Greetings fellow penguins! I believe this will be three posts this week. Can you tell we just finished some projects? Anyways, this was our latest Personal Growth Plan (PGP) project where we had a look at how other’s career journeys can shape our own.
From the start of the project we knew we were going to achieve this goal by shadowing a professional for a day and then interviewing them, although just getting an interview was fine as well, and then turning the audio we captured into an entire podcast episode! It did seem rather daunting at first, but I managed to make it work and I’m very proud of the end result.
We started by sending out emails to potential “mentors”, the people who we would be shadowing, so we did some work on how to send a good email before sending those out. My dad helped me connect with Ahren Britton, an engineer at AlgaFilm Technologies, and then I contacted him about what the day would be like. We then worked on some interview questions to ask after doing some research on the person/place in question. Here were my initial interview questions:
[interview questions]
We also did a bit more of a deep dive into the the career we were going to be exploring, and we showed our learning by making an easy-to-read overview on the topic in turn also expanding our knowledge on the subject as well as that of the reader. Here is what I created about engineering, with a focus on bioengineering:
[smart brevity]
Then it was time for the actual shadow day, It was really fun and I learnt a lot about engineering, and also AlgaFilm’s work.
[photos]
More details are in my podcast episode, which was finished after some music creation and a whole lot of editing. The episode is still being published on Spotify, so for now, here is the audio file:
[le podcast]
I hope you enjoyed that, there was a lot of work put into it, but let me know in the comments if you had any comments or there was something you didn’t like, and I’ll take it into account for my next podcast project.
This experience definitely reinforced my interest in engineering
Its come time time of year for mPOLs, our midyear presentation of learning. This year I was asked too reflect on progress made towards my “mission”, which was a kind of “where do you see yourself at graduation” type situation set at the start of the school year. Mine was “I am a student who can be engaged in my work, self-regulate, communicate, and collaborate. This helps me achieve my vision by reinforcing my good habits and helping me break worse ones. I also helps me enjoy my projects, which in turn makes me do much better work, as well as feeling proud of my own work and learning from it.”
Now that was all fine and dandy but now that we are actually a good part of the way through the school year, the teachers want to make sure we are actually making progress on our goals that we set for ourselves which I figure is fair. No point having a goal if you forget about and don’t work towards it. So now I’ve got to do just that.
So lets break this down. I said that I wanted to:
Be Engaged in my Work
Self-Regulate
Communicate & Collaborate
Learn from my work
Well that all sounds good, but how am I actually progressing these skills?
Engaged in Work:
I think my best example of this so far this year our WWII project where I created a sophisticated essay to go into our class zine. I really enjoyed this project, and I found the content interesting which definitely helped me focus and be engaged on my final product.
This is definitely a skill I’m still working on although I’m not to bad at it. I mainly get distracted when I’m overwhelmed with work and it feels like to much to handle or start. Better managing my time and working more efficiently will clear up some time so that these projects aren’t overwhelming. I need to do some more research and potentially creation of some methods that will me allow me to do this.
That being said I think I did this very well in our latest PGP project. I was able to focus on my work and just things done, and as a result, I had less work to do later and didn’t get bogged down with work, which would in turn make it harder for me to focus in the future.
(Blog Post Being Made)
Communicate & Collaborate:
I think a great example of where my collaboration and communication skills are at right now was our latest humanities project, where we read and analyzed Romeo & Juliet and then created a modern parody of the play. Throughout the project I maintained constant communication with the DRI and other main people working on the creation and presentation of the parody, and I was very happy with myself after I created a combined script for all the acts and a formatting guide, as the previous format had caused some chaos; I was just happy it all worked out in the end but I was proud of myself mor making something that ended up being very useful even though It was not part of my role.
In terms of learning from my work and learning skills applicable in real life, I think the project that was designed to just done that has done so. Marketing me was one of our PGP projects were we essentially learned how to be professional and create a bit of a brand identity for ourselves. Not only do I find this really fun and have been using it for a lot of things, but I also now have a job interview scheduled, and i had sent the resume we made in class, so I think I definitely learned a lot of stuff from this project.
