Month: February 2016

Building Understanding for The Friday Everything Changed

alexr2015

After watching a movie or listening to a TEDtalk or reading a piece of literature, a poem, or any other piece of writing, fill in the chart below. When complete, file into your “Inquiry” folder OR print and keep for future reference. Your teacher may ask to keep your work as an example to expand understanding in the class

Title: The Friday Everything Changed by Anne Hart Your name: Alex R

Which Essential Question(s) is addressed in this piece of literature? Content:

a)    What happens in the text/movie/Talk?

b)    What is the main message/theme?

 Understanding:

How does the text answer the EQ?

Answer in full sentences. Record relevant quotes and page numbers/lines if needed.

When is it acceptable to challenge the values of society?

 

Why do people feel the need to conform to society and it’s expectations?

 

Why are we afraid of change

 In the story The Friday Everything Changed, there is a question that goes against the norms of society. A girl named Alma asks the teacher, “Why can’t girls go for the water too?” The water bucket was shown as a job that only big, strong boys could do. The story takes place in the 50s, where gender roles were strongly enforced. Alma asked the question, believing that girls could be just as, or more stronger than boys. When is it acceptable to challenge the values of society?

I think it’s acceptable to challenge the values of society when these values go against a large portion of the population. In the Friday Everything Changed, one value, or norm, in that society was “boys always carry the water bucket”, but that value excluded the girls. It went against them.

 

Why do people feel the need to conform to society and it’s expectations?

Going against the norms of society is change, and for some reason, we’re practically afraid of it. Conforming to society’s expectations is the norm. Sometimes, going outside society’s expectations, creating change, is met with resistance. In the story, after Alma askes the special question, the boys are worried because the water bucket is theirs. It’s always been theirs, and they don’t want to share it. So after they all leave the classroom, the boys try to jump Alma, in an attempt to deter them from wanting to carry the water bucket (pg. 6).

 

Why are we afraid of change?

We’re scared of things that we don’t know, and that’s change. It’s something that we sometimes don’t understand. Society has had this whole understanding of “boys will always be stronger than girls” for a long time, and some people are perfectly content with how society is. But when people try to change society, some people will retaliate because they don’t want to change.

 

 

Mushrooms

alexr2015

Mushrooms              Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

 

I think this poem describes the minority; the oppressed. Mushrooms will slowly, but surely, grow. They don’t grow overnight, but over time, they WILL grow, and you couldn’t stop it. There was a very small population of people in the 1950s who believed in equality between men and women. It was a small community, so no one noticed it, and wives seemed more like humane slaves in the 50s. But this community grew, and grew. The line, “We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,” seems to describe women, how they were simply used to keep the house clean, or to bring food to the table. Men were portrayed as the ones who kept the world standing, while women were treated like idk. This is relevant to the Friday Everything Changed because that both the story and this poem revolve around gender roles.

 

IT10: Scratch One Week Challenge

alexr2015

In IT10, the first assignment we were given was to create some sort of game on a program called Scratch. We were given the timeframe of one week, or four days. I wanted to create some sort of platformer, but I also wanted the sprites to have some sort of animation to them too. Making a character walk left and right was easy, but I already ran into some small problems there. I then tried to make my character jump, and my game creation went to a complete halt. Nothing was working after that. The code on the left is the moving left and right, while on the right side, I was playing with X and Y velocity. Nothing worked when that stuff was put in.

One thing I learned during this week in Scratch is how animations work. I never bothered to play with animations when I used this program in grade six and seven.

I wanted to create a sort of platformer with multiple levels, but obviously I was way out of my depth. I didn’t know how to create a sort of scroller, and I didn’t know how to create gravity. My character would just be floating up in the air. Certainly a failure, but hopefully I will learn.

You can see the code here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/96882655/#editor

Intro Game