Yo, and welcome back to the blog. We actually just managed to finish our project, and get everyone in the class to make a podcast episode. A mad impressive accomplishment if you ask me. Basically, this project was about making a podcast episode that answered the question, “Who Is The Greatest Canadian?”. My choice for the answer to this question was a woman named Michaëlle Jean, and if you want to find out why, check out my podcast (here is the link to my podcast) . But in order to get the answer to this question and create my final product I had to go through quite a lot first, but every single milestone or stepping stone had a lesson to teach me and here are a few of the most important ones.

I think one of the milestones that I took the most away from, would have to be the research mile stone. And that’s because it taught me so much about the empowered learner competency. Basically the empowered learner competency is all about using technology to enhance and make your work better. And in the case of research having my technology allowed me to do so much more, Whether it was being able to access more on the Internet, or being able simply search a word that I didn’t understand. But there were also benefits for my notes, I was able to bold words, link things, create MLA citations, and add images to enhance my notes. All of this was super helpful to me as it gave me all the info I needed to organize and create my script, but also being able to see Michaëlle Jean in both video and picture actually really helped me get a better understanding of her as a person, and how I wanted to represent her in my episode.

The second lesson that had a big learning for me was one of our first steppingstones, historical significance. In the steppingstone we were tasked with picking a person and rating them on several different scales to determine if they were historically significant. There are basically five criteria that go into establishing historical significance and they are profundity, quantity importance, durability, and relevance. Pretty much if you look critically at any event or person with those five criteria in mind you can determine whether or not they were historically significant. And since one of our main core competencies was establishing historical significance, I figured that this really was the best example of me learning this competency. I was able to assess my greatest Canadian on this chart with such ease, that I was able to determine that she was historically significant, and then I could create my podcast about her.

I think the final big example of my learning in this project was our steppingstone, textbook page readings. And that’s because looking at them showed how much we could comprehend texts. As you may have guessed comprehending text is a core competency in this project, it’s a competency about understanding what texts are talking about, using them to relate back to other things, and understanding how text features enhance texts. Obviously in the steppingstone we had to look at a lot of texts, you have to read them try to understand what they were saying, relate them back to our own project, and other things we learned about, and use the features like images and bolded words to better understand what the text was trying to say. However I think the text that I best comprehended was the Miss G project text. For me the use of the image showing the girls who had started the Miss G project, really helped me understand why they were doing that they were doing. They were supporting Other women like themselves, and honestly really just showed me how friendship and a little bit of caring can go such a long way, and for them it went all the way to the creation of their project.


Theme is one of the most important parts in comprehension of texts.

I think my real last important thing I took away from this whole project was the idea of theme. I think it’s really interesting to me how I’ve probably been subtly been analyzing theme for most of my life, but I never really was actively thinking about it. I also think the idea of theme is really interesting, as it’s sort of an unsaid and unspoken meaning behind what seems to be often quite surface level stuff. I know it’s as I go on throughout this year and into grade 11 and 12 I’ll be doing a lot more analyzing of theme in my English courses, but I also wanna get better at it so as I get older I can better understand the novels I read, and movies I watch. Maybe as I eventually rewatch the films from my childhood I can also better understand what they were trying to teach me then. I think understanding theme is one of the best ways to comprehend texts and with that being a core competency for grade 10 English, I know i’ll be getting better at analyzing theme in every project.

Yo thank you so much tuning into this blog post today, I really hope you enjoyed it, and my podcast episode as well. 

Adios,

Holly : )