Geography of The West and How It Has Shaped Us

Hello people! Welcome to another one of my blogs! 

For those of you who don’t know, I am a new member to PLP 9 at my school and so far, it’s not that bad. At the start of the school year, in September, we started a project in Humanities about geography. Our driving question for this project was “how has the geography of the West and how it shaped us”. There were two trips planned near the end of September, so we had to learn as much about geography as we could before it happened. We started off by learning what the word geography means. Once we had an understanding of it, we learned about the five themes of geography. Those themes are: location, place, region,  human-environment interaction, movement.

Then we were introduced to a one page comic in Comic Life that showcases our knowledge on the five themes of geography. For each of the five themes, we included one image in one cell that shows an understanding of one of the themes, one-two words with each cell that are important for understanding the them, the images had to be taken by us, at least one image must have me in it, and at least one image must have annotation drawings on it or be a drawing here mine!

Then we looked at the geographic characteristics of Canada. We looked at a couple pages taken from a textbook or something and answered some questions there.

There were two trips planned, so the class split into two groups and one went on the first trip and the other went on the second. The trips were mostly the same, just at different times. We had to chose which trip we wanted to go to, and I chose the second one, mainly because I am new to PLP and wanted to get to know it a bit better before going on a trip. The second trip started on Thursday, September 22 and ended on Friday September 30. During the trip, we made a bunch of stops along the way to Calgary and back. We also did some surprise activities along the way.

Our final product for this sector is a multi-touch book that holds our answer to the driving question and the evidence to support it. In the book, we explain what geography is by using our comic life, what made and makes the West with our photographic evidence that we took on the field study, and who I am in the West with our reflections on the photographic evidence. In the reflections, we had to tell the reader how the photos that we chose connect to the five themes of geography, how it shaped and is shaping the West, and our own connections to the places.

The places that we had to include in the book were The Last Spike, Downtown Calgary, Calgary Zoo, The Frank Slide, Head-Smash-In Buffalo Jump, Cave and Basin National Historic Site, Columbia Icefield and Glacier Skywalk, and Golden Skybridge.

After the trip, we learned about the history of the West in Canada and some other stuffs that we could maybe add to our answers in the book. This took about half a month, and then we were told that there was going to be a mini exhibition on our books, a week before it happened! I was surprised. I had barely wrote anything down, so I was very behind. After school, I didn’t wast any time and started on it right away. Over the next week or so, I worked on it a lot.

In that week, we had to choose from one of three categories of answers that we had to use as our answer. There was economy, history, or diversity/people. In our groups, we had to make a video for the mini exhibition. The video included some explanation on how the history of geography of the West shaped us. Even with that going on, I managed to complete the book right on time. I was relieved, but I still had the mini exhibition to worry about.

The Mini Exhibition

The mini exhibition was on Wednesday October 26, and it was my first ever exhibition! Right after school ended, all of us grade 9 PLP people met at the main PLP room. I then went with the rest of the history group to our assigned room and set it up. The exhibition was going to start at 5pm and end at 6. As the time ticked closer to 5, I was getting more and more nervous. I am not a very social person, and I don’t talk much. With me having to explain and present my book to the parents that are coming, I didn’t think it was going to go well.

I somehow made it through the exhibition. When the first parent came to me, I got scared, and I forgot how to speak for a few second at the start. I had to pause and take a deep breath, and that did the trick. The next hour went by in a blur, so I don’t really remember anything else. When it was finally over, we, as in everyone (including parents and teachers), went over to the library to celebrate. We had some cake and watched two fun videos make by the two fun groups. They consisted of some of the best moments from our trips.

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