At my Lewis and Clark graduation on Sunday! From left to right, my dad, my brother, Mrs. DeFrance, me, my mom, my grandma, and my grandpa (my dad's parents). Fun times! It was a way too fast weekend! Time to finish out the end of the year!
Hello everyone!
Oh my goodness, we only have one more class together! This is all coming to an end really fast. I hope you enjoyed today's class - thanks for the attention, even with multiple things going on during the lesson. Please remember to finish out the year strong with the paper and any revisions that we asked you to do. Also, come see me or e-mail about any late work you may have to do! Let's go out on a high note!
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? How did the concept of nonviolence develop and become implemented? - We looked at multiple angles of the answers to these questions today!
Soundtrack: "If You're Out There" by John Legend. Lyrics here. The verse that I especially wanted to highlight is:
If you're ready we can save the world Believe again, it starts within We don't have to wait for destiny We should be the change that we want to see
Great song! :-)
AGENDA 6/9/09: News Brief Be the Change/Revisions Letter to Self (Outside?) Class Reflections
Homework: Finish any late work – REVISE your papers, if needed! Read the blog and ask questions!
Seriously, either Mrs. DeFrance or I would be happy to have you revise the paper - please make your best effort! If you have not given me a copy of your paper (at all), you definitely need to be e-mailing it to me ASAP. I hope everyone is clear on this. Thanks!
Sam, you are up for the last news brief of the year on Thursday. Any article about anything currently going on around the world outside the United States. Thanks!
Be the Change/Revisions: After the news brief, I wanted everyone to really be thinking about how they want to have a positive effect on the world. To get you thinking about this, I showed this video (one of the most popular on YouTube):
I then asked the class to write about how you want to be the change you wish to see in the world (a Gandhi quote). How are you going to leave a lasting positive impact? I then left you to be writing as Mrs. DeFrance and I checked in with everyone about the revisions we requested for your paper. This took much longer than we were anticipating, so I am sorry if you were finished with your positive life story and had nothing to do. Sometimes class just works out like that!
Letter to Self: For this portion of class, I handed back the letters that you wrote to yourselves from the beginning of the year as well as a reflection piece to do on them. I know that most of you did not have the time to finish this in class, so please read your paper over again and write out your reflections! We are really interested in what you have to say!
Class Reflections: We did not get to these because of the timing issues with the class, but I hope to have some sort of reflection on the year from you guys during next class - our last of the year! Ahh! So crazy! ---
Have a great night! I have a million things to do: grading, blog writing, football practice, more grading, lesson planning, dinner, and possibly (hopefully) sleep at some point. Thus, please do not be offended if I can't post your comment right away. I will promise to read and respond to everything that you send me though! Please keep working hard through the end of the year! :-)
Gandhi advocated living simply (as you saw today). This is a picture I took last fall of a farm by Lake Oswego, about five miles away from my house. It reminds me of simple times.
Good afternoon Period 2!
I am so sad that today was our last Friday together! I hope that we made the best of it, though I must say, that was one of the longest periods I have ever had! We started at 7:45 and finally let out (due to the long assembly for the seniors) at 11:10. Crazy times. On to the class recap!
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? How did the concept of nonviolence develop and become implemented?
Soundtrack: "Comin' From Where I'm From" by Anthony Hamilton. Lyrics here. Chosen for today because we are continuing to talk about empathy and nonviolence. That, and it is an excellent song.
AGENDA 6/5/09: News Brief – President Obama/Tiananmen Square Example Paper Talking Gandhi
Homework: Finish and turn in any late work! Read the blog and ask questions!
For those that did not turn in your final paper today, please e-mail me at luke_fritz@beavton.k12.or.us as soon as possible. Thanks!
News Brief: We talked about the enormous lightning storm that happened in Portland last night! It was certainly something to take notice of. I was inside watching the NBA Finals. Good times.
