Period 1: World War I, Day 1 - Class Recap

We talked a bit about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, since we had the day off from school on Monday to honor and remember him. I took this picture of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC on October 1, 2011.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for a great first class with me as your teacher! It was really fun for me to be back doing my dream job. I hope you didn't mind all the talking at the start. It was necessary to be clear about what class will look like with me as your teacher. Read on, for the recap!

Essential Question: "Why does war happen?" - Essential questions are very broad (they do not have yes or no answers) ways of looking at content. I might eventually have you write an essay, do a speech, make a presentation, or something along those lines, with the essential question for a unit. It will always be highlighted during my opening remarks.

Soundtrack: "Changes" by 2Pac. I will always have some sort of relevant music playing before class starts - for many reasons. I always start new classes with this song, because my classroom should be a little different than what you've had in the past, but some things never change. Lyrics here.

Agenda 1/23/13:
Introduction/Attendance
Create Ground Rules
The Blog/News Brief
Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint
Murder of the Archduke
Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Homework: Check the blog and post a comment! If you have not done this, go to the bottom of this post and click on "comments" to post yours. Please remember to use your name, so I can give you credit!
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Introduction/Attendance: As it sounds, I introduced how I like to start my classes - with the essential question, soundtrack, agenda, and homework all up on the board. Again, it might take me a bit to learn all of your names - hopefully I am able to by the end of finals next week! Thank you for sitting where you were supposed to be and allowing attendance to go smoothly. The faster I learn your names, the faster we get rid of the seating chart!

Create Ground Rules: I'm glad we were able to eventually figure this out. Here's what your class agreed on as ground rules. I will hold you to these, both in class and on the blog! You will see them on the upper right hand corner of the blog at all times.

Your Period 1 Ground Rules:

- Be Respectful

- Be Prepared
- Have an Open Mind

- Have a Positive Attitude
- 110% Effort (Try!)

The Blog: After making the ground rules, I introduced everyone to this website! Possibly the one time I will allow everyone to have your cell phones/iPods out. Thank you for bookmarking this page - I hope it will be useful for you in the future!

News Brief: I talked about how I like to start each class, with a "current event" section. No worries, though - this involves no writing on your part. Simply find a news article about something that has recently happened outside of the United States, read it, bring it in, and talk about it for maybe 30 seconds. Then I will try and add to it and we will all find the location of the country in the article on the world map. My example from today was this article: CNN.com - For Israeli voters, missile fire, money main issues in Tuesday election. So, I talked a little bit about the election in Israel, the ongoing conflict there, and I had you find the country on your map and highlight it. Not so bad, right? We will begin each class with a current events type focus. Because Global Studies is not just ancient history - it is what is happening right now, especially as the present has been influenced by the past.

After nobody volunteered, Rachael Colwell was randomly assigned to start us off next class with a news brief. Please remember to print out (or send me a link, if you don't have a printer) a news article about something outside the United States for next class. :-)

Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint: I went over the definition of "ominous" and used the example of music in a scary movie: you know something bad is about to happen. The rest of the PowerPoint was about the M.A.I.N. causes of World War I. The class took notes on each slide - which will come in handy at the end of this unit. Please review the presentation if you missed class, or did not have enough time to finish up your notes:

Google Docs - World War I: Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint

Thank you so much for your focus during this part of class! You all seemed to really be getting what I was talking about, which is great to see.

Murder of the Archduke: I passed this document around, and read it aloud to the class - Borijove Jevtic: The Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. This is the story of how World War I started. I had the class predict in writing what would happen next (especially with all the various different alliances). It is such an important event in history - all set up by the MAIN causes of World War I.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Since we had Monday off for a social studies reason, I felt like it was very important for us to talk about why that was. We discussed who Martin Luther King Jr. was and what he was fighting for. Many of you asked if we were going to watch the famous "I Have A Dream" speech. We did not, but you can find it here: YouTube - Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech - August 28th, 1965.

The speech (or at least, part of the speech) that we watched in class was this one - his last speech before being assassinated. His words here make it sound like he knew exactly what was happening:

Martin Luther King Jr. was once called "the most dangerous man in America" by the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover - who thought he was a communist for being against the war in Vietnam. There is much more to MLK than what most people commonly think of - you could spend an entire unit on him in American Studies or AP US History next year.

Thank you again for a great first day! I'm looking forward to Friday. Please leave a comment so I know that you came and did your homework!