This is probably most likely the last humanities blog post of the year, I’ve learned so much throughout this year and this has been one of the most interesting units yet!

We started off this unit with reading a very well known book ‘The Lord Of Flies’, I didn’t know what the book was exactly about but the name sounded familiar. Going into the book I thought it was going to be just the average teen novel. However this book is far more than just a easy teen book, The Lord Of Flies deals with heavy topics such as death, and the idea of civilzation. There is a group of kids stranded on a island, throughout the story each kid slowly goes more insane. This book reminded me of one of my favourite movies, “Apocalypse Now”. Each story involves the idea of insanity and that breaking point that every human has inside of them, also that each story includes two groups of people. 

Our first task of this unit was to make groups, yes the whole class decided on the groups. It was quite a struggle at first though, basically what happened is that our teacher Ms. Maxwell left the room and lead us all in charge. We had to organise ourselves in six equal groups, each groups team members had to vary in strenghts and weaknesses. It was very hard to do this as everyone in the class just wanted to be with their close friends so it was quite hectic. The group I was put in consisted of Robbie, Calum, Sofia, Willa and I. I’m pretty happy with my group as it has a wide variety of skills, Each one of us are very strong with several different skills. At the end of this class we had to write a reflection of what had just happened, in my reflection I explained the overall story of how we organised ourselves and the idea of the groups. We organised ourselves based on picking group leaders, those group leaders would then pick members to join their team and then we would adjust if needed. Overall I think all the groups were actually pretty fair based on what we had coming up.

We also had been told that there would be a points reward system for this unit. Teams could earn points by handing in their homework, on time and staying focused in class, etc. And loose points if you swore in class, or handed in homework late. I wasn’t sure what this points system would lead up to but I actually enjoyed it, it added a more competitive element to class time and also lead to some funny situations. 

This unit had three main parts to it, we had to read Lord Of The Flies, learn about politics and Canadian government, and have a unit ending debate. During the process of ready we would have a test every week, we would end up having a week to read about four to five chapters and then would have a group test on the book. If your group got 100% on your test you would win a large amount of points. When I read it usually goes in to my brain and then straight back out, it’s very hard for me to remember what goes on in books so these book tests helped me with this problem. To help me remember important sections of the book I would highlight key phrases or paragraphs and then write them down. This would help me out when answering the tests, the tests were never too hard but there were a handful of questions that needed a lot of knowledge of the book. Overall I’m very proud of how my team did with these tests, we never got 100% but we still did great.

During this unit we also had to learn a lot about human nature and several concepts about humanity, we would end up having to write two concept journals based on certain topics. These concepts can all be seen in the Lord Of The Flies, below you can read my two concept journals. Reading Lord Of The Flies was a great experience, this book is like no other book I’ve had to read in school. It focuses in on children but at the same time it focuses on big concepts about human nature, these concepts would also flow perfectly into debate topics.

To begin learning about governments we had to research about these six different form of government. Theocracy, Oligarchy, Anarchy, Democracy and Monarchy. We then started looking into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we looked into some of the rules that Canada enforces to their residents. Such had the mobility right where all citizens of Canada are allowed to move through the country freely. This wasn’t my favourite part of this unit but it was still interesting to read about. 

Next up was the debate portion of this unit, we were to be given a topic and then be given a side to this topic. My group was given the main statement as “Let it be resolved that in order to survive you must be savage”. We were to argue against this statement, we were very happy with our side as we could agree with this side of the statement. We created a google doc and filled it with information, below are the points we where to mention in our debate. The tricky part about this debate is that we had no idea what the opposing team was going to say, it was quite exciting as during the debate we were all huddled around each other thinking of what we could say. As I’m generally a quiet person I didn’t speak much in the debate, I really regret this as I could’ve added so much to the conversation and it would’ve been great public speaking practice. I’ve been trying to up my public speaking skills this year as I believe it’s very important at to be able to get up and speak to a group of people. What I had to say in the debate was great I just wish I had taken the time to speak more.

This project was very different to what I am used to, I much prefer projects where we create a video or something else instead of getting up in front of the class and debating over a topic. It’s the first time I’ve done something like this but I can see doing a lot more of this in grade 11. I learned so much in this unit and reflecting back it was probably one of the most different units I’ve ever done in highschool. It really took me out of my comfort zone and I’m very glad with how my team did. Please take a listen to our debate below as it’s very interesting what both teams had to say.