This year I have developed the strength of connecting with an audience while incorporating class content. In three classes of World History, Wellness and Biology, there were three projects throughout these classes that really introduced me to learning how to express my ideas and thoughts of a topic. Through the Imperial Rule Monologues, Healthy Living Project and Science Fair I learned how to expresses the importance of a topic and drawing in specific audiences based on their age and interest.

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In the Imperial Rule Monologues, we demonstrated a perspective of a citizen living in an imperial country through a live performance. The purpose of this project was to really feel how these citizens felt that were oppressed in this time of imperial rule in their country by actually being this person in a monologue. Not only did we learn more about imperial rule in these countries and the events that happened during this time, but also what it would be like if we were there at that time. Since I could connect with the character that I created, Mariatu Kamara, it helped me to connect with the audience very easily. This was my first time ever performing a monologue in this project and in the beginning was somewhat overwhelming. When writing my script, I had parts that was italicized, starred and parenthesized which all resembled whether to perform an action, feeling, or tone. I found it difficult at first, to translate my script into acting and realistic emotion. To solve this I read my script multiple times, imagining in my head how I would perform. As a result, I started to truly feel my character, Mariatu. Through this, I started to feel more comfortable. I later understood that repetitive practice was crucial to fixing the minor flaws and perfecting my tone while still mimicking the feelings of a citizen of that time. In the end, I was very pleased with my final performance because it explained the thoughts and stress of citizens living in Sierra Leonne during imperial rule not only to me but to the audience. I could tell that some people in the audience could truly feel the pain of my character simply through words. As a result, this project grew my ability to connect with an audience.

 

In the healthy living project, we looked at unhealthy eating trends of middle school students at DRSS. In groups, we solved these issues with a fun and interesting game and/or food alternative. The purpose of our group was to help middle schoolers limit their intake of empty calories through a fun game and healthy alternative. When brainstorming how to change the excess of empty calories that middle schoolers were in taking, we had to think about what would help middle schoolers be interested but still teach them. We decided to make an easy yet healthy after school snack and also using competitive games to engage the students. To do this, we used Kahoot, an interactive quiz. The short quiz taught the viewers what the empty calories were, what you were lacking with them, foods they are found in and foods that are a better alternative to receive the essential nutrients. We also made brochures that covered the same information in summary. These brochures appealed to all ages, not just middle schoolers. This project required me to have a strength not only in connecting with an audience on a verbal level but also visually and personally. By creating fun games for these students, we were able to appeal to them and therefore were able to have their attention and teach them about empty calories and healthy snacking. We could also appeal to other ages with a visual of a brochure

 

Finally, in the process of Science Fair, which is designing and performing an experiment and later drawing conclusion and finding patterns in the data, we also had to connect with another audience- judges. This process is much different than the others because you are incorporated a lot more class content while still making it sound clear and cohesive. In doing science fair, you are required to have a research report that, in detail, explains the entire process of hypothesizing, testing, analyzing, and drawing conclusion. I had to have the strength of picking out specific parts of the report that would be essential to the judges understanding of the project as well as how it would connect to the real world. A way that we did this was use presentation note cards so that we would focus on what was most important to the process of the project. Each not ecard follows a specific topic with either bullets of parts of that topic or written out wording that I needed to memorize. By doing this, I wasn’t boring the judges but instead, I showed the parts that would pull them into the process that I did with my partner and helping them experience our experiment. Each of these projects helped me to practice connecting with audiences which will be a huge quality that I will need in the future.