Mustafa Eric
Ponoka News
Grade 7/8/9 students at Crestomere School are vying for national acclaim and they are hoping to receive some support in the form of votes from area residents for their entry to a video contest.
Teacher Kayley Bowie, who lead the students in the project said the whole thing started when she received a brochure from Parks Canada at the beginning of the school year about a contest open to all Grade 8 classes throughout the country.
“Since we are a 7/8/9 split class, all of my students qualified,” she said.
The contest requires classes to create a one-minute video about a Canadian national park of choice. The video has toexplain the selected park’s environmental or cultural significance for Canadians.
The winning entry will reward the Grade 8 class that produced it with a five-day trip Jasper, “which is not something wewould be able to afford on our own,” Bowlie added.
“I put all of the choice in my students’ hands. Each of them chose a park and researched it, then shared their research withthe class,” she went on.
After discussing probably 15 different national parks, the students voted for the Wood Buffalo National Park in northernAlberta, which was researched and proposed by Grade 9 student. Emma said, “I had never heard of Wood Buffalo andwanted to bring attention to a park in Alberta other than Jasper or Banff. It protects endangered animals like the whoopingcrane and it is the largest national park in the world.”
Further research and discussions followed to decide on what the video should depict and how with all class going for acreative and original production instead of rap or a song. Then Bowie said she herself suggested a silent film to the class.
“It took pressure off the kids who didn’t want to speak in front of the camera, and it allowed us to be comedic. My grouphas an amazing sense of humour,” she said.
“Because we are rural, we were limited to filming everything at the school so we had to think outside the box,” Bowie said ofthe production process. “All of our props were things the kids brought from home, including a fake Canada goose and akayak. We utilized our green screen technology to help out with a few scenes. Every student got to be in the video andwatch scenes being filmed. It was extremely difficult fitting everything we wanted to do into only one minute, but I think mystudents were very happy with the final results.”
Commenting on their production, “We tried to take a unique spin on it by doing something different so we would standout,” said Mackenzie Gillard in Grade 8.
Grade 7 student Colter Bresee said “I like all the props we used, and all of the team scenes we filmed where we got to dothings together.”
To watch the video and to vote for the Crestomere School entry, visit http://contest.myparkspass.ca