Hey guys, this term in humanities we have been working on a single unit that had many parts to it. That unit was about the Crusades and shifts in Worldview, and the driving question for it was “How has moving from elementary school to secondary school challenged your worldview?” To start off this unit we were added to a project folder in Basecamp (an app that we’ve started using for assigning work). In that project Ms.Willemse shared a file that was basically a lesson plan for the unit, and in that lesson plan there were six milestones that we would have to complete throughout the project. In this post I will be talking about these milestones, what I learned from them, and how they helped me answer the driving question.
Milestone #1: A Big List of Need to Know Questions
The first milestone we had to complete in this unit was a big list of need to know questions, for this we were given a sticky note and we had to write a question that we ‘need to know’ the answer to. You see what I did there, pretty smart right? Anyway, sadly I wasn’t there when we started this milestone but luckily we did this throughout the unit so Ms.Willemse could answer any questions that may have come up. This milestone was actually my favourite just because everyone had to think so much about what they were going to ask so they didn’t sound ignorant when Ms.Willemse read them out and answered them. One of the things I learned from this step was that when Rome “fell” only the western part of Rome fell, the eastern part, the Byzantine Empire, flourished and became the first ‘country’ to be part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Learning this really sparked my interest in Rome as a whole and I was really excited to what lay ahead. One of the ways this step helped me answer the driving question was some of the questions cleared up some confusion on what we had learned and allowed me to show my best work without making a silly mistake.
Milestone #2: A Paragraph on the Changes to Worldview that the Crusades brought either Western Europe or Muslims
The next milestone that we were tasked to complete was a paragraph that talked about the shifts of worldview for either Western Europe of Muslims, I chose to write mine on Western Europe. Now before I get too deep into this let me just say we have learned a lot about the Crusades and how they changed society so I was very much educated when I wrote this. I didn’t really learn much from this step but I had to think over what I had learned over the last few weeks and relay my own opinion onto the page. I had to think about everything a lot more deeply which I believe helped me understand what we had learned even more then I had before. I’m actually really proud of my work for this step and the only thing I old change would be my grammar which, by the way, was horrendous. The way this helped me answer the driving question should be obvious, it helped me identify exactly what a shift in worldview was.
Milestone #3: Three Role Sheets on The Book of the Lion
For the third milestone we had to read a book about the Crusades and complete three role sheets on them. I think it would be helpful to note that we were in groups and each week we had to complete a specific role and share what we had done with our group, my group was Emily.M, Ben, and Anthony. Each role was interesting in it’s own way but my favourite had to be illustrator because I got to draw a beautiful work of art that made everyone in my group question my sanity.
Richard the Lion Heart ordering his men to kill the Muslim captives.The other two roles were connector and investigator and were both as fun as illustrator. While reading the book I realized how bloody awful that time period was (second pun of the post, I’m on a role!). Nobody had any type of moral compass in that time, even the justice system was brutal. They would literally cut off your hand and let you bleed out if were cheap on materials for making money. Although the book was painful to read it gave me a look into what it was like back then and helped me see how much society has changed over time. The way this helped me answer the driving question is that, like I said before, I could really see what the time period was like back then and how much our ideas of what is acceptable has changed overtime.
Milestone #4: A Triple Venn Diagram Showing the Shifts in Worldview from You, Peers, and Experts
By now we had finished learning about the Crusades and the shift in worldview because of them and had moved on to the shift in our own worldview when we came from grade 7-8. We were given a triple Venn diagram, each of the circles had a title: Myself, Peers, and Experts. The task was to fill in each field with three different points of how either my worldview changed, how a peer’s worldview changed, or what experts would say would change. Then we had to find what they all had said that was the same because that’s what Venn diagrams are for. This step was actually really interesting because I got to see all the different worldviews and it really showed ho we all are so different. I think that the way this helped me answer the driving question was it helped me figure out what exactly had changed and maybe what I had forgotten about.
Milestone #5: MindNode Diagram on your Events that Shifted your Worldview
Now, we actually did this milestone before #4 but I wanted to show them in the order they’re on on the sheet. So what we had to do for this was make a mind map with all seven aspects of worldview and off of each aspect we had to have three branches that was one way our worldview had changed. If I was to reflect on my work on this MindNode I think I would have liked to put a little more effort into it. How this helped me answer the driving question was it helped me figure out what exactly I was going to sing about in my song.
Draft 1 page 1
Milestone #6: Multiple Drafts of the Lyrics and Photo Essay
Last but not least, the drafts part of the post. Basically we had to rewrite the lyrics to it’s the end of the world as we know it, record our selves singing it, and making a photo essay to go with it. I have to say I actually think my lyrics were pretty good considering this was my first time writing lyrics ever; the only thing I would change would probably be a couple of the rhymes that were too much of a stretch for how well they rhymed. As for my singing, well let’s just say that I won’t be doing that ever again. One of the hardest parts of recording was finding a good microphone to record with, which I didn’t so the sound quality was pretty bad. Next time I attempt to record a song I’ll try to use a proper mic or just record somewhere that won’t echo as much.
My personal song
The next step after writing and recording our own song was to combine our group’s lyrics into one big song that had all the aspect of worldview represented in it. Our way of accomplishing this worked really well, we would go line by line and see who had the best line for that part. The end result was a great looking song that I don’t think could have been any better. However like before if you were going to look at our actual recording job that was another matter. The hardest part about recording was that we had to all record the chorus together which was really hard because none of us could sing, much less harmonize. It was even harder to hear the music so we were always off time.
Group song page 1
Page 2Time to talk about the photo essay. Now before you watch this let me just say this is not t all my best work, I would 100% redo this whole step if I could. One of the hardest parts of making the essay was none of us had really any pictures of ourselves so there wasn’t anything to actually put in the essay. The photos we did have had nothing to do with the lyrics so it just kind of looks like a bunch of random photos thrown together at the last minute. The one thing that was good about the photo essay though was the photos had great musical timing so it wasn’t super awkward transitions and weird photos in one. I do believe that the video did answer the driving question it showed how we had grow just from grade 7-8 and that there is still room to grow. In other words, our worldviews had evolved into something beautiful that only we can truly appreciate.