Stocks

Above are two photos from a project that I have been working on in Language Arts for a while. The project was stocks. We began doing this project because we were reading a book called the Westing Game, and a character in the book called Turtle liked stocks and invested money in them. First, we started by (theoretically) investing $20,000 in stocks. I invested in 30 shares of Apple, five of Adobe, 30 of Sonos, 70 of Newmont, and 500 of Macys. We created a spreadsheet (image on top) to keep track of how much we earned/lost. We entered the current price every week or so and saw the money we earned or lost. The other image is of the piece of paper we used to write how much we earned/lost down. We created a logo and a name for our investment company. Mine was Smith’s shares. My company earned money for the most part, and I only lost money twice. In the end, I earned $2,316.

TED Talk


I know two questions you might be asking right now. 1) How are the two above images related? and 2) Is this girl flunking math class? I will give you an answer to both. I’m going to do things in reverse order, so the answer to number two is; probably. Now on to number one. I recently did a project (if a say this you can assume it’s in language arts) where I had to present a TED talk to my class. The photos above are pictures of some of my slides. You probably think that the second one is a joke. But, actually, the first one is the false one.

My topic was complicated, so I used an example to describe it. Why do we think two plus two is four? The first image was a joke slide I put first to trick people. The second one was my actual first slide. For this particular topic, I couldn’t find a lot of information on the web, so I looked through a book called 1984, which is where I got the 2+2 example from (great book, by the way). Most people wrote flash cards, but to be completely honest, I did not have a plan whatsoever. I was really nervous and ended up talking fast so my presentation was pretty short, but it was still a fun thing to do.

Tree Book Project

My language arts class has been working on this project for awhile, and we finished last week. Artist Peg Gignoux has been helping us with this  book. The cover is screen-printed paper, and the inside is collaged Akua ink-covered paper, which we made by rolling Akua ink on a rubbery platform called a jelly, and we added plants to make prints. We also made little pockets on the book to store our writing pieces, which were collaged with the Akua ink. We put one thing in each pocket; a life list (things we want to do before we die), a roots essay (an essay about our family members), and the last pocket held a Polaroid picture of our self. Funny story about that picture. The flash on a camera makes me blink. So I look like I’m asleep in the photo. We also wrote a wish on the inside of our books.

To go along with the project, we are reading the book Wishtree. We haven’t finished it yet, but it is a good book. A lot of good messages in it. It’s kind of sad though. We also put our books up in a gallery for a bit. My dad, his parents, and my brother came to see my book. My mom was in New Jersey for the weekend, so she couldn’t come. It was a fun exhibit, and the project itself was even more fun.

Check out Peg’s website: Peg’s website

Also check out frank gallery’s site, which is where we displayed our books: Frank Gallery site