Period 1: Historical Investigation, Day 8 - Class Recap

An overview of the city of Boston, from the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. As I told the class today, I flew into or out of Boston a combined 53 times in 2011 as part of the JetBlue "Blue Pass" promotion. I took this picture on my last trip, before seeing Jay-Z and Kanye West in concert.

Hi everyone,

Only two more classes as your teacher! Plenty of work to do before then, so let's get to it.

Essential Questions: What brings people together? What tears people apart?

Soundtrack: "More Than A Feeling" by Boston. Selected for today because of the obvious connection of the band name to the bombings in Boston. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/16/13:
News Brief
Rough Draft Peer Review
Finish Understanding Afghanistan
Reasons for War

Homework: ***FINAL draft of Historical Investigation due next class – printed and ready to turn in with the grading rubric stapled to the front (no work in class on it)!*** Study for Middle East map quiz.

Next news brief: Esmy, Kenyon, Jen, Alexis, Jerikahlyn.
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News Brief: The news articles were brought in today by Marleen, Sooly, and Daniel: Bigpondnews.com - UK police arrest 29 football fans, WSJ.com - Turkish Pianist Receives Suspended Jail Sentence, and Yahoo.com - Venezuela opposition demands vote recount, protests flare.

The obvious big news from the top of the class was about the bombs in Boston, so I went over everything that is known so far and what we don't know and are total guesses. I talked about the bad information that flies all over the place immediately after events like this, and how this may or may not be connected to what we are learning about in class.

Rough Draft Peer Review: After the more lengthy than usual news brief, we moved on to reviewing the historical investigation rough drafts. As I told the class, this is a BIG deal. If you had an A in the class and do not turn this in next class, you will have a D at the very highest until it is turned in and complete.

Here is the peer review form that I passed out during class. Please remember that this is a general guide for what to look for - I am specifically grading on the rubric:

Google Drive: Historical Investigation Rough Draft Peer Review Form

If you missed class, or wanted to see for yourself the absolute basics of what you need to do, please check out that form.

Finish Understanding Afghanistan: After devoting a fair amount of time to reviewing (and worryingly, many students still seemed to have a lot of the historical investigation missing), I moved on to finishing up the PowerPoint we started last class. If you missed class, or I went too fast, here it is to check out again:

Google Drive: Understanding Afghanistan PowerPoint

Remember that I will be using some of this information for the Jeopardy game we will play during my last class as your teacher, next week. Mrs. DeFrance Gilman also might use it in her lessons for you in the future.

Reasons for War: At the end of class, we ran out of time to really get into this section fully, but we did get to talk a bit about why the United States invaded Iraq in 2002. Next class, we will come back to this and wrap it up, before I give you the rest of the period to study for the Middle East map quiz (I will give you a blank map to study from and the countries you will need to know).

Get your historical investigations reviewed, edited, and ready to turn in next class! Let me know how if you need help!

Period 1: Historical Investigation, Day 7 - Class Recap

This was my view at "Ground Zero" in 2011, as the Freedom Tower was being built in New York City. There is a permanent 9/11 memorial in place now, as well.

Dear class,

I enjoyed today! A little more laid back, with working, reviewing, studying, and some new content. Hopefully, this helped you not be as stressed about the historical investigation being due next week!

Essential Questions: What brings people together? What tears people apart?

Soundtrack: “Under Pressure” by David Bowie. Selected for today because I think we are all feeling the pressure of quite a lot of work. Pressure can do one of two things: make diamonds or cause something to burst. I hope you are all diamonds by the end of this! Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/11/13:
News Brief
Part C + D Peer Review
Understanding Afghanistan
Reasons for War

Homework: ***Rough draft of Historical Investigation due next class - Parts A, B, C, D, and E!*** Study for Middle East map quiz. Next news brief: Daniel, Sooly, Marleen.

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News Brief: The news brief articles brought in today were from Emily and Savannah. Here they are: CNN.com - Rights group accuses Syrian military of targeting civilians and HuffingtonPost.com - Justin Bieber Concert Prompts Norway School To Postpone Exams. The first story is definitely connected to the Arab Spring revolutions and the second, well, who wouldn't want to not have tests when Justin Bieber is in town?

I also talked a bit more about North Korea, and showed the class this link, which is a map of the missile range (both real and theoretical) of North Korean missiles: CNN.com - North Korea's missile capabilities.

Part C + D Peer Review: I really hope that you used this section to improve your historical investigation in some way. Parts C and D were due in class, so if you did your homework, you should now have everything looked over by at least one other person to help improve your work. Some basics that you were supposed to be looking for: No first person (I, me, you, us, we). Times New Roman font, size 12. Double Spaced. Part C is one full page or more. Part D is one full paragraph that has the research question answered with a thesis.

When in doubt, look at the grading rubric for how I am going to give you a grade on this! Improve, improve, improve. Get your rough draft to be in as good a position as you can for next class on Tuesday. We will do a similar exercise in class. If you are behind, you have all weekend to be working on your historical investigation. Please let me know if you are confused about what to do!

Here is the assignment sheet: Google Drive - Historical Investigation Assignment

Really, everything you need to know how to be successful is linked on the blog.

Understanding Afghanistan: To start this bit of new content, I played a selection from this video, which asked people from New York City about places in the Middle East, with humorous results. I also showed the class an article from CNN.com in 2006 (I doubt that the results of the study would be much different today) that shows how terrible young Americans are at geography: CNN.com - Study: Geography Greek to young Americans. I mean, about 60% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.

As a Social Studies teacher, I find this completely unacceptable. Over 4,000 US servicemen and women died in Iraq in the last 10 years, and we can't even point to it on a map? This is why I am having you do the Middle East map quiz, on my last day as your teacher (April 22).

After that introduction, I started going through a PowerPoint about what has happened in Afghanistan since the end of World War I. There should be all sorts of mind blowing facts about the United States relationship there, even with Osama bin Laden himself. Here's the PowerPoint to review (we will finish next class):

Google Drive - Understanding Afghanistan PowerPoint

Thanks for being good at taking notes here.

Have a great weekend and please remember to be working on your historical investigation!