In November of last year, LGMS parent council suggested our students become involved with a contest.
The aim of this contest was to promote our Canadian National Parks. This worked well in the context of our humanities program. As well, the grand prize was an all expense paid voyage to Quebec City. Parks Canada would provide programming to help our students understand Canadian history and the beauty and diversity of our country.
With this in mind, we led our students to create a 60-second video that encompassed our closest national park–Banff National Park. Our students researched park history, geography, activities, economic impact and ecological sustainability. We also looked at the technology necessary to create the film short, as well as the art of story boarding.
The result of this planning was that from both Grade 8 classes, eight films emerged. As classes, we narrowed this field to one film. It was that film that was submitted to the contest. It was then that the voting began. We encouraged our friends, our families and our colleagues to review our work and … vote, vote, vote.
The voting has lasted for three weeks. It was our pleasure to find out on April 9 that our efforts have paid off. How excited we were to find that LGMS was recognized as the second place winner of this contest. Out of 56 videos from all across our country we were awarded second place.
This has been a wonderful journey for our students and wouldn’t have happened without the support of the following people and organizations: Lisa Cohen-Wallis, Spencer Schneider, Carolyn Headmann-Cohen, Carolyn Shoepp, David Headmann, Tina Tricco, Brenda Birch, Carrie Harbin, Tracey Wilkins, Dianne Schneider, Kevin Cohen-Wallis, Daniela, Griesser, Cindy Kelly, Amanda Waters, Jacqueline Dumas, Carole Buetler, Mike Quigley (www.quigley.tv#home), Rob Murray, CBC, Banff/Lake Louise Tourism, Rocky Mountain Outlook and Safeway.
We also need to congratulate these students: Jane Cohen-Wallis, India Schneider, Erika Teskey, Sam Messier and Miriam Griesser. These young ladies produced and starred in the winning video short.
We were impressed with how a simple project can impact so many people. This is learning at it’s finest.
Stéphane Vallée, Martine Desautels, Cori Fraser,
Lawrence Grassi Middle School
