Context title the project is called: Mightier then the Sword ✍️ and there’s a pen, hence title.

 

Alrighty, here we are again, first blog post of the year. Another great year of reflections ahead. Yay! Now, where to start… How about the beginning? This was a Humanities Project and a short one at that, with the learning and final product all being done in just over two weeks. So, as always, it’s DRIVING QUESTION TIME!!!! YEAH!!! “How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners?” So there’s the question, which will be answered at the bottom of the post.

So you’re all probably wondering (or not) what we did. Well, dear readers, as this was an English project, we worked on building formal writing skills and rhetorical analysis in writing. If you’re confused about rhetorical analysis, you can go read another post from last year. [Link] Now, the actual final product was a piece of advice written to the PLP Grade 8s.

Now, on with the project. The very first thing we did was make a haiku and write a short 3-sentence paragraph about leadership. This was a nice preview/introduction to the project. It was also a nice, easy way to ease back into the school year.

 

Before we moved on to the next big thing, we learned about Pre-Writing. What is pre-writing? It is using techniques to help you come up with ideas, such as free writing ideas down, mind maps, notes, etc. My preferred method is brainstorming on a handheld whiteboard. For some reason, this works better for me than normal brainstorming, maybe because it’s more fun with a whiteboard marker. Using the pre-writing technique, we started a writing journal, and the first entry in it was how the pre-writing helped us.

Using the whiteboard, I came up with great ideas on how we can give advice to grade 8s, such as not being mean to them and being friendly when talking to them, which we had to do before writing.

The next big thing we did was watch a video from grade 9s on what they felt grade 8 was. We were then tasked with answering these two questions: What is it like to be in grade 8? What is it like to be new to PLP? I chose to answer them in audio format because I felt it was a more effective way of getting my ideas out.

Moving onto a piece of academic writing we did utilizing the previous skills learned like pre-writing and rhetorical analysis, we were to craft a formal paragraph on why PLP was a good choice for students. I chose to do mine on the aspect of hands-on learning because I have found it to be more effective for me than traditional learning.

 

Why is PLP a Good Choice for Students 

 

This paragraph took a while, and I got a couple of rounds of feedback on it, mainly for grammar and spelling, but also word choice, sentence structure, etc. My goal for the next time we make something like this is to improve my grammar and spelling before handing it in.

Moving on to the final product, which is our piece of advice to grade 8s. I made mine on ‘quality of life tips.’ Simple things that make life in PLP 5-10% easier (maybe). You can read below ⬇️

So mine’s pretty good; it’s got good tips, is fun with the little brackets and stuff, and overall, I tried to keep it light and fun without sugarcoating too much. I found this to be an effective way of getting my point across while still making it interesting for a grade 8 to read. I went through lots of revision; I even had an incomplete sentence. So again, just going over my work, reading it, and trying to spot word errors.

So now, the answer to the driving question, which in case you forgot: “How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners?” Using written text, appropriate vocabulary, and the right tone, we can give advice and help grade 8s with things that we struggled with.

Egg Noodle=Carter

Thanks for reading.