English 9
HCE 9 – English Assignment
For this assignment, I chose to explore a work by Banksy called “Birds on a Wire” through a poem based on the learning concept of applying decision-making strategies to a life, work, or community conflict and adjusting the strategies to adapt to new situations.
Right
They come in a group.
With faces as forbidding as a storm,
And as thunderous too.
(There are so many of them so it must be right.)
They put a sign in your wing.
Hand painted with hatred,
And framed with fear.
(On paper, their words make sense.)
You go with them.
You hold their signs.
And yet you can’t bear to look at the—the thing.
(Why do I feel so uneasy?)
It is smaller than you realized,
A pink shrimp in the vast, blue ocean,
With strange colours and features you’ve never seen before.
(Could such a defenseless thing be so dangerous?)
“It is a creature from Africa!” a bird caws, but you aren’t sure how they know for certain.
“It will steal all our worms!” another cries, but you don’t know how that is possible.
Everyone turns to you and you quickly squawk out, “It isn’t welcome!”
(Did…did I really mean that?)
The thing shrinks at the noise, warbling a sound you don’t recognize.
It shuffles to cover itself more securely with its wing, body cringing in fear.
The others jeer at it, jabbing more sharp words into its colourful feathers
(T-this isn’t right, is it? But…)
You want to say something, but your beak won’t open.
You’re not even sure what you would say,
And what if the other birds get angry?
(If it’s wrong, someone will probably speak up instead.)
This thing could turn out to be dangerous too.
A crafty trickster hidden behind its meek gaze.
And anyway, the thing came from somewhere so it could probably just go back.
Right?
Right?
…Right?
Independent Novel Study – Bento Box Book Thief
For this project, I used genial.ly to create an interactive Bento Box to represent my book, The Book Thief. I collected five different objects to symbolize key aspects of the story that match with my written content, which explores theme, text to world connections, character, and inquiry.
I tried recording my audio reflection on genial.ly several times but the audio kept glitching and speeding up at times so I recorded it on Audacity instead and inserted it here.
Core Competency Reflection
I used creative and critical thinking for this project, shown in my Bento Box arrangement, written content, and troubleshooting. At first, I found it hard to come up with object ideas because of the constraints of the items having to clearly relate to book, yet still be an everyday object lying around my house. So, throughout the project, I tried to trigger some inspiration by reading passages from The Book Thief, writing my content on it, and walking around my house to see what I had available. Through a combination of these, I came up with new ideas for my Bento Box that I was satisfied with and fit the criteria. Once I had gathered my objects, I arranged them around my book in several different positions so that I could figure out which positioning looked best and fit on my painted background, resulting in an appealing and creative interactive image. I also used critical thinking to analyze my book and explore different facets of it with my in-depth discussions of theme, inquiry, character, and connections. I gathered information from the book and my group discussion journal to write my content, using evidence from the book to support my thesis and ideas. In the different sections, I expressed my thoughts from two perspectives, one as a formal literary analyzer and one as an informal reviewer. I also encountered some problems too with the audio reflection that I had to use critical thinking to resolve. When I recorded on genial.ly, it ended around three minutes, but when I tried to edit it, the bar only showed two minutes and the audio became warped and incomprehensible. I redid it three more times, but I received the same result each time, which frustrated me. To solve this issue, I had to step back and think about how I could fix this. Eventually, I decided to record it on a different program, Audacity, and insert it at the bottom of the Bento Box on my post so that it would be as close to the intended result as possible. Throughout the Bento Box project, I had to think creatively and critically to complete each aspect of the project, resulting in a finished product that I’m proud of.
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury – Blackout Poem
This is my blackout poem on the Veldt. I used Canva to create the poem and took the words from page 38 of The Hunger Games.
Alysa chose to write about the theme of alienation from the Veldt in her blackout poem ‘Bubbled’. This is evident in the lines ‘grimly, I forget people at all’ and ‘I’ll never know we’, which represents how we are becoming disconnected and isolated from everyone around us. She uses the social media symbols and bubbled people to show how technology is pulling people apart, leading them to become purposeless and alone as if they were floating in an empty space. She also explores the repercussions of our alienation, which is feelings of panic, sadness, and ‘starvation’ of interpersonal connections as shown in the line ‘too soon, I start to panic, starve, cry’. Alysa uses the repetition of ‘I’ in the line ‘clinging to I, I, I-‘ to emphasize how isolated we have become that there is no he, she, or they, only I, painting a picture of the narrator alone in a room with only themself for comfort. She uses the simile ‘the station is swarming with reporters like cameras clean of emotion’ to represent how some people have become like technology in their obsession with it, making them as robotic and mechanical as a camera. Alysa’s poem echoes some of the Veldt’s themes in that it shows a world isolated by technology, leaving some anxious and aimless like the Hadley parents and narrator or simply indifferent like the Hadley children and reporters. The line ‘to appear weak and frightened is from years back’ connects to the Veldt and our world by representing our desire to always have the best thing like the Happylife Home or go with the trends of social media, sometimes at the expense of our own health and values.
Indigenous Exploration – “Imprisonment”
For my Indigenous exploration project, I chose to do my podcast on Indigenous incarceration and worked with Zoey and Maliyah.