Now moving forward, I’m thinking about how I can extend in my work and make some truly impressive things. I’ve feel already seen a large jump in the quality of my work this year, especially with my PGP podcast, which got praise from my interviewee that made me very happy. Continuing to refine my presentation and making real-world connections are what I believe will bring my projects to the next level
Building my collaboration skills with others though communication and practice will also be instrumental in my future success. It’s a skill I’m always trying to work on, but always find difficult as I prefer to work by myself, but Destination Imagination and our Romeo & Juliet project have definitely improved my ability to collaborate with others, and work towards a common goal.
Welcome to yet another blog post, for this this one our focus is our time working on and preforming in destination imagination (D.I.) 2025, It actually was a really good experience this year and I’m exited to share my journey throughout D.I. this year.
We began working on our challenge what in my opinion was far to late into the year, with only a little over a month into the first contest, but hey, that’s just the way things happened this year. I was very happy with my group this year, I had a strong team of dedicated people who wanted to do really well this year, so I was pretty confidence going into our design process. We then created a group messages chat to collaborate on which ended up working very well.
We were assigned to the engineering challenge, which only two of us were interested in, for the others it was their last choice (but they still did a great job). We started by deciding on a general team conduct to follow and then moved to identifying everyone’s personal strengths. We quickly realized it would be best to split into an engineering team and a story & props team; I was on the engineering team.
A test course we made to see if our transporter worked
I don’t want to reveal to much about our solution the the challenge yet (which was to bring weights across a cord on some sort of transporter), because I have been told not too, as there are still some regional tournaments going on, one we need to make sure no one uses our ideas. We had a good design process though and went though many rounds of ideation and iteration before we landed on something that we were happy with as an end product. It’s certainly not perfect and it did break a little later on but we have thought of some ways to improve it for the provincial tournament in a month-or-so’s time.
Some basic ideation sketches that we may or may not have used.
While we worked on that our story team was hard at work creating a parody of the greatest showman for us to preform. They did a great job with the story, script and props and I think the D.I. appraisers were very impressed. I’ve learnt a lot about what good team collaboration, collaboration, and communication looks like, and I’m really thankful to my team for that. I also devolved my brainstorming process and learned a little bit about mechanical engineering principles in order to build our transporter.
On the day of the tournament, our team agreed to meet early to get in a whole bunch of extra script run-throughs and practice performances. It was exhausting doing ~8 run-throughs in a row, but it all paid off after we had a really good performance. We then had our instant improv challenge which went well as our grouped worked well together towards a solution. After all that, our hard work was rewarded with winning our category, which felt awesome, even though I was rather confident we would win.
Our team after finishing our performance. I’m the one on the far left looking flustered, as I had just been running around trying to make sure everything was in the right place so we could finish our performance on time.
For the provincial tournament, we did some brainstorming and made a list of things to fix/change that we are beginning to implement now, but I still don’t want to say what it is so we don’t break the rules. Hope you guys found this interesting, and look for the part two in a month or so!
How do you manage to burn yourself, stab yourself, and create a system to connect wires to each other for a social studies project? To find out, use those handy eyes of yours (the things on each side of the bridge of your nose), and look this way ↓
I say salutations to my fellow penguins reading this (and humans I suppose), as we dive into a project a few of Canada’s worst moments and how they are reconciled and learned from, as well as a little bit about discovering and setting my own boundaries.
Our focus for this project was “How can we keep an apology alive so that the wrongs of the past are remembered—and not repeated—today”, and you can see me discover this throughout the post, and then at the end, I’ll give my answer.
We began this project with a quick activity where we tried to commemorate certain historical tragic events with some quickly constructed memorials, which was a nice jumpstart into learning about monuments and memorials, which is what came after along with learning where story played a role in these events and memorials.
