World War I, Day 1 - Class Recap

Your anonymous feedback for what you like about this class! :-) 

Hello everyone,

Welcome to a new semester and a new unit to study! Today, we started looking at World War I and making connections to what we have already learned about as far as imperialism in Rwanda, the Holocaust and the rise of Hitler, and everything else we have talked about. Here's what happened today:

Learning Targets:
Critical Thinking and Analysis LT 2: I can explain connections between events, issues, problems, and concepts.
Knowledge LT 20: I can explain the impacts of nationalism and revolutionary movements.

Soundtrack: "Brand New Day" by Sting. Selected for today because it is a brand new semester and a chance to start again! Lyrics here.

AGENDA 2/5/18:
News Brief - Albert
Review Class Feedback
Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint
Murder of the Archduke

Homework: Read the blog and post a comment again! Finish the reading questions if you did not in class. Next news brief: Trent.

News Brief: Albert had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Juan Barros case: Chile sex abuse letter contradicts Pope over 'cover-up'. We found Vatican City on the world map and talked about this story for a bit, before moving on.

Trent was selected to do the next news brief.

As usual, we checked in about what students were up to outside of class (I hope finals went well!). I showed my reaction to the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl. I was pretty excited. :-)

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

Review Class Feedback: We looked at the anonymous feedback that students gave me before the Ladkah semester final about how the class was going, and how I am doing as a teacher. Here it is again if you want to check it out:

Google Drive - Period 3 January Class Feedback

Some observations:

1) It looks like students really love what we learn about in class, as well as the discussions we have, which is awesome to see!

2) The class knows it could get better at notes and having everyone participate.

3) The class likes that I am helpful, passionate, and engaging.

4) However, some students feel like I could do a better job of going slower (or faster) with material (if anything at all).

As I also noted in the last slide, we have lots of work to do in the second semester, which will probably be more challenging for most students than the first semester. We will be discussing this more in class, but you have the opportunity to earn college credit in Global Studies this year by completing a research project, which will will start in March. Lots to get to, for sure.

Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint: To start up the World War I unit, I showed this recent clip from the BBC about what millennials know about it.

I went over the definition of "ominous" and used the example of music in a scary movie: you know something bad is about to happen. The rest of the PowerPoint was about the M.A.I.N. causes of World War I. The class took notes (Cornell Notes would be awesome!) on each slide - which will come in handy at the end of this unit. Please review the presentation if you missed class, or did not have enough time to finish up your notes:

Google Docs - World War I: Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint

Thank you so much for your focus during this part of class! You all seemed to really be getting what I was talking about, which is great to see.

Murder of the Archduke: I passed this document around (or had students access it on their Chromebooks), and read it aloud to the class, trying to describe what happened in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. - Borijove Jevtic: The Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. This is the story of how World War I started. I had the class answer the analysis questions at the end, as well. It is such an important event in history - all set up by the MAIN causes of World War I. The questions at the end were what we finished class with. We will start next time by going over the answers together.

This was what we ended class with! Thank you for your participation and focus today! :-)