How do people and the environment affect each other?

Introduction:

This project taught me a great deal concerning how little we take for granted how much we need our environment. This project was completely centred around the question of how do people and the environment affect each other. I honestly didn’t know a great deal about environmental issues. This is why this project actually made me think about the environment in ways I never thought of before. Overall, even though this project was difficult, I believed I learned so much about the environment, that it was worth the work.

Topic pitch:

The topic pitch was my first step in learning about the environment. I had great deal of trouble figuring out what topic I should choose. This is due to the topic I would choose would determine what type of change I would try to make. The topic we chose we were told we would research and eventually make a letter on this issue. I decided upon BC forest fires and air quality due to a trip being cancelled since the air was extremely terrible. If I was going to do this project again, I would most definitely try to choose a topic more personal to me than a cancelled trip. Overall, this topic made me think deeply about the well being of the environment 

CommonLit Assessments:

The CommonLit taught me about using evidence and analyzing in the proper and correct way. At first, I didn’t do well on the first CommonLit assignment, Lee Sherman. This is entirely due to me not understanding how to properly give evidence for my analysis of the text. However, I was given a chance to redo this assignment and got a 100 percent. In fact, I got a 100 on all the assignments except one, Quiet Town. I believe this is due to me at first, not having a good understanding of Quiet Town and not liking Quiet Town’s story. If I were going to do these assignments again I would try to maybe get a friend to ask about what they thought the central theme of the text is. The themes of each story taught me a lot about what humanity could improve in the future. H-ey come on out taught me to be careful of what I contribute to the waste and Lee Sherman taught me how big companies don’t care about the lives they ruin. The skills I learned from this part of the project are extremely useful and I will be using them in the future.

The Letters Drafts 1, 2 and 3:

My first couple letters were lazy and vague concerning what change I actually wanted to create. My first draft was an extremely rough copy that was in point form on what I vaguely wanted to create. However my second draft was a fully written version of all my points, however, wasn’t organized or met the criteria at all. My second draft got critiqued by an upper classroom and mostly pointed out all my spelling mistakes. The reason for my spelling mistakes is that I didn’t put effort at all on how my wording for the letter could be improved until the very end of the project. My third draft, an much better draft than by second, however, still had a great deal of issues. When it was critiqued by the teacher, learned how terrible my draft actually was and that I had to fix all my spelling mistakes, reword a lot of lazy writing and have an actual solution to my issue. Overall, this is the part of the project that made me realize what I needed to fix for the final draft.

The final draft:

The final draft of the project I must say I am extremely proud of. Before the final draft, my drafts were getting marked lower than I wanted. Thus, on my final draft I tried extremely hard to correct the mistakes I saw previously made. I did this first by trying to read my whole letter and see if they’re any words I could reword to make the letter more interesting and engaging. Secondly, I tried to use the website Grammarly, which really helped pick up on mistakes I didn’t even notice. Overall, creating this letter taught me about both environment and how to properly structure a letter.

CommonLit Connections:

Even though CommonLit Connection was quite difficult and I am not the happiest with how I did at the end, I still think it was an experience that will stay with me for a long time. For this project we had to create a Multi-Paragraph Outline that was about the connection our letter and CommonLit story of our choosing had. Then, we would be forced to use our outline to write the actual paragraph, the CommonLit Connections, in an hour. The CommonLit story I chose was Quiet Town since the theme of the story is, if we don’t do anything about climate change quick enough there will be consequences that will affect the environment. If I were to do this project again I would most definitely be more prepared since there was a great deal of details I messed up. However, I think did an amazing job explaining how my letter and Quiet Town were connected to each other through the main ideas of each of the stories. In general, I hope we do more projects like this in the future.

Curricular Competencies 

Use strategies to analyze text:

I believe I have completely shown this competence in the project. This can be most seen in my CommonLit assignments. I highlighted all my evidence and carefully planned out how I would present the knowledge I learned to the audience. Another strategy I use was in my CommonLit Connection, in that I analyzed the theme by the consequence each of the characters in the writing had to pay for their actions. In general, I am thankful that this project furthered my understanding in this certain skill.

Recognizes the role of context and perspectives in the text:

I feel I have somewhat fulfiled this competence throughout the project. This can be best seen by my CommonLit assignments and Multi-paragraphs. At first, I did a poor job at giving context and fleshing out my writing. However, the further we got into the project the more I understood how to give context and really show what the characters are thinking in my writing. I feel I need to do some work in the future of understanding the character’s viewpoints and explaining their motivation. Overall, I hope I can build on this skill in the future 

Recognizes how texts use literary devices to enhance meaning

I feel at the beginning of the project I didn’t really understand this competence however, at the end I feel I could easily recognize the use of literary devices. This can be seen in my Multi-Paragraph and Multi-Paragraph outline. In both I used examples and gave detail about the theme of this text and how it relates back to my letter. I even showed this in my CommonLit assignments where I had to explain the meaning of the literary devices each author used in their story. Overall, I am extremely happy of how much I improved upon this competence throughout the project.

Conclusion:

Overall, this project opened my eyes to how I too could change the environment. I had loads of fun reading the CommonLit assignments and talking to my peers about the meaning behind certain texts. Creating the letter even taught me how to order people with power to make changes to the things that need fixing in our society. Humans have destroyed the environment so much in past years and people need to start to realize the damage we have cauced. I honestly never had very much interest to the environment until now, I hope that I can still make change in the future.