What does it mean to be Canadian, and who were the courageous souls who shaped our country? In our latest project, Save Juno Beach, we asked ourselves all sorts of questions about what we can do to give back to our community, and our veterans. Join me as I take a deep dive into our project!
Our entire project was centered around informing ourselves about World War Two. We watched real phootage, read articles, and did created notes on every piece of the project. This allowed us to look back and review our notes whenever we needed to, and was very helpful. This helped me work on my organization skills, as well as learning how to take notes quickly and efficiently.
We had two main parts of our project: an essay, and an act of service towards our community. The essay could be any topic that we were interested in that was relevant to Canada’s role in World War Two. I chose to focus on Canada’s shift in trade from Britain to the United States after the war. Even though I have written a number of essays, I’ve never done one in MLA format. This formatting was definitely new to me, so me as well as the rest of my class had to go through a ton of revisions. However, in the end, I was able to create work that I was really proud of. Learning how to format my essays and how to source my work properly will help me with real world experiences, and is a skill that I can use for the rest of my life.
The second part of our project was our act of service. Our plan was to have everyone in our class commit an act of service towards our community, and get a patron to sponsor them ten dollars. We’d use the money from the project to buy a flag that would fly at the Juno Beach Centre. Me and my friend Melissa got a spot volunteering at the North Vancouver legion collecting donations and giving our poppies for Remembrance Day. We spent two hours at park royal mall, and collected around seventy dollars in donations. We got Ron Beesley, who runs the North Vancouver Legion, to sponsor us the ten dollars we needed out of the money that we raised. I felt really good about volunteering, and it helped me feel even closer to my community than every before.
In conclusion, the country that we live in had been shaped by everyone who had a role in World War Two. Me and my classmates learned about the atrocities of war, and how so many people sacrificed themselves to give us the freedom we have today. I’m ever grateful, and I think that if there’s anything that I can do in the future to help remember those who died, I will do so. This project taught me all sorts of new English skills, but I think the most valuable was compassion. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!