We then went into a bit of history on the history of our home, British Columbia, and how it came to be. Here is what we learned:
We then learnt about and analyzed some of the biggest wrongdoings by the Canadian government in history: Asiatic exclusion, Japanese internment in WWII, and the Komagata Maru incident. We also learned about what an apology is, so have a look at that below:
I did honestly find it jarring that I had never heard of some of these events before; despite being a Canadian citizen who has lived in Canada as long as I can remember, I had never heard of the Komagata Maru incident for example, and with the role it played in challenging Canada’s discriminatory intentions at the time and shaping a better future I now find this kind of odd. However I am pleased to the lengths at which these things were taught to us, showing how Canada truly has a commitment to remembering and learning from the past.
As an accompaniment to our other learning in this project, we read and studied Obason by Joy Kogawa. Obason is a book about a young Japanese girl and her family during Japanese internment in Canada and their journey and experiences though it. It gave me new perspective on what this event was like, as well as some more information about the topic. I’m going to personally rate the book a 7 / 10.
We were then assigned (with some choice), our case study for this project. My preference was the Komagata Maru, and this was luckily what my group was assigned to. Here is a more in-depth overview of the topic that I created:
After some brainstorming, we had a basic idea for what we were going to make for our final product, which was in the style of a pitch of a memorial to commemorate the events of our case study. We decided we were going to have a wireframe boat supported by hands raised out of a rock pond. I know this may seem a little confusing, but it’s laced with metaphors, so here was my explanation.
We were also tasked with creating a prototype of what this would look like. It was a lot of work to figure how to create this in a way that would communicate our vision to others but I think we pulled it off.
My group with the finished memorial pitch (I am in the middle)
But its creation was not without struggles, as each group member was tasked with creating one section of our memorial prototype. I said I would create the wireframe boat, and as my teacher pointed out on more than one occasion, I probably made it a little more difficult on myself than it had to be.
I designed and 3-d printed an entire system specifically to join the type of wire I was using together in a modular way. After the many iterations of that, I still had to build the boat, but I got away with just a few small burns and a small cut. (I’m not great with hot glue)
… but I think it looked alright. I also ended up 3d printing the hands, and we were having trouble sculpting them.
All in all I think this was a very informative project that taught some useful information and skills, and I learnt how an apology can be kept alive though careful and methodical storytelling and symbolism to create a monument that resonates with and helps heal those involved.
Overall I give this project an 8 / 10. See y’all in the next one.
I never though I’d have to make myself a logo, much less for school, but that’s what happened in this project.
This was a PGP (Personal Growth Plan) project about marketing ourselves to the world in an authentic and purposeful way. In fact our driving questions was “How might I present my passions, strengths, and learning to the world?”, and therefore this is the question I will be answering with this blog post!
I understand how this project could look very boring from the surface, but as a student who hadn’t really tried to express myself professionally before, I was actually very exited and was hoping to make/learn some things that would actually be useful for my future.
I don’t feel like I was disappointed, we started off strong with a guest speaker, Curt Scheewe, who came to talk to us about some dos and don’ts of things like marketing ourselves and job interviews, as well as where we could fit into the workforce. It was great to have him talk to us, and it got me thinking about how I was actually going to y’know, market myself.
Then we started working on our first benchmark of the project, creating a personal theme and logo, and then combing them to make a business card:
It took a lot of revisions to get it right, but I was actually very happy with the end result and I think it’s one of the most professional looking things I’ve ever made, so yeah, I was really happy with how this came out.
we continued this theme by moving on to our resumes, which were a real challenge. We made visual resumes which I had very mixed feeling about,. because while it was technically a resume, it doesn’t work well for actual use but oh well. It went though many revisions, far too many to put here, so I’ll just show you my final version:
We also did some mock interviews which were interesting, and some practice, but I don’t feel like there was very much emphasis put on them throughout the project so I didn’t put too much effort into mine, although I still think I did just fine and it was a good preview/reminder of what a job interview is like.