We talked a little bit about the Air France Flight 447 disaster and trying to find the debris (an article on that can be found here: CNN.com - Brazilian air force says debris was not from Air France crash) and Diana asked about the Bermuda Triangle - which is a close, but not exactly where the plane went down. Interesting information at the Wikipedia site! I think what I was talking about in class as far as geysers and such that might be part of the reason for the strange activity in that region are Methane Hydrates.
I mentioned that I will be "graduating" (we still have two more months of classes after this) from Lewis and Clark this Sunday, at 10:00 AM. You can see all of my teaching friends and me! Woo hoo! Here is a link to watch the ceremony live online: Lewis and Clark Commencement 2009. Apparently, the webcast launches at 9:45 AM and changes to live feed at 10 AM. Let me know in the comments if there is a consensus about a signal I can do for you guys! I suppose I could do the touching the nose thing if all else fails. If you don't know when I will be coming up, it is alphabetical by degree. I will be getting my Masters of Arts in Teaching. :-)
I also wanted to point out that the NBA Finals starts tonight, and if you want Mr. Hardin to be sane tomorrow when he is teaching you guys, you had better be rooting for the Lakers. That will air at 6:00 PM on ABC.
As Amy mentioned for her news brief article today (which you can read here: NYTimes.com - Addressing Muslims, Obama Pushes Middle East Peace) President Obama had an enormously big speech yesterday in Cairo, Egypt. He was talking to Muslims in the Middle East. Some of it was almost EXACTLY the same as what you guys did for your Israeli-Palestinian project! Specifically, I wanted to show the class what he had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and nonviolence (tying the last two units together):
I also showed the end to the speech, when the President tried to say that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all had the goal of promoting peace in the world. This was very much like Sarah's presentation for the Israeli-Palestinian unit! The video we watched can be found here.
Finally, I wanted to make sure to note that today was the 20th Anniversary of the Tienanmen Square protests being broken up. Read all about the event here. This is the video I showed in class (just the first part, until the credits roll):
After this played, I showed this video of the unknown "tank man" standing up to block the Chinese military. A very important date in history!
Thanks for indulging me in all these videos! I hope you found it interesting!
Example Paper: After this extremely long news brief section, I showcased an example of a really good research paper, done by Sarah. It was all about chocolate, and how it has an impact on the economy, health, and happiness! See, that is the power of a thesis statement - I didn't even have to look that up. Because Sarah had a really memorable thesis and paper, it is easy for me to recall what she was talking about. Hopefully, showing her paper to the class was something that everyone learned from - I was really glad to hear the clapping at the end too! It was a great paper! Thanks for the hard work on it Sarah! :-)
Talking Gandhi: Because the class was shortened, this section was not as long as I had hoped that it would be, though I am glad that we got to talk a little bit about the magazine article I had you read last class. I asked everyone to volunteer a few things that Gandhi tried to do in order to better society through nonviolence. The class mentioned his hunger strikes as well as resisting temptation. This was good! After a brief discussion, we watched a biography (if you can call a three minute video a biography) of Gandhi and his philosophy on nonviolence, which you can watch again here.
When the video was over, so was the class! We then voted on a movie to watch as the senior assembly was going on (the freshmen were not allowed to go because of a lack of seating in the gym). The rest of our time was spent watching the movie and/or doing whatever quiet activity that you wanted, until the senior assembly wrapped up about 40 minutes late, giving you roughly 15 minutes in your Period 4 class. Fun times! ---
Please remember to be e-mailing me your papers if you did not hand me a copy today or had a copy previously accepted! We will be going over your grades on these on Tuesday.
Have a great weekend! Watch me graduate if you want, and the NBA Finals, and the French Open finals! Please remember to finish out the year strong - this is your last weekend of having school after it! Make the best of it! :-)
An Air India 747-400 at Newark International Airport on Memorial Day weekend. If not for Gandhi, it is possible that Air India would not even exist today! Picture by Mr. Fritz.
Hello and welcome to another class recap!
I think that today was great - it was good to check in with everyone and see your papers. Hopefully, we gave you some good feedback about revising them. I also was excited that we finally got to talk a little bit about Gandhi and his philosophy. Look for that to continue next class!
