Canadian Government

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Hey guys and welcome back to my blog. I haven’t done a post in a while due to summer break but now im back to school. Today’s topic is the structure of the Canadian government and election. But before I get into my opinion I will explain the student vote at our school. My PLP class ran our school’s student vote. We ran it in the morning, during first block, and lunch. My job was to go to different classes and bring them down to the library to vote. After school the people in my class who were clerks counted the ballots. Here are the results:

NDP got 1,216 votes, Liberal got 1,069 votes, Conservative got 541 votes, Green got 506 votes, and PPC got 216 votes.

The results of the actual election in our area is that the liberal candidate won.

The question for this post is; how is the Canadian government and election structures? To answer the first part of this question I created a puppet show, however I will be typing the second part.

How the Canadian Government is structured:

“Democratic Principles.” YouTube, 3 Sept. 2019, https://youtu.be/rhtEuH2G6bg.

“Government and Democracy.” YouTube, 22 Sept. 2015, https://youtu.be/JgBBfM8SYPA.

“The Levels of Government.” YouTube, 22 Sept. 2015, https://youtu.be/7C8uDuhLqvg.

The way the election is structured:

“Introduction to Politics and Political Parties.” YouTube, 9 Sept. 2021, https://youtu.be/5-s84atcouE.

“CIVIX Explains: Elected Representatives.” YouTube, 2 Mar. 2020, https://youtu.be/y_vmG4Thld4.

There are parties, these parties are made up of people with common goals and views. One person from each party will run in their local area and if elected will represent that area. There win then adds to their leader, the party with the most local area wins gets their leader elected prime minister.

In my opinion I realized that I understand the structure of the government however I dislike the structure of the election. I find it difficult to decided who to vote for due to the fact that you can only vote for someone running in your area and cannot control who becomes prime minister. An example of this is that in my area the candidate my parents want to vote for is apart of the liberal party, however they do not want Trudeau to be re-elected. I was informed by one of my classmates (Fraser) that in New Zealand you can vote for both your local area and who you would like to see as prime minister.

I hope this post informed you about the government, election, and my opinion.

Peace ✌️

 

Women’s Roles in the 50’s

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How did Canadian life develop after WWII? With this current project I have found that the topic that has jumped out to me is gender roles in the 50’s, more specifically the roles of women. Women’s roles changed when soldiers returned home which effected Canadian lifestyle. I have found many examples that support this idea and may make you look at this topic differently. 

Women’s roles in the 50’s were focused around the household. They would clean, cook and take care of the kids. Women in the 50’s were expected to fit the description of a perfect wife. When we watched “Leave it to Beaver” in class I noticed that the father referred to the mother as a dish washer. I was able to connect this to the “Back in Time for Dinner” episode we watched when Tristan commented on how she had to do all the work while her husband relaxed. Beauty standards also went up after Cinderella was released. 

Women had finally gained independence during WWII with all the men going to war and jobs needing to be filled. But once the war ended they went back to being seen as a wife and nothing more. Most women were told to quit their jobs and find a husband. These job positions were then filled by the men coming home from war. Women lost their independence and started having to depend on their husbands. 

With all these women marrying and starting families there was the baby boom. Suburban life emerged and the ideal family was set. The husband would go to work and the wife would be expected to raise the children. Boys would be raised knowing they will get a job and family one day while girls were taught how to be a mother. Girls would help their mother clean and cook and if they went to school they would take a home economics class. These home economics classes would teach them how to take care of a home when they grow up. This caused many girls to only dream of becoming a mother rather than an astronaut or to work in a business. 

In conclusion I think that women had worked so hard to get more respect and then were set back to square one in the 50’s. Their roles did indeed change when soldiers came home and it still leaves behind an impact today on Canadian lifestyle.

Life in Nature

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Hello and welcome back to my blog. In todays post I will be reflecting on our second to last PLP 10 project. This project is going to tie into our end of year exhibition. For the past 5 weeks we have been learning about post WWII times and how they affected canadian lives. For this project we teamed up with Deep Cove Heritage Society to help build there archives. In each of our podcast episodes we interviewed someone who has been associated with the cove for a while and listened to their stories. I was able to schedule an interview with Wendy Bullen Stephenson, she grew up in the cove and now has a studio there. In my podcast episode I compared some of her experiences with mine and how growing up in the cove has changed over time.

