Hello people of the internet.
I’m back again with another awesome blog, and we have just finished another project in humanities. Also, it’s our last one in semester one. We still have it in the second semester. This project was very fast-paced because we only had 3 WEEKS to finish it. 3WEEKS! Can you believe that? Everything was in such a rush. I’m was really relieved when it ended.
We did this project with Ms Madsen, whom we have not have before, and is also new to PLP, like me! This project is about slam poetry and the cause and consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Keystone 1
The first keystone was a graphic organizer of the cause and consequences of the steam engine, plus a few more innovations of our choice that were introduced during the Industrial Revolution. But first, we had to learn about the Industrial Revolution and cause and consequences before that.
We started with learning about the Industrial Revolution. We read some textbook pages and watched two videos individually. Then took notes using the PDF format that our teacher so kindly provided. Of course, the textbook was online, because we are, as we like to call ourselves, sticky iPad kids. We don’t like using actual paper and textbooks.
Next, we learned about cause and consequences. There are two classifications of cause and classifications of consequences. The two classifications of cause are underlying conditions and human actions. Underlying conditions means certain conditions that existed that made something happen. Human actions means someone did something that made something else happen. The two classifications of consequences are long term and short term. Those are pretty self explanatory.
This keystone has two separate parts. One, the cause and consequences of the invention of the steam engine. Two, three inventions of our choice from the revolution. We have to have the reason it was invented, and list three consequences for each one. For mine, I chose the light bolt, steel, and cotton gin.
Keystone 2
The second keystone is a formal paragraph that informs the reader about how the Industrial Revolution has made consequences and/or impacts on these things:
- The environmental consequences
- Consequences for urbanization
- Workers
- Impacts on and consequences for war
- Impacts on children
- Or choose a innovation and its impacts
We had time to think and decide which topic we wanted to choose over the weekend, but I totally forgot, so I only had a few minutes to decide. The ones that I was interested in was the one on war and environment. When the teacher asked me which one I wanted, I still haven’t decided yet. I panicked a little and went with war, but later changed it to environment.
Then we did some research on our topic. Well I didn’t, because I wasn’t done with my graphic organizer. So while everyone else was doing their research, I was trying to catch up on my work. I barely did any research on my paragraph, but that was ok, because I already learned about most of the informations that I need to write it.
This keystone was pretty easy. We had to have our friends read and give us feedback on what we could change. I only had time to do it with one of my friends before class was over, so the other person to do the proofread was my mom.
Keystone 3
Similar to the first keystone, keystone 3 also has two parts. One is a slam poetry analysis. For this one, we watched three poems in class and we had to pick one to do the analysis on. The three poems were “To This Day” by Shane Koyczan, “We Can Be More” by Solli Raphael, and “Why Am I Not Good Enough” by Olivia Vella.
The other part of this keystone is our slam poetry planner. This is where we put in the response we want from the audience, the theme, etc. By the way, the theme of our poem should be the topic that we chose earlier. That all there is to this keystone, pretty simple and easy. Didn’t take that long to do. By the end of this project, two weeks had already gone by, leaving us with just a week to do the poems.
Final product
The final product, or the finish line, is the slam poem. On the first day of the week, we had to finish writing out our rough draft. Then, the next two days were to revise and practice our poems. We were suppose to preform our poems on Thursday, and leave Friday to do our blog post, but as a class, we decided to do the performances on Friday so that we would have more time to finish our poem.
All of our poems needed to be presented to the class. My poem is called”While There’s Still Time Left.” We did our performances in the Vortex, the theatre in our school. I didn’t know we had to put our names on a list for who’s going when, so I was one of the last ones to preform.
Overall, I had fun during this project. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be, and it wasn’t that bad as well. Slam poetry, or poetry in general is pretty scary, but I wouldn’t mind doing it again.