Hello! And welcome back to another one of my blog posts. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these; this is my first blog that I’ve written in grade nine! Today I’ll be talking about the geography of the West. Our driving question for this project is ‘How the geography of the West shaped who we are?’ We had an entire nine day trip all the way to Alberta. The trip was insanely fun but also quite chaotic (but that’s as to be expected). We did a lot of fun activities but there were also lots of learning opportunities. We learned lots about the history of Canada and how that has impacted us now. You won’t see as much writing in this book as usual because it’s mostly in the E-book below.

Now, how has the geography of the west actually shaped us? I created this book to show you my answer to this question:

It took a long time to create my E-book and I had to do a lot of revisions. I hope you learned something new about Western Canada from what you read in my book. 

We also had a mini-exhibition to show off our books to the parents.  

I usually really don’t like exhibitions, but this one wasn’t to bad. It was fun and not very stressful to set up our room and we didn’t have a lot of people in our group, which makes it easier. It was easy to explain and show my book to the parents and I always had an answer to their questions. It went by very fast and before I knew it we were done. Afterwards we watched videos made by other groups of the fun things we did on the trip, they were very fun and I loved watching them. We also got cake! So cake makes the whole thing worth it. 🎂 🍰 🧁 

I will talk about the work we have done in this project and what I’ve learned but then at the end I’ll share some of the fun things we did and some videos/pictures.

To start this project we learned about the actual geography of Canada and its history. To do this we read about old Canada then answered some questions about it. The substitute teacher was very nice and helped me with this by explaining the questions to me individually.

At first I really struggled with this because geography is a very hard subject for me. I barely understood where any places they talked about were and It was quite hard to answer the questions they gave us. Luckily I had a good teacher who helped explain the questions to me 1 on 1 and I finally finished it.

After that we learned about the five themes of geography:

(Regions, Movement, Location, Place, and Human Environment Interaction)

You can learn more about each through looking at page 9 of my E-book.

After we learned about each theme we focused on how the themes were displayed in certain places in the West. Along the way we took pictures to add to our book but to also use in our ‘Five Themes of Geography Comic’. We made a comic explaining each theme with a picture and two words. Here is my comic:

I did almost as many revisions on this comic then I did on the book, there was always something I should change or a way to make it better. Then I ended up with that product, and I am quite happy with it.

But now I will show you all the fun things we did!  

Click here to see zip lining video

I had so much fun on this trip and I will never forget it. I made so many memories with my friends, I am so glad I got the opportunity to go. Along with having fun I also learned a lot. I learned about how certain geological aspects of the West can effect us so greatly. For example of how the West effects us is its diversity, like I had mentioned before. Growing up in such a accepting area has made us feel more comfortable about who we are and less scared to use our voices. I think being able to say something without being judged is a very important thing, and I wouldn’t be able to get that in some places.

Thank you so much for reading, I’ll be back soon for the next project reflection post!