Today's soundtrack was "Wavin' Flag" by K'Naan, so the photo for today is of a picture I took of the flag of Turkey on a ferry, overlooking the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. Photo taken in 2013.
Hi everyone,
I enjoyed blowing your minds today (see below)! I think it was a good class, with more students passing the states quiz, finishing the culture PowerPoint lecture notes, and then having fun with the Nacirema reading. Here's what happened today:
Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 15: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.
Soundtrack: "Wavin' Flag" by K'Naan. Selected for today because flags are a symbolic representation of a county, which is integrated into culture. Lyrics here.
AGENDA 10/16/15:
Grades/News Brief – John
States Quiz
Cornell Notes
The Nacirema
Homework: Read the blog. Check your grade in Student VUE and improve it, if possible. Next news brief: Lisanna.
Grades/News Brief: At the start of class, I again talked about grades, and that this progress report would just be based on the Geography unit grades. Any late work is due to me today (Friday) by 2:45 to be considered for progress report grades, because I will be submitting them later this afternoon (and I will be in St. Louis over the weekend).
John brought in this article to talk about for the news brief today: CNN.com - From 'Dracula' fish to snub-nosed monkeys: New species found in Himalayas. We found Nepal in the world map packet (the Asia map) to represent the Himalayas. A cool story about scientific discovery around the world! Thanks, John! Lisanna was randomly drawn as 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):
States Quiz: We are getting better at this! I know I wasn't able to pass this back in class, but Roisin did enter the scores on the gradebook and it appears that most students have passed (which is a 50/50 score) at this point. Again, this will not be a score for the progress report. I will figure out a way to incorporate it as a behavior grade for class. If you have not passed, please continue to study and be ready to do so!
Cornell Notes: This is a note-taking strategy that we are going to be using frequently this year at Westview - especially if you are at all familiar with the AVID class. There were two handouts that went with this:
We went through both of these together, as I made sure to talk about the way in which Cornell Notes help with retaining information. Here's the PowerPoint on culture that I wanted notes to be taken on:
Really, the Iceberg Model is all about what we cannot see. We had an interesting discussion in class with this, as we looked more into deep culture, and what some good examples might be. As I said in class, I think everyone does not want to stereotype cultures, or be prejudiced against them in some way, so we need to seek to understand cultures around the world. It was cool to hear that students were really interested in this material! Your notes are a good start in this!
The Nacirema: I always enjoy this (an old school reading, but a good one). To begin, we used another AVID strategy that involves numbering the paragraphs of a reading. We read this famous article together, as most students sat perplexed about what the heck was going on.
Spoiler alert: here's an assignment that has to do with the with the Nacirema reading (we will start this next class - it is not homework, so please don't do it yet):
The end of class was spent looking at the reading, and trying to analyze how the Nacirema story might relate to our own culture. Next class, we will continue with this and then write a little bit about the Nacirema using similar language and theme. This is usually a pretty fun assignment, once you think of an aspect of our culture to use!
That was it for the day! See you next class! :-)
The Nacirema: I always enjoy this (an old school reading, but a good one). To begin, we used another AVID strategy that involves numbering the paragraphs of a reading. We read this famous article together, as most students sat perplexed about what the heck was going on.
Spoiler alert: here's an assignment that has to do with the with the Nacirema reading (we will start this next class - it is not homework, so please don't do it yet):
The end of class was spent looking at the reading, and trying to analyze how the Nacirema story might relate to our own culture. Next class, we will continue with this and then write a little bit about the Nacirema using similar language and theme. This is usually a pretty fun assignment, once you think of an aspect of our culture to use!
That was it for the day! See you next class! :-)
