“The waters of the English Channel and the winds of the Normandy coast have erased the footprints these men left on Juno Beach. But not even the great tides of time can wash away the deep impressions they have made in our national memory, and the chronicle of the free world.”
– Prime Minister Paul Martin on the 60th anniversary of D-Day
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Welcome! In this project we learned about World War II and the importance of preserving war memorials. The final product for this project was a persuasive essay arguing the need to preserve the Juno Beach Centre in Normandy, France. Our driving question was:
Why is it so important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre?
My final essay answers this very question:
We started this project by learning about WWII from a series of slides and lectures from Ms. Madsen. I actually found this extremely challenging as I find it very difficult to understand and take in the information being taught and take notes at the same time. Thankfully my wonderful friend Ariane was able to provide me with notes so I could focus on learning the content in the moment, so a huge thank you to Ariane for that! 🪿
Keystone 1 was to choose what we thought were the three most important reasons why WWII was significant, based off of the criteria for a historically significant event. This keystone enabled me to demonstrate my ability to exceed at the curricular competency “Questioning: I can share ideas, ask questions, and research information from a variety of sources.“ The criteria for a historically significant event is as follows:
- People at the time thought it was important
- It affected a lot of people
- It affected people deeply
- It affected people for a long time
- It still affects attitudes or beliefs today
- It led to other important events
Read my arguments for why WWII was significant by clicking the card below:
For Keystone 2, we learned about rhetoric (the techniques writers use to convince an audience). We then did a rhetorical analysis on the text “thanks for not killing my son.” Read my analysis below:
The second part of this Keystone was to plan for my persuasive essay. Both of these parts of the assignment allowed me to demonstrate my understanding of rhetoric and the competency “Analyzing: I can identify, analyze, and represent supportable conclusions having evaluated relevance, authenticity, and bias from a variety of sources.” Check out my planning document below:
Keystone 3 was the writing process. For this Keystone I submitted a thesis, a brainstorm, 3 drafts and feedback from peers on each draft. I also gave a lot of feedback to my classmates. This keystone gave me the opportunity to use the competency “Communicating: I can express and reflect for communication by determining appropriate and effective forms for purpose, audience, and message.”
My thesis:
Given current events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, preservation of the Juno Beach Centre is especially important to educate people about the human cost of war and the need for countries to continue to cooperate to protect democratic freedom.
My Brainstorm:
Check out my drafts and the feedback I received on them below:
I kept track of all my assignments, notes, resources, drafts, etc. in a Craft document, which I think is a great example of my organizational skills. Check it out below:
I also took the opportunity to “flex” my learning by working with a small group to curate everyone’s essays and put them together in a nice design to be shared with the world. It took some problem solving to figure out the best way to work together to curate everything, and required me to use my leadership and organization skills. In doing this, we were able to create an nice looking document with everyone’s essays and it’s looking great! It’s not available for the public to view yet, but I’ll update this post when it is!
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Overall, I learned a lot in this project about WWII and the importance of remembering it. I spent a lot of time writing, but I am very proud of my final essay (an it’s name “footprints in the sand, which I got from the quote at the top of this post). If you didn’t read my essay at the top of this post, make sure to read it now:
Thanks for reading!