Period 4: 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 on Friday!

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 4/15/13:
News Brief
Part C + D Peer Review
Understanding Afghanistan

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: Wyatt, Ivan, Jaylene, and Casey.

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News Brief: The news brief articles brought in today were from Cadie and Josh: CNN.com - Chavez's political heir declared winner; opponent demands recount and ABCNews.com - Bus Carrying Russians Crashes in Belgium, 5 Dead.

I talked about my experience with crazy bus rides in foreign countries. I also showed this video of the winning goal in the Timbers game last night as an example of something that brings people together.

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 and 88% could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.

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 24).

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. Some really excellent questions as well! Let me know if there is anything that I said would go on the blog but I have not posted.

Please remember to be working on your historical investigation! Your rough draft of everything is due in class on Wednesday!