Geography, Day 8 - Class Recap

The Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, taken in July of 2014. Today, we had our Africa map quiz in class, which included Egypt!

Dear class,

Welcome back to our first week of October! This week should close out the first big unit of the year, on Geography. Next class is our last map quiz, and then we will start moving on to Culture later in the week! Here's what happened today:

Learning Targets:
Behavior LT 2: I can self-direct my learning.
Knowledge LT 7: I can demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics of locations and regions.
Knowledge LT 10: I can demonstrate an understanding of the connection between physical and human systems.

Soundtrack: "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck. Selected for today because an anonymous student commented on the blog with it as a suggestion. For future reference, I like song requests to tie in to what we are doing in class somehow, so for this, I said that today we are taking our fifth map quiz of the geography unit. :-)

AGENDA 10/3/16:
News Brief – Ashwin
Africa Map Quiz
Latitude/Longitude
Atlas/Map Work

Homework: Read the blog. Finish Asia/Middle East maps (colored and labeled) for the quiz next class. Bring all of your other geography unit work/quizzes to be able to turn in. Next news brief: Victor.

News Brief: Ashwin had the news brief today and selected this story to talk about: CNN.com - Hurricane Matthew: Jamaica and Haiti brace for 'life-threatening' storm. We found Haiti in our world maps and talked for a bit about what this dangerous storm is up to. Thanks, Ashwin! Victor was drawn as the next person up.

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):

BBCNews.com - One-minute World News

I also checked in about the weekend with everyone to see if anyone was up to anything interesting or fun, before moving on.

Africa Map Quiz: The second to last map quiz out of the six! Remember that your top four scores will be turned in for your grade for the geography targets. We corrected the quiz in class and then passed them back.

Latitude/Longitude: I wanted to make sure that we went over the concepts of latitude and longitude again, in identifying where places are in the world. With that, I passed out this worksheet having to do with Asia (which, not so coincidentally, students were labeling in class today):

Google Drive - Asia Latitude and Longitude Worksheet

I will collect these as part of the collection of evidence for the geography learning targets later in the week, along with your top four map quizzes, finished map packet, and Five Themes of Geography packet.

Atlas/Map Work: The last part of class was dedicated to labeling and coloring the Asia and Middle East sections of the map packet, in order to be able to use it on the last map quiz next class. For checking the blog, here's a question from the quiz: This island country—an archipelago made up of many atolls—is located south and west of India. If you are missing your map packet and know you need to have it done, please print out another and have it ready to go for next class:

Google Drive - World Maps Packet

Here's the Five Themes of Geography Atlas activity to continue working on (which mostly has to be in class with the atlases here):

Google Drive - Five Themes of Geography Atlas Packet

I am looking forward to meeting your parents Wednesday night at Back To School Night! You can bet that the blog will feature heavily. Make sure to have your map packet completed, and as much of the Five Themes packet done as possible for next class!