Student Exhibitions and Gilgamesh

We're a mere three days away from the premiere of our production of Gilgamesh (and a week and a half from winter break), and the energy around the school is palpable. Props and costumes are spread throughout the middle school commons, the hallways echo with the grunts and shouts of Jianmarco and Taylor practicing their fight choreography, and nearly everyone has the bulk of the script memorized, as evidenced by the frequency that I overhear people quoting lines to one another.

Our director giving notes during a full dress rehearsal.

Props

In addition to the spectacle of Gilgamesh, we'll have a range of student work from this year on display during the performances. Each student in our class spent a part of the afternoon selecting at least one thing item that they're particularly proud of for display. Some chose their Farm-to-Table reports, others are sharing stories that they've been writing, and others are writing up brief descriptions of math and science projects they've enjoyed. It's been exciting to watch them revisit their work and reflect on it. In many cases, students were eager to revise and improve upon their past work before display.

Gilgamesh has grown beyond the play: Lee has been adapting the plot of our play to create a computer game.   

We also spent some time today moving our research papers along. By now, each student should have a thesis statement written and the major points of their outline completed. We worked today to start plugging research notes into our outlines, with the goal of writing a draft of the paper by the end of the week.

Discussion starters: 

- Ask your student what piece of work they chose to display at Gilgamesh! Why did they chose that particular item?

- Ask your student about their research paper. What is their thesis? Ask them to take a look at the outline they've written. 

- Ask your student about what world news story they read about during our warm-up this morning.