Hey guys! Welcome back to My Dog Ate My Blog! For the past few weeks we have been working on a…… video! Wow! That’s a throwback to last year when all we worked on was videos. Sir Matthew Bailey Begbie, WW1, and the Identity video are a few examples. This project has been all about the causes and consequences of WW2 and stories of survival. It involved reading a book, doing responses, and creating a video as a group. My group, Caleb, Alex, Anika and I were tasked with creating a book trailer for Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. But, as always, this entire project was based on one driving question.’

“ How can stories of survival deepen our understanding of WW2?”

I will answer this question through out my post with examples and assignments that I think have taught me the most about this subject. I will also give an overall reflection on this question in my conclusion. Soooooo…. let’s get started!

CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE

Although the main task of this project was to create a book trailer, we had to do a bit of background research first, therefore everyone individually had to create a video about the causes of WW2 as well as a podcast about how Canadians contributed to the war both at home and on the front. In the end, both of these tasks really helped me understand the purpose of this overall project and how to use apps like Garage Band and iMovie.

 Causes of WW2 video

Most people know and understand what WW2 was and what happened in it, but not necessarily how it happened or the causes. If that’s you, don’t worry, because before this video, I didn’t either. This video really brought to light the idea that there are causes and consequences for everything! But the biggest thing that the “Causes of WW2 Video” taught me is that there can be more than one cause, there can be many layers to the problem. 

How Canadians contributed to the war podcast

This milestones definitely taught me more, specifically, about the causes and consequences of Canada in the war. The example that stood out to me the most was the role of women like Elsie McGill in the war. I learned that the cause for women joining the war effort was because most men were all in battle on the front line, this gave women the opportunity to take over men’s jobs in there absence. The consequence of this was more equality between men and women in the work place and more available jobs for women.

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE ACTIVITIES

1. Book chats

As I may have mentioned earlier in this post, Novel Study and book chats were a huge portion of this project. My group read Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys and it was an absolutely amazing book! I would easily give it a 10 out of 10. I won’t give away too much, but the basic plot follows four characters. A 15 year old girl from Poland named Emilia, Joana, a woman from Lithuania, a German soldier named Alfred, and Florian, a run away man from Prussia. In first person narrative, we follow along on the refugee’s journey to safety. This book showed me that I actually LOVE historical fiction and I have read 3 more since. 

One of the biggest things that this story of survival taught me about WW2 was the geography. All of these people were from different places and it shows just how close-knit all of these communities and cities are, that each city is quickly effected by the rampage of the Russians, one after one another, everyone had to flee. It taught me many new things that I didn’t know about the war, I always thought that the Germans were the main “bad guys” through out Europe but I discovered that Russia played a huge role too. In the end, this book is very historically accurate and I learned a ton about the war from the European perspective.

 

In these book chats, I created three different role sheets:

CREATIVE CONNECTOR

SMART SUMMARIZER

DISCUSSION DIRECTOR

2. Poster Activity

I created this poster to advertise victory gardens which were grown to help the war effort over seas, to send fruits and vegetables over. I had a lot of fun creating this poster in Sketches Pro as well as Phonto. Though, this poster was not just an art project, it taught me about life on the home front and what people did it at home to contribute.

CREATE

What literacy skills am I using to write, speak, and represent in the texts I create?

After reading Salt to the Sea, I had to transfer all my ideas from taking notes and the book chats to a book trailer! It was quite difficult but with the help of comprehension and analysis I was able to input information I had gathered from one text (the book) to another. (The video) You will be able to see through out my process of creating a book trailer, how I used the competency “Create”.

Here is a quick little slider I created to show the short story of the creation of my video

  • First things first, the initial brainstorm. My group came together to start thinking about the best scenes form the book to include int he trailer as well as character roles.

CONCLUSION

This video was definitely a process, we went through a lot of rough patches as a group but in the end, I am full of pride when I watch this trailer. I haven’t created a video since last school year so, I think it was a bit of a refresher to work in a group environment again, it was difficult. One of the biggest lessons I learned was about Teamwork. You need Teamwork to make the Dream Work. Communication and following through with your own individual tasks is extremely important for film making. Along with teamwork comes leadership and this project definitely showed me the difficulties of that role. I learned so much about film making, WW2, Book chats, and working a group as you can see from my examples above. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed, see you next time on My Dog Ate My Blog!

~Jordyn