This was also our exhibition project, so in order to present our learning be designed and created booths, trying to simulate the general look of a job fair. I really wasn’t sure what to focus on for a while for my booth, as it was such a personal focus thing, but eventually I decided to lean into the nerdy side of my hobbies (I don’t know why I’m pretending there’s another side). Here was the draft for my booth:
On one side I had all of the stuff we made in the project on 3-d printed display stands, and then on the other some of my hobbies like speedcubing and 3-d designing. Then came the actual exhibition night.., and it went great! It was by my and my class’s best exhibition so far, and we got a lot of praise from both teachers and parents so that was awesome. I think the success can be attributed to the amount of work put in, the personal elements of the project, and just having a little more time than usual. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of my booth on the day 🙁
I learned a lot about myself in this project, and finished it with a lot more pride in who I was and the things that I do than I did going into it. It was a good opportunity to preview some of my potential career decisions. I think I did a very good job of creating my business card and booth, as well as being a good team member, but I could have definitely improved my resume. In future I will do some more concept ideas and ideation for graphic design projects before diving headfirst into the actual design. It would also be fun to make a design theme/moodboard for ourselves if we ever did this project again
I was actually very impressed with my exhibition group and we all worked really well together to create a great theme for our area of focus (engineering & trades), as well as making sure all the guests would have fun and be engaged.
So throughout this project we presented our passions, strengths and learning to the world by developing an image for ourselves and exhibiting our work and interests to a public audience. This was great project that I have learned a lot of great strategies for presenting myself, and just building my general confidence. Thanks so much for reading!
Hello there fellow humans, and welcome to yet another blog post (I need a new intro, suggestions are welcome). From the start of this project, we knew we were going to be making many real-world connections, creating a class zine about WWII’s role in shaping Canada’s identity, as well as collecting $500 dollars in order to purchase a flag from the Juno beach centre (the museum at the beach taken by Canada on D-Day), and present it to a local place supporting military veterans, the Lynn Valley Legion.
In this project we did many a thing, in fact, I would confidently say that this is the largest project we’ve ever worked on in PLP. We started off just by learning about the severity of WWII and how the war played out. it was very insightful to learn about the war and how it has affected my life, I really feel like a started to connect some things in my head. It’s honestly hard to describe, but I definitely felt a strengthening of my national pride on those days.
We also had a guest speaker come in from the Lynn Valley Legion to talk to us about the notion of service and what we can do for our communities. I thought in general he was a really nice guy and he had a lot of good points when it came to volunteering and community. We then volunteered our time around the community, which was a nice experience, and I discovered a lot about how the world works in regard to volunteering and what it can mean for someone or something. I know that’s all a bit cryptic, but it’s a little hard to explain concisely. I’ll just show you what I did and my section for the about me section in our class zine:
James is a grade 10 PLP student at Seycove secondary who enjoys spending time with friends, designing things, and solving Rubik’s cubes. For his service project, he decided to participate in a cleanup of his local forest, removing trash and making the forest a better place for humans and all other creatures as the forest is very important to him, as he enjoys being in and around nature. He very much enjoyed cleaning the forest while exploring and discovering more about Canada’s forests and geography. His friend Matteo also came to help out.
(I’m on the left)
Then we get to the hard part, the essay. Why is there always an essay? So much essay. However it actually wasn’t too bad this time, as least the first draft, and even that didn’t happen until after a lot of planning. In fact, here was my plan; I think this took longer than the essay itself because I had to make sure the whole thing would make sense when it was finished:
The Plan
you might have to zoom out (CTRL + Scroll)
And lets not forget about the thesis which when though many, many iterations:
If you actually want to see them:
General vibe: “Canada’s multicultural identity was fostered and enriched by its military contributions in WWII, shaping the country’s unique and inclusive national identity.”
Potential points to argue:
The UN and NATO’s existence have prevented WWIII
The UN’s peacekeeping operations blah blah blah
How WWII contributed to Canada’s safety and security
The conflict of WWII directly led to the safety and prosperity of Canada though Canada’s acts within the war
Because of Canada’s contributions in WWII, Canada is safe and secure today
Canada’s safety and prosperity are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII
Canada’s multiculturalism is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – reword, add identity, fostered
Canadian’s values are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
Canadian’s lifestyles are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
WWII was only won by the Allies as a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – is a statement, too much nationalism, also an opinion?
