Hey y’all! Welcome back to G’s blog! 

It’s been a couple weeks since I finished my Industrial Revolution project with a slam! A slam poem that is.

Our more recent humanities project, Full Steam Ahead,  was a fun combination of the Industrial Revolution and exploring different types of writing. I’m really proud of the work I created in this short project, and I would love to share it with you throughout this post! Keep reading!

Before creating anything whatsoever, I had to learn about the Industrial Revolution. Before this project, all I really knew about the Industrial Revolution was that is was a period in time where great smogs and pollution from factories filled the air, and I remembered something about the moths, but I don’t think I knew it to the detail that I do now.

Now, with some research, text book reading, and a few informational videos, I understand it much more. 

The Industrial Revolution was an era that began in the late 1700’s, in Britain, where the transfer of energy sources, from burning lumber, to burning coal (which was cheaper and burned longer), saw the emergence of factories, and new industrial innovations. This change of systems allowed for producing things in mass quantities, and transporting them over longer distances. With new machines, the work that farmers and artisans used to do by hand, eventually got replaced by machines, and their farming and artisan work was no longer needed. With a decreased need for people to grow their own food,  people who worked on the farmlands, moved to the cities, which led to overcrowding of the cities. They worked in poor conditions in factories, for long hours with no breaks, and barely got payed. Several negative consequences arose due to the Industrial Revolution including child labour, not enough jobs for everyone, very low wages for factory workers, disease, and massive environmental impacts.

Anyhoo… that was your Industrial Revolution overview in a nutshell. After some research we went Full Steam Ahead into Keystone 1 of this project, which was understanding through examining the  short and long term “causes and consequences” of the Industrial Revolution. I made 2 graphic organizers to represent the most important innovations of the Industrial Revolution (in my opinion), and the causes and consequences of their invention. Here they are:

I like my graphic organizers, because they’re nothing fancy; basically just some handwriting and doodles, but the key information is there, and so I feel that this work is a reflection of when imperfection and quality meet.

The following keystone was an objective paragraph. For this assignment, each person selected an area of focus of the Industrial Revolution that they were interested in. I was debating between choosing the impacts on workers or the environmental consequences, but decided on the later topic because I thought there would be more information, and resources.

These were the subjects you could choose from:

• the environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution
• the consequences of urbanization
• the consequences for workers
• the impact on and consequences for war
• the impact on children
• select a specific technological innovation and focus on its impact

We did some more individual research specifically about our area of focus, and then we went straight into planning our paragraphs.

Ms. Madsen gave me some feedback on my topic sentence and the 3 points in my paragraph. 

This project focused on the process; or in other words, the steps you take and revisions you make to improve your work/ your final product. So when handing in this assignment, I submitted my research notes, my paragraph planning, my first draft, 2 sets of revisions, and then my final paragraph. Although all these steps are timely, I do think they allowed me to expect critique, and use that critique to improve my work. 

Here’s my final paragraph, after the whole writing and revising process. 

And then last but not least we ended our project with a slam poem! 

First we learned a bit about: “What is a slam poetry?” 

I learnt that slam poetry is a form of of spoken word poetry, often presented before a live audience. Poets connect to their audience by including personal experiences, changes in their tone and volume and by using hand gestures, which evoke emotion and inspiration to the audience. Often slam poems connect to a real life issue or problem in society. We watched some slam poetry videos for inspiration and to extract themes, messages and emotion that the poet is trying to communicate through their voice and poem. This was my favourite one that we watched: Shane Koyczan‘s “To This Day”: A poem for the bullied and the beautiful. The way he connects with the audience with his words sends shivers down my spine every time. Watch it.

Then we were told to write our first draft of our poem, on the same theme as your paragraph, but this time, you could show personal emotions, and opinions.

 I wasn’t super enthused and inspired about what to write in my first, messy, get-all- the-ideas-on-the-page draft. But I knew inspiration would come. It always comes…eventually. Even if if it takes awhile, I am always able to edit and make revisions in the second and third draft. I have to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be great on the first draft, I just need to get a draft down, and then edit, add, remove, to make it ship-shape.

In the end, I loved my poem. It was a true SLAM on our society, and our habits and our mindset when it come to preserving our earth. I use a metaphor “We are the moth” to begin the first and last refrains of my poem, to tie the poem all together. My poem is called We Are The Moth. Here is the final slam poem, in written format. Stay tuned for spoken SLAM format.

I practiced my poem out loud, like 10 or so times, to get the feel of the speed, tone and silence breaks that I should take. 

I wasn’t very nervous about presenting my poem; the part when I felt the most doubtful was when I went up to present, and most poets/classmates before me were just holding their ipads in their hands (because our 2-3 minute poems weren’t completely memorized), but I wanted to put my IPad on a table so I could use hand gestures like an authentic slam poet. Even my teacher doubted my decision to put my iPad on a table, because slam poetry is without props.

In the end my decision payed off, and my way of delivering my poem was very effective. I got some really nice comments on Showbie from my teacher, including “Love your metaphor”, “expressive delivery”, “thoughtful preparation”, and some nice comments from my peers. 😁

Overall, this project was a huge success for me. We were able to get a lot done in a short 2 weeks or so.

So, “how can slam poetry help us connect to issues?”.

Well, from what I’ve learnt, SLAM poetry inspires and evokes emotion in audiences, in a way that a news article or paragraph could never impact you as much as a live poet that you can connect to. Social issues, such as politics, climate change, bullying, racism, sexism ect, but they are not limited to those topics. Poets often choose deep topic that will impact their audience. Slam poetry is a good way to bring light and inform those around us about these issues in a new, entertaining way.

Peace out! Thanks for reading.