Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Geography, Day 9 - Class Recap

This is me doing the Gangnam Style dance, at Gangnam Station in Seoul, South Korea, in January of 2014. Yes, the Korean girl who took this was laughing at me.

Dear class,

We are finally done with map quizzes and most of the Geography unit! Thank you for your patience and understanding as we finished today and there was a flurry of activity. I will grade your packets in the coming days for your upcoming progress reports. Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets:
Behavior LT 2: I can self-direct my learning.
Knowledge LT 6: I can demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics of locations and regions.
Knowledge LT 7: I can demonstrate the ability to use geographic tools.

Soundtrack: "Gangnam Style" by PSY. Selected because we had our last map quiz today, on Asia. South Korea is where PSY is from, which is in Asia. Lyrics (which are mostly Korean, and hilariously translated to the English alphabet) here.

AGENDA 10/5/16:
News Brief – Victor
Asia Map Quiz
Atlas/Map Work
Turn in Collection of Evidence

Homework: Read the blog. Your geography packet needed to be turned in today, so if you have parts you did not turn in, please get it to me ASAP. Next news brief: CJ.

News Brief: Victor brought in an article about this story for the news brief: CNN.com - Stakes for Iraq's future couldn't be higher as Mosul offensive looms. We found Iraq in the world map packet (handy, since we did the Middle East map quiz today in class) and talked about the situation with ISIS in the region, as well as the importance of Mosul as a strategic city in Iraq. Thanks, Victor! CJ was selected to do the next news brief.

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):


We also checked in about the Vice Presidential debate, as well as what students are up to outside of class. I hope to see many of your parents (you can come too, if you want!) tonight at Back to School Night!

Asia Map Quiz: This was the last map quiz opportunity (remember, you had 6 possible opportunities with different map quizzes - 4 of which you choose as your best work to be graded along with the other geography work we have been doing). We graded and passed this back in class, so everyone should have had all the graded quizzes available for selection.

Atlas/Map Work: There was time in class for students to be finishing any geography unit work, after the Asia quiz. I hope you used your time wisely! The assignments for the unit are:

1) The completed world map packet, labelled and colored. Link here.
2) Your choice of the top four out of the six map quizzes that we took in class.
3) The Five Themes of Geography Atlas activity. Link here.
4) Latitude and Longitude in Central Asia worksheet. Link here.

Turn in Collection of Evidence: Finally - the first graded packet of work for the semester! This was the accumulation of all the work we have done with the geography unit - the quizzes, five themes papers, the latitude and longitude assignment from Asia, and your completed world maps by continent (colored and labelled). Here is the rubric students used in class to self assess (I will be using this same paper to write grades and comments on):


I will look at what students wrote on this, along with the work that was stapled and turned in with it, in order to determine your proficiency grades are for these two learning targets, which is what the first progress report will be based on. Thus, if you did not do well with keeping up with your maps, doing well with the quizzes, and making sure to use class time effectively for the Five Themes of Geography packet, you may have some unfortunate news coming soon if you do not make up the work.

Next class, we will start our look at culture in depth. See you then!

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