Hey guys it’s Ben and since the start of the new year my class has been working on re-writing a song. That song was “Its The End Of The World As We Know It” by R.E.M. We were to rewrite the lyrics so it showed how our worldview changed from the transition from grade 7 to grade 8

Above is a link to my final draft of my song. As we were supposed to show how the grade 8 transition changed our worldview my lyrics were all about things that I was afraid of, excited for, and stuff I do right now in school. Below is a slideshow of my lyrics.

I wasn’t just given the lyrics of the original song and told to make a new song with the same beat though. We had little stepping stones and 6 major milestones to help us get the best possible final product which was out song. The first major milestone was a list of  “Need to Know” questions. This helped clear up any confusion and allowed the class to understand fully what we were doing. The second milestone we did was a paragraph on how the Crusades shifted the worldview of either the Western Europeans or the Muslims. This mile stone showed how a major event in a timeline, such as a major change, can impact the society you live in.

While we where working on the paragraph we were reading a book called  the “Book Of The Lion”. It was all about the journey of a boy who was sent to the Crusades after his master was murdered for fraud. We were put into groups and given a role, investigator, connecter, and illustrator. The connecter role of these sheets made me see how past events are connected and still influence today’s world. The fourth key milestone was a Triple Venn Diagram showing the shifts of worldview form a change in school from my point of view, my classmates, and experts who  study this. This milestone let me write down any ideas for what I wanted to write into the sing and it gave me new ideas from the experts and my peers point of view. This milestone led right into the next milestone. A MindNode on my own shifts of worldview since the start of grade 8. Like the Venn Diagram, this let me write down ideas I had for the song but also forcing me to have three ideas for every aspect of worldview (values, beliefs, geography, economy, society, time, knowledge).

After that all that was left was to actually write the song. I had three drafts of lyrics and sang the song about 4 times. Once I had finished the final draft of my song I was glad I didn’t need to sing anymore. But wait! Ms. Willemse gave us a group and we were tasked with combining our songs into a supersonic with the best lyrics of each song for every line. This would go over a photo essay of pictures of my group from grade 7 to grade 8. We each had to sing one verse. My group, Grace, Anthony, and Emily, spent two classes on the lyrics. After we were finished with singing the song we were to show the song to a few grade 11’s in PLP and they would give us feedback. The feedback we received was to increase the volume of our voices so that they could actually hear us😂. We were also told that some of the pictures in the photo essay we shown way too long. Our solutions for this was to re-sing the verses in a quieter room so that we were heard better. We then went back home to get more pictures so that they weren’t so elongated to fit the length of the song.

This project really showed me how much the transition to grade 8 changed my worldview. If I were to do this project again I would focus on spending more time on the lyrics so that they matched the syllables and best of the real song. I really learned how one change or event can completely changed the world you live in, and how you see that world. That’s it for now than, you for reading and I will see you all soon!