Canada’s global reputation is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
Canada’s multiculturalist (<- Not a word) identity is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – reword, add identity, fostered
Final: Canada’s multicultural identity was enriched and expanded by it’s military contributions in WWII, shaping the country’s inclusive national identity.
And then we had to learn about MLA formatting (which was not as bad as I expected), it was a challenge but eventually I understood enough to the point where I use it and be confident it was correct.
I also had to write the thing itself, which was definitely a challenge and after I finished planning I only had a day or two to complete my first draft but here it is:
After that I revised, revised, revised (around 6 total revisions) until I had a finished product that I was actually really proud of:
I think my favourite part of this project was either learning about the good part of Canada’s contribution is WWII or actually doing my service project. Both just felt right and were actually rather enjoyable. I think I over-planned my essay a bit to much, and as we learned about in our atomic habits project earlier this year, I did to much work that seems good but actually doesn’t get much done.
Some of my key takeaways from this project were about history, how it to analyze it, and a deeper understanding of how it shapes the present and the future. I also feel much more confident in essay writing now, which I’m sure is a skill that will benefit me throughout later life. It it kind of sound like a bit of a shallow explanation, but these are some of the most useful skills I gained in this project.
So yeah, in the future I will do more realistic planning for my essay, and I also think that learning some writing skills could be beneficial for my my focus and even personal well being. Big projects with a deadline can be very imposing, but I think learning how to succeed in that type of situation will set me up well for life.
So now we get to answering our driving question: “What role did the conflict of World War II play in shaping Canadian identity”. My answer, built off of all that we learned in this project is: World War II played the role of an instigator for the advancement of Canada’s society and identity though providing a necessity for innovation and assertion of Canada’s national identity. I hope that makes enough sense. its hard to condense an entire project into one sentence. Thanks for reading!
Greeting my friends, we’re back at school; we just finished our first project, and you know what that means. It’s time for a blog post!
In this post, I’ll guide you though how diversity in the Canadian military improves the effectiveness of the army that keeps us here in Canada safe, and how we managed to express what we learnt in this project. So if your interested, keep reading!
This was a very big project, even spanning over two subjects! yes, you heard that right, this was the first joint project between Humanities and Maker and think it actually worked really well, but more on that later. The driving question we were trying to answer first this project was ‘Why does the world need more “Canada”?’
We started by learning about:
Globalization: The process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
How canada works towards peace & protects itself: We learned a bit about Canada’s military and peacekeeping operations, as well as all of the the alliances it’s in.
Diversity in canada: …and how it benefits all Canadians
Canadian Literature: how to analyze it and how it showcases Canadian identity
We were also tasked with watching the national every day, a Canadian news network to keep ourselves informed and then we were tasked with choosing one important thing that just happened or is happening in the world and lead a discussion about it. Here was what I found:
I think that my discussion went rather well, and It felt good to have a meaningful talk about some of the awful things going on in the world right now.
At the same time, in maker we were learning how to create a good podcast, and how to structure a story. We worked on how to edit audio clips, record clear audio, create music for a podcast and how to create a good podcast cover art.
My intro music:
My cover art (I made two versions):
Then, in humanities we chose a topic to write our final essay on. After a bit of brainstorming I decided to write my essay on diversity in the Canadian military and how it increases effectiveness within the Canadian armed forces.
