As you probably know based on recent posts by any grade 10 PLPer, we have been learning all about World War One in humanities class. The whole unit this year is about identity, and we are relating the First World War back to Canada’s identity. That’s what this post is about. Our big project for the WWI unit is a 5-6 minute podcast about the impact of WWI on Canada. But before we started the podcast, we did lots of smaller assignments first.
One of the first things we did was read a graphic novel that was online, called Shattered Ground. It was a story following a soldier that went to WWI and fought for Canada. I liked this story because it was extremely detailed, and very interesting to see this one guy fight through multiple well known battles. The drawing were really well done, and really portrayed what it was really like. The graphic novel also featured real photos and video from the War. Overall, It really gives you insight on what is what like to be a soldier in WWI.
Next, we read a section of a textbook that explained what was happening in Canada while the war was being fought. We then answered a true/false page about what we just read:
Then we watched a very interesting video about Vimy Ridge, a battle Canada is very famous for, and we made notes about this video as we watched.
I really liked the video, because Vimy Ridge was a very famous battle, and Canadian soldiers fought with true grit to gain a victory.
After learning all this new information, our next step was to write our podcast script. This was the big project of the unit, and we’d had it in the back of our minds while we did all those assignments above.
The aim of this podcast is to explain how the war affected Canada, but also have another aspect to it. We went to this Canadian Soldier War Memorial website, and chose a soldier that we thought could support our story. This soldier fought and died in World War One. The soldier I chose was named Henry Jackson. I chose him because the website gave me the information I needed and there was a lot of photos and letters of him and his life.
The next step: to write my script.
I ended up writing 1,300 words, which is a little long. My theme for the podcast was a WWI radio show podcast. My soldier was integrated as if I’m interviewing him, but he’s not there. I talked about the war and how Canada participated. Before handing in our script to our teacher, we first did some peer critique. Me and Simon switched iPads, where I read his, and he read mine. Here’s the feedback he gave to me about mine:
After this, I handed in my first draft of my script to my teacher and got some great feedback from her. Here’s the notes she wrote on my script:
After this feedback we had to record our draft 1 of the actual podcast. Then, on the Monday, we traded iPads with the person next to us, listened to each other’s podcasts and then gave feedback. Here’s my first podcast:
And here’s the feedback I got from Izzy:
The next step was to take that feedback, and change our script/re-record based on it. But before we did that, we focused on making a good hook for our podcasts. We did that by listening to other podcasts that more professional podcasters made, but only listening to their hook/intro. We then made a chart that states the way the podcaster hooked you into each podcast:
After that, we wrote out a script that would only be about the first 30 seconds of our podcast and then recorded it. We added Music and then the next class we were to listen to all of our intros, and get even more feedback. When I plugged my ipad into the classroom speakers and played it, you could barely hear my voice for some reason, so I just got feedback on my music. I then went back and re-recorded it later on, and then put it in the beginning of my podcast. Here it is, just the first 30 seconds:
Then to finish off this project, after talking about and listening to more professional podcasts, we were assigned a WWI Podcast Final Draft. We were to fix anything, add more music, change it based on any critique, and so on. And after adding different music, cutting out some sentences from my original script, and re-recording it all, this was my end product:
Overall, I really enjoyed learning about the First World War, and making a podcast on it. I especially liked researching about a specific WW1 soldier because it made it more personable, and it was interesting learning about their stories.
See you