Driving Question: How did WW1 impact Canada’s Identity?

The Introduction 

Our class was introduced to the topic of WW1 before spring break, we began the topic by asking different questions about the war, we had sheets on all of the desks in the classroom and walked around looking at them and writing questions on sticky notes. I did not know anything about world war one, in fact I didn’t know anything about any wars at all so all of this information was completely new to me.

Along with just thinking about WW1, we also watched videos from a channel called “The Great War” where we took notes, these videos were about 8 minutes long but they gave us so much information.

 Then spring break came along and Ms. Maxwell assigned us a book report to do over the break, and we had a choice between 3 WW1 themed books. They were also each different levels, War Horse was the easiest, Private Peaceful was medium and Generals Die In Bed was the hardest.I chose to read War Horse and I’m really glad I did, it’s a great story and it didn’t feel like a school reading and more like just a book that I would choose to read. Once we finished the book we had to create a book report, and we also had different choices for how we wanted to present our learning. 

Our choices were to either make a:

1. Book Soundtrack 
2. Photo Essay 
3. Poetry 
4. Draw a Scene 
5. Movie Trailer 

I decided to create a photo essay, and because I wanted my report to be very authentic, I took detailed notes as I read so I could know the book as well as possible.

Once I finished reading War Horse I went through my notes and highlighted the parts of the books that stood out the most to me, and there ended up being quite a few but I chose a scene in the beginning and the middle.

 

Once we returned from spring break, our class took a trip to Ottawa to take part in the Encounters with Canada Vimy Ridge week, which happened to be what we were learning out in humanities. The week basically consisted of a couple visits to historical locations per day and time spent in the encounters building doing activities but you can learn more about the trip in the blog post link above. 

 

The Project

Once we returned from Ottawa we were introduced to our project to answer our driving question. We were to create a comic book as a class to show the information about WW1 in an engaging and entertaining way. 

We began to explore our topic choices which included topics from artillery to the nursing sisters and more. 

My first choice was The Vimy Ridge Battle, and that’s exactly what I ended up with. Maggie and I were both working on the same topic meaning that she focused on the beginning of the battle and I worked on the end. 

The next step that we had to complete was researching our topic through books and websites. After a couple days of research and of course knowledge from my trip to Ottawa we began to put together our comic. Most of the media that I used in my comic weren’t too hard to find because Vimy Ridge is a very significant battle in Canadian history.

We had a couple of critiques before it was time to present to the kids at Cove Cliff Elementary School. We each presented to 3 different groups of kids and I felt really confident while presenting and that I knew my topic well enough to answer their questions. I was also glad to hear that at least 2 people from each group I talked to were going to join PLP in the future. 

To end this part of our Canadian history unit we read a 6 chapter graphic novel called Shattered Ground. The novel is about a young boy who accidentally knocks over a couple of boxes in his attic revealing his grandfathers journal from world war 1. He begins to read and he learns all about what life was like for his grandfather and all of the tradgeties he had to face. This novel was really educational and it also had real photos in embedded throughout the pages.

 

My Knowledge Now

As I said at the beginning of this post, I didn’t know anything about any of the world wars and now after travelling to Canada’s capital, reading and researching, I have more information that I can handle. This entire unit was quite interesting to me and I feel like I have a better understanding of what it would’ve been like to be fighting on the battle feild or working in a factory. I know what the battlefields looked like and how violent and gruesome the battles really were. I know why so many country’s got involved in one war, but most of all I know why it is so important to remember it all.