Mouses

Hello everybody and welcome back to my blog. Today, we will be talking about our last humanities project of grade 11, entitled “Cat and Maus.” This project was centred around the Holocaust, and the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, which is the only graphic novel ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. Within this project we learned about integration of quotes to substantiate writing, different forms of learning and their effectiveness, and of course, the Holocaust. In this project we even attended the Symposia on the Holocaust hosted at UBC. Let’s get into it.

We started with a free write on why stories are an effective way to learn. This would be the tone that would underly the entire project. A main focus of ours was thinking about why stories are an effective way to learn. You can read my free write on this topic here. Next, we used examples from texts and quotes to substantiate our thinking. We watched a compilation of clips rom a show Band of Brothers, and we received a lecture from our teacher, Ms. Madsen. You can read my substantiated writing here.

Next, we did various learning about the Holocaust, each in a different form. We learned about the history of antisemitism, the severity of the horrors of the holocaust, and how trauma from the Holocaust still affect people today, in the forms of a traditional article, a documentary, fictional adaptations, testimonials, and photos. I’m not going to put all this work here, as I’m assuming most of you won’t want to read it.

Next, we begun reading. We started Maus, the graphic novel about Art Spiegelman telling his father Vladek’s story.