Hello, so recently we just completed a Humanities project called Save Juno Beach, this project was all about WWII. The reason it’s called Save Juno Beach is because a few years ago there was a proposed condo development on Juno Beach that threated the center, The Juno Beach Centre was established to honour the Canadians who died on Juno Beach. As you can imagine the idea of building condos and impeding access to the center while doing it, was wildly inappropriate to a lot of Canadians. The final product for this project was a Multi Paragraph Composition for reasons to preserve the Juno Beach Centre. The Driving Question for this project was: Why is it so important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre? With all that in mind, lets explore the project. 

 

To start this project we learned all about WWII from the start to the end, and everything in between. More specifically however we focused our efforts on Canadian involvement in WWII such as: The Battle of the Atlantic, D-Day, The Liberation of the Netherlands. We also didn’t just focus on the battles, we also looked at the Canadian Homefront and war time production. Such as the Hawker Hurricane fighters needed by the British, or the many other assorted materials, needed for the war effort. 

Our first assignment was to analyze The Battle of the Atlantic. The Battle of the Atlantic was a Naval campaign which lasted from the start of WWII, 1939, to the end, 1945 it was the most intricate naval battle in history. German U-Boats, submarines, were tasked with sinking allied supply convoys crossing the Atlantic to the British. Using the PEE formula which stands for Point, Evidence, Explanation. We had to give evidence on why the Battle of the Atlantic was important, then give an explanation. 

Next we moved onto to Keystone 1, Keystone 1 was all about Historical Significance. We had to write about 3 Canadian based WWII events, things like D-Day, The Battle of the Atlantic etc, and state why they were historically significant for Canada. I chose D-Day, The Battle of the Atlantic, and The Canadian Homefront. 

Keystone 1

I found this keystone to be relatively easy as I enjoy history, and I understand the purpose of Historical Significance. I enjoyed learning about people like Elsie MacGill, what she did for Canada and her whole story is incredible. At this point in the project I was really enjoying what were doing, and was super engaged in topic. This is great for me as when I’m engaged in the topic I do better and put more effort in, as I enjoy writing and learning about it. 

For Keystone 2 we first had to learn about Rhetorical Analysis, which is analyzing pieces of writing using a certain lense, this means you consider what tactics the writer is implementing such as the audience the writing too, the topic, the context behind the writing, and the purpose of the writing. I really like rhetorical analysis, as it makes sense as to why you would use it, also you can see it a lot when you look for it. So the assignment part of Keystone 2 was to fill out a chart on how we were going to use rhetorical analysis, for our paragraphs. 

Rhetorical Analysis

 

I did have to revise this keystone once as I was missing some crucial details you can see my first draft below ⬇️. 

Rhetorical Analysis Version 1

So as you can see by the revisions written on it by my teacher, I needed to expand on some of my ideas. To improve this I bulit on her feedback and revised to the level you first saw above.

So on to Keystone 3, for Keystone 3 we started building our composition we started with a topic sentence, then from there we were starting to create our composition, which is the final product for our project, we were tasked with doing multiple drafts and rounds of peer critique. My topic sentence was: “The preservation of the Juno Beach Center is a reminder of the more free and inclusive world we live in thanks to the defeat of facsim in World War II.” For my composition I made a first draft and then asked Dana to give me some feedback.  

So here is all the feedback she gave me. 

So my first draft was not very good, as it was a first draft, and as you can see Dana had some great feedback. So taking it all I revised for the first time. And here is what it looks like now. 

So after the second draft I got feedback from Fraser. And he also gave me some good feedback here is what he said. 

So here is what mine looked like after 2 rounds of revision.

So I decided to go and get a 3rd round of revision mainly for punctuation checks, etc. This time I asked Makenna to give me feedback and here is what she said. 

So after three rounds of revisions here is what my final draft looks like. 

So after all that revision I learned how to properly expand my Ideas into a clear and comprehensive piece of writing, using the rhetorical analysis. 

Ok now onto the answer to the Driving Quesiton. As a reminder the Driving Quesiton for this project was: Why is it so important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre? I is important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre for a multitude of reasons. The first being that it honours the brave Canadian soldiers who died on D-Day, and preserves the memories. Two It serves as a reminder of the slippery slope that is Authoritarianism rule, and Intolerance, and what it can lead too. So overall its important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre so that we can remember and not forget. 

Thanks for reading! 

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