I created a presentation during this project that represent the change in nature.

Now looking back at the project I like to reflect on the competencies, which one shows my best work and which one I could’ve improved on.

This competency is about continuity and change. How are lives and conditions alike over time and how they have changed. I feel like I was able to really represent this competency with my podcast episode. I compared and looked at the changed and similarities between my interviewee’s experiences and mine.
This competency is about Discussing, listening, and speaking. How have I respectfully exchanged diverse ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking using appropriate speaking and listening skills for the context and purpose? I think that I showed the shared understanding with my podcast episode but I could have extended my learning by connecting my podcast to current and past events.

In class we wrote a reflective essay on what we have learned through this project, more specifically what stood out to us. I decided to write about the roles of 1950’s women. You can read it here.

 

I would also like to give a shoutout to my class mates, Noah and Anthony. They did an interview with Wendy before I did mine and I got some information from it to form my questions for my podcast. Big thanks to them and make sure to check out their podcasts.

Anthony’s podcast

Noah’s podcast

In conclusion I really enjoyed this project and learning about the 50’s. I am excited to see how our exhibition will turn out. Stay tuned for my exhibition post.

Walt’s Light

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Hello and welcome back to my blog. As you may have noticed I haven’t posted much, this is due to not have PLP for an entire quarter. But now I’m back and this first post is about one of my favourite topics. Disney. To understand what we talked about you need to know a bit about our current project. We are learning about post WWII leading to now. We are also working with the Deep Cove Heritage Society to help build up their archives by interviewing people who have lived in the cove the majority of their lives and creating a podcast episode. With studying post WWII we are mainly looming at the 50’s when a certain happiest place on earth was built. 

During Friday’s class we did a couple things. We showcased our school year as a ride or roller coaster, we learned about the building of Disneyland and of Disney productions, we then split into groups and compared certain rides from the 50’s till now. And finally we watched the trailer for Disney opening back up this year. 

While watching this I noticed that some people who were interviewed mentioned how Walt’s light was still on and I decided that in this post I will tell you all of my favourite Disney story.

In Disneyland, above the fire hall building in Main Street is an apartment, Walt and his family would live there from time to time. Whenever he was staying at the apartment he would turn on the lamp at the window to let the people visiting the park know he’s there. When he died, the cast members turned it off. The next morning, the cast members went to work to find the lamp on. The lamp was turned on by itself mysteriously. The lamp never turned off and never went out. It is believed that Walt’s spirit is connected to this lamp.

I don’t know what it is about this story but it gives me so much joy whenever I walk past it when I travel to Disneyland. I hope you enjoyed this post and stay tuned for more.

Adaptions are all around us

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Welcome back to another blog post, today’s post is going to be a reflection on our third week of our Romeo and Juliet project. This week we were watching the 1968 and 1996 movie versions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I learnt quite a lot about adaptions and how the directors of these films adapted the movies to fit their filming style, the time it was filmed, and the time they wanted to capture. For example the 1968 version has a renaissance style to it rather than what the 60s were like, whereas the 1996 version wanted to capture the 90s.

There are many different movies or tv show adaptions, some are adaptions of a book or play, and others are adaptions of other movies or tv shows. Adaptions also apply to our daily lives. We created our second co hosted podcast this week and the focus was adaptions, we had to include our theme of our podcasts and possibly mention Shakespeare or Romeo and Juliet. My co-hosts Thomas and Julia mainly stuck to their podcast themes of ski and mental health, whereas I included more of Romeo and Juliet and reflected back on the first co-hosted podcast.

 

I have learnt this week that there are so many adaptions in life whether it’s in productions, manufacturing, or worldviews; everything keeps adapting. I also learned that sometimes an original does better than an adaption but an adaption can sometimes be better than an original.

