Louis Riel; was he a hero, did he belong in a mental asylum, or both. If you want to find out, just read this handy blog post!
We started our history project by learning about the timeline of events, with our topic question of “how has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time”, and then doing some sample writing in the form of a postcard. This was mine:
Afterwards, we began to learn about more of Riel’s life and accomplishments, including where he studied, where he lived, and what he did. I’m not a stalker, I promise. It’s just history. After taking notes on who he was, we had to take notes on how others viewed him.
We delved into the many portrayals of Louis Riel, including statues, primary sources, a heritage minute made by the Canadian government, and a video where Louis Riel is a duck. I’ve learned that its best not to question it.
Now that we knew who he was, and how he was portrayed, we had to learn how to communicate that to other people.
We began to learn about Frayer models, synonymes, antonyms, topic sentences, elaboration, paragraph structure and much more. We then developed our topic sentence for our multi-paragraph composition (short essay), and that was actually really hard.
First draft:
Louis Riel was a controversial figure in Canadian history who initiated change.
Second draft:
Louis Riel was a determined and ambitious leader for the Métis people, who was a controversial figure in Canadian history because of the of the change he initiated in the Canadian government.
Third draft:
Louis Riel was a determined and ambitious Métis leader who initiated change in the Canadian government, whose portrayal has changed as a result of a shifting collective worldview
After that, we had to actually write something! As a PLP student this was unexpected (kidding), I actually found it quite fun. After we had completed a first draft, it was time to remember why we are in PLP, and get a reminder on revision…. Yay. I got feedback from my mum, my peers, and my teachers. Here it was:
It was actually fun, and I learnt a lot about analyzing sources and formatting my conclusions, as well as revising things and overall writing, I hope you enjoyed reading about my project, thanks for doing that!