Paraphrases of artworks and Comments of a contemporary event

The ISGR library is currently hosting two exhibitions, made by students in Grade 9.

The first exhibition is made by LGRM 9. It consists of their final project in Art, in which they have made paraphrases on famous artwork that they have chosen themselves. Several students have chosen to paraphrase the artist René Magritte. The teacher has been Jennifer Hawkins.

The second exhibition is made by students from MYP9, and has been arranged by their teacher Ida Fastén. The students have painted and written poems based on the ongoing debate on the Swedish Academy, that is related to the Metoo debate. The students have made their own have made their own interpretations and comments.

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Jacqueline Woodson has been awarded the ALMA prize

Today, the American author Jacqueline Woodson will receive the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) Prize. The ceremony will take place in Stockolm at the Concert house at 18-19. From tonight you will be able to watch images and high-resolution videos from the ceremony in this pressroom: http://www.alma.se/sv/Press/

The prize was established by the Swedish government in 2002 and is the world’s largest children’s and youth literature award. It is based on the Children’s Convention and the children’s right to culture. The prize is handed out internationally, to authors regardless of language or nationality, as long as their work have got the highest artistic quality and is characterized by a humanistic spirit.

Who is Jacqueline Woodson then? She debuted in 1993 and has since written about thirty books for children and young people. In her books, she brings up such topics as invisibility, racism, segregation, prejudices and silence. She does so through focusing on people who has been marginalized and the purpose is to fill a gap in the literature. She does not to speak loud or become aggressive, but find a way to make people understand and change.

Here you can read more about Jacqueline Woodson: https://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/

Here are some titles by Jacqueline Woodson, represented in the library:

Grade 8’s visits of the exhibition Together, at the World Culture Museum

For four days, MYP and LGRM students have visited the World Culture Museum and their exhibition Together to do a workshop on interpersonal relationships. The workshop leaders tried about the same arrangements for all student groups.

The students brainstormed what love can be. They showed each other love through writing nice comments about each other. After that, they looked at items a part of the exhibition, titled Collected stories, and pointed out objects explaining why those represented love.

After that, the students were divided into groups, and were sent to different part of the exhibition. The different parts of the exhibition addressed different themes: Living together, Fitting in, Understanding, Separating, Fighting and Making up, Dancing and Interaction. The task was to choose two items from your part of the exhibition, which represented love, and explained to the other group members why the item represented love and how the item was related to the theme of their part of the exhibition.

With some groups, a walking tour took place during the presentation. With some other groups, students used their iPhones, and showed their items with the help of a projector.

Children’s questions were put in focus and feelings you go through in everyday life: How does it feel to miss someone? When do you fit into a group? Is it just silly to have a quarrel or sometimes needed?

Sexual cityzenship by Tommaso Milani

Today, ISGR received a visit by the Italian professor Tommaso Milani, who spoke about his work with gender issues in South Africa through discussing an incident that took place  in 2012

He brought up questions like what is pride? What is the difference between a parade and a march? He did so in the context of an activist group’s attempt to temporarily stop the yearly Pride parade in Johannesburg, South Africa through means of a die-in protest, resulting in resistance and violence on the part of the Pride participants.

One of his main points were that you need to apply an intersectional perspective that takes into account how gender and sexuality are closely linked to social class, race and ethnicity.

He showed a video on a protest in Johannesburg, and presented some photographic data and media reports. As a preparation before the visit, the students read about the One in Nine group at Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/10123398375/about/

They also read the first 8 pages of the South African Constitution: http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf

Here you can read Tommaso’s lecture: Sexual cityzenship GTB

Here is a video clip he showed us during the lecture.

Romeo and Juliet at the Gothenburg Concert Hall

Yesterday, grade 8 visited the Gothenburg Concert Hall, to listen to classical music on love theme, as part of their Love Weeks.

For example, they got to listen to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Samuelsson’s Afrodite and Higdon’s Blue cathedral. The concert was performed by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and led by the Taiwanese conductor Mei-Ann Chen. Also, there was song performed by the Mezzo Soprano Katija Dragojevic.

For those who would like to listen to it, and are not able to attend, it will be broadcasted live here on Saturday May 5th at 3 pm:

https://www.gso.se/gsoplay/klipp/prokofjev-romeo-och-julia/

World Book Day 2018

I would like to recommend you some resource containing film clips on storycraft:

Many students at ISGR love Liz Pichon’s series on Tom Gates (that reminds about Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a wimpy kid).

Here is a video clip with Liz Pichon giving advices on how to write a comic style story.

Charlie Higson‘s Young Bond series, is also popular among the students. Here he give you some tips on how to write an exciting story.

As an end of the term activity, you can get some creative writing tips by watching a show run by Jacqueine Wilson on June 15th at 2-2.30. Here you can get hold of the link.

If you scroll down this website, til you get to Reading ideas for young people, you can click at the name of an author you like and get tips of books you may like.

Here you can find a lot more tips and ideas.

If you speak Swedish, you could also visit the Gothenburg City Library today. At 18 you will have the chance to meet a range of authors:

“Balsam Karam, Agnes Lidbeck, Sigrid Combüchen, Johannes Anyuru, Leif Holmstrand and Catharina Thörn in conversation with Lars Mikael Raattamaa.

Anna Mattsson will read texts by the author Yin Luoth from Cambodia.

Presentation: Martin Engberg.
Artist: Marie Dahlstrand.
Music: Stefan Missios.

Time: 18.00
Location: Gothenburg City Library, Hörsalen
Organizer: Author Center West and Gothenburg City Library, supported by the Swedish Academy.”

Writing workshops on love theme. Author visit by Klara Krantz

On Thursday last week, ISGR was visited by the writing pedagogue and youth author Klara Krantz. This took place within the framework of Love Weeks, a number of weeks during which the 8th graders work on love in different ways in different subjects and also participate in events on love theme.

Who is Klara? Klara is quite young yet. She debuted as an author 2013 and focuses a lot on ambiguities and emotions in her novels, feelings as can be difficult to put in words when you are 15 years old. A great source of inspiration for her is the music artist Håkan Hellström, who often combines joy and pain, joy and sorrow or anything else in his songs.

   

What did Klara do with the 8th graders? She let them do writing exercises. The first writing exercise, was about not lifting your pen, starting with the sentence: “Today is Monday …”. Then they had to write what they thought of and occasionally insert words as Klara shouted out: In love, heart, love story, frying pan, meaningless, you and me, pain, etc. Then the students should find a sentence that they thought was nice or fun.

As another exercise, they had to choose a person X from a set of pictures. Write down information about that person. Then choose another person Y among the pictures in which X was in love. And write some information about Y too.

After that, the students would start writing a story where X wakes up in the morning, thinking of Y, his/her love. The story would be written in first person. The students would use their five senses to describe X’s feelings. During breakfast then, X decides to tell Y how he/she feels and how to reveal that. The students also got to imagine the place where this would happen. Then they encounter an obstacle, that Y has completely different things in his/her mind. How will they catch his/her attention?