My Grandfather once told me about how he fought bravely in World War One, so I asked him how many years he served for the U.S. He replied “Nein.”

This past project was about World War One and everything that there is to know about it. But we learnt what we needed to know about it in a cool gen z was. We read a graphic novel. This graphic novel was good though because it was very historically accurate. So if you know Mr Harris, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was his idea. 

This was relatively short project beginning on March 29th. We started with an introduction to the war, ex. Who was in it, when it took place, etc. Then two days later we started the best part of this project, learning about comic books (graphic novels) and reading one. We learned about all the different things that get put into comic books. For example, speech bubbles, panels, BOOMS and BAMS, etc. The graphic novel we were reading is called “World War One 1914-1918”. After we learned about the comic stuff, we did some cool things in class. We learned bout the consequences of innovation in war, and also the belligerents of war.

Then we learned that we would be making our own comic book as the final product for the project. That I wasn’t very excited for because I’m not the best of artists. But I am alright at coming up with good stories, so that part I was pumped for. Like most times that we have to make a story for some thing in class, we had to make a story board. We also made a 5w’s chart. Thats just Who What Where When Why. After we finished that, we did possibly my favourite thing ever to do at school, watch a movie in class. It wasn’t just any movie, we watched “1917” in my opinion the best war movie ever. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it. A bit after that we learned a easier way to draw on our iPads using keynote. It was just tracing other images and adding colour. Then to finalize our story, we made a story spine, and a finalized storyboard.

Then came the part that I was dreading all along, the drawing. Ive never been a good drawer and I don’t think that I ever will. So these kinds of projects aren’t my strong suit. Don’t get me wrong, I am the creative art type, just other kinds of art, like music. So at this point I had a great story. I chose the topic of Canadian government intervention for my comic, but I chose to focus on Ukrainian work camps. I made my story about a little Ukrainian girl who lives in Toffino who gets taken to a Nanaimo labour camp with her family. They plan a “jail break” and the little girl gets out but her parents don’t. 

Super Hero

After you read my comic you probably think that the drawing are bad. Which they are, but its the best that I’ve ever done.

I really enjoyed the fact that we read a comic to get the info about World War One for this project. I also really enjoyed all the little things we did like the propaganda worksheet and the tank study. I hope the grade 8’s have a lot of fun with the project next year✌️.