Category Archives: Humanities

This Is Us🇨🇦

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog. This is my very first post of the school year, and I’m excited to get back into it! The project that we just finished was called This is Us🇨🇦. I enjoyed this project for the most part. My favourite part was definitely designing my CBC Craft notes, which we’ll get into later.

Ok! So in the first assignment we did, we had to write a paragraph of about 6 sentences explaining why it is important to think about who we are as Canadians. This is my answer:

It can be important to think about who we are as Canadians, because even though we are all different, thinking of us as one unified nation can help us from an economic, political, and a social standpoint. We can think about how we contribute to society, and how we fit into our society. I think that it is very important to believe that we all have a role to play, especially in a close knit community such as some of the small towns in B.C. The difference in Canadians is huge, we can go from Truckers to high ranking members in the medical community, such as the chief public health officer of Canada. It would be amazing if we all could push past what we don’t agree on, and focus on what we do agree on. If we do this, it could make for an even more unified country. I also think it is important to think of everyone as individuals within Canada, such as First Nations. Even though we are all different, we are also all the same in that we are Canadian.

I think I did very well on this, and my teacher said that it was a thoughtful response!

The next couple of small assignments were not very important, and they were all about how lucky we are to be Canadian, and stuff like that. One of the assignments was to answer questions about how important the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to us. Here is that one. 

Why is the charter so important?

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes basic rights that all forms of government must follow. The federal, provincial, and municipal governments can make their own laws, but they must always follow the charter. It includes protection of the following rights: Fundamental Freedoms, Democratic Rights, Mobility Rights, Legal Rights, Equality Rights, Official Languages of Canada, Minority Language Education Rights. These are all very important in their own way, and they are the baseline of what makes Canada such a great country to live in.

The biggest reason that the charter is important is that it protects the basic rights and freedoms that we all deserve as human beings. It keeps things fair, and ensures that no one with power or influence takes away or impedes with these rights in any way.

Which section do you think is the most important? Why?

Fundamental Freedoms – Everyone has the freedom of religion, thought, opinion, etc.

Democratic Rights – Every person in Canada has the right to vote for whoever they please.

Mobility Rights – Every Citizen of Canada has the right to move, leave, or remain in Canada.

Legal Rights – Everyone has the right to a lawyer, and their rights. Eg right to remain silent.

Equality Rights – Everyone is equal no matter their gender, race, or age.

Official Language of Canada – English and French are the Official languages in Canada.

Minority Language Education Rights – Everyone has the right to be educated and go to school.

Out of all these, I believe that Mobility Rights are the most important. There are 2 main reasons for this:

First of all, if there are none of the other rights, you can just move out of the country into one that has more rights. So say Canada had zero rights other than mobility. If the laws created by the government didn’t suit you, you could easily not live there anymore.

Second, you cannot get exiled or banished, as you have the right to remain in Canada. If you were a criminal and got banished from Canada, you could never enjoy the same rights that citizens of Canada enjoy today. Instead, with Mobility rights, you could serve your sentence in prison, then you could go back to being a Canadian citizen, and turn your life around.

I thought that I did well answering these questions. I thought that I made a very good point about Mobility Rights. 

Here we go! This is my favourite thing that I did, and the one I am most proud of. For this assignment, we had to choose a topic of personal interest that is part of people’s Canadian identity. I chose CBC. First of all, we had take notes and answer questions that we made ourselves. Then we had to create an elevator pitch about it. Here they are:

https://www.craft.me/s/kuZCMHoHia8Vo0

https://www.craft.me/s/dAsegmisAH8cDY

I am very, very proud of the first one, because I thought I answered all the questions well, and I also organized it well. 

The last part of this project was the human library. In this, we had different « books » and we talked to them about their different experiences. I loved this, and met so many interesting people. That’s all for this blog post! I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you later!

Outsiders – a book of worldview

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to another blog post in my blog! In this project we did two tableaus. They were about a book called the Outsiders. The Outsiders is a novel by S.E. Hinton, which she wrote in the 1960s. This is a traditional grade 8 book, so old that my parents read it in grade eight! For this project, my group members were Chris, Sydney, Seth, Keenan, and Cameron.

