This unit was a long, difficult, multi layered unit. There were three main topics that all combined to make one big project. Those three topics were learning about the structure of and how to debate, reading the book Lord of the Flies and we learned about the worlds political systems, with a heavier focus on Canada’s system. This was a really cool idea to teach because when we were leaning about the politics and the debate techniques, we could relate the topics back to what we were reading about the island, and the life on it.

So, I’ll start where we did, with Lord of the Flies. We read the book. While we were reading we had to do a couple of activities to make sure that we understood the deep symbolism behind everything in this book. It may just seem like the kids were trapped on an island, and forced to survive, but it’s more than that. Each stranded youth represented a few things, and everything they did also did this. We did three sheets, one was a chart to talk about what we believed each character represents, one to express our opinions about what ideas fit each character, and one to compare objects to symbols.

Another part of what we did to do with LOTF was our concept journals. As soon as we started reading we did an activity in class where each table had a piece of paper with a topic on the top. With coloured pens we rotated writing ideas that fit into that topic. We used things from our current unit, our previous units, and current or historical events. These are photos of all of our topic brainstorms.

We took those ideas to make what we called concept journals. These were page long reflections that connected the topics with brainstorm ideas. These were made one at a time over three weeks, so I made three total. One on uprising, one on the Vancouver riots, and one on power and authority.

And, the most constant part of LOTF was our own islands. We were asked to make teams. We were left in a room, and told to make groups. In my opinion this process did not work. We failed. Why? Because was have too many personalities in this class. Too many personalities who think that they NEED to step up as leaders, even if that means just yelling. That was my problem, the people who wanted to step up and lead were drowned out by other people just yelling very similar things at the top of their lungs. I am a culprit too, at one point I tried to turn it around and take a central leadership role, but even then I was yelled over by one individual. This was not normal human behavior, normally one or two people would step up to lead but in this situation everyone wanted to be a leader, and instead of letting someone else lead our class decided to try and out-lead the other leaders. The only good part was how it was broken up. After all of the yelling, messing around and generally doing nothing, a leader was chose for a group, and then as a class it was decided who would benefit that leader by making a mosaic of talents. That was a small victory in a madhouse of yelling and problems that I had to leave because of the lack of respect for leadership and human nature. Yelling at each other louder and louder doesn’t work. But, in the end I wound up in a group with Ryan, Izzy and Will. And, all of the teams were an island that was competing using a points system. We did not win. (We were the piggy’s)

So, that was LOTF, we learned about island survival, symbolism, and politics. That’s what’s next. Politics. We started by researching a bunch of kinds of political systems, my group did Oligarchy, when I group of people work as a team of wealthy advisors to one head. This is seen in Russia.

This was just an activity to learn a little bit how there are different options about how the worlds politicians run their countries. But, what we really needed to know was how Canada works. So, we did an activity called “Who’s Who?” This was a good activity to help us learn some of the names of the many many people who tell us how to live our lives, this isn’t the graphic we made.

Yes, I did miss the Sovereign, the Queen. Good job Adam.

So far this unit that I am explains sound huge, and it is. I mean, look at the size of the post and I haven’t even gotten to the debate yet. Yep. Debate. We needed to debate, but, before we did we needed to learn how. First we watched a video that taught us the “7 Keys to be a Great Speaker.”

We now knew how to talk to people, perfect. Now we had to put that to the test. We we’re put agaings the team of Sydney, Sam, Spencer, and Michael to debate about ‘Be it Resolved that Power Leads to Corruption.’ My team was arguing for this. Here is a photo of what it looked like when we set up the debate, he and a a small table where the host would sit, two standing desks. One for each team, and a semi circle of chairs for the audience.

Her is what it looked like when we were ‘debating,’ we staged a photo of the two teams in an pic stare down with Ms. Maxwell as the host, not her normal job.

So, what did they think of our debate? Well, they wrote it down. It’s a little hard to read because when we were taking Ms. Maxwell and Ms. Willemse were drawing on it, trying to communicate without being disruptive.

Big unit, right? Yep. This was probably the largest unit that we have done in a while. This is mostly because of how we did so many things all under the topic of LOTF. I think that this was a very long, grueling unit. But we learned a lot, I learned about everything from how the different political systems work, all the way to how to debate. It was a lots but in the end, very productive and memorable.