Romeo and Juliet

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Hello and welcome back to another blog post. This will be my last post for this quarter as I will be moving on to quarter 3 starting Monday. This post is about our latest project in PLP 10 and it’s all about Shakespeare. Now at the start of this project I thought “great another Shakespeare project” but in the end this project was by far one of my favourites. The driving question to this project was changed from “how do we modernize Romeo and Juliet to appeal to a younger audience?” To “how can we present a live audio story that makes an audience appreciate the relevance of Shakespeare?” The reason of the change is that we couldn’t create a good enough adaption of the entire play. So we just adapter certain parts in the end. But let’s not rush. This project started with comparisons, more specifically that of the original play, the 1968 movie, and the 1996 movie. I also created 2 new podcast episodes, these episodes were different because I had co-hosts, Thomas and Julia.

For this project we 3 curricular competencies that represent each PLP area of study, English, Social Studies, and Maker.

English 10: I can express an understanding of how a text uses literary devices to make meaning.
I can express an understanding of the role of contexts, values, and perspectives in texts and how language is used to construct personal, social, and cultural identity.

the stepping stone that best represented this competency was the act comparison charts. For these stepping stones we read through the Romeo and Juliet play and watched the movies to compare how they were similar and different. I found that I was able to get a better understanding of the play through seeing the movies.

Maker 10: I can select and use a design solution to a problem, process, or challenge.

The milestone that best represented this competency was milestone 2, this milestone was our first co-hosted podcast. For this episode i had to solve the problem of how does Shakespeare connect to the BC outdoors. I answered it with bard on the beach, bard on the beach is a festival held at a park in bc and they preform Shakespeare plays.

Social Studies 10: I can explain and infer different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events by considering prevailing norms, values, worldview, and beliefs.

the milestone that best represented this competency was milestone 4, our second co-hosted podcast episode. In this episode Thomas, Julia and I talked about how the location for the Romeo and Juliet movies we were watching in class adapted to fit the time era and characters. We also talked about our different views on the Romeo and Juliet movies and which adaption we liked the best.

The final step to this project was to wright our own adaption and preform it as an auditorial story. It was a challenging process but it turned out well.

In conclusion this was my favourite project yet and i hope we get to do more similar projects in the future.

The Colourful 60s

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Hey guys, welcome back to another blog post. In todays post i will be talking about the colourful fashion of the 1960s.

Many things were happening in the 1960s, one of the major things was women’s rights, now I’m not here to talk about that but about the style of the 60s. The 60s was known for their colourful style of neon and flowers

An Architectural Insight

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Hey guys, welcome back to another post. In this post I will be explaining the structor and meanings of an Elizabethan theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you look at the image above you can see that there are many different levels, the bottom levels would be for commoners and those of a lower class whereas the top levels would be of the high class. One of the reasons that the wealthier people were at top was due to weather, a lot of the lower levels wouldn’t get covered and people there would get rained on. It’s quite similar to theatres now a days were if you want a box seat or a seat higher up you need to pay more money.

An interesting fact about the theatre there is that it is set in the round, meaning that you can see most of the stage from different perspectives. It is built this way to allow more room for the audience. This technique is still used today and one of the challenges in Destination Imagination uses this as a way to give more of a challenge.

I find these theatres quite interesting and learnt in class that during the Elizabethan time there were great differences of how people were treated if they were of a lower class than now.

The Mysterious Attack

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Hey guys welcome back to another blog post. As you may know from my last project post we are creating podcasts this year. If you want to catchup on my podcast journey make sure to read my Greatest Canadian post and my podcast trailer post.

Anyways, for episode 2 of my podcast “Rhiann’s Nature Scope” we had to answer the driving question:

How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of WWII?

To answer this question we had to tell a WWII story and be able to support our story with an interview. With my podcast topic being the outdoors of BC I decided to see if there were any places in BC that were effected by the war. I happened to stumble upon a location on the west coast of Vancouver island. Estevan Point lighthouse has a very mysterious story, June 20, 1942 a Japanese submarine shelled Estevan Point Lighthouse.

