Hello and welcome back to another blog post! It’s been quite some time. Over summer break, I had a lot of fun. I went camping, boating, had lots of picnics and hung out with my friends, played a lot of volleyball and ate a lot of junk food. But now, we are back in school. Well, we have been for the past three months. In that time, we have been working on a project in Humanities. The project has been about the BC gold rushes and the people who migrated from around the world to come here. Through out this project I have learned so much. In this post, you will be hearing about the project path that we took and my reflection on this project.

Driving Question: 

How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?

Answer: 

The discovery of gold shaped our province because of 3 main reasons – 

1. The influx of people brought new cultures, religions, and created a diverse society that we still see today
2. The conflicts between the white settlers and Indigenous peoples can still be felt today as we try to come to terms with the horrors that happened
3. It provided opportunities for people and boosted the economy of BC which in the end, helped it become a province as it had so many resources to give

To start off this project, we explored our learning targets. I felt like this was a very good way to start off the project as it set the stage for what was to come. I remember first reading it and getting super excited because I saw that we were going to be writing a creative short story. An activity we did start with was a prompt. The prompt was “If you could come back as anything (person, animal, object), what would it be and why?”. I really liked this because it let me start getting my brain juices flowing with creative writing. It also would be a good marker for what I needed to improve on in my writing. I can now compare my final product to my writing in this prompt and, I feel, see a major improvement. Below you can see what I wrote ⬇️ 

Next up, we started out NTK (need to knows). We do this in every project so that we get an understanding of what topic information we need to research in order to have accurate and completed knowledge of the subject. For us, it was research the BC gold rushes, more specifically the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo gold rushes. By having everyone in the class contribute to the NTK’s, it gave me some new questions that I hadn’t thought of by myself and in the end, definitely helped my further my understanding as I had more to research and learn about. Below, you can see the NTK that I thought were the most important to understanding the BC gold rush ⬇️ 

After coming up with the NTK’s, we started our research. By doing our own research, it showed in our final product how thorough it was. If you didn’t have good research, you wouldn’t understand the topic. If you didn’t understand the topic, you wouldn’t have historically accurate details in your story. Having good research was the foundation for this project. Below you can see my general notes on the gold rushes ⬇️ 

We then did more individualized research on two major events that happened in the BC gold rush. First, the Cariboo gold rush. You can check out what I did for that ⬇️ 

Then we did the Fraser Canyon gold rush. You can check out what I did for that below ⬇️ 

These were really important because while having a general knowledge of who was involved, what happened, how the geography of BC impacted the gold rush, being able to focus on a learning point helped me personally be able to visualize what was happening. 

For our first Keystone, we had to write a paragraph demonstrating our understanding of the gold rush and how the people changed the course of it. This was a good point in the project to check our understanding and to reflect on what we had learned so far. By writing this paragraph, I could concisely put into words what I had learned. It not only helped me bring my thoughts together, but I feel like all of my time spent researching paid when I wrote it. Below, you can read my paragraph along with my rough drafts, cause and consequence sheet, and my overall thought process for creating my Keystone 1 ⬇️ 

After Keystone 1, came Keystone 2. Keystone 2 was when we started bringing everything together. We had to com up with a character card. It was when we had to start thinking about specializing in a topic that we wanted to write about. In the end, I decided I wanted to focus of women’s role in mining. Specifically, Cathrine Schubert who was the first female miner in the BC gold rushes. In order to make this character card, we had to do specific research on our character. You can check out my character card below ⬇️ 

Finally, we had Keystone 3. It was where we wrote out the story structure for our final product. We did the three act story structure. I put a lot of time, effort, and thought into mine because in the end, it was the back bones for my story. This was one of the ways that I showed in my project the knowledge that I had learned from all of my research. You can check out my first planning document below ⬇️ 

The other planning document that we had was a checklist. It was to make sure that we had hit all of the baseline expectations in our story. I think that by having this, I was able to see what I was missing and add it in. You can check out my check list below ⬇️ 

Then, once we got our planning documents approved and looked at, we went on to writing our story. I decided I wanted to write mine in the perspective of a journal. In the end, I decided to write a new article about her and include some of her “journal” in it. If I’m being honest, I feel like we didn’t get enough time to write the story. I know that I could have done a lot better given maybe two more days and less stress. However, in the end I am still proud of my work. You can check out my final story by clicking the button below ⬇️ 

 

When it comes down to it, I learned so much. I learned about who and where people were involved in the BC gold rush. I learned why people came from around the gold rush. Where they came from (did you know that some people came from as far away as Australia to the BC gold rush?). I learned more specifically about Cathrine Schubert and the way that she influenced generations of women miners to come. This post has been a good way for me to reflect of this project. Thanks for reading 🙂

Best wishes,

-Dana

P.S. In my learning plan that I made at the beginning of the year, I said that one of my goals was to be able to be able to see a little piece of me in every project. So, in every blog post I’m going to say where I put a piece of me into the project. For this one, I wrote my story in the perspective of a journal because I love journalling and it helped my unwind at the end of the day.