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? How did the concept of nonviolence develop and become implemented?
Soundtrack: "Get Up, Stand Up" by Bob Marley. Lyrics here. A fantastic song for thinking about civil rights!
AGENDA 6/3/09: News Brief Who Was Gandhi? First Draft Check-In The Old Man
Homework: Finish and turn in any late work! Read the blog and ask questions!
This includes any work on the paper that either Mrs. DeFrance or I gave you to revise!
News Brief: Sometimes we spend a lot of time on this section of class, talking about what is going on in the world. I am sorry if this gets boring for some of you, but I really like talking about everything that is happening! It is a good way to stay connected to what is happening. Today we had:
Nasser started a really interesting talk about black holes in space. I talked a little bit about the effects that black holes have, like warping time. Here is a video about how this is theorized to happen: Space.com - Black Holes: Warping Time & Space.
Also, we talked about Osama bin Laden coming out with a new audio tape that just aired this morning (or we got news about it). This is a recap of what we currently know about that all: NYTimes.com - Message on Obama Attributed to Bin Laden.
Really interesting stuff right? Juliet continued this section by bringing in her news article, which was this one: BBC.co.uk - Al-Qaeda 'kills British hostage'. Sadly, this sort of stuff happens all the time. People will kidnap others to try and spring their own friends out of prison. In fact, this is exactly like the plot of the movie Air Force One (1997).
Thanks for sharing the article Juliet! Amy, you are up for next class. A current news article about anything going on outside the United States. Thanks!
Who Was Gandhi? For this section, I had you write for a little bit (as I passed out an article) about what you would do for a "bucket list" if you knew you only had six months to live, to somehow better society. I really liked the responses that I heard, and I want to hammer home the point - why don't we live like this more often? Why aren't we more eco-friendly, for instance? I think a large part of it is that almost everyone is afraid that they will die and wants to deny that they eventually will. Part of coping with this is that we do not realize how we can truly have a long lasting positive impact on the world! Leaving a good legacy!
Gandhi was someone that definitely did leave a long lasting legacy. I had you read this article on Gandhi and look for ways that he tried to have an impact. It is a really interesting (but long, I know) article, so I hope you liked it! We will be talking more about it next class. TIME.com - Person of the Century, Runner-Up - Mohandas Gandhi.
First Draft Check-In: During the time when you were reading the article, Mrs. DeFrance and I were checking papers and asking many of you to continue revising. If we asked you to do this, please bring your revised copy to class on Friday, thanks!
The Old Man: With about 20 minutes left in class, I showed the Seinfeld episode "The Old Man" because it talks about having an impact through volunteering, and about Gandhi for a little bit. It is also really funny and I thought it was a good reward for all of your hard work so far on the paper. Keep it up! ---
Remember that there is Nike SPARQ testing after school today from 3:00 to about 4:30. Also remember that I am crazy busy these last few weeks, so I might not be able to post and respond to your comments on the blog instantly. Please be sending them though! I love hearing from everyone, and helping as much as I possibly can!
Have a great evening, thanks for being so awesome!
Because we talked a little bit about nuclear winter (that is a really interesting Wikipedia page) today in class, I figured that I would post a picture from outside my house last winter, during the week we had off of school!
Hello and welcome to the blog recap!
We have lots to get to today! I would have to say that generally, I liked how class went today, though I was not too happy to see how little it seemed that most people had worked on their research questions, and with some of the base groups that did not seem to be particularly productive in talking to each other about their ideas. Hopefully, we can work hard next class and finish out the year strong!
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?
Soundtrack: "Bomb the World" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. The lyrics, which I showed on the projector and read aloud in class because I thought that they were really interesting, can be found here. This song was suggested to me by Ms. V'Marie. I played it today because of the nuclear bomb test in North Korea, which we talked about in the News Brief section.
Homework: Notes on sources #1-3 (use to start paper!). Read blog recap and ask questions!
