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 10/7/15:
News Brief – Alaina
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. Study for the states quiz next week. Next news brief: Meher.
News Brief: Alaina brought in an article about this story for the news brief: TheGuardian.com - Police arrest four in western Sydney raids after Parramatta shooting. We found Australia on our world map and noted that we did a news brief on it. There was a bit of difficulty in class determining what actually happened with the shooting in the story, so details are in the article linked. Meher was randomly 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):
I also asked about any plans for the long weekend and talked a little bit about what I have been up to. It was great to meet your parents at Back to School Night yesterday! :-)
Asia Map Quiz: This was the last map quiz opportunity (remember, you had 6 possible opportunities with different map quizzes - 3 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 three 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! Enjoy your long weekend!
