Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Finals Prep - Class Recap


This past weekend was Father's Day! Here I am with my dad, mom, and both sets of my grandparents, in 2007.

Dear class,

One more day left of the school year together! Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets: 
Communication LT 1: I can use language and style that is appropriate to the content area.
Critical Thinking LT 2: I can explain connections between events, issues, problems and concepts.
Knowledge LT 9:  I can explain demographic changes in the world and their effects.
Knowledge LT 19:  I can explain the impacts of nationalism and revolutionary movements. Knowledge LT 21:  I can explain how religious ideas impact the shaping of societies.

Soundtrack: "Give Peace A Chance" by John Lennon. Selected for today for obvious reasons, as we are working on the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 6/20/17:
News Brief – Reese
Final Questions?
Clean Up
Work Time

Homework: Read the blog! Turn in your final project for the year on Google Classroom (specific guide for what to do here). Finals for your period are Thursday at 7:45 AM. Next news brief: Sam.
---
News Brief: Reese had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Finsbury Park attack: Theresa May condemns 'sickening' terror attack. We found the United Kingdom in the world map and discussed this most recent terrorist attack on Muslims, which came after Ramadan prayers at a London mosque. After that, we checked in about the weekend and what students were up to outside of class.

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):


Finally, I showed this trailer for a documentary that just came out on Netflix called Disturbing the Peace, about people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who are coming together for peace. I watched it last night and highly recommend it!



Final Questions/Clean Up: I told the class to start taking down pictures and posters from the bask wall in order to help clean up the classroom for the end of the year. I also gave time to continue working on Through Middle Eastern Eyes and anything else related to the final. This was an excerpt from a book, which I made a class set of. The two characters are representing the perspectives of Israel and Palestine. Here's the online version if you want to keep working on this at home:


There is a few pages of timeline and introduction in that, and then the characters start talking on page 229. The two characters in the reading were David (representing Israel) and Daud (representing Palestine). I wanted students to partner up and go through the reading together. Here is the assignment that goes with the reading, to note each perspective and help you prepare for your final assignment:


Work Time: The rest of class was set aside for the final project, after Kira and Abhigya presented their final projects. I was checking in with every student as to which learning targets they wanted to be graded on for the final. Speaking of the final project, this form clarifies what the expectation is going to be on the day of the final, as well as what students should be writing/talking about:


I'm going to keep it simple and have students just focus on this. You should already know what learning targets you need to work on. Use the chart at the top of the second page to focus your writing/speech notes on the specific issues in the conflict. I know there were a lot of questions on this - please let me know if I can continue clearing this up.

We also played the Sporcle country name game for the last time this year, and ended with a score of 184. An admirable effort, after 4 times played this year!

See you on Thursday for our final class of the year!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please enter your comment. I will review the comments before posting them to the blog, so don't worry if you don't see yours pop up right away. Remember, do your best with spelling and grammar! :-)