This will be explained in greater detail below, so keep reading! :-)
News Brief (Exploding Nuclear Bomb Edition): At the start of class, I went over the essential questions, soundtrack, agenda, and homework, then asked the class about what they did for the long Memorial Day weekend!
After some good conversation here, we went on to talk about the enormous news of the weekend. I found it absolutely incredible that in both of my Global Studies classes today, nobody had heard that North Korea had detonated a nuclear bomb as a test over the weekend. You can read all about that on really any news site. CNN.com has a special section dedicated to it, which you can find here: CNN.com - News & Videos about North Korea.
CNN.com - California high court upholds same-sex marriage ban - this was the "Proposition 8" topic that I mentioned would be decided at 10 AM today. Basically, the Supreme Court sided with the voters in California that elected to ban gay marriage last November, but also that the people that got married when it was legal for a short time last year (about 18,000 people, including Ellen DeGeneres) still have valid marriages in the State of California. So basically, neither side of the debate is happy. The debate continues!
Finally, I mentioned that President Obama had selected Sonia Sotomayor to be on the Supreme Court. She has to be confirmed by the Senate now, but seems likely to be the first Hispanic (her parents were born in Puerto Rico) on the court, as well as the third woman. This is another HUGE deal, that is all over the news. Her biography can be found here: CNN.com - Who is Sonia Sotomayor?.
Allie, you are up for a news brief for next class! Anything going on around the world outside the United States. Thanks!
Scheduling: For this section of class, I had everyone take a schedule and write out what we will be doing in class for the rest of the year. Here is what I put down on the board, for those of you that were not in class or lost the schedule:
May 26 (today): Research Questions and quiet work on notes. May 28 (next class): Notes on sources 1-3 due. Work on citing in paper. June 1: Peer Review in class (rough draft and Notes 4 due. Check off bibliography in class.) June 3: Paper Due (First Draft). June 5: Paper Pass Back and Revisions. June 9: Paper Due (Final Draft). June 11: Paper Pass Back and LAST DAY OF CLASS!
I went over all of these dates and what I will be checking off and looking for in class. Hopefully, this makes sense to you! Please let me know if it does not!
Taking Notes: For this section of class, I had everyone come up and take 4 sheets of paper for your notes on your sources to put in your folders. I talked about the awesome system for writing the paper. Take one of these papers and write #1 on the top, then write #1 on your first source. Write your research question in, then look at the "cheat sheet" in your folder to find out how to correctly cite your source for the bibliography. Finally, use the three smaller sheets that Mrs. DeFrance and I showed you how to take notes on (quotes/summarizing sentences/summarizing the entire source), and use those to create your notes for each source!
I know that this sounds complicated, but I feel fairly confident that I explained this well in class. Again, if this is not making sense, PLEASE ask me to clarify! There is simply no way that I can know how to best explain it if you do not tell me what you are confused about.
After this explanation, I had everyone get in to "base groups" of 3 people (there was one group with 4), to talk over what your research questions are about and what sources you have. You will continue to be in these base groups for the rest of the year, writing the paper! I have found that it is really nice just to have people to check in with, who know what you are writing and bring good ideas to the table.
For the rest of class, people were working on their research questions (running them by Mrs. DeFrance or me), as well as writing notes about your sources. Again, try to have at least two direct quotes per source! This will make writing the paper so much easier, I promise!
As I said above, I am not sure how productive this whole period of time was, because there seemed to be not a lot of thought put into the research questions, or communication amongst the groups. We will see what happens for next class, when I am asking you to bring in three sources with notes on each source! :-)
Gallery Walk: We were not able to get to this, but I am okay with it, as it really does take up a good amount of time to do correctly. ---
That should just about do it for today! Please remember to be asking questions and posting comments below if you are confused or needing help in any way! It is a two way street here, remember that. Thanks! Have a great rest of the day!
The Wordle of what everyone had to say what everyone had to say for what they liked about this class! I was glad to see all of this, thank you for the participation here!
Good afternoon class!
