If you somehow haven’t noticed, planet earth isn’t doing so hot right now. Actually it’s getting way too hot and we all have to start doing something to change that. Why not start now? In the first Humanities project of grade 9, we’ll be looking at how people and the environment affect each other, as well as writing a letter to a person in power about a specific problem and solution that would help save our planet. Let’s get started!

We started this project off with a baseline writing pitch in which we stated our opinion on whether or not people are protectors or destroyers of nature.

I actually quite liked my writing pitch, and think it was a great way to start thinking about this project, as a lot of the ideas I had in this pitch, carried throughout the project into my letter. Main ideas like how society is built around this destructive unsustainable system, and some of the problems that we are facing when it comes to protecting our environment (like ease of use and accessibility), were all later explored in other milestones and writing practices.

After the baseline writing pitch, we set out to find a topic for our final letter. I ended up choosing to focus on plastic mask recycling, mainly because my family bought one of these mask recycling boxes for our house, but also because it seemed to be a fairly consequential and noticeable issue that not many people were talking about. I also needed to decide who I was going to send my letter to. After lots of deliberation and consultation with a few peers, I decided to go with Terry Beech, our local M.P. After all that was done, it was time to do research!

Throughout the research on our specific topics, we also practiced different writing techniques that we could eventually use when writing our letter. We did this in the form of commonlit assessments, which are short reading passages, with questions and writing practice to make sure you were paying attention. Each lesson covered a specific way we could improve our writing, like ‘Introducing evidence with context’ as well as ‘Writing Explanations’. The stories also had themes and were all based around how people, and the environment affect each other. These stories were great practice for the letter, as they required me to carefully analyze the texts to figure out things like mood, themes, claims, and many other aspects that can make my writing sound better, and are all things I think I still have a lot to learn about. Even though, the stories and questions were not my strong suit, I think I performed very well and created very insightful work.

One of the most valuable lessons from the commonlit assignments, was using evidence. This was probably the thing that I’ve learned and improved the most over the course of the project. You can look back to the baseline writing project and compare it to my final letter to see what I’m talking about. In the baseline writing pitch, I wrote a lot of explanations without any proper evidence. You can see this most clearly in paragraph 4 in which there was a perfect opportunity to quote some of the research I did about the Peregrine falcon. Contrast that to my letter which sounds a lot more professional and trustworthy because of the evidence I used.

As always in PLP, we did many revisions to make sure that the letter was as good as possible. My letter went through a few revisions, with the most notable changes being the addition of personalization to make the letter sound more personal to me. As well as a lot of small tweaks to make the words flow better, which is a skill that I still sometimes struggle with but slowly getting better at. (Also thanks to Teva for some revisions suggestions, you can see her perspective here👉 Teva’s Journey Through the Forest of Learning). These revisions really helped refine my work into something that I’m quite proud of.

The final thing we learned was how to address a letter properly, which surprisingly was one of the most stressful parts of this project as one small slip of the pen would mean you would have to start all over again. Then we did a quick walk in the rain to the closest  mail dropbox to send our letters.

Now after all this, let’s look back at the driving question, “How do people and the environment affect each other?” As always with a lot of these questions, there are many different answers. My opinion is that the environment and humans, are in a constant cycle. Everything we do affects the environment, and everything the environment does affects us. Global warming is a good example of this. We have created way too much carbon dioxide, affecting the environment and heating up the earth. In turn, the glaciers start melting causing the oceans to rise, therefore affecting us. We have a certain amount of control on the environment. Think about agriculture and farming. Instead of having to go out into the forests to hunt and find our food, we can just grow it right here. However we also still live in the environment, so everything we do to affect the environment will also affect us. Right now it’s like we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Every piece of plastic, and every ounce of waste we produce will most likely come back and affect us in someway. We need to try to change that. Write your own letter about some environmental change you want in your community, because the more advocates for change, the more likely it will happen. Maybe then, we will be able to change our connection with the environment, one letter at a time.

See you next time,

Nolan✉️