Kahaani has been an extremely rewarding and educational experience for me this year. I’ve learnt some of the best ways to collaborate with people in order to get what needs to be done, while also creating a meaningful connection with people I usually wouldn’t interact with. It was difficult to get most of the people in my group to focus enough to be working on the dance rather than playing around. I could see our dance leaders getting more and more frustrated and it became imminently clear that confrontation diffusion was a skill I needed to develop in order to avoid an explosion. There were moments when I thought we were never going to get the dance learnt or be able to perform it well without something having to change. Eventually, after a lot of convincing and threatening, the boys would settle down and we would be able to run the dance. The final performance was filled with zest and energy as we were all excited to be coming to the end of our Kahaani journey for this year. It has been a meaningful experience for me, committing to an activity which is helping those in far more need than ourselves. Not being able to actively see the difference my participation was making to the Kolkata GC was difficult to deal with. I had to trust that my contributions were aiding an issue of global significance rather than observing the change we were making in the world myself. Overall Kahaani is a wonderful thing to do in order to help out, just by sacrificing one lunch a week and a couple of weekends you get to learn and grow in a community of loving and supporting students.
Key Learning points reflection (December 2nd)
One of the most important parts of poetry is the analysis of it, often completely shown in the annotations. With this unit, i have recognised a significant improvement in my annotation. I am able to develop ideas through little notes and convey the meaning behind certain literary devices. Learning to scrawl down any ideas that come into my head is key to forming an understanding of why the text makes readers feel certain ways. I have recognised that my ability to distinguish the different names of sound devices has improved.
Choosing HL Literature has meant my conceptualization of texts has become a lot easier. It comes naturally now for me to be creating an image of the text’s meaning in my head while reading. Repitition of certain concepts has ben a big part of this. When analysing the book Women’s World, the importance of road safety was mentioned multiple times and i was immediately able to predict that it was significant to the narrative of the text. This was a key moment of learning for me as i observed my analysis of texts improved.
Kahaani – Initial Reflection
Kahaani as an experience is generally very rewarding. A the end of roughly three months of sacrificing your lunchtime for sessions with your dance group, your hard work will pay off as the tickets are sold to family, friends, and teachers all there to support you, and the under priviledged in Kolkata. The profits then being fully donated to the cause that the East Kolkata Global Concern support. Having done Kahaani last year in Grade 10 I have experience in the timing, organisation and end production of the activity. This year, the amount of time spent on improving my skills and abilities as a dancer I’m hoping will be productive. I know with dance that my strengths lie in the artistic portrayal and aesthetic of the movement. This is because i have the ability to compartmentalise my actions and visualisation of what im doing and copy the emptions portrayed through the motions. However, I am also aware of areas that I might need to work harder on during the process, like coordination and memorisation of the dance. Balance has always been an issue with me, which affects my coordination and is why I struggle with synchronisation with other dancers in the group. This year I am going to try and focus more on picking up the choreography faster than last year. Im going to acheive this by practicing the dance more often at home to provide the resulting visual my dance leaders are looking for.
Antigone Student led production- initial reflection
Having been cast as Ismene in this years Student-Led production, Antigone, I am hoping this experience will be an opportunity for self-growth and progression in my theatre skills as well as my collaboration. Focusing on LO2 and LO5 I will be trying to overcome the challenges that this creative project will pose to develop my abilities as a theatre student and learning how to work with a group collaboratively in order to create an impressive piece of theatre. Regarding LO2 my goals are to be skilled enough by the end of this production to know that I have the ability to lead a group of people in a challenging endeavour like this. I am aiming at becoming a better deviser, exploring many possibilities of what road this production can go down. Creating scenes for the audience while monologues or dialogue is being performed is the main task that comes with an interpretive piece, something which can prove incredibly difficult. Creativity will be key with this experience, as well as an openness and acceptance of other peoples ideas in order to work well and produce an aesthetic and interesting piece of theatre, which falls under LO5. Working together with others is usually a strength of mine and I’m hoping that will be shown through rehearsals when the cast will have to form a team of tightly banded theatre students open to change and creative development. There will be challenges to overcome throughout this process, however, this is anticipated and expected when there is a group of people working together to create something. Some of these challenges will be a difference in opinion on what should stay in and what shouldn’t, the easiest way to resolve things like that are by just trying out everyone’s idea until you find the one which feels the most fitting for the scene. Being open to criticism is also crucial to the process, taking in feedback and not getting offended too easily, presuming positive intent in my castmates. The entire cast has written up an agreement which we have all signed to keep us on track and remember that this is to be an enriching, educational, yet fun experience from which we will all learn a lot.
Women’s World Essay: Moving from characterisation to concept
Intro:
Some of the ideas Rawle expresses being that identity can be influenced heavily by the representation of a group of people.