First I had to create a thesis, and this went though many different iterations, and was probably one of the hardest parts of this entire project. Here were some of my drafts:
Then it was time for research. A lot of research. we even did an in class lesson on how to find reliable sources which I did actually find very useful. After I had my sources, It was time to begin writing my essay. I went though many different versions and iterations of my essay, changing grammar, spacing, spelling, formatting, and even entire sections or paragraphs. It was lot of work, and if we did it again I would definitely change how I wrote some of my initial drafts. I think it was a very good experience though, as I learned how to find sources hat supported my thesis which I think will be very important for me going in to higher grades. Currently I don’t have access to some of my earlier versions, but I will update my blog when I do. In the meantime here was one of my first drafts:
And then it was done! It was a lot of work but I was happy with my end product. It did really help me understand what it meant to be Canadian and what Canadian identity is. Then we began adapting our script to fit our podcast, first we put it into the three act structure:
And then we recorded our podcast! there was a lot of challenges to overcome, from microphone issues or speaking clearly to making it engaging, but I felt in control throughout the whole process and was pleased with my final result:
Or if you don’t have Spotify:
I was very with how it turned out, even if did take me an hour to figure out how to move the audio clips from my computer to my iPad.
I do actually feel that I learned a lot of valuable things throughout the course of this project such as how how to find evidence to support my claims, how to write a thesis, and how to edit a podcast as I talked about previously. Though our literature studies I also learned what Canadian identity is, and how a collective identity is created.
So now after all that work, why do I think the world needs more Canada? Well, I think that Canada sets a good example for the world in many things, and that if the rest of the world did things more like Canada, the world would be a better place.
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you also learned something or found this interesting, and I hope to see you again! Bye! 👋
Why did I do 12 hours of 3-d modelling for a careers class? It’s a mystery.
…unless you read this spectuaroulous blog post!
[spec-tac-ur-arol-us] = spectacular + marvellous
Hello! it’s once again me! this time, we going to be taking a look at the first PGP project of this year: Atomic habits! Our driving question for this project was “How can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond?”
Centred around the self-improvement book ‘Atomic habits’ written by the author James Clear, we explored his strategies for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. We used many methods from his book to do this, but everything was centered around four main rules.
Make it obvious
Make it attractive
Make it easy
Make it satisfying
These were the rules we learned for creating good habits, but I also tried to implement throughout the rest of this project as I will touch on later. While reading the book we also had some tests just on the content of the book. Yes, you read that right, paper! every PLP kids worst fear.
We also did a little bit of work on who we want to be and our learning intentions for this year. Then we created our artifact, which was something we came up with and created that showcased what we learnt in the book and how we were going to implement it into our lives.
I decided to create a slightly odd marble run/habit tracker hybrid that used marbles to track your progress on your to-do’s. Here is the final 3-d model:
My artifact represents a couple things from the book. It was created using design principles that were the same as those for forming a habit in the book: easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying. It also uses the paperclip method (A visual method to see completed work) of a very visible indication of what has been done and what needs doing. It can/will help me manage my time and have a clear visual indicator of my work as talked about in the book as well as a few other things:
Reducing friction
Immediate reward for good actions
Designing my environment for success
It was also very fun to design and went though many different iteration of each part. Revision as always.
Concept design:
And the finished product!
I also have a time-lapse of me designing a single part. (half an hour real time for reference):
I think that this project was very helpful for me, as it did help me develop some methods for forming good habits, but it also taught me about my own mindset and how I work much better when working on something I find fun or care about. I do genuinely feel more competent and in control after this project, so thanks to the teachers for that.
As for answering out driving question for this project: Small changes in my habits can enable me to live a better, more controlled life where I am organized and in control this year and beyond.
Thank you very much for reading as always. Goodbye. *BWweDeloOop
Hello, and once again welcome to (I need a better intro, suggestions welcome) my final post of Grade 9! It’s crazy that a year can go by this fast, and yet this slow. Here were some of my thoughts on this year.
This year I learned a lot, both about academics and about myself and my needs, and that is what I want to show with this post, where I will highlight what I did well this year, areas for growth, and how I think I did and what needs to be improved on some success behaviours from this year.
I had a few really big achievements this year and a lot of things and techniques that I’ve learned as well, here is what I thought I did well this year.