Reflection
I had a positive experience creating this assignment because not only did I get to work efficiently with my friends, but I also learned a lot about a serious issue in Canada. Out of all the difficulties Indigenous peoples experience in Canada, I found incarceration the most interesting because it was something that likely didn’t sound as sympathetic as the other issues like poor health care and education, which is easy to see as something that’s bad and should be changed. My group all agreed on the topic and so we started researching so many new startling facts about Indigenous incarceration before sharing it to the world with a podcast. I enjoyed making the podcast because it was easier than a video and we could just read off our script. With Audacity, the podcast came out clear and audible, which is why I’m happy with our finished product. After choosing our topic, we brainstormed six different subtopics that related to incarceration and split it into two each to research, which made it very time efficient and quick. We used the databases and Google to find websites to read before paraphrasing the information into concise sentences in our shared research document. While recording, we found it hard to set up the microphone because it wasn’t connecting to the laptop, but we troubleshooted and eventually got it to work. After we finished recording, we struggled with editing out errors since it was challenging to find the exact part and deleting enough that the mistake was gone, but not too much so that it didn’t sound off. I first communicated my ideas to my groupmates so that we could brainstorm ideas for our research. We bounced ideas back and forth until we settled on the topics we wanted and were happy with. Through the research process, I showed my learning through the shared Google document, which I used to write all the research I collected so that I could explain it to my teammates. Lastly, I used our finished podcast to demonstrate my learning as it is a culmination of everything I’ve learned about Indigenous incarceration shown in a concise six-minute podcast.
Sources
White, Patrick. “Minister says Ottawa working to decrease Indigenous incarceration; Lametti expects the high percentage of Indigenous prisoners to decline under new legislation.” Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada], 16 May 2022, p. A1. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A703895590/GPS?u=43dcbs&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=38668c82. Accessed 13 Oct. 2022.
“Indigenous imprisonment rates linked to policing styles.” Sydney Morning Herald [Sydney, Australia], 11 July 2017, p. 8. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A498189467/GPS?u=43dcbs&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=85e9d46d. Accessed 13 Oct. 2022.
“Indigenous Women Make up Almost Half the Female Prison Population, Ombudsman Says | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 18 Dec. 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indigenous-women-half-inmate-population-canada-1.6289674#:~:text=Indigenous%20people%20make%20up%20about,the%20population%20in%20women’s%20prisons.
“Indigenous imprisonment rates still rising, figures show; The number of Indigenous Australians in prison has grown by more than 80% in 10 years and the overall imprisonment rate is rising, figures show.” Guardian [London, England], 11 Dec. 2014. Gale In Context: Canada, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A396979223/CIC?u=43riss&sid=bookmark-CIC&xid=2ac0e167. Accessed 13 Oct. 2022.
Edwards, Kyle. “The good fight: Mark Marsolais-Nahwegahbow’s Gladue reports help tackle the over-incarceration of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons.” This Magazine, vol. 51, no. 1, July-Aug. 2017, pp. 4+. Gale In Context: Canada, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A616787309/CIC?u=43riss&sid=bookmark-CIC&xid=f0f009dd Accessed 13 Oct. 2022.
“August 8, 1997 (Page 4 of 112).” Times Colonist (1980-2010), Aug 08, 1997, pp. 4. ProQuest, https://bc.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/august-8-1997-page-4-112/docview/2264819913/se-2.
Gebhard, Amanda. “Pipleline to prison: how schools shape a future of incarceration for indigenous youth.” Briarpatch, vol. 41, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2012, pp. 6+. Gale In Context: Canada, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A320734846/CIC?u=43riss&sid=bookmark-CIC&xid=d71900c7. Accessed 13 Oct. 2022.
Browne, Jennifer. “Canada’s High School Dropout Rates Are Staggeringly High, according to Studies.” Narcity, 16 Sept. 2019, www.narcity.com/canadas-high-school-dropout-rates-are-staggeringly-high-according-to-studies.
“Globe Editorial: More Indigenous People in Canada Are Graduating from High School than Ever. It’s Still Not Nearly Enough.” The Globe and Mail, 4 June 2020, www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-more-indigenous-canadians-than-ever-are-graduating-from-high-school/.
“Police Brutality against Indigenous Women in Canada.” The Indigenous Foundation, www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/policebrutality.
Government of Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator. “Indigenous People in Federal Custody Surpasses 30% – Correctional Investigator Issues Statement and Challenge – Office of the Correctional Investigator.” Www.oci-Bec.gc.ca, 16 Apr. 2020, www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/comm/press/press20200121-eng.aspx.
“How Does Poverty Cause Crime Criminology Essay.” UKEssays.com, 2010, www.ukessays.com/essays/criminology/how-does-poverty-cause-crime-criminology-essay.php.
Pathways to Theme One-Pager Assignment
This is my One-Pager on the Pathways to Theme assignment. The assignment was to create a one pager on a children’s book of our choice. The story I chose was Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini.
Core Competency Reflection
My one pager demonstrates how I presented information clearly and in an organized way by showing how I grouped similar topics together and made them plainly seen. In my assignment, I put the questions at the top, the quotes in the middle, and the themes at the bottom so that it was organized and easily read. I also fine lined everything and spaced it out with accompanying pictures so that the information was clear and understandable. A personal strategy I used to generate ideas was flipping through the book and reading it over a few times so that I could absorb the overall message and ideas. I also tried imaging myself in the main character’s shoes and what choice I would make if I were there in Syria. These helped me come up with ideas for my writing and pictures, which helped me understand more about the story. This assignment shows I’m good at symbolism and communicating the themes of the story by having a lot of imagery and depth. I used the sinking boat to show the desperation of refugees trying to flee to safety and how if the international community helped more, tragedies like this wouldn’t happen by putting the story quote under water and the article one above water. I also understood how the book is both about a father’s love and miseries greed imposes on others and used that to write my theme statements and questions.