Tag: winter exhibition

THE Great Debate

Happy 2024 everyone!!! 

I come to you today with a project we finished just before winter break, and if you know PLP you know that means it was also our Winter Exhibition project! This project was called The Great Debaters, and if you can guess by the title, it was a project centered around debate. We not only learned about public speaking, and how to debate, but we also learned about researching, finding credible sources, and structuring persuasive text that combines the right mix of pathos and logos. 

The Project

At the beginning of this project, we got the chance to watch Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters. If you have not seen this movie, it is based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, who was a professor at Wiley Collage in Marshall, Texas. The movie follows Mr. Tolson’s debate team as they work their way to challenge Harvard for a national championship. It was a very inspiring movie and helped get us into the mindset of debate.

The first piece of writing that we did was a short paragraph on the best “blank” ever. It could be a book or a season or musical artist. It was up for us to choose a best “____” so I chose to do mine on something I care very deeply about, Christmas stuffing. 

Over the next few classes, we learned about different ways to improve our writing and practiced using these techniques with our “best blank ever” writing. I found parallel structure really interesting and highlighting different sections for different tones.

Around this time, it became time to choose a debate partner, and topic. My partner Ines and I decided to choose the topic “zoos should be banned“ with Ines arguing the affirmative and myself arguing the negative. I am already passionate about this because I love reading books on conservation and had recently read about this issue in particular.

Now that we had our topic chosen, Ines and I wouldn’t be collaborating again for the rest of the project. promptly, I came up with some Need-To-Knows and got down to researching.

A big part of writing is revision, so of course the next few weeks were chock full with writing our opening argument, rebuttal, and closing statement, rewriting and practicing aloud, and so much peer critique. 

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, this project was our PLP 11 project for the PLP Winter Exhibition. This means we would be performing these debates live in front of an audience, and they will get to choose the winner. The pressure is on! I debated fiercely, but in the end I came up victorious. Thank you Ines for being a fierce rival.

Conclusion

Overall, I really like public speaking so this project is pretty fun for me. I think I definitely improved my redrafting skills because I find sometimes I don’t do enough drafts and end up with something that I’m not completely happy with. But in this project I really pulled through, and in the end had a speech that I was very proud of. Thank you to Madsen and all the PLP teachers and students for a wonderful exhibition and see y’all next time!!

As always, Brooke

How to Apologize

Well happy new year! 🥳 

It is a brand new year but still the same semester. So lets quickly talk about the project and exhibition that we just finished last year.

Driving Questions

How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered and not repeated today?

We used the exhibition as a way to educate about the past wrongs we studied. Education is very important in making sure that those past wrongs are properly remembered and accounted for in our society today.

Us grade 10’s were working on a project called “The Ology of Apology” where we studied historical wrongs towards different races of people in Canada’s past. The three main topics we studied were the Chinese head tax, Japanese internment during WW2, and the Komagata Maru incident in 1914. I ended up studying the latter and for an easy explanation of the incident I present to you my Keynote presentation, also known as “Keystone 1: Keynote of Transgression”.

The komagata maru

What does James Cameron’s “Avatar” reveal about our society?

Avatar brought up many themes present in our society today. Themes like militarism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, corporate greed, and such. Avatar magnified these issues as their world is almost an augmented reflection of ours. The Winter Exhibition was themed around this question and each room/area was to tackle one of the themes and how it was represented in the movie and in our topics that we studied. For the Exhibition, I was in the library room that was originally themed to represent racism but had to have a bit of remodelling done.

Our Memorial And The Exhibition 

The monument I created was in collaboration with Ines and Gwen. We had all studied different topics for our first 2 keystones so we wanted our memorial to relate to all 3 subjects. Gwen came up with an excellent idea of a figure breaking down walls to represent combatting racism and discrimination. I suggested that we put cutouts of racist newspapers and notices from the 3 events on the walls to give more meaning to the monument. We accidentally learned that spray paint actually eats styrofoam while trying to paint the walls black. We also were scrounging for paint and other supplies to bring our work to life. It was a work-in-progress up until the verify last minute. I LOVE our finished monument and was very proud to be able to display it at the winter exhibition.

