As part of our year 10 Humanities course we are able to research a project of our own choice, and to create an outcome to showcase at a final exhibition in term 4. We got assigned to do a project on the HASS subtopic of Geography.

Our essential question for the project is “How do dogs live around the world?”. We want to find out about dogs around the world, which breeds are most popular and what are the different jobs they can have. We chose this question as we both have an interest in animals, dogs specifically so we knew this is a topic that we’ll be able to stay focused and motivated on.

During this project, we will be working on improving effective communication, collaboration and being inquisitive. This is because in order to have a good final project, we need to use communication in order to collaborate effectively during school and at home. This is the only way that we will be able to finish our project to a high standard. We also will be improving the inquisitive capability as we need the research for our project to be in depth and analytical. By being inquisitive, we are encouraging and motivating ourselves to carry out more research and put more effort into our final project.

For this project, my role is equal with my partner Kate’s role as we are splitting each task in this project in half. For example, when we completed the annotated bibliography, Kate wrote the annotations for five sources while I wrote the annotations for the other five. When we split up a component for the presentation, we discuss which part we each want to do. This ensures that we are both doing an equal amount of our assignment and that we are both happy with the part we are doing. By handling the project this way, it means that there is a less likely chance that we’ll get stuck on something we don’t want to do, which keeps our motivation up. It also means that for the whole project we should be able to maintain the effective communication we already have with each other.

Our core research questions for our project are:

• Where are dogs most commonly found around the world?
• Which dog breeds are most popular in each country?
• What are the jobs a dog can have and what training do they have to go through to get these jobs?
• What cultures do different countries/religions have surrounding dogs?

To answer these questions we will need to find statistics and data relating to dog population around the world and which breeds are bought in every country per year. On top of this, we also need to research what dog professions exist, the training for each role and how different countries have treated dogs in the past and present and the beliefs they have surrounding them.

The steps we have completed so far for this project are:

• Simple plan of our project
• Timeline
• Annotated bibliography of ten sources
• Week 9-10 reflections
• Progress update one

Our plan for continuing our project includes:

• Applying feedback given on progress update one
• Take notes on our sources
• Compile our research
• Progress update 2
• Extensive exhibition plan
• Assembly of project elements
• And weekly reflections along the way