Have I constructed an original connection between myself, the text, and the world? The milestone I showed my best work to respond to text would be my story connection milestone. The story connection milestone was where we read or listened to people’s story that had a connection to WWII. We had to listen or read the story, and fill out a template of the story’s story arc, connect it to another source, connect it to a personal story, find the message of the story, and find 3 or more vocabulary words and definitions. I found that as we work through the 3 stories I progressed in telling the different aspects to the story we heard or read.
Have I found diverse sources and evaluated them for their relevance, accuracy, and reliability? The milestone I showed my best work to using evidence and resources would be my research milestone. For this milestone we had to find 5 sources to support the story we were telling in our podcasts. One of these sources had to be an interview or piece of audio. I had found many website sources that informed me about the attack but a couple also gave me information about it’s history before WWII, I found all this information very helpful for this episode.
Who or what influences events to occur and what were the consequences of those events? The milestone I showed my best work to analyzing cause and Consequences would be milestone 1. For milestone one we revisite our nationalism project from last year and looked at how Canadian nationalism might be different to different countries. For example canada is very accepting whereas America can be seen as not so accepting. We created a collage of different shapes and photos to represent Canadian nationalism and presented it by saying how these photos or shapes represented and cause us Canadians to be who we are. We also had to create a small reflective paragraph about how we as individuals are impacted by where we grew up and where we live and how it shapes our identities.
How might I use technology to connect to the world? The milestone I showed my best work to Globally collaborate would be milestone 5. Milestone 5 was our podcast episode, I think that my interview within my podcast best showed my work for this competency. It took me a really long time to be able to find someone to interview, first I emailed BC Parks but they never responded, so I emailed someone on a website that I found who had a page about Estevan Point, luckily enough the person I reached out to had the email of the actual lightkeepers at Estevan Point Lighthouse, I got a response from Maureen Schmidt and we scheduled an interview. I feel that my interview with Maureen went really well, she told me a bit about her role as a lightkeeper, what happened at the lighthouse during the attack, and what she would do in that situation.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this project because I got to learn not only about how BC was connected to WWII but also a bit of our history here on the west coast. I felt that I didn’t represent my best work during this project but will hopefully be able to improve for the next one.

I hope you enjoyed learning about my recent project, make sure to listen to my podcast.

Peace ✌️

Kids during WWII

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hey guys welcome back to my blog. With our new normal hybrid model at school we are doing a new project each 5 weeks for my PLP course. We are currently working on a new project that revolves around WWII. I have always known more about WWII than most major events in history.

On Wednesday the 25 we read a short book about a girl named Rose Blanche. This book was about Rose watching trucks with soldiers driving down her street and one day she noticed a boy trying to escape one of these trucks, so she decided to follow it. While following it she happened across a barbed wire fence, behind that fence were kids around her age wearing striped pajamas, she overheard some of the kids say they were hungry, she had some food left over from her lunch and decided to give it to the kids. She kept collecting food and going back to the fence to give it to the kids, she noticed that more kids kept coming to the camp and some were even wearing yellow stars. One day her small town starts to evacuate, she doesn’t know what is going on and decides to go to the fence. As she’s walking in the woods to find the fence there’s a shot.

When I read that part I immediately knew what happened (she was shot). It took a couple other people to realize what happened. I found the story very sad because the girls mom didn’t even know that she had been giving kids food at the camp or where she had gone the day of the evacuation. I decided to tell my mom about the book once I got home from school. She told about a book she read called “The Boy in The Striped Pajamas” and how it was similar to the Rose Blanche story I read.

the boy in the striped pajamas is about a boy whose dad works at an internment camp but doesn’t want his family to know. The boy decided to go explore behind their backyard, despite his father telling him not to. The boy stumbles apron a barbed wire fence and meets this young boy around his age. The two boys become friends a come up with a plan to play together, the boy in the camp gives the other boy some extra pajamas to be able to come into the camp. Little do they know that the day the boy enters the camp under cover is the day of the showers. The dad eventually realizes that his son has died.

In conclusion I have learnt that people interpret things differently and don’t always understand things for what they really are. I am very grateful that I didn’t grow up during that time of war.