Despite some continuing issues with attention, listening, focus, and being quiet, I think today was really a good day of class! We definitely accomplished a lot, and did many crucial things to get us closer to the end of the year! Your class is great to be around, but at times, I have to use some tough love to keep everyone on track. Generally, we did that today! On to the recap:
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?
Soundtrack: "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado. Lyrics here. I'm not sure if anyone really knows what this song is about, including Ms. Furtado, but man, is it catchy. As I said in class, it reminds me of a California road trip I took in 2007! Chosen for today because I searched my iTunes for "right" and this was the best song that came up.
AGENDA 5/20/09: News Brief Debrief Class Reflections Martin Luther King Jr. Final Paper Bibliography
Homework: Have research question formulated for next class, begin work on writing paper! Read blog recap! Have a great long weekend!
In class, we talked about aspects of a good research question. Is is specific enough? Can it be actually researched or tested? Is it interesting to you? All of these should go in to formulating your question. Please let me know if you need help here!
I cannot emphasize this enough: you NEED to be working on finding sources for this paper, taking notes, and answering your question. It is not like you do not have homework to do for the next six days. It is really important that you use this time wisely, so please do.
News Brief: I used this part of class to go over the essential questions, soundtrack, agenda, and homework, as well as talk about your Israeli-Palestinian projects (about half of which I have graded). Apparently, nobody is particularly interested in getting theirs back, because I did not have any visitors at lunch. Good, I am glad that I can take my time then! :-)
We talked about what we had planned for the long weekend for a bit, and also talked about the news of the day - which I didn't make any notes on, so I am not sure if the class and anything to say that I needed to look up. I do remember this being productive, as always. This section of the class is only as good as you make it! Pat attention to what is going on in the world, it is really pretty interesting!
Mary brought in this news article to share: CNN.com - Indonesia plane crash kills nearly 100. Really unfortunate! I pointed out that Indonesia is actually the most populous Muslim country in the world, not anywhere in the Middle East. I also talked about how safe (I certainly hope) the airlines here in the United States are. Look at the bottom of this post for a little recap of my trip this weekend and why I love airlines.
Allie, you are up for next class for a news article, about anything going on outside the United States. Thanks!
After Mary presented her article, she showed the class an incredibly awesome PowerPoint she made using her photography of nature, and making it relate to the conflict in Israel and Palestine by saying that the land would be eventually destroyed if they kept fighting. Good points! Thanks for this, Mary!
Debrief Class Reflections: This is always interesting for me to do, and I liked that most everyone was following along, hoping to get a glimpse of what people like about my class, and what should be improved. If you missed it, here were your answers again:
1) What do you like about this class?
What we learn about x 9, culture x 2, relaxed, not hard, news x 7, people x 5, agenda, blog x 2, soundtrack x 4, activities x 3, comfortable, safe, fun x 2, "not just textbooks," interesting x 2, everything, Mr. Fritz, not much homework x 2, relevant x 2, easy to understand x 2, debates, videos x 2, food, quietness, discussions x 2, energetic, happy
2) What could the class improve on?
Attention/listening/focus x 12, less homework, discussion, less lectures, more debates x 2, less talking/quieter x 7, more windows, less videos, more history, more games, sharing more, being interesting, not talking about sports, nothing, checking the blog, respect
3) What do you like about Mr. Fritz as a teacher?
Excited x 2, comfortable, not harsh, work hard/effort x 3, makes class fun x 3, focused, enthusiastic x 4, interesting x 3, good topics x 2, personality, music, loud (and clear) x 4, activities, learn from, cool, good at explaining things x 3, friendly/kind/nice x 4, smile, optimistic, helpful, blog x 4, easygoing, organized, awesome, style x 2, motivated, eccentric, understanding
4) What can Mr. Fritz improve on?
Reduce amount of homework, assignments are boring, making the class fun x 2, keep classes attention x 3, be quieter/volume (disturbs us in Hardin's class/only if needed) x 9, memorable activities x 3, games, music selection, slow down, "make note taking a little more fun" (less) x 2, handwriting (on board) x 4, talk less about what we already know, be stricter ("give lunch detentions for people who are bad or late"), explain more --- Really interesting stuff! My main point here was that it seems that you like what we study, but know that there are a lot of problems with your attention and noise level. Similarly, you like my enthusiasm as a teacher, but think I need to be a bit quieter. Sounds like we need to work on this together, so please, let's do that! I think we got better at this as time went along today, but the start of this class was a little rough.
