My poem

Spring is coming now
Everywhere outside is green
It used to be white.

Another poem

The Life Of A Cupcake

© Shelby Greer

Published on May 5, 2014

They put me in the oven to bake.
Me a deprived and miserable cake.
Feeling the heat I started to bubble.
Watching the others I knew I was in trouble

They opened the door and I started my life.
Frosting me with a silver knife.
Decorating me with candy jewels.
The rest of my batch looked like fools.

Lifting me up, she took off my wrapper.
Feeling the breeze, I wanted to slap her.
Opening her mouth with shiny teeth inside.
This was the day this cupcake had died.

This poem is about a cup cake's life, how this cupcake was born and how he died. As a poem, it used a rhyme of AABB format in each section. Such as paragraph one bake and cake, bubble and trouble. This rhyme makes the poem sound more flexible and more funny. The character was a cupcake which was put into the oven to bake. The author used bubble to describe the condition of the cupcake inside of the oven. Then he used "I was in trouble" to finished the sentence which is interesting and funny. I like this poem not only because it is easy to understand, but also because the description  words in the poem. Beside the end rhyme in each sentence, there is also rhyme in the beginning of the sentence for example "Feeling the heat I started to bubble. Watching the others I knew I was in trouble", those two sentence all used an "ing" rhyme at the beginning of the sentence. My favorite part of this poem is that"Lifting me up, she took off my wrapper. Feeling the breeze, I wanted to slap her. Opening her mouth with shiny teeth inside. This was the day this cupcake had died." Those sentence are very interesting which introduced the condition while the cupcake was going to be eat. "Feeling the breeze" makes the cupcake like a real living things, "I wanted to slap her." makes the cupcake have its own thoughts. Those sentence makes me imagine the scene which the cupcake was going to be eaten and facing a huge mouth with shiny teeth.

Poem

Utopian
Alicia Ostriker, 1937

My neighbor’s daughter has created a city
you cannot see
on an island to which you cannot swim
ruled by a noble princess and her athletic consort
all the buildings are glass so that lies are impossible
beneath the city they have buried certain words
which can never be spoken again
chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots
when it rains you hear chimes
rabbits race through its suburbs
the name of the city is one you can almost pronounce

This poem is about a girl's imaginary city.
I choose this poem because it sound beautiful
and make me think of the world which is introduced in the poem
I liked it especially that chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots
Which showed that the little girl don't want their parents to be divorced

Rewrite:
My neighbor’s daughter has created a city you cannot see, on an island to which you cannot swim, ruled by a noble princess and her athletic consort. All the buildings are glass so that lies are impossible. Beneath the city they have buried certain words, which can never be spoken again, chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots. When it rains you hear chimes; rabbits race through its suburbs. The name of the city is one you can almost pronounce.

Refection of the project

Jerry Wu

Ms. Guarino

English II

April.25.2016

Reflection of the project

For our creative project, we chose to make a board game because at that time, we thought it sounded more interesting. During the time working on it, we met the biggest problem: how can a board game related to the story we read? At first, we researched different kinds of board game, and finally we found out Saboteur which is a card game based on the mine. Then, we spent a long time trying to understand the rule. After we knew the rule, our project is finally started.

We bought the card from the shops, and trying to create our own cards by drawing them on the note card. We divided the work by Leo and Minh draw the cards and I cut the card from the note card into a board game card size. However, this did not work after we saw Minh’s terrible drawing, so we switch the work. During the time making the card, we met another problem: Why the board game we bought looked so strange and lacked a lot of cards. Soon we realized the one we bought is Saboteur 2 and we need a copy of Saboteur to play this expansion. After all, we decided to create the Saboteur game by ourselves.

After all this “lovely” hand drawing, we turned back to think our biggest problem:How to make the game related to the story. This problem perplex us for long time until finally Minh came up an idea. The point is that, we changed the winning rules from People found the gold win into people found the gold win. As the story mentioned, people lived on the lightning Ridge all had an opal dream, they went down to the mine everyday and trying to find the opal. Same as the Williamson family, the father Rex Williams also loved opals. He used to enjoyed his life about finding those valuable stones until he got into trouble while he was searching her daughter Kellyanne’s imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan. He was misunderstood by others on the town, as they thought he was ratting Old-Sid’s mine. As soon as Kellyanne became sick because of the lost of Pobby and Dingan, the Williamson family got to save Kellyanne instead of finding Opals. So we changed the game by adding Pobby and Dingan as goals card and Kellyanne as a special character into our game. Normally, there is normal miner and bad miner in this game. The normal miner’s goal is to find the opal, and the bad miner need to disturb them and have the opal at the end. We made those two types of character as people lived on the Ridge and Old Sid. Beside those. We had make the Williamson family and Kellyanne as the special character. The Williamson family was like the normal miner, if they found the opal they wins. However, Kellyanne was very different, her goal is to find Pobby and Dingan instead of finding the opals. If the member of the Williamson family helped Kellyanne find Pobby and Dingan both of them may win. The point of this game is teamwork and player’s decision I think. The Williamson family can either choose to find the opal to win or help Kellyanne to find Pobby and Dingan. The good miner helped each other to create a route and the bad miner worked together to disturb others. Also you can choose to disturb others if you want to win by yourself at the end. I think this game is base on player’s decision a lot, and how the game will be end depends on the player’s decision. They may learned that teamwork is important and they may probably realized help others is important too, just like in the book, Ashmol made others to find Pobby and Dingan in order to save Kellyanne.