Paragraph one (not including intro):
In doing so, Rawle implies that our identities can be influenced by the representation of types of people, as we can see when Norma adopts the personality of the women in advertisements portrayed in popular women’s magazines at the time.
Little Red Cap analysis and ATL’s
Self Management
Self-management is one of the areas that I am in need of development. My procrastination needs to be sorted out which I will be working on this year. Due to the late submission because of having forgotten to bring my piece to class, I received feedback late, completely my own fault. I do, however, have the ability to sit myself down and finish a writing task while setting myself a deadline and time restriction. This, I feel, will be quite crucial in the IB due to the fast-paced nature of its course.
Collaboration
With this task, not much collaboration was needed considering it was an individual writing task. I am usually very good at collaborating with others and working in groups when it is required for discussions about character traits or storylines, the usual HL Lit class stuff. I can articulate my sentences well and express ideas with ease, articulating and building off of what others have contributed. As a very social and outgoing person, face-to-face interactions come naturally to me, and in conversation, I am open-minded to other interpretations and opinions.
Communication
In this assignment, I was able to communicate my analytical intentions fairly well. However, possibly lacking in the area of linking my paragraphs back to the thesis statement all the way through. I received feedback that I needed to touch on how the relationship between LRRH and the wolf was toxic and abusive. I could have refined my point about the wolf having changed over time, as I feel like I didn’t express the fact that there is clear evidence in the poem to suggest the wolf didn’t change at all, making one of the most important parts of the poem’s narrative. Overall my communication in class is quite strong but I need to work on communicating ideas through my writing.
STEM Project reflection #1
My project is going to be about a particular area of my interest that doesn’t often get to be explored at school. I love using makeup when I’m at home and over the years I’ve become very familiar with the beauty and cosmetics industry. I first came up with the idea after seeing a prompt about sustainability as a possibility for a STEM project. I’ve since modified the question and direction of the project from the general sustainability of products in the beauty industry, which could include products anywhere from soap and shampoo to henna tattoos, into a more refined research spectrum of makeup and cosmetics. The end product for my project will hopefully be either a children’s picturebook or comic, generally, my target audience would be young adults and tweens. I’m going to physically be making and designing this book along with a presentation to go with. My creative side will hopefully be exploited during this project as I draw and hand-make the book at home. However, there might be some problems with this considering the fact that craft stores are all closed at the moment due to the pandemic, I’m going to have to use any and all materials I have at home rather than getting new ones.
STEM project progress #1
“How has your thinking on this project been influenced by other people?”
The comments my group mates have made have been really helpful in coming up with ideas for the final medium ill present my project in and things that I can add to make it more effective. Looking at their projects has also given me a sense of where I should be going with mine, and what kind of end product I should have.
Hellboy Comic observations and analysis
3. One moment that you think is a particularly powerful example of comic language being used to create character/relationship
At the end of the comic when the witch has explained to Hellboy that he needn’t use violence to defeat the trolls, she mysteriously asks him how he will feel about that. Out of context and to an unknowing audience, this is possibly foreshadowing that the protagonist feels a need to use violence and kill the antagonists by spilling blood or using force. The fact that the troll woman asks him about his feelings towards using such a mellow and peaceful approach to defeating the bad guys also tells the audience that she knows more than has previously been revealed. In the last panel, she is seen in front of a black, shadowy background which alludes to a deepness in the question she asks as well as a certain complexity in the character’s backstory.
2. One moment that you think is a particularly powerful example of words and images working together to tell the story
The moment when it is revealed to the audience that the troll witch lady is actually the troll sister in the story, proven by the dramatic build-up of the skull reveal when the curtains are drawn, each image keeping the audience in suspense before the close up of the sister’s skull adorned with a flower crown. Proximity is being used to create tension in the story before the shocking reveal of the gory and disturbing image of the dead sisters head, the climax of the story.
What do you find most striking about the ways in which two or more of the short stories connect?
Most of the stories are built upon the role of a woman in society. The story Girl is completely based on the expectations for girls to be able to cook well, know how to iron and clean, to dress modestly and to constantly be catering to other peoples desires and requests. The story is all about following the “rules” set in place for women and how she has to be conforming to societal norms. However, while the speaker narrates to the girl what is expected of her, there is a break in the pattern of conservative language when the girl is aggressively told not to be “like the slut you are so bent on becoming”, a drastic and shocking change from the language previously used. Another story that connects through the common theme of societal norms would be “Lamb To The Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. In this story, the role of a woman is less explicitly stated but is shown through the characters actions and what is expected of her to provide for her husband. However, obviously all of that goes out the window when she bashes him around the head with the lamb she was going to cook him for dinner. The fact that she was so riled up from being told about his wish to divorce her, enough to kill him for it, goes to show how much she needed to be in that marriage maybe because of the shame that used to come with getting divorced for women. Or possible how she felt the need for revenge because of how much she had done for him as a wife and yet he still didn’t want to be married to her anymore.