On the second day of Christmas, my teachers sent to me ten revisions and a partridge in a pear tree!
Revisions, revisions, and more revisions. I can confidently say after the endless amount of revisions, I have produced some quality work.
In this project we explored the importance of WWII and how it influenced the Canadian identity which was completed through multiple tasks such as:
- An act of service
- A /WWII Essay
- A thesis for our essay (theme)
- Smart brevity formatted notes
In this project, our driving question was “What role did the conflict of World War II play in shaping Canadian identity?”
Ah yes. The question that historians have been wondering for centuries. Jokes aside, after the learning demonstrated in this project, I have come up with an adequate answer to this question.
“World War II forged a deeper sense of unity, independence, and resilience that would come to define Canada’s new national identity in the post-war era”. This was my insightful thesis answering the driving question and setting the tone for my essay and zine.
I believe the war strengthened Canada’s independence and unity through allied pressures that acted as opportunity in which Canada seized upon to assert their dominance on the global stage that reshaped economic situation (leaving behind a trading and production legacy), military reputation, and a shift in alliances.
Saving Juno beach was a mission the teachers of PLP 10 launched in November where each student donated a whole $10 through “acts of service” supporting Canadian veterans. Before you ask, this money is being sent to the Juno Beach Centre located in Normandy, France. In return, they will send a flag back to the Lynn Valley Legion.
The message and goal of this task was to in the end, have a new perspective on how the men and women of Canada served and sacrificed for their country through hard times and ways the new generation can remember, support, and give back to our communities as does the Lynn valley legion.
For more, visit Act of Service
When the project was launched we watched the opening 30 minutes of saving private Ryan and began to form connections with the reality of what happened. In the process we were encouraged to take notes. To be honest, notes have never really benefited me because I used to think that I can find better information elsewhere which may be true but I was wrong in a few ways.
A little later, we were introduced to smart brevity formatting through cross referencing similar articles in different formatting. One website was clearly longer and less concise while the other demonstrated the undervalued power of saying less. Let me show you a comparison between my old notes vs my notes now:
For more on smart brevity⬇️: https://s.craft.me/xcRlU7eh20O9A6
Now that we know how to properly take notes and cite our information, we embarked on our WWII learning journey. With our smart brevity notes in our inventory, this enabled us to get clear and concise information fast thus it made it easier to compose our essays.
Before this project, I had little understanding on how to create an MLA formatted essay. One of the most new concepts in this type of formatting was the in text citations in which we cite the authors last name in brackets at the end of each sentence that are someone else’s words. Although I’m a quick learner and it was a brief learning curb for me.
Looking back on my learning, another tool added to my tech inventory was adjusting my document setup in pages which has and will continue to prove a useful skill as it allows you to duplicate corresponding page numbers or words of your choice into all pages. You can also adjust the text borders on the page.
Moving on to our zine, this proved a somewhat simple assignment. Essentially we converted our text into zine formatting which primarily involved copying and pasting our essay text into a two-column layout including relevant images as well as optional quotes- similar to a news article.
In retrospect, Saving Juno Beach taught me critical lessons/insights of WWII, how we can contribute to our local communities (from watering your neighbours garden to joining the legion), praise veterans, a variety of skills to enhancing the quality of my notes to ensure I have a wonderful final product, a series of formats to engage different audiences (e.g. a magazine may interest viewers that prefer more visual elements vs an essay focused primarily on conveying a message through large bodies of information), and uniting this beautiful country in whichever way I can!