We are the second, third, fourth, and fifth grade students from the Gifted and Talented classes at Ralph Downs Elementary. We were honored to represent in collage form what our town means to us in images.

The concepts of where we live, learn, work, pray and play were analyzed and discussed at length. From this brainstorming, we began to develop, a strong sense of pride in the city where we all live.

In discussing each of the theme areas to be developed for the collage, we began to volunteer interesting ideas for representation on the large board. We wanted to achieve a sense of balance and form in design and meaning in our collage.

After lots of active discussion, we decided to use large post cards in
all the theme areas as invitations to our wonderful community. We wrote the cards collectively to express the strengths and gifts our city has to offer anyone who might visit us.

Along with written expression about our town, we decided to include a visual image of the five theme areas highlighted. We agreed to use large red figures indicating these areas of theme. To emphasize texture, we listed on each figure examples of various places of amusement, work, worship, education and living. Post cards and a three dimensional mailbox was added symbolizing our invitation to the world to visit our city. The ribbon was added to lead the viewer's eyes around the images on the collage. It ends inside of the mailbox.

In addition to studying about the five theme areas of our city, we studied about the history of our city to help us in understanding how we have developed our heritage in Oklahoma City. We decided to use historic post cards to showcase some of that history as well as current day post cards of our city that invite visitors to different places of interest here.

This collage is about how we artistically demonstrated the pride that we have for our unique and friendly city. It was done with a lot of teamwork and effort. We worked hard and had a lot of fun in the meantime. Our city became more important to us as we worked and learned in this huge group effort. We found a new appreciation for the town where we live that we were not aware of before beginning this project.

(This essay was a collective effort written from summaries and verbal comments by the students about the process of this project.)