Week 11 Storytelling: Alice's New School

“Good morning students! Welcome to your first day of classes! I hope you enjoy your semester. Now, get to your first period class so you aren’t late.”

Alice was in the locker room still. She hadn’t worked up the courage to go out to the field where she was supposed to be playing monkey lacrosse. She wasn’t too sure what that entailed, and it being her first day at a new school she had no one to ask.

Locker Room
From Wiki Commons

Finally, a teacher came in and saw her. She was reprimanded for being tardy, and ushered out to the field where she saw all the other girls in her class standing in front of her teacher. Her teacher. That was the worst part. It was just Alice’s luck that this class happened to be taught by the principal of the school, Mrs. Heart, so everyone had to be on their best behavior.

Lacrosse Field
From Wikipedia

As Alice looked around she noticed that no one had any gear yet. That was peculiar, since the Mrs. Heart was explaining the rules. Alice was too busy daydreaming about why it was called monkey lacrosse to hear any of the rules. She must have missed something important because all of a sudden everyone was walking toward what looked like cages. Alice followed, trying to peer around her classmates to see what was in the cages. Soon they were right in front of them, and she could see that there were actual monkeys in these cages!

Each girl picked her monkey one by one until it was Alice’s turn. She got to the front and saw that there were only a few to choose from, and all looked exceedingly difficult to deal with. She chose one at random, and followed everyone back to the field where Mrs. Heart held something in her hand. Everyone scattered around the field into what Alice presumed were positions…

 Maybe she should have paid more attention to the rules, she thought.

A whistle blew, and Mrs. Heart threw what was in her hand into the air! It was green, but too far away to make out what it was. Everyone scrambled around the field to get to the ball. Someone called out “Hey Blondie!”, and before Alice realized what was happening there was a frog coming straight towards her. She couldn’t get her monkey to stop pulling her hair, and had to dodge the frog before it hit her. Her team didn’t look too happy that she had let this one slide passed her.

All Alice could think was that this was definitely going to be an interesting semester at an odd new school. 

Author’s Note: I chose to make my own story from the croquet scene from Alice in Wonderland. I liked that they used animals, and wanted to change that up a bit, so I decided to pick a new sport. I also wanted to change the setting a bit because otherwise I thought it was be too similar to the original story. I chose a school because that seemed like one of the most plausible places for someone to be playing a sport like lacrosse.

Bibliography: The Queen’s Croquet Ground from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).

Week 11 Reading diary Continued: The Queen's Croquet-Ground

For the second half of the unit of Alice in Wonderland I really like the scene where the cards messed up and are painting the roses red. Another of my favorites is the croquet ground where they use strange animals to play. I think I would like to take the croquet scene and change the game possibly to lacrosse or another sport with a lot of equipment. I would change the animals as well. I would have my character come to a field that had random marking in every which way, so that you couldn’t tell where you were supposed to shoot or anything. The sticks they would use would be little monkeys instead, so that they were able to catch the balls. They would not be very cooperative, and would insist on climbing all over. Once she got her monkey straightened out it would let out a big howl and frighten her into dropping it. Then she would have to chase her monkey to reclaim it, and start this entire process all over again. As for what would be used as the ball, I was thinking that a frog would be a good choice. It is small and somewhat round. It would also be great if it would just hop all over the field, and I would also have more than one in the mix. This goes along with the mass chaos from the original story to keep my own similar. The queen would have a way of easily scoring, and making up rules so that she would win.

(illustration by Sir John Tenniel)

Week 11 Reading Diary: Alice in Wonderland

This week I chose to read Alice in Wonderland because it was one of my favorite movies as a child. I had never actually read the book, so this was a really fun first half of the week for me!  For this weeks reading diary post I was thinking about changing up the scene where she falls down the rabbit hole. It is very iconic for this book, and I wanted to see if I could tweak it until it was my own. I like the idea of my character wandering through a field, and hearing chatter at the bottom of a well. This would lead her into looking over, and instead of following the rabbit it would push her down the well. I still want the fall to be long, but instead of just thinking about how long the fall is I want my character to see things on the way down. I was thinking about how in the original Willy Wonka they go through the tunnel, and there are scenes projected onto the sides. I wanted to incorporate this without it being scary, though. Maybe she would see characters from what she is about to encounter. First would be the Cheshire cat, and he would just suddenly vanish as he has a way of doing. Next she would see the mad hatter as he was doing a funny little dance (from the newer movie). Finally she would see the red queen, and would get a sense of how awful she is. When she finally reached the bottom all of this would feel like a dream, so she would tend to have a little Déjà vu when she actually encounters them.

Alice in Wonderland
From Cea

Week 11 Learning Challenges: Being Present

This week I chose to look at attention memes because I feel like recently I have been less focused. I chose this meme because it becomes a real problem when we cannot let go of our phones to be present with he people we are with. I usually try to stay off my phone in classes so that I can process the information given, but sometimes I forget when I am with friends or family. This post was a reminder to pay attention when I am with other people. When I was in high school my friends and I used to play a game when we were out to dinner. Everyone would put their phones int he center of the table, and whoever touched their's first had to pay for everyones dinner. As you can imagine no one wanted to be responsible for that, so no one touched their phones. It was a great way to get everyone focused on the present, and the people they were with.

The Paradox of Presence
From Laura Gibbs

Week 11 Review: The Sun is Still Shining

This week I decided that I would do a backup since we are nearing the end of the semester. I usually have some sort of computer disaster at the end of an important week, or even at the end of a semester. That is why I thought it would be important to do this week!

I also really liked the proverb below I found from the daily announcements.  I feel like sometimes we have a bad day or week, and that feeling stays with us for a while. This is the perfect reminder that we should just brush those bad feelings off, and hope for a better tomorrow!

Behind the cloud is the sun still shining. 
(Longfellow, The Rainy Day)