Having a Canadian identity is not merely the result of being born in Canada. How is a national identity developed?
Author: D. Sader
Death Personified
Personify death. What does Death look like? Write a dialogue in which you negotiate a bargain with Death.
Write a “How to …” Article
Write a “How to …” article. Write an article in which you explain how to do something. You might choose a common, seemingly everyday topic such as how to send a text message or how to write a business letter.
Immigrants and the Quality of Life in Canada
Write about the ways in which immigrant people enrich the quality of life in Canada.
How I came to Canada
Write a poem titled “How I came to Canada.”
“Credo” by Robert Fulghum (excerpt)
I realized that I already know most of what’s necessary to live a meaningful life – that it isn’t all that complicated. I know it. And have known it for a long, long time. Living it – well, that’s another matter, yes? Here’s my Credo:
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and plants foes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own messes.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are – when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
- What is your reaction to Fulghum’s statement that everything he really needs to know he learned in kindergarten? Do you agree or disagree? Explain your response.
- Think back over your elementary, middle, and high school. What would you do differently if you had the chance? What would you not change?
- What advice would you give to someone entering your high school next year? Decide on the tone and form for your message. You could take a humorous or serious approach.
Earth First
Research an environmental issue and organize an action in response to the issue.
What you can do:
(Hints: poster, pamphlet, booklet, 4H speech, video clip, display, commercial, web app, animation, plant a tree, join a group, etc.)
I Shouldn’t Be Alive
View one of the following “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” episodes from CBC’s “The Passionate Eye” series.
- Watch Shipwrecked Family.
Debuting Wednesay October 5: On the final leg of an amazing two year sailing voyage, the Silverwood Family hit some stormy weather 180 miles west of Bora Bora in the South Pacific. It’s no big deal, until a broken mast pin and a submerged rocky reef suddenly turns their adventure into a potentially deadly one. As the mast snaps, it falls on dad John, severing his leg. It’s up to teenage son Ben, to become the man and help to save his family. He gets the family off the sinking boat, but as they spend a terrifying night on a reef in the middle of the ocean, will rescue get to them before Ben’s father dies of blood loss? - Watch Crashed in the Jungle.
Debuting Wednesday October 12: Newlyweds Brandon and Brandy Wiley are on a backpacking adventure in Costa Rica, when their 8 – person Cessna crashes in dense tropical rainforest. The pilots and one passenger are killed on impact. Of the five remaining survivors two are seriously injured, including American Michael Packard. With the plane’s emergency beacon malfunctioning and the crash site obscured by thick cloud, the chances of rescue appear remote. When darkness falls, the group face poisonous spiders, swarming ants and jungle predators. By morning and with Michael’s condition worsening by the hour Brandon and Brandy face a terrible dilemma – do they go in search of help or stay with the two injured men? It’s a decision that could ultimately cost lives. - Watch River of Fear.
Debuting Wednesday October 19: Running through the majestic splendour of the Grand Canyon the Colorado River offers construction contractor David Whittlesey with just the kind of challenge he craves. He embarks on a 3 week, 280 mile white-water rafting expedition, opting to tackle some of America’s most gruelling rapids on his own. Just days away from completing his journey David’s raft capsizes, gets stuck and he loses all of his life-saving supplies. As he attempts to scale a cliff face, which is his only way out, he falls and injuries himself. He is trapped, alone and knows that hypothermia could kill him before anyone even knows where he is or that his life is in danger. - Watch Alone in the Amazon.