Because of our overall theme; storytelling throughout the moving image, that is what I’m going to focus on for this section. I think the project that I learnt the most from this year was our field school in Alberta which taught me a lot about about the real world and problem solving. In terms of filmmaking, the most meaningful projects were running a remake which helped me improve my revision skills by remaking our video, and then this idea of revision was improved upon with our thriller in Thrill Us, where we expanded upon our filmmaking and storytelling skills while also having fun with friends.
My thriller video made with my friends
I think that my best project for storytelling wasFrankenstuffies, where the entire project was based off of our world building and storytelling skills. Also in the story creation department was WWI-Con, which I think was one of my best projects this year, and one that accurately represents my growth and improvement, with meaningful research and planning, good end result, and interesting presentation.
My comic book:
These are some other things I felt that I did well this year:
Destination Imagination: This really tested my teamwork skills, where I was trying to manage our entire group and create our final product. It was also great for my presentation and public speaking skills, and I was incredibly happy with our first place finish
Let’s get Riel: this one was really fun i felt like it was executed really well, both on the teacher’s side, and also on mine. I enjoyed the writing and was well organized and all that made the project very manageable for me.
Me and my group very happy after winning our category
And I think that these are some areas for my growth as a learner next year at school and in life:
Using correct tools: Using the best tool for the job, unlike using superimpose for my advertisement in grade 8, and not using comic life in grade 9 / using the tools provided to me.
Better organization: Having a spot for notes & work so nothing is lost, and no time is wasted trying to just find my work, which I feel like will help me in general with all the work we I will be doing in grade 10.
Focus in and out of class: Staying on task, but also taking breaks to maintain productivity. I struggle with this a lot sometimes, and finding out how I focus best would be super useful to me, and something I will be working on.
Teamwork: Although most of my group projects this year worked out well enough in terms of a final product, most things other than that didn’t really work for me this year, such as D.I. and Metaphor Machines, part of this was who was in the group, but I will also try not to take lead or control of a group as much and make sure everyone plays to their strengths.
Making these changes to my routine and work will help me be able to produce quality work not just throughout next year, but also the years to come after.
And here are the three success behaviours that I want to focus on:
Agency -> Goals and self-assessing: I think that this is something that is important to work on, because setting meaningful, realistic goals will be really useful to me all though life, and being able to look at and critique my own work in the name of improving it, is in general a really important skill. Over the summer, I will set three goals for myself that will be realistic and related to my hobbies, and check in on my own progress over the break.
Outside school: I do have a lot of extracurricular activities like piano, soccer, band, and my hobbies, and it can be hard to keep track of everything and maintain balance, but I think I did okay on this, but with room for improvement.
Balance: This plays into the previous section, and in terms of balance, usually it’s not too big of an issue for me, but it can become an issue when band concerts and exhibitions are close to each other, and I think that I way that I can improve this balance in general, is when I have a lot of downtime, starting or preparing something that will make the school element easier in the future. This could be starting a blog post, or organizing something in advance.
Overall, it’s been a pretty good year, and I’ve learned a lot, and had good times with with my friends. Thanks to everyone who helped me get though this year!
How did one Canadian military engineer kill three men, and capture twelve more in WWI, and how did I turn it into a graphic novel? Well, you’ll just have to read the post! Easy as that.
Hello once again to another exciting, riveting, super-fantabulous blog post coming soon to a city near you! This time we were learning about the bad, the ugly, and the uglier of WWI and its impacts on the world. So, without further ado, let’s jump into WWI.
Our driving question for this project was: How can I create a graphic novel that accurately depicts an event from WWI?
This project’s title was: “WWI Con – The Great War Graphically told”, and it was about telling the story of the Great War though a graphic novel. This plays into our everlasting theme of storytelling, also teaching us about the importance and impact of the Great War, our processing skills; understanding of narrative structures, analysis of a historical event, and visual art production. We knew from the start that we were going to be making a comic book for this project, which seemed daunting but also kind of fun.
