Berkeley High School Home to Many Fun and Unique Finals

Throughout Berkeley High School, starting Wednesday January 26, scantrons littered the desks, number two pencils emerged from pencil cases, and students attempted to express the knowledge they had gained during their semester with the mark of a dark, graphite circle. Many students’ free time was marked with tutoring sessions and study group meetings. However, while some courses took the normal route, others chose to take a more creative approach in testing their students’ knowledge. One such class is Amy Crawford’s seventh period AP Composition class. The final for the AP Comp class was to create a fallacious speech, one that incorrectly made points and used insufficient sources. The students’ work made arguments for everything from the racism of chess and the importance of reality TV, to creating morals. “Final exams coincided with our study of logical fallacies, and since the other Composition classes were writing speeches for their finals, it made sense to tweak the assignment and have some fun,” said Crawford. “Students tested their ability to make weak and fallacious arguments by writing and delivering speeches fraught with fallacies. Once you’ve deliberately sullied a speech with feeble reasoning, you will no doubt sharpen your ability to detect it in the words of others.”

Lucinda Daly’s Advanced Photo class created a book for their final, using photographs they had taken and printed. The book was required to have a written component, and students chose a way to write the book, be it through a story or a poem.
“On the day of the final we sat in a circle on the floor with milk and graham crackers and shared our books,” said Daly. Junior Madison Williams describes her project, “I took pictures and connected them to a Shel Silverstein poem called ‘There is a Bear in There.’ It was really nice to be able to use storytelling or poetry to add meaning to the photos. It was a great final.”

Sophomore Leah Henry also enjoyed Daly’s final. “It was really fun to create a body of work with one theme,” Henry commented. “I printed out slides from my dad’s childhood, and then took portraits of my family over winter break and compiled everything into a book.”

Derek Eshelman’s IB English class created individual projects that reflected the themes present in the literature they had read throughout the semester. “An IOP is an individual oral presentation. We were allowed to create whatever we wanted in order to symbolize themes from the text,” said junior Frankie Whitty. “I made a board game that explored the issue of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried.” Other students created books, videos, and art projects that explored themes brought up in the books. The IOP project allowed students to express their knowledge in a more creative way, and many students appreciated the opportunity to showcase their artistic talent. “It allowed you to think creatively rather than sitting quietly in class.” “I had fun creating my art project! It made me think about the text in a new way,” said junior Reavey Fike.

Exercising creativity in finals has proven to be a successful method. As senior Natalie Bigelow said about her AP Composition final, “When you have to exercise your knowledge in a strange and creative way it challenges you to really explore what it is that you know. You have to know how to apply what you’ve learned and really look at it from another angle. You begin to relate to knowledge in a new way.”