Period 1: Revolution! Day 1 - Class Recap

My view of the 2011 BCS National Championship, between Oregon and Auburn, on January 10. Not a game that I particularly like remembering, but a good example of an activity that brings people together. Before the Olympics, this was the biggest sporting event I had ever attended.

Dear class,

I loved today. It was such a relief to get all your graded work back to you, and so much fun to move on to the start of the next unit! Here's what happened in class:

Essential Questions: What brings people together? What tears people apart? - New essential questions! We will be looking at the answers to both in the revolution unit.

Soundtrack: “Where is the Love?” by The Black Eyed Peas. Chosen for today because we have been talking so much about war, genocide, and revolutions (soon) - I thought we needed to focus a bit on love and what brings people together across the world. Lyrics here. 

AGENDA 2/19/13:

News Brief

Debrief WWI Essay

Grades

Togetherness

Homework: Read the blog! Turn in missing World War I work. Sakib has the next news brief.

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News Brief: I started the class off by checking in about the long weekend - interesting activities the class did, and such. I mentioned that I visited the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which was really cool. I even saw a father explaining to his daughter what happened in World War I with the trenches and why airplanes became a valuable new technology. Just like I was talking about in class! I love it when that happens.

I also talked/bragged about booking a flight to Europe later in May (after Mrs. DeFrance Gilman comes back, which should be around May 1). I will have to keep in touch with you all about that! I'm really excited. :-)

The news brief article for today was brought in by Amanda. Here it is: CNN.com - Robbers breach gate, steal $50 million in diamonds at Belgian airport. This sounds like the plot of Ocean's 11 or The Italian Job! Very interesting. Thanks, Amanda! Sakib, you are up for next class.

Debrief WWI Essay: Next, I asked the class for general feedback about how the in-class essay went. I really appreciated the responses here. Khushali noted that you will have to do such tests in the future, like for SATs, and this was good practice. That was definitely my hope! Yes, it may have been tough to write so much, in an entire class period. I do think that most of you did very well with it.

Grades: Speaking of grades, I handed back the essays with comments written. The basic marks: underline in green was the thesis and highlighted words were vocabulary. I used stapled the rubric I used to each of the essay tests, and underlined what made up your grade. I took the three category scores and multiplied it by 3, so the final score was out of 30 points.

I also passed back all of the World War I packets that I received to be graded. If you have not turned these in yet, they are late and will be graded accordingly. However, a B on these is still WAY better than a zero, which I will have to start entering as scores soon, for those of you that were missing assignments.

Togetherness: After looking at all of the grades, I turned our attention to something more exciting and interesting (I hope): ways in which the world comes together. I showed five consecutive videos (a record, but there are so many good ones out there)! Here are the links to them, if you want to watch again:

"Dancing (2008)"

The world's reaction to the United States Men's National Team winning a critical World Cup game at the last second in South Africa, 2010: YouTube.com - Landon Donovan Goal Reaction.

The "Free Hugs" campaign in Australia: YouTube.com - Free Hugs.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thanks to McKenzie for emailing this to me over the weekend!

"Dancing (2012)"

I LOVE these videos. All great examples of what brings people together across so many different areas.

Your task after watching this was to start creating a poster of something that brings the world together. Again, this is extremely low stakes - it's not going to be a huge grade or anything. Just a fun activity to remember that there is more to the world than just conflict. We will try to finish these up next class, present, then move on to the revolution unit. Sound like a plan? Thanks for the great class today! Let me know if you have other videos that you enjoy along these same lines! :-)