We began this project with research, as we often do, looking into primary sources, big ideas, and fun facts alike to gain an understanding of the events that transpired in the Great War with a focus on Canada and its contributions. This research included a novel study of the graphic novel World War One by Alain Cowsill and Lalit Kumar Sharma where we learned about the causes and realities of WWI, and also gained inspiration for our own comics. We also completed a study of the amazing film, 1917; a brilliant (in my opinion) story told in a unique, nonstop format that taught us about the realities of WWI and offered an interesting perspective on the art of storytelling.
We then moved on to thinking about our final product, which for this project was going to be in the form of a 20 panel minimum short graphic novel. First, we learned about a lot of different comic making techniques, which are shown below, spanning from how to space and format our panels, to what should actually be inside them and how to make them feel alive and be engaging. My chosen method for creating this comic was tracing primary source images / photos from the time; this is what most people in my class did, but I have major respect for those that managed to freehand the entire thing.
However, creating our comic didn’t just consist of drawing the actual panels, but included a lot of research, topic selection and storyboarding before we could even begin to draw our story. Originally, I wanted my story to be about the air force somehow, or one of the Canadian Flying aces, but it turned out that a lot of people wanted to work on this topic, so I made a shift to ‘Sappers’ as my topic. Sappers are military engineers, soldiers who bolster their country’s or “side’s” movement and impede the enemy’s; building or repairing bridges, planting or removing mines and digging trenches were all included in their duties along with other things. I decided to focus on a real person, Coulson Mitchell. He really was an amazing man, being the only Canadian sapper to earn the Victoria Cross in WWI. If you want to see what he earned it for, you’ll have to wait until the comic later in the post. After pouring through countless sites trying to piece together as much as I could of his life, and the events I knew I was going to showcase in my comic, it was time to get to storyboarding! Below is my initial storyboard:
Then I began to create the actual comic; laying out every panel, finding primary source imagery to fit the scene, applying the research I did, tracing and colouring, and then adding extra effects like narrator’s blocks and speech bubbles to form my story. Here is a video of part of the creation.
On a normal project, this would be where we would be done, but this was no ordinary project, as we now had to present our final product in our PLP Spring Exhibition 2024. Now this exhibition felt different from others in the past because we didn’t have very much physical stuff to show unlike other exhibitions, and so somehow I felt less stressed leading up to it because we didn’t really have much to show. Or maybe it’s just getting less stressful, I don’t really know. But either way, setup was as chaotic as ever with misprinted comics (this happened twice!), a failing trench , and few decorations. We resorted to bringing in ivy, rocks, and wood from the forest to make everything look nicer, along with some paper from the art room used as a tablecloth. Big thanks to anyone who stopped by to see my comic, “Coulson Mitchell”, and an even bigger thanks to those who asked me some good questions about him and the creation of the comic. I won’t keep you waiting any longer; here is the finished comic:
So now you know what I did, but what did I learn?
I felt that within this project I deepened my understanding for many topics, such as:
– Planning: all the work that went into my storyboard. – Research: using good sources for accurate information. – Drawing/Storytelling: managing to tell a story throughout my comic book, and the actual creation of my panels and their contents within the book. – Presenting: all of the work that went into showcasing my comic book.
All of this along with many other assorted skills were improved upon within my time working on this project. If I did it again, what would I change? I think a few things that could have been improved are:
– Preparation: being a bit more ready for the exhibition would have saved me a lot of stress on the day – App selection: there is a better app I could have drawn my comic in which might have saved me some time, and if I had used Comic Life 3 (an app for comic creation), my text blocks and bubbles might have looked a lot better and made the story easier to read – Writing: I meant to re-visit my script for the comic book at some point after the comic book, so I felt like the dialogue within the book was lacking, not to mention some grammar/spelling errors.
And so, to answer the driving question: We can create a graphic novel that accurately depicts an event from WWI by creating an engaging story though meticulous research, well formatted and written dialogue, quality visuals, and reciting and interesting storytelling.
Overall, I actually had a lot of fun with this project, and I would put in my top three projects for this year. I learnt a lot, but I’m still glad that I won’t have to write another one to these for around three months. See you after summer! 🏖️
