Exhibition Blog Post:
Do you ever wish you could live in another Era, or travel through time to experience a time period that’s not your current one?, The PLP 2016 Exhibition was very similar to a time machine. My class and I successfully recreated the World War 1 period in our school gym!
This blog post will explain how we made it possible!.
Process:
Our teacher Mr Hughes started by creating a GoogleForms. Here we were allowed to rate the 5 sections given ( Pre War, Trenches, Conscription, Post War, and Depression) in order of our first choice to last choice.
4 students plus me chose to do Post-War. My new group included Michael Sutherland, Kirby Harris, Luciano Boniface, and Chloe Talman. After groups had been established our whole class got together and decided how the gym would be split into the 5 categories.
Here is a quick sketch i did to show my schools gym and how we organized it:
My group then got started by researching the biggest events that happened during our time period. “The 1920s”. “Post War”
We used several websites to research our information.
https://prezi.com/m/t3bqygjcb20c/positive-and-negative-effects-of-ww1-on-canada/
http://classroom.synonym.com/canadian-life-1920s-7293.html
http://www.canadahistoryproject.ca/1920s/
Then we categorized our information into “Who, What, When, Where, and Why”. We came up with possible scenarios that could be used and decided on a Polling Station/Union Strikes scenario. Here we could include the current political state of Canada, women’s roles in politics and their rights, how some minorities couldn’t vote, some of the unions which weren’t really a thing before, minority unions, union busters, and beggars in the marketplace to show unemployment.
After deciding on our Scene we went ahead and started to sketch what our side of the gym would look like.
After we had an idea of what it would look like, my group constructed a script. We made our script so it would be straight to the point, informative, yet engaging. Our group was only given 4 minutes time to present so we had to make sure our presentation would be long enough but not too long.
Our presentation started with a audio clip of our classmate spencer introducing our section. We used garage band to make it sound old. To make it sound as if it was in the 1920s playing from a radio. This audio clip drew the people in from the previous section and introduced our section’s topic in an interesting way.
Insert Audio Clip
We also made actual polling booths and ballots for people to vote which made the experience very interactive.
I wouldn’t call myself a performer but after running through the script a couple times, I became really comfortable with my part. I was really proud of myself as I am usually too shy to perform in front of audiences. In the end I was able to include the audience and talk to them so they would feel as a part of the scene. I would look at them or talk to one person in specific. This made the whole experience for them very enjoyable.
For our exhibition we also had to dress up. My group researched each one of our outfits and found clothes at home that looked like them.
I was a First Nations Veteran.
My outfit during the exhibition was created by collecting different clothing items that I had and some of my friends had.
My outfit consisted of soldier army pants, a guy shirt, a “paper boy” like hat and some combat boots. Since I was supposed to be a guy I decided to take a risk and thicken my eyebrows to look more manly. I took some black eyeshadow and put it on my eyebrows. My outfit came together very nicely in the end. My teacher, Mrs Willemse even described me as “Badass”. Something I had never been called before. Funny thing is that I really enjoyed being “Badass” for a few hours.
To set up our section we used
-tables to make a polling station
-a big banner with houses to represent the outside
-a “podium for kirby to stand on and lead the protest
-clothing racks, and dividing boards to create walls
-Polling Booths
-Ballots
-Signs used to strike
Reflection:
Overall my group worked extremely well together. We all contributed immensely and there wasn’t specifically a leader since we all contributed equally. My group had great communication and time management. We all knew the deadline was approaching quickly and managed to finish our project without ever feeling we weren’t going to make the deadline.
My group was very resourceful,
While we were setting up we realized we wanted more walls in our scene, so we decided to use our schools lost and found clothing rack. We covered it with paper and and then we had made a wall out of it.
One thing I would change if I could go back was maybe include a break during the performance. We did our skits around 50 times and we were pretty tired in the end. A break was needed. I would also maybe add another section to my side of the gym. The right side of the gym (post war, and depression) seemed to small for the amount of space we were given.
In the end my class successfully portrayed World War I and had a great time doing it.