Your friendly neighbourhood blogger returns.

So, grade ten. Back at it again with Humanities (also known as socials and English, if you didn’t know that). This time, we studied The Great War, World War One, WWI. We went a bit into this a few posts ago with discussing how World War One started. But now, we look at the actual war. We started by reading a graphic novel called Shattered Ground, which is on the topic of World War One, and talks about what it’s like to be a soldier on the battleground.

Next, we learned about all of the battles that Canada fought in using this website right here.

The second battle of Ypres is the first battle that Canada showed their resilience, as they fought through chemical gasses, shrapnel, bombs, and gunfire, and stopped the Germans from getting to the English Channel. Soon after this, the Canadians earned a rep that they were fearless. The Germans would fear them, actually. Go Canada.

Fun WWI Fact: Harry Houdini actually took a year break from his magic to help sell war bonds and teach American soldiers how to escape German handcuffs

While Canadians were risking their lives over seas in the war, that left many women back home, as they weren’t aloud to fight. So, women took over the men’s jobs. Working in factories, and on farms. Eventually, they were even given the right to vote.

Then, we talked about the Halifax Explosion

This was a tragedy that happened in Halifax during World War One. A ship exploded and wiped out most of Halifax. Since we’re focussing on podcasts this year, we did a class podcast about it. We read this article on it, each person getting one paragraph. The final product of it was this:

But, as with all PLP units, we had an end project to do. Our job: find a solider off of this website and do a podcast on them. I chose a soldier called Walter Thomas Hooper

He was a Welsh Man, who moved to Canada, and fought in the war. He died at the battle of Vimy Ridge, fighting for Canada.

We had to link back to the driving question of this project: How Did WWI Shape Canada’s Identity?

The first draft of my podcast was too short, and needed improvement:

I got some feedback, about grammar and how to make it flow more smoothly. Most people in our class had one issue: We had bad hooks. So, we worked on the first thirty seconds of our podcast. This helps set the tone for the entire podcast. If someone doesn’t like the first thirty seconds, how are they expected to like the rest?

And then it was on to finish the podcast. I made the mandatory adjustments, and this is it:

Play on SoundCloud

This really helped me understand World War One better, and made us go into detail about some of the people who died, and how bad it really was. Knowledge is power, after all.

I suppose that’s all, until next time

Read you later

Sincerely, Me