Transcending Borders at Riverstone.

Today, before starting work on our projects we decided to try another

art project in honor of our unit on transcending borders.  Our

classmates and colleagues toured Amsterdam yesterday.  Today, we

attempted to recreate Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” as a

small way of connecting with their experiences in the Netherlands.

We think the results are pretty true to the original.  We also

enjoyed some Belgian almond cookies and French ecoliers.  Everybody

is now hard at work – pouring over rubrics, staging scenes, producing

video reflections on their projects and other sundry tasks.  All are

in high spirits and wish everyone well.

Andy

Here is an update on the MYP Transcending Borders unit….from the students in Boise.

You don’t necessarily need to be in Europe to Transcend Borders.

Dear all,

The rest of the 9th Grade began work on their “transcending borders”

unit with a brainstorming and discussion session in English 9 this

morning.   It was a wonderful day to begin work on our projects.  The

sky is like something from a Ruisdael painting….a deep blue

punctuated with cottony clouds parading across the horizon.  We began

by reviewing the terms of the project, but focused mainly on ideas.

Katharine came up with a phenomenal idea to write a haiku or other

short poem to capture the poignancy of the divide between East and

West Berlin and then illustrate that poem by using grafitti style

writing as was the rage on the western side of the Berlin Wall.  Mona

and Emma are collaborating to produce a short play based on a true

story of love separated by the wall.  Yaro and Max are producing a

mural based on a primary source photograph of the day the wall was

torn down.  Sarah is exploring the ways communities transcend borders

to collaborate to protect a particular species.  The outcomes promise

to be interesting and challenging.  Now…on the really fun part,

while we can’t share the rest of the classes experiences in Europe we

can create our own here.  To that end we produced a painting of la

Tour Eiffel and enjoyed croissants in its shadow.  Picture is attached!

Andy and Katie