So recently in PLP we’ve learned a lot about WW1. Our driving question for this unit was “How can we show the stories of WW1 through video?“ Everyone in our class and a different topic or event that occurred during WW1 that they covered. Below is my world war 1 video on The Halifax Disaster, which is a major milestone in Canadian History.
We started the project by getting into lit circle groups, my book was called “Generals die in bed.” The book followed a man and his journey throughout fighting on front lines in world war 1. World War 1 started in 1914 and lasted for four years until 1918. The war started because of the assassination of archduke Frans Ferdinand; or was at least one of many causes. The war was fought between two sides, “The Central Powers” and “The Allied Forces” although both sides had many different names.
While the class was all reading our books we created different responses to the chapters we read each week. These are some of mine:
Going through the project we watched a lot of different style videos because our whole project was about creating a video on something during the first World War. We watched a lot of videos by a channel called “The Great War.”
I learned through watching those videos a better understanding of the war itself which helped me when creating my own video on the Halifax Disaster.
The Halifax Disaster occurred the year before the war ended in 1917 on December 6th at 9:02am. A ship called the SS Imo collided with another ship called the SS Mont-Blanc a French cargo ship transporting high explosives and weapons to Europe for the war. The ships were passing through the Halifax Harbour when they collided on the morning of December 6th. People say that the two ships may have been able to avoid the horrific disaster if the SS Mont-Blanc had a sign symbolizing the dangerous materials they had on board. However since it was war time a sign symbolizing the weapons they were transporting to use in the war was out of the question, their ship would have been blown up by the enemy. Since the SS Mont-Blanc didn’t have a sign warning of the dangerous materials on board, the SS Imo didn’t understand the magnitude of the situation. Both ships made small movements until they decided to finally cut their engines and come to a stop. However it was too late and the momentum of the ships kept them moving forward. The SS Mont-Blanc tried to turn right and head towards the harbour but the SS Imo collided straight into the front of the SS Mont-Blancs bow creating a gash three metres long. This opened up barrels of flammable explosives which created sparks from the rubbing metal and fires started right away. In an instant all buildings within 800 metres were destroyed and the explosion killed 1600 people right away leaving 9000 injured. The Halifax explosion still remains the worst human made disaster in Canadian history.
The process of writing and filming and planning my video certainly wasn’t quick. I had to write a screenplay, storyboard/script, edit create music/sound effects and more. This is some of the work and planning I did leading up to the creation of my video:
Once I officially completed my video after many revisions and restarts, our class walked down to the Cove Cliff Elementary school and shared our videos with the grade sixes and sevens there. This is a photo of me with a group of kids at the school where I shared my video and gave them a fun quiz to do on it:
Watch my video again or if you haven’t already and try to answer my quiz questions below!
Bye:)