First, we learned about the novel. It was based around two gangs, the Greasers, and the Socs. The Greasers are the gang that the main character, Ponyboy is in, while the Socs are the upper, richer, class. My favourite part of this book was Johnny’s quote, “Star gold Ponyboy, stay gold.” 

Second, we learned about worldview. Worldview has seven different aspects. There is geography, time, beliefs, society, values, economy, and knowledge. When we presented this, we had a script explaining how our chosen aspects of worldview relate to our scene that we presented. “We chose this scene to represent two aspects of worldview, geography and economy. If Darry wasn’t stressed about his financial situation he might not have slapped Ponyboy. We also chose geography because they live in a really rough neighbourhood causing them to turn into greasers.” We then transposed this scene into 2021, “we have kept the same aspects for this scene as the first, which can be seen here as geography and economy. Geography is represented by where they live, and economy is represented by the older phone models.” 

Last but not least, we learned about Tableaus (I think that’s how you spell it). A Tableau is a still image. A Tableau must include these elements. Different levels (high, medium, low), different body shapes (open or closed), effective use of physical space (balance + visibility), strong poses that communicate a story,  strong facial expressions that convey emotion, focus is appropriate and in character.

We presented all of our elements of learning by choosing a scene, representing that scene as a Tableau, and choose two worldview elements to go with our scene. The scene that we
got was in the Curtis’s living room, when Darry slapped Ponyboy. Everyone had different roles in this Tableau. Sydney was a bush, Cameron was Darry, Christian and Keenan were walls of a house, Seth was Sodapop, and I was Ponyboy. Here is us setting up:

“What can the Outsiders teach us about worldview” was the driving question for this post. I think that the Outsiders can teach us a lot about worldview. They live in a rough neighbourhood as the lower class, the Greasers. This novel could happen in our world today, but not here. Maybe in some of the bigger cities where there are more gangs. But I don’t think that it could happen here (also because guns are banned in Canada). Also, I think that the cigarettes would be replaced with vapes. 

Thank you for reading, and there will be more posts soon. Also, be sure to check out my YouTube channel. I have three videos so far: 1, 2, 3.

Our First Humanities Project!

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Hi everyone, we are finishing up our first Humanities (Socials and English) project, creating a professional advertisement for a business. Our business was the Deep Cove Heritage Society. The Deep Cove Heritage Society is based in Deep Cove, they sell memberships, books, and have a new online photo archive here. The driving question for this project was “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?”

For this project, my group members were Kai, Brooke, Jessie, and Silas. We had several different milestones, such as our individual ad, and our historical media analysis.

For our individual ads, we did many different drafts, as you can see in this slideshow. 

I found that the progression from first draft to last was dramatic. The last image that you saw was our final group advertisement. We are quite proud of it, and the email that our business sent was very nice, and they said that we did very well. Their feedback was entirely positive. Please check out their website here.

With the Historical Media Analysis we had to choose an ad, then answer questions about it. This is the ad that I chose, and these are the questions that I answered:

Who created this message? 

The McDonalds company.

What techniques are used to attract my attention? 

A clown, crazy hat, and dancing at the end, as well as the clown with some examples of the food that they sell.

How might different people understand this message differently from me? 

They might think that McDonalds is a really fun and crazy place to go!

What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message? 

If you see this ad, you will most likely want to go to McDonalds more than any other fast food company, because they have a clown, which could be very fun, and it’s clearly a family restaurant.

Why was this message sent? Profit and/or power. 

Profit and power. Profit to make money, and power of being the best food chain. If you’re the best food chain, you will get recommended by people more, and more people will come to you, which links in with profit, because you’ll make more money.

This project was a lot of fun, and I especially enjoyed making the ad for real people. Most of the projects that I’ve done before PLP have been just for the teacher, not for real world businesses. Doing projects like this will be more like what I’ll do in real life. I hope that we get to do more projects like this in the future.

The driving question for this project was “how does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” My answer to that is if we see stuff a lot, like an ad that has been up forever at a bus stop, we start believing the ad. Also, if you have friends that use a certain product, they might keep saying that the product is great, and you should buy it. Eventually, over time, you might start to believe them even more, and buy the product.