I really enjoyed showing off my Keynote presentation and talking about our monument to all of the passers by at the exhibition. Despite being occasionally quite socially anxious, I actually really enjoy public speaking and commanding a room. So that was really nice for me to get in touch with that part of myself again. 

Conclusion 

After not attending any exhibitions last year, I can say that I think this exhibition was my best one yet. I am very proud of the amount of work I was able to put into this project and the fact that I actually had enough energy to go to the exhibition. Overall a successful semester in Humanities 10.

As Always, Brooke

Guilty as Charged!

Bonjour and welcome back to another Humanities blog post.

This project was called “Revolutions on Trial”, and in this project, as you may have guessed, we took famous revolutions and put them into a mock trial.

Crane Brinton – The Anatomy of a Revolution

Most of us started this project off not knowing much about revolutions, so one of the first pieces of building knowledge that we did, was learn why revolutions happen and what the different stages of a revolution look like. We studied Crane Brinton’s theory of revolutions, consisting of 4 main stages. The stages were incubation, moderate, crisis, and recovery, followed by a question of either peace or war? We were asked to create a diagram to showcase Crane Brinton’s theory, here is mine;

Animal Farm

A new thing that we did in this project, was study and read a book that was related to the topic. This book was called Animal Farm was written by George Orwell. This story of animals rebelling on a farm was created as an analogy for the events and characters in the Russian Revolution (Mar 8, 1917 – Jun 16, 1923). Every week we had new chapters to read and after every one, we had to write a little summary of the chapter with any questions we had. When we came into class, we would have to discuss what we read and our thoughts and feelings towards the chapters. We analyzed the events in the book to coincide with what we had learned about the anatomy of revolution. This was a good chance to practice identifying the stages of a revolution because we would need to use these same skills later on in the project.

The French Revolution

We were split into two different class rooms and assigned to a group with a revolution that we would be studying for the rest of the project. My group was the French Revolution, and we would be the ones arguing in defence of the revolution in the mock trial. After countless articles read, podcasts listened to, and YouTube videos watched, I had gained quite the chunk of knowledge on the French Revolution. We created graphic organizers to display some of what we had learned and if we identified any patterns of continuity and change. Here is my graphic organizer;

The Mock Trial

Once all the building knowledge on our revolution was done, we moved on to preparing for the trial. This included building an affidavit with the prosecution group from the other class, preparing a witness, and writing a script. We chose our witness to be Maximilien Robespierre, a prominent leader of the Jacobin club and headlined the famous “Reign of Terror” era in the time of the French Revolution. We worked side by side with the prosecution to concoct a script that we would be using for the trial. We had to come up with opening statements, closing statements, direct examination questions, and cross examination questions, all to hopefully prove that the revolution was, in fact, NOT guilty.

Now lets talk a bit about that. What do we mean by the revolution being guilty? Well, the PLP 9 court established a list of 6 criteria/goals that an effective revolution would have demonstrated. The revolutions would be judged on how many, if any, of those goals they achieved and to what extent they actually accomplished them. The criteria was as follows;

A revolution to be effective must include the reformation political systems aligning with the voice of the people, an increase of rights and freedoms for the people, a removal of a dictator with sweeping power, the achievement of financial stability, an improvement in standard of living, and the removal of internal conflict.

And as the defence, my team was arguing that the revolution was effective, and the prosecution was arguing the opposite. The mock trials would be taking place at the winter exhibition where we would have our live audience (a jury if you will) decide the fate of the revolution, guilty or not? Now unfortunately I was unable to be at the winter exhibition but luckily we were recording. Here is the video of the French Revolution, on trial.

Conclusion

Unfortunately we lost the trial to the prosecutors. But nevertheless I am very proud of how far my team came from the beginning and I am so sorry that I couldn’t be there in the end to help us win. Kudos to the prosecution though because they definitely were a very strong team and to be fair, we never stood a chance against them. Overall I really enjoyed learning about revolutions and I think that a mock trial was a super cool way to have us showcase what we had learned.

Thanks for reading!

As always, Brooke.