Period 1: Turmoil in the Middle East, Day 11 - Class Recap

A picture from my cell phone of the game last night. What a team! I will give away all the food coupons to anyone who comments and wants one! Up for grabs: 1 Chalupa, 2 Whoppers, 2 Apple Fries, and 1 Egg McMuffin. Post a comment telling me something that was interesting, or that you learned, from the class today and the item you want, and it's yours! First come, first serve!
Good morning class! It's a great day to be a Blazer and a Wildcat! :-)

To begin, thank you for the hard work today, when we got down to it. I know that I could have done a better job explaining exactly what we were doing with the developing skills, but I really loved that the class sort of carried me through and bought in to what we were doing. It would have been very easy to say, "Hey Mr. Fritz, this makes absolutely no sense," but you bought in and together (like the new poster on the wall), we made it make sense. Thank you for understanding my hoarse voice and any lack of the usual energy I have too, if that was apparent. As I said in class, the introduction to full time teaching is a huge strain on my ability to get decent amounts of sleep. That, and staying up late to be at a Blazers game...

Essential Questions: In what ways are cultures and countries interconnected? What are the factors to consider in the development of a Palestinian state?

Soundtrack: "Get Ready for This" by 2 Unlimited. There are no lyrics for this song, but it is a fantastic pump up "Jock Jam." I wanted everyone to be excited to be coming to the last class before the weekend, and working on your projects. That, and I was still excited from the Blazers game when I was writing the lesson plan at 12:30 AM last night.

AGENDA 4/16/09:
News Brief
Middle East Map Quiz
The Blazers are Proficient
Project Work
Playoff Pump-Up

Homework: Continue to work on the final project. Watch the Blazers game! Read recap on blog!

Again, be thinking about how, exactly, you are going to get your creative product to work! I need you to clear the idea by me before you can begin to work on your masterpieces! Remember that we are working on fostering relationships here. Your product needs to demonstrate this in some way! Please continue to ask me questions, if you have them!

The Blazers will be playing their first playoff game on Saturday at 7:30, on KGW and ESPN. If you want to follow along during the game by posting comments, I will be online at Casa de Fritz and will be posting responses and thoughts during the game in the comments. It might be a fun way to watch it together as a class - so if you get the chance, come back and check in!

Finally, as you should well know by now, please be reading the blog. It should be fairly obvious that I devote a lot of time and effort to it, so please use it to your advantage inside and outside of class.

News Brief: What an exciting start to the class! Not only did we have a light being repaired right in the middle of the room, but we got to talk about the Blazers! I showed you the "TOGETHER" poster that they were giving out before the game, which I posted on the wall. John Canzano of the Oregonian mentioned them in this article, near the end.

Someone mentioned that there were people camping outside the Rose Garden for the tickets that go on sale at noon today. This was something I was going to touch on at the end of class anyway, so I had Blazers Edge loaded and showed the class some pictures of people camping out at 3 AM. That link is here. Simply incredible. Blazermania is back! I also wanted to again point out the "Behind the Blazers Locker Room Door" series that Jason Quick is doing for the Oregonian. Here's the latest installment: Behind the Blazers Locker Room Door: At home with Denver.

It really was a fun game to be at. We were shown on the big screen a couple of times, and my mom is speaking at the rally later today! Lots of fun, exciting happenings going on. Like I said with the "together" thing, I am a big believer in knowing about what is going on in your community and being there for each other. The Blazers are a great example of that, and a team that I really feel proud to root for. Thanks for indulging me, everyone! :-)

Brooke brought in an absolutely FANTASTIC article about women in Afghanistan bonding together and speaking out: NYTimes.com - Afghan Women Protest Law on Home Life. Guys, again, isn't this exactly what we were talking about in class? Take a look at the following quote:

"We want our rights!" one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”

The women ran to the bus and dived inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.

"Whores!"

But the march continued anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.

It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.

Seriously, how many of you wrote about women speaking out as being important? Or uniting together for the cause? Or overcoming a lack of education? I know it may sound silly, but this article put chills down my spine as I read it. I love it so much that I am going to bring it in to talk about in my other classes. Just an excellent look at the struggles of women in Afghanistan and what they are doing to overcome them, and completely relates to what we have been talking about. Brooke, phenomenal job on selecting it. Aaron, you are up for next class, on Monday. Any current event outside the United States.

Middle East Map Quiz: Thank you for being quiet and focused on this. I took a gander (great word) at these, and most of them look okay, at the least! Except there was only one person who remembered the statistic from reading the blog, which is entirely depressing. Hopefully the food incentive will up the readership too. I will have these graded and back to you next class.

The Blazers are Proficient: I loved the question "Mr. Fritz, is there supposed to be a Blazers game recap in this packet?" Why yes, yes there was. I introduced the packet as a way to look at proficiency in Social Studies. This is a lot like Math, except we are looking at things like, "Can you identify and explain the critical components of an event, issue or problem?"

We will be using the rest of the packet (and some additions) to go through and construct your explanation paper and final creative product for the unit. So, to begin explaining the who, what, when, where, and why on an event, issue, or problem, I provided the Associated Press game recap ESPN.com - Outlaw scores 21 as Blazers claim home-court advantage. We read this as a class together and then I asked you to write identify and explain the critical components of the event! A fun transition here.

After that, I asked you to use that same skill to identify and explain the main parts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, using the PowerPoint notes and any other information you know. After some hesitation about exactly what I was asking you to do with each question, I think this went pretty well! Remember, the more that you can explain or put down, the better. If I ask who is involved, it is not enough to say Israelis and Palestinians. What are the characteristics of those two groups?

Hopefully the recap on the board helped you out as well. This is something we are going to continue to explore! We really want to know, do you have this certain skill?

Project Work: I gave the class about ten minutes to get in groups and talk to each other about the project, or work on it. I really liked most of the ideas that were brought up! Next class, I am going to need a definitive statement (we will write it in class) of what you are going to do. Let me know if you have any questions!

Playoff Pump-Up: Finishing the obscenely Blazer-centric day (my serious apologies to those of you that could not care less), I showed the following video to get everyone excited about playing the Rockets, and then sent the class on its way:


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Have a fantastic weekend! Enjoy The Office tonight (9 PM, NBC) and come back here for the Blazers playoff game (7:30 PM, KGW/NBC and ESPN), if you want to have a running conversation! :-)