The hardest part of the game is making the connection between the game and the book and see if the connection works in the game or not. None of us plays this game Saboteur before, we even don’t hear it before. We learn how to play and make it into our games and we teach others to play. The final product was finished, but I think it can be better if we spent more time on making the card and trying to make more connections. It’s not because the time was not enough, but we were being lazy and did not spent a lot of time working with each other after schools. Otherwise the project will be perfect. Anyway, from this project we learned design a board game is not very easy, it takes a lot of times to do all this steps:make the rules, create the cards, and see if the rules work in the game, is there any problems(bugs in the game)? I think now I understand the story better since I was keep thinking about how to connect the story with the game and what we can learn from it. What I learned is that, your decision will make the game(the story) ends in a different ways. It is very important to think before make a decision.

Project progress

At last Thursday, our group has already finished making half of the cards that we are going to use in this board game. The rest of them we will finish drawing it as Minh had already cut them from the notecard paper. During the weekend, Minh came up the idea that we hide Pobby and Dingan with the opal as the goal. The people who get Kellyanne, who knew where Pobby and Dingan located is going to lead other player to find Pobby and Dingan. If Pobby and Dingan was found, then Kellyanne win the game and get the opal. So instead of only three goal card, there is probably four which one of them was Pobby and Dingan. So that our game can be related to the book, which reminds the player the most important things for Kellyanne is those two imaginary friends she believed. That is our idea about the game. For the rest o times we had, we will finish up drawing all the card we need, and practice playing to see if the game work at all.

Proposal for creative project

Introduction:

In order to make a creative project for Pobby and Dingan, our group(Leo, Minh and) choose to make a board game, because board games are fun and all of my classmates can join to play it. Of course the board game is related to the story Pobby and Dingan, and it's about people live on the Lightning Ridge going down to the mine to find opals. There are good character such as Ashmol, Kellyanne, and their father. Their goal is to trying to find as much opal as they could by using their route cards to moving down the mine. If there is good character, there must be some bad character also such as Old Sid. The bad guy's goal is trying to disturb other character to find opals so that they could get all the opals at last.

The game is base on the game Saboteur and it is a card game.
After playing the game, we can have a better understanding of  how teamwork is important in this game and refer to that how the Williamson family is going to against the people who pick on them.

Rule:

Player play as miner who goes down to the mine and looks for the opal card. Some are just normal miner and some are bad miner who is trying to disturb others. If the miner uses their route card to make an tunnel to the final place which may have the treasure, they could find the opal and the intruder would get nothing. If the miner do not find anything, then the intruder get the opal. When 3 round of the game is finished, the player who had the most opal will win.

Picture of the game should be look like:

When the game is started, there is one start card and three goal cards placed on the table. There is a space about seven cards between the start card and the goal card.
Each players have cards on their hands(the amount of cards depends on the amount of player there are in the game). During each turn, each player must use either a route card or an action card into one player or pass the turn.
Route card: this type of card need to be put beside the start card. Each of the card need to be put in the order of the route depends on the pattern it has.
Action card: with this type of card, player can disturb each others or help each others. 





Our plans:
Leo is going to design the special character and their abilities in this game which is related to the book Pobby and Dingan.
Me and Minh is going to make the card by using the note card and trying.
Of course we are going to help each other since teamwork is very important.
And we will provide a nicely done board game to our glass when we finished.

Opal Dream

"The secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absences."
                                                                                                     ———Australian Geographic, 1998
"Opal is one kind of jewelry which is different from diamond and pearl. It's price is not base on how big it is, but depends on the color it has.“ I knew that from my mom while I was in Australia this spring break. People likes opal as it was beautiful and expensive. The rarer color it has, the higher value it has. After reading the book "Pobby and Dingan”, I realized that opal also has a special meaning to them. 
In the book, the Williamson were living in the Lighting Ridge which they could find opals. They believed that when they find precious opal they can be wealthy. Actually it was hard to find opal which is precious. Finding opal is a hard works which needs time, patience, and hard working. Ashmol's father Rex Williamson was crazy finding opals, so he brought his family to this poor Ridge in order to reach his dream. Although he hadn't found anything yet, he never gave up because it was his dream. The power of opal(dream) made him continue working even he was called "ratter" by other people in the Ridge. He knew that the value of the opal can make his family's life better, and finding a valuable opal is his belief . This explains that the secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absences. The secret of an opal is not how much money people can get from its color. It is about how people are going to use the value of the opal and the dream people have in the opal which refers to that the absence(meaning of the opal) is more important than the substance(opal itself).
The people in the Ridge believed in something which is hard to see, or kept looking for something which is totally hard to find. For example, Ashmol felt happy living in the Ridge, he said that "because here there's always opal waiting to be found, and there's always something to dream about"(Pobby and Dingan). From that, we can see that Ashmol did not mind about the "substance"very much as his living condition wasn't very well. He has dream which is finding opal there which explained the reason why he was attracted to this place. He wanted to make his family better if he can find a opal. That's why he used the opal he found to pay for the funeral  of Pobby and Dingan because he thought it may get Kellyanne better from illness. He viewed his family more important than the money he can the get from the opal. Instead of being wealthy by using the opal, Ashmol used it to make his family member better. That's how Ashmol thought the absences is more important than the substance itself. 
Those dreams insides of the opal are invisible and important to all the characters in the book. That's why the secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absences.