Martin Luther King Jr.: For this section, I asked you to get out your notes on civil rights from last class. I then proceeded to hand out a sheet of excerpts from three different speeches, which can be found (along with many others) at MLK Online - Speeches.
The speeches that I quoted from were "Letter from Birmingham Jail," "Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech," and "I See the Promised Land." All incredibly powerful speeches, with some amazing context for when they were given! For instance, check out this excerpt from the end of the last speech he ever gave, "I See the Promised Land":
If that does not give you chills, I do not know what to tell you.
After reading through these excerpts, I asked the class (using volunteers and calling on random people) to tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind what MLK was saying. How was he trying to get civil rights? I thought that this was an incredibly productive conversation to have (I took notes on the board and asked you to copy them down). It was a little shorter than I wanted, but that is the nature of things for the rest of the year, since we also have the following section to work on!
Final Paper Bibliography: For this section of the class, I handed out a bright yellow sheet to help you with formulating a good research question and citing sources. I talked about how to create an easy bibliography, using the "cheat sheets" that were stapled in your folders. I used Suzie's book as an example for a source. Remember, for your final paper, you need to have at least four different sources, and three of them have to be a newspaper article, magazine article, and a book. Wikipedia is NOT a source, but it does frequently link to sources at the bottom of each page!
We brainstormed on the board the aspects of a great research question, like: being specific, testable, interesting, and easy to follow. For the last 10 minutes or so, we worked in class on developing your questions. Again, please see me if you want any help with it! Begin researching and answering your question! This should be a fairly lengthy paper - about 3-4 pages by the time you are all done. We will continue to talk about great ways to take notes and accomplish all the other objectives for the paper, next class. ---
As I stated in class, this weekend I will be visiting my brother at college in Princeton, New Jersey, to help him pack up to come home for the summer. I am really excited! I am flying out on Friday morning and getting back on Sunday night. If you are at all interested, you can track my flights in the air here: Portland to Seattle (Horizon Air Flight 2172, 9:30 AM Friday), Seattle to Newark, New Jersey (Continental Airlines Flight 1680, 11:45 AM Friday), Newark to Phoenix, (US Airways Flight 77, 4:35 PM Sunday), and Phoenix to Portland (US Airways Flight 94, 8:10 PM Sunday).
Also, if you would like to see a really awesome website that has all of the flights I have ever taken in my life mapped out, check out this: FlightMemory.com - Ml007. I love flying! Looking forward to putting that Newark-Phoenix route on that page later! If you end up doing this, post a link to yours in the comments! I would love to see where everyone has flown to!
Finally, I told the class about an airline geek post I wrote for Period 1, during the Nigeria unit and the travel guides everyone was working on. Should you like to see how big of nerd I am about this all, you can check that out here: Off-Topic: The Airline Geek Post.
Whew! With all of that being said, I still should be fairly easy to communicate with this weekend, though it may not be as fast as you are used to. Please keep in touch and ask questions, post comments, or e-mail me with anything I can help you with! Enjoy the long weekend, and thanks for being so great!
Earth, as seen from the Apollo 17. This is probably the most famous image of Earth from space, and is sometimes referred to as the "Blue Marble" picture. Found on the consistently incredible (bookmark and come back every day) NASA.gov - Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Dear class,
That certainly was an interesting class. I am not sure what it was about today, but there seemed to be an almost class-wide lack of focus. Possibly because it was a Monday after a sunny weekend. Possibly because the class just was not all that interesting (which I have a hard time believing, but could totally be true). Whatever the reason, I really had a difficult time quieting everyone down, making sure that people were paying attention to what was going on, being prepared, and other aspects of class that should really be entirely up to you guys. Take some ownership of class! It simply just will not work if I have to do it all. That, as we saw today, would take up most of the class.
