So after a year filled with lots of assignments and learning, I am finally signing off for Grade 10. This last blog post in the Grade 10 category is about our latest unit. This unit is entitled Lord Of The Flies. Some people reading this blog will know what this book is about. Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. This book has been read by philosophers, teachers and students all over the world. While we were in this unit we read this book but the entire unit is centered around a driving question just like many other PLP projects are. The driving question for this unit was “How do we organize ourselves?” We also studied the Canadian political system and different types of government.
Alright let’s start this post with the book. As I stated previously we read Lord of the Flies as we went through this unit. Every week on a Wednesday we had a quiz on the book. We did this quiz in groups but this time our teacher Ms. Maxwell let us choose our own groups. Ms. Maxwell left the room for 20 minuets and left us to fight and argue about who was in each group. We didn’t much of that. We chose captains to be in each group, such as you would do in PE in high school and dispersed the remaining class members into each group. My group was Sam, Sydney, Michael and I. This would be my group for the book quizzes as well as the debates but we will get to those later. So back to the quizzes. We got points for how well we did in each quiz and by the end of the book we would totaled all of the points up to see who won. The book was super interesting and had many hidden meanings. This book is much more than just a story of some school boys stranded on an island, it is a story about human nature, power, and corruption. The story follows a group of boys stranded on an island who start out civilized and organized but then conflict starts to rise between them. As the groups stop getting along, some of the boys turn violent and deadly. While we were reading the book we were required to fill out a character chart with different observations. Here is my character chart.
As well as reading Lord of that Flies another part of this unit was studying the government. As part of this unit we looked at different sections of government and studied how the Canada government worked. We were told to make a chart of the different branches of government in Canada as well as the major leaders of the parties. I toured inside the Parliament buildings awhile ago in Ottawa. It was interesting to study the place I visited and remember seeing the House of Commons and the Senate and where the Prime Minister stands. Here is a photo from my visit
Here is a diagram that I created that shows how the political system of Canada works.
As well as part of the government portion of the unit we were given the mini assignment to research about the different styles of government that we see around the world. My Lord of The Flies group was given dictatorship. We create a small three slide keynote that we would present to our peers in class to help them explain to them what dictatorship is. Here is the small keynote that we presented to our class.
We were also taught about the different types of government that different people associate themselves with such as whether you consider yourself a left wing or right wing person. We took a small quiz that would help you see where you were on the spectrum. This was a very interesting quiz that asks some very contested questions. I encourage you to take a look at the quiz and see where you are on the spectrum. It is a very insightful quiz. I will link a blank document below. Feel free to download it and take the quiz.
Where Are You on the Political Spectrum?
So at the end of each unit there is always going to be a big project or assignment. For this unit it was no different. The assignment for this unit was a debate! The teams that we were in for the entire unit were the group that made up our debate teams. We debated against another team in the class. We were given a choice of topics for the debate and we had to chose our top three. Here is a picture of all of the topics that we brainstormed on.
Our group’s top three picks were, Civilization VS Savagery, Power and Authority, and Humanity and Inhumanity. Our teacher Ms. Maxwell chose the topic for our group as well picked the team that we debated against. The next thing we did was to choose what side of the argument we would be on. We ended up doing it by calling heads or tails while we flipped a coin. Our group got the cons side of the argument. The statement for this debate was “ Be it resolved that power leads to corruption.” We would be arguing that power doesn’t lead to corruption. The only catch for this debate we were only allowed to use the points from the topics that we studied this year. This included but were not limited to World War 1 and/or 2 , disruption in Silicon Valley as well as Lord of the Flies.
To practice for the debate we did some activities to practice presenting publicly and impromptu speaking. We did two activities, activity one was called “ pass the buck “. Pass the buck was where one person in a group got a topic to talk about and when 30 seconds was up they passed the buck and the next person had to argue on the same topic and after 30 seconds the next person did the same. The next exercise was “ impromptu speeches. We stood in front of the class and the teacher gave us a random topic to speak on. You had to do your best to expand / explain your topic. These exercises were great things to do to get ready for the debate but it was time to gather our points and execute.
We studied all of the notes that we had taken from the past year to gather all the important information that we could find. We studied these debate research notes and our group put some points down on paper that we could refer to during the debate. Monday June 11th arrived and it was the day of our debate. The debate started with an opening statement from each team followed by a rebuttal from each team followed by questions from the audience and then closing statements. I don’t want spoil the outcome because our debate was turned into a podcast that is linked below.
Overall this unit has been one to remember. I have enjoyed learning more about the political system that we have here in Canada. All of the different forms and branches of government are very fascinating because this is how our world is run. I found it very interesting to see how our teacher Ms. Maxwell centered our entire unit around a book. Lord of the Flies is definitely a book that I would recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it already. There are so many different hidden meanings that characters and events represent in this book it is almost impossible to find them all by yourself. Lastly the debate is something that was just fun. I really enjoy stating my opinion as well as speaking about a topic that is very relevant in this world.
