RUE Episode 30: Passenger Railroads of Canada

Passenger Railroads of Canada! We explore Canada via Rail! That’s what Episode 30 is all about – that and some tips on writing a report about a country.

The Canadian in Jasper Park — Via Rails Canadian train in Jasper National Park

We didn’t travel far from our last location in Alaska. We’re still up North, and we’ll use much of what we learned about writing a state report as we use the possessive form to put sentences together to communicate the features of a place.

Watching Episode 30

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Segment 3

Language Objectives

Use the possessive forms of nouns to vary sentence structure in expository writing. Organize facts into sentences and paragraphs.

Academic Content Objectives

Geography: Describe land forms found in interior British Columbia. Locate Vancouver, British Columbia and Jasper National Park. History: Trace the Western Section of Canada’s Transcontinental Railroad.

Videos Featured in this Episode

Canada’s Via Trains – the Canadian – are featured in this episode. To see the video of the Westbound trip from Jasper National Park to Vancouver, B. C. click here.

To enjoy the same journey Eastbound, click here.

Possessive Pronouns

As we did in the state report on Alaska, we used the possessive form of nouns to vary our communication of facts about this great country. We also focused on possessive pronouns. Interestingly, possessive pronouns do NOT have an apostrophe and S added like possessive nouns.

Looking briefly, we could say that the symbol of Canada is the maple leaf. We could also say that Canada’s symbol is the maple leaf. As long as we’ve established that it’s Canada we’re writing about, we could write Its symbol is the maple leaf.

The possessive pronoun “its” is always written without an apostrophe. The word “it’s” is NOT possessive. It’s is a contraction for the words “it” and the word “is”. Let’s see that list of possessive pronouns I used in this episode:

my our

your your

its,his,her their

As you can see, No apostrophes!

You can practice this by writing your own report on Canada. Remember the pattern…

The ____ of Canada is…..

Canada’s ____ is……

Its ____ is ……