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?
Soundtrack: "Wavin' Flag" by K'Naan. Lyrics here. Selected for today because Ricardo suggested it to me, because it was his birthday.
AGENDA 5/18/09: News Brief Reflections on Goals/Unit/Class Civil Rights Final Paper Note Taking
Homework: Bring sources (at least one more) for next class. Continue to work on research project! Read blog recap!
For next class, I want you to have a solid choice for your topic that you want to research, as well as multiple (more than one) sources to take notes on. Thanks!
News Brief: We had a few good topics to talk about this morning, but none that I actually took note of to post on the blog. However, I did have a couple of items to point out in class and on here. The first was this article: CNN.com - Woman elected in Kuwait says gender in politics is 'history'. Super interesting article, I thought! Exactly what we were talking about at the beginning of this unit with how women can have an impact in the Middle East. Yay, progress!
Breanna chose to bring this article to talk about: CNN.com - Abuse of child 'witches' on rise, aid group says. Such a sad story! Furthermore, it is talking about Nigeria, a country that we know a lot about, right? Very interesting! Education is the name of the game!
Mary, you are up next for a news article! Anything currently going on around the world outside the United States. Thanks!
Reflections on Goals/Unit/Class: At the start of this section, I had you pull out your goal sheets from the beginning of the semester (if you still had them), or make a new sheet for goals. I asked you to write a little reflection about how things are going, what you can improve or continue to work on, etc. I read all of these, and generally, I am glad that you are participating on this! It is really important to set goals for yourself, and come back to those goals from time to time.
I then asked you to use the second half of your sheet of paper to do the activity that we had done at the end of last semester. The questions that I wanted you to respond to were: 1) What do you like about this class? (What about the structure gets you excited to come in the morning?) 2) What can the class improve on? 3) What do you like about Mr. Fritz as a teacher? 4) What can Mr. Fritz improve on?
To be honest, I have not read all of these yet, but I did glance at them, and I am really thankful for your honest feedback. It really does help me out (and in theory, you as well)!
Civil Rights: To start this section of the class, I asked you to get out another sheet of paper and I projected this quote for you to reflect on (like Mr. Hardin's class): "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." - Mohandas Gandhi.
After a really great period of focused work (I could tell you guys were used to doing this), I had everyone come up and write one example or thought you had that came to mind as you were thinking about the quote. I thought all of these were really interesting! The point to doing this was as a warm up to think about the fight for civil rights.
Next, I asked you to help me brainstorm about what, exactly, civil rights were. I started this by asking the class "how (have) your civil rights been violated lately?" We had some interesting stories about freedom of religion, and freedom against search and seizure, amongst others. Mary helpfully pointed out that civil rights are rights that you are born with, which I called "natural rights." Generally, I think this was a great way to begin the unit and thinking about all of this!
Final Paper Note Taking: During the final few minutes in class, I had everyone go up to the board and write down what their idea for their final research project is. I was not expecting a really concrete idea, but many of these seemed entirely too vague or not thought through enough. Again, your homework was to think of something and bring in a news article about it! That is your homework for tonight as well!
For the rest of class, I had you take notes on three separate sheets of paper in your folders. I think I probably could have done a better job at teaching this, but hopefully everyone understood the main points behind all of this. Here is exactly what I typed on my laptop, for future reference:
YELLOW SHEET:
One sentence or a short thought, directly
Quote "in quotation marks" (Author, page number) – in parenthesis
Indenting multiple sentences
Commentary on how or why the quote relates!
RED SHEET:
For paragraphs or chunks –
Paraphrase! (take the paragraph, rewrite into your own words)
PURPLE SHEET:
For the entire article –
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That was just about the end of the class! I hope that everyone has a wonderful rest of the day. Please come prepared to focus and learn on Wednesday! We are almost to the end of the year! Keep working hard, please. Post comments about anything you think is interesting or any questions that you have about what we are doing! See you next class! :-)