Debuting Wednesday October 26: Fresh-faced twenty two year old Brit Benedict Allen embarks on an epic six-month expedition which will take him from the mouth of the Orinoco River to the Mouth of the Amazon River through six hundred miles of uncharted jungle. On the final leg of his journey Benedict meets two gold miners who steal his guides then threaten to kill him. Fearing for his life Benedict is forced to tackle the wilds of the Amazon with only his faithful dog, Cashoe, for company. His inexperience nearly costs him dear when he capsizes his canoe, losing virtually all his provisions. Embarking on the 100 miles journey through dense rainforest to safety Benedict is struck down by near starvation, Malaria and a severe case of ‘jungle madness’. Will he ever find civilization? - Watch Edge of Death
Debuting Wednesday November 2: Charlie Hench has set himself a big challenge before he turns the big 50 – to fulfil his dream of a late-summer solo hike through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But he underestimates the challenge ahead. Charlie is at 9,000 feet when an early snowstorm suddenly blows in. The amateur hiker is soon out of his depth, lost in the snow-covered landscape. A missed step on the treacherous boulders and he’s crashes over the side of the mountain. Only a ledge, the size of a car bonnet, saves him from falling 500 feet to his death. Charlie is trapped and badly injured, with a shattered wrist and fractured spine. He’s alone and there’s no way up or down. He knows no-one will even know he’s missing for days, but will he survive trapped on the exposed on the side of a cliff? - Watch Crashed in the Rockies
Debuting Wednesday November 9: Trainee pilot Justin Kirkbride takes two friends, Tommy and Larry, on a sightseeing tour of the Rocky Mountains, but crashes on a steep, snowy mountainside. Larry breaks his leg, while best friend Tommy is knocked unconscious. Only Justin escapes unscathed. He decides to hike 45 miles down the treacherous mountainside in search of help. As darkness falls he picks up a cell signal and manages to summon a rescue helicopter. He joins the rescue pilots in the search for his two missing friends, but their crash site is hidden by thick pine forest. The search is about to be called off when disaster strikes again – the rescue helicopter clips a tree and smashes into the mountainside. Can Kirkbride escape with his life for the second time in 24 hours? And will his passengers now succumb to their injuries during the freezing night?
Write 2 posts(one Critical Essay, one Creative Narrative) in which you discuss some of these focus questions dealing with survival.
Survival
What challenges to survival does the environment present?
Related Questions:
- What hardships and challenges do humans experience with respect to the environment?
- What must humans do to survive with respect to the environment? Who and what will survive? Is population survival more important than individual survival? Why or why not?
- What are the most important survival qualities in our society? What images do we associate with the idea of wilderness survival?
Instant Communications Technology
“Our embrace of high-tech gadgetry could turn life into a series of rushed encounters and clipped exchanges, producing ideas of diminishing depth.” – Langdon Winner
What effect does “instant communication” have on you? What effect does “instant communication” have on your relationships with other people?
Corners of our lives once sheltered from direct technological intervention are now bombarded by the demands of incoming and outgoing messages … However, people text-message alone. It is mainly an isolating experience in society … Of its role in the future only one thing is certain: it will be larger than ever before. – S.D. Robinson
Film Creation Idea:
Write a script for a text messaging dialogue between two friends (they are not face-to-face) for one of the following scenarios:
- two friends discuss running against each other in the student council election
- two friends argue about an environmental issue
- a person tells a friend who has taken a part-time job that he/she is upset that they are spending less time together.
Film your script while paying particular attention to your actors non-verbal behaviour, watch out for various types of body language. Add the “dialogue” – the text messages – as titles to each scene in iMovie. It is not necessary to have any audio captured with the video at all.
- What is the person doing with his or her hands? Is the individual tapping a finger on a table? Are the arms crossed?
- What is the position of the individual’s body? Is the person leaning forward? Leaning back? Is the body turned away from another person?
- What is the position of the individual’s legs? Are they crossed? Is the person tapping his/her foot?
- Where are the eyes looking?
- Does the person smile? frown? yawn? cough?
Consider these and other questions in your planning:
- Who are my 2 friends? Describe their emotional and psychological states, too.
- Where are they? Remember that the video you shoot will be shot at school.
- What is the issue? What point are you trying to make?
- How will you show that their conversation is rushed, incomplete, frustrating?
- How can you show that their responses to each other lack depth?
- How can you show or demonstrate how alone they really are?
- How can you demonstrate how texting is an isolating experience?
- How can you show them being “bombarded by the demands of incoming and outgoing messages”
Consider capturing/grabbing your iPhone/iPod message screen and then get those pics into an iMovie.
Can you rap?
Try to write a “love rap.” Can you celebrate your love, or that of someone you know, in rap? Create and share your rap using GarageBand. Or try another topic as the subject of your rap: Chinese Socialism, Euclidean geometry, Macbeth, etc.