing was ever the same each day. There were struggles, and achievements, but overall I learned a lot this year with so many different experiences. Finishing up the year, there were many things I’ve realized looking back at my work. I feel like I’ve accomplished and gained so much knowledge. For a lot for the topics we discussed, it broadened my views on things. The two main ideas I am going to discuss are about struggle and creativity. “Without struggle there will be no learning,” and “Creativity broadens our views on life.”

At one point in the year we had our playwriting unit, I remember first starting it and having no clue what to write. I had a few in my mind, but then thought too much into it, and I felt like it wasn’t going to be good. I then started looking through Mr. Block’s magazines and saw a man working in a mine, and immediately I came up with the idea for my play. My play was about a small family living in a poor part of Brazil. The younger sister eventually had to care for her baby sister because her Mom died in childbirth. Her older brother worked most of the day with the mines. The whole play unit was really great. Although I struggled with writing it and then finally submitting it, we had an amazing teacher come in and help us. Her name was Kate and she was apart of the Philly Young Playwrights. She was great because when she looked at our work, she would really take her time into helping you improve it. “You say the brother has replaced him, which is something I’ll bet happens a lot in mining families.  Keep working, don’t be afraid to use monologue, like Andressa talking out loud to the baby perhaps?  How will they feed themselves now? -K”(One of Kate’s feedbacks for a scene) This project leads to one of my general statements about struggle. I’ve always been told you need to struggle through something to be able to learn. If you just did an assignment and had no trouble with it, you most likely didn’t learn anything. Creating and putting together this play was much harder for me then I thought. I faced many struggles during the process, but in the end when I submitted it. I learned many different strategies in working on assignments productively, but also efficiently.

Creativity played a big role in both of Mr. Block’s classes this year. Almost all the projects had to have a little piece of your own in it. There were small projects that we were able to use our creativity in them, but there were also projects that helped us open up and express our creativity. There was a time in the year where we read the book Passing. At the end we were assigned to do some sort of art piece on a main point in the book. I choose to draw a picture showing different aspects of the main character's personality. This is the drawing I drew with the two faces of Clare. Art in the Open was one of the main events of the year that I saw everyone come out of their comfort zone. It was a great experience, and really fun for everyone to participate in. Here is a picture of my group’s site and our wiki. Another project towards the end of the year was creating a poetry wiki. This was very creative in ways where, although we all were on the same wiki and had the same format on each of our pages, everyone’s work had their own tweak to it. We were able to express ourselves through the writing of poetry by using our own experiences. My wiki page is here with all the assigned poems.