Period 4: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 1 - Class Recap

Earth, as seen from the Apollo 17. This is probably the most famous image of Earth from space, and is sometimes referred to as the "Blue Marble" picture. Found on the consistently incredible (bookmark and come back every day) NASA.gov - Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Dear Period 4,

I really liked how today went, despite a few areas where I thought I could have done a better job teaching how to write the paper, and where the class really needed to be focused on actually writing the rough draft. Other than that, I loved the participation, engagement, and overall focus. Thanks!

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights? - Wow, we have been seriously neglecting the essential questions, but I am really hoping that we will be able to come back to them at some point!

Soundtrack: "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado. Lyrics here. I'm not sure if anyone really knows what this song is about, including Ms. Furtado, but man, is it catchy. As I said in class, it reminds me of a California road trip I took in 2007! Chosen for today because I searched my iTunes for "right" and this was the best song that came up.

AGENDA 6/1/09:
News Brief
Writing the Paper
Quiet Base Group Work
Conferences

Homework: Rough draft of paper due for peer editing. Read the blog and ask questions!

To be clear here: I would like a typed copy of the rough draft of your historical investigation (including everything that we talked about in class today - an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and bibliography) for your peers to help review in your base groups next class.

Please be sure to be asking questions and asking for help in the comments if you need it at all!

News Brief: Two stories that I wanted to highlight this morning as items of interest that everyone should know about were these - AVHerald.com - Crash: Air France A332 over Atlantic on June 1st 2009, aircraft lost. Check out that second picture of the extreme weather patterns in the area. As I mentioned in class, it would be hard to pick a more remote place in the ocean. I also said that I would upload a picture of the "black box" or flight data recorder that is virtually indestructible and can be used to help determine what happened in an accident. Here is one from an Evergreen International Airlines 747 that I worked on two winters ago:


Really a horrifying event. Though for any of you that are concerned about flying, know that you have a way higher chance of dying from a car accident on the way to the airport than you do the actual flight you are on. Flying is really one of the safest modes of transportation in the world. It just so happens that every so often, things go terribly wrong.

The other story I wanted to point out was this: CNN.com - GM bankruptcy: End of an era. Really an incredible day. General Motors was the biggest car company in the world for something like 90 straight years before losing its position to Toyota. Many people and dealerships will be out of jobs, though the company is expected to remain mostly intact through the bankruptcy (as it tries to get rid of the huge debt it has).

Armando mentioned the news about a new President of San Salvador. I had not heard that, but it is a really interesting story! It can be read here: CNN.com - El Salvador's first leftist president inaugurated.

Someone else mentioned that North Korea is potentially launching a rocket that could theoretically hit Alaska. This is an article about that: NYTimes.com - Gates Issues Warning to North Korea.

Tyler asked about someone calling Sonia Sotomayor (President Obama's Supreme Court nominee) racist. That is an interesting debate, some of which can be recapped here: CNN.com - Sotomayor: GOP cries racism, Dems cry foul.

Finally, Maddie was wanting to see and hear about the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here is an article about how he has denied that the Holocaust happened. Associated Press - Rival criticizes Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial. Go searching on YouTube if you want. He is a weird guy.

Brenan brought in the following article to talk about for the news brief today: CNN.com - Israel stages biggest-ever war drill. Again, Israel and many other places in the Middle East are involving in really long running conflicts that are almost sure to continue. Very interesting to learn about!

Haley, you are up for a news article for Wednesday. Anything currently going on around the world that is happening outside the United States. Thanks!

Writing the Paper: During this section of class, there was a really fantastic discussion about the finer points of citing a source and how we want you to write the paper, which would be impossible to entirely recap on the blog. However, if you were paying attention in class, I feel pretty confident that you understand what is going on. If not, please ask questions in the comments about how to construct a paragraph and cite a source! Remember, we do not want you using a ton of direct quotes. Pick a couple really key ones, and summarize the rest! You still have to cite them, but now you are showing me what you think about your research!

Remember that the format of the paragraphs is there to just give you a general idea of the sequence that we want: topic sentence, concrete detail, concrete detail, commentary, concluding statement. Those do not all have to be single sentences! In fact, if you elaborate each point, your paper will probably be much easier to write!

Again, let me know if you have any questions about all of this!

Quiet Base Group Work: Perhaps I should have underlined "Quiet" here, because I really doubt that most of you used this time effectively. I wanted you to check in with each other about how things are going with the paper, then get right down to writing your rough draft. Some of you chose to utilize this time, some did not. During this, we also did...

Conferences: Mrs. DeFrance and I really like doing these. It is always awesome to get to check in with everyone! I started from the bottom of the class list and she started from the top. If you did not get to chat with either one of us today, the questions that I asked were: how are you feeling about your research question and sources? Does this paper make sense? Do you need any help with it? Do you feel confident about writing the rough draft this weekend? Finally, I showed everyone their grade and gave out ways (if possible) to get it up.

Thanks for visiting with us! I really value the opportunity to sit down and chat one-on-one, because that happens way less frequently than I would like.
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Again, please let me know how I can be helping you out! Do not stress about this, but please get it done! Thank you!

I will be involved in many football meetings and practices this week after school, but should be able to respond to comments.