**QUICK NOTE: ALL OF THE DOCUMENTS THAT ARE IN THIS POST, YOU CAN CLICK ON AND SEE THEM FULL SIZE**

Oh my goodness!! This is a milestone of the year! This. Is. My. Last. Humanities. Blog. Post. Of. The. Whole. Entire. Year. I know, it’s pretty crazy right? This past month and a half my PLP 9 class has been hard at work learning about all the parts of WW1. Anything from battles to the Role of Women have been studied inside out an been made into a video by someone in our class. My topic, is the Role of Animals in WW1 and I had to find a way to solve this driving question “How can we show the stories of WW1 through video?” Come along with me and a few of our furry friends to see just how they changed life on the battle front. That will sound familiar if you take a look at my video down below.

World War One happened for many reasons but there is one major one we learn about in school, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary and it just snowballed from there, literally. Here is a quick little diagram I created in sketches that describes the events leading up:

Along with that we learned a ton about the Allies and the Axis which were the two Alliances during the war including tons of different countries in each, here is a mind map I created showing that a long with a few other cool facts.

World War 1 is said to have been one of the most brutal Wars in history including battles such as the battle of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the battle of Somme which were all very significant to Canadians and the rest of the world. But one of the most significant was the battle of Vimy Ridge. If you recall our heritage minute unit, then you will know what this is but here is one about Vimy Ridge:

https://youtu.be/rH0Gx3OFFyk

I thought I would give y’all a bit of background information about WW1 before getting to far in to it.

THE BOOK CHAT

This unit we did LIT circles!! Yay! I love LIT circles so so much and I actually read a very amazing book, The War Horse. I’m not going to tell you too much about it because no one likes spoilers but basically, it’s about a horse named joey who is taken away from home to the war and his story there. It was actually a great book to read with my video topic (Animals in the War), teaching me a ton of things I wouldn’t have learned from the internet.

Each week out of the four weeks we read the book we had a different role. Either Creative Connector, Artful Artist, Discussion Director, and Smart Summarizer. I think my favourite role that really helped me take my learning deeper and that helped me with my video was being the Creative Connector. Just to the side over their you can check it out.

 

At the end of the book, we did a final book reflection, a CREATIVE book reflection. I wrote four poems from a few different character’s perspective’s so I hope you enjoy!

THE PROJECT

As you know from many of my other blog posts, it is quite the process to create a video. Anything from my Identity Video in Alberta to my Kanakas Animation includes many steps, but I don’t want to make this post too too long so you can either go check those posts out or here is a little drop down for you guys.

First things first, I had to choose my topic. Me, absolutely loving animals (which you can find in my about me page), made it an easy choice. I decided to research The Role of Animals in WW1.

Now for the pitch form. I don’t want to get too much into this because I will talk about it later but this was the first project I did a pitch form and it quickly became very important. 

As many of you are familiar with, the Screenplay is the next step. Screenplays are something I have been working on for the past few projects and I am really proud of how for I have come with them:

Storyboarding. This storyboard was a little bit different, we actually created it in Keynote which I really enjoyed and had a lot of fun creating.

Last but not least, it’s filming. I went to Maplewood Farm on the perfect day, it was bright and sunny and beautiful and I am very happy with how those shots turned out.

I am just going to talk about two very important things I learned from actually creating the video, pitch forms and audience. This was the first project that included a pitch form. In this pitch form we had to decide on a video form whether it be animation, Rick Steves style, John Green style, or a stop motion but this is when things could have gone downhill. You really have to think about which style of video goes well with your topic. Because if not it will be very hard to film and it will set you off track for the rest of the project.

I ended up choosing a bit of animation as well as a Rick Steves type video. This was for our audience who we were creating the video for the whole time. THE GRADE 7’S DOWN AT COVE CLIFF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!! This included presenting to my brother as well as many of his friends. I learned important lessons from each and every part but these are the two most important to me.

GOING DOWN TO COVE CLIFF

Going down to the elementary school I once went to was actually a lot of fun for me and many of the kids too. After they watched my video, I gave them a short quiz which it seemed like they really enjoyed. One thing that I would have done a bit differently is either print more quizzes or find a different way for them to review what the learned from my video. Other than that, I found it really motivating and driving to be creating for an audience I know so well. Ill put my quiz down below, you can try  answering the questions in the comments.

 

CONCLUSION

WW1 was a topic I didn’t know much about before learning about it in this project and I think it really changed the way I know what happened. It was awesome to learn about it through the point of animals since that is something I can connect to. I learned a ton about video forms and  creating for an audience in this projects and I cant wait to use these skills in projects next year! On that note, until next year my fellow blogging friends, I am off to enjoy my summer!

~Jordyn