In our latest unit, we’ve been reading and analyzing the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. This unit had a lot of written milestones, which I feel I’ve improved a lot through.
A screenshot of the Lord of the Flies film
Our driving question for this unit is: What is the role of tribalism in society?
There were four competencies for this unit:
Competency One: Reading and Personal Text Response
Read for enjoyment, to achieve personal goals, and to think, construct, and respond personally, critically, creatively, and reflectively to explore ideas within, between, and beyond texts to construct meaningful personal connection between self, text, and world.
Competency Two: The Writing Process
Transform ideas and information, using appropriate features, forms, and genres, through the writing process to plan, create, assess, and refine original, engaging, and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes, audiences, and messages while using an increasing repertoire of conventions (Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation) and appropriate citations for clarity, effectiveness, and impact.
Competency Three: Literary Identification and Analysis
Evaluate how text structures, literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning, including identifying bias, contradictions and distortions, and impact, considering social, political, historical, and literary contexts.
Competency Four: Understanding Language Construction and Intent
Recognize and understand the role of personal, social, and cultural contexts, values, and perspectives in texts, including culture, gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic factors and how language is used to construct personal, social, and cultural identity, including discerning nuances in the meanings of words, considering social, political, historical, and literary contexts.
Milestone one: Response paragraph
For the first milestone of this unit, we were to reflect on the driving question. Then, we had to write a paragraph explaining the role of tribes in society. I researched this both in class and outside to create this. I used competency three most in this, through my analysis of factors in interpersonal tribes.
Milestone Two: Response Journals
This was by far my favourite milestone. We were to create four “journal entry” style reflections on four different topics. I found this to be a great way to show myself through my writing, as it allowed me to focus on topics of interest. I am very proud of these, and I spent a lot of time and effort on them. I can tell how my writing improved throughout.
First, I wrote an entry about leadership. This asked me to question what makes a good leader. I included present-day leadership examples such as bosses or politicians. I was able to connect these examples back to Lord of the Flies through the way that the boys’ power system reflects the society in Britain.
My second entry was a reflection of violence in society. I did some research on the impact of violence on developing children.
The third entry was my favourite. This one was about power and control, and its part in LOTF and in tribes in general. This was super interesting to me, as I didn’t understand how big a role power plays in society.
Lastly, this entry was to be our theory on what would change in LOTF if it was a different demographic than young boys. I decided to research the differences in this story if it had been adults in the same situation. I found some fascinating articles written by a group of university professors about the change in the age in LOTF. I am proud of this journal.
In milestone two, I used competencies one and two the most through developing my personal writing style and responding to the text.
Milestone Three: Literary Analysis Test
The third milestone was an analysis of quotations from LOTF and was formatted as an in-class test. I studied quite a bit for this, and I felt very well prepared. I analyzed two sections of text from the book, and I felt I understood their importance. This was a stressful assignment, but I learned a lot from it. I used competency three most here, as the main focus of the assignment was to analyze and identify pieces of text and their significance.
Milestone Four: Response Paragraph
In this milestone, much like milestone one, we were to write a paragraph about the use of language within tribes. I spoke on the points of comfort and how language brings well being to tribes. I used competency four most here as I considered the use of language to construct identity.
For the second half of the project, (milestones 5,6, and 7), we were to compare LOTF to a real-world tribe of our choice. I was in a group with Daniel and Jamie, and we researched the People’s Temple. This temple spurred the Jonestown massacre, a mass murder/suicide where members of the group were forced into drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Jim Jones with members of the People’s Temple
Milestone Five: Research Notes
The first step of this part of the project was to conduct research. we researched many different sources to find the most accurate and significant information from the People’s Temple. I worked hard on my research, and these notes are a solid condensed version of it. For this section of the project, I used competencies two, three, and four. First, I used competency two to assess the messages and connections of the tribes. I used competency three to analyze the historical impact of the people’s temple and LOTF, and I used competency four to recognize differing opinions and views in the temple
Milestone Six: Draft Presentation
The next step was to take these notes and turn them into a draft of our final presentation. We didn’t end up presenting this draft, but rather just discussing it with ms maxwell. We did have a nearly finished presentation that we had written ready to present, though. I feel proud of the research I did for this presentation. I connected very well from the novel of LOTF to the People’s Temple. I found that there were quite a lot of common elements within these two tribes. I feel my work and analysis in this presentation were exceeding. Here are my rough notes that we ended up discussing!
Milestone Seven: Presentation of Learning
This was the final presentation of all of our hard work. We filmed our presentation, but it cut out a few minutes in so here is just a segment of it.
https://youtu.be/Srocf_2KnYM
Overall, this presentation is very reflective of our overall learning and work. We split up the sections that we wrote between us so that it felt more balanced throughout. I am proud of the work that I did for this unit overall.