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 –
Main points (what is the abstract?) of the article.
Put this in your own words – paraphrase, summarize ---
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! :-)
Peter's really amazing wallpaper that was his creative product! Formatted for screen resolution 1280x800, I believe. Seriously incredible! Click to view full size, then right click on the image and select "set as desktop background" and presto! :-)
Good afternoon class,
This was another really productive day of presentations and talking a little bit about the final paper for the entire year! Thank you for the good focus and attention, for the most part. You guys are sort of a bouncy group, but all in all, really fun to work with. I hope you enjoyed class as much as I did! On to the recap:
Essential Questions: In what ways are cultures and countries interconnected? How can the Middle East be stabilized?
Soundtrack: "Let Love In" by Goo Goo Dolls. Lyrics here. Really an excellent song. It can also definitely be related to the conflicts that we are studying!
AGENDA 5/14/09: News Brief Student Presentations Final Paper Folders
Homework: Decide on what topic you want to do, bring a source to take notes on next class. Read blog recap!
This will be talked about a little more in "The Final" section. Basically, I want you to decide on what you want to investigate for your final paper, and bring one source in (like a news article, book, magazine, etc) that relates to your topic and that you can take notes on. We will help you do this in class! All I need for you to do is to pick a topic, and choose something to take notes on about.
For anyone that was not in class today, or that has lost (already) the assignment sheet, here it is to download:
Again, we will be talking about this much more. In fact, for the rest of the year, this is what we will be doing. As I noted in class, I am thinking that we will have about half the time devoted to a new unit, and the other half to developing this paper.
News Brief: We have really been struggling to find things to talk about recently! The two things that I took note of were:
The recent plane crash in Buffalo, which Amy mentioned, is something to really be interested in. A lot of things had to go wrong for that to happen. Source: ABCnews.com - Buffalo Crash: 'A Recipe for an Accident'. Basically, the pilots were sleep deprived, inadequately experienced, paid very little, and the icy conditions outside made it all come to a head. Really a sad story. Pilots do not get nearly enough credit for what they do.
Yesenia brought finished this section of the class up with this article: CNN.com - Former Mexican president calls for legalizing marijuana. This is a pretty interesting take on the whole "war on drugs" issue. Someone else in class noted that some people are proposing to legalize marijuana in California and tax it, in order to help with the state's finances. A really interesting report on that was recently done by TIME Magazine, here: TIME.com - Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?
Breanna, please remember to bring a current news story about anything currently happening outside the United States, for next class on Monday. Thanks!
Student Presentations: These were pretty fun, again! Thank you to those who really put a lot of time and effort into creating something. I really respect your hard work! After everyone was finished, we turned in the following items, which I need from everyone ASAP if you did not turn it in today:
- Completed Skills Packet (which contained the Blazers recap and debates). - Presentation Notes (for other students). - Explanation Paper for your creative product AND - Creative product, if it is something that can be handed in (like lines for a skit, or a PowerPoint, or a poster, etc). Again, I cannot grade your creative products without the explanation paper, so please get both in to me!
I hope that everyone enjoyed these presentations, and possibly learned a thing or two about interconnectedness as well. It was fantastic for me to be able to see you demonstrate your knowledge about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!
Final Paper Folders: As I think I said in class, this "historical investigation" project is one that every freshman at Westview is working on, as part of the common assessment for Social Studies. If you remember, the first semester version of this was the visual metaphor. Thus, this is a really big deal!
I talked about Mrs. DeFrance's really amazing folder system for helping you write papers. Seriously, if I had this in high school, I think I would have written 10 page long papers with ease. It is really a pretty incredible way to keep track of everything. Please keep everything in that folder - including all the sheets of paper tucked inside!
I linked to the final paper assignment sheet above. We read that together in class, as I tried as best as I could to introduce this as something that you do not have to stress out about. Make it interesting to you! After reading everything together, we started brainstorming ideas for "issues of global significance" on the board. Here is a picture of what we came up with, to help you out if you need it:
Pick one of these, or any other issue for your homework, and bring in something to start you off on the project on Monday! I want you to be excited at finding out information about the world, that you may not have really had the chance to learn about in class this year!
Put it this way, there are entire college courses devoted to just these topics. In fact, I was in one last year at Western Oregon University! It was called History 492: World Problems. I ended up writing a 10 page paper on the search for Osama bin Laden. It was a really interesting class!
If you are still totally unsure about what to do, try a Google search for "world problems" or "globalization" or something along those lines. If none of that sounds interesting at all, come talk to me and I am sure we can get you started. :-) ---
Other news of interest: Brandon Roy was selected to the All-NBA Second Team! This is a really huge honor! The first time a Blazer has made All-NBA since Clyde Drexler in 1992. Source: BlazersEdge.com. Brandon Roy is simply incredible. What a guy.
The Office Season Five finale is tonight (Thursday)! It is totally worth checking out, even if you have never seen it. The fun starts at 9:00 PM, on NBC (Channel 8 for most of you). The Office is my favorite television show of all time. I am really quite sad that the season will be over and we will have to wait until the fall for a new episode! Every year this happens, and there is a huge cliffhanger, and it just kills me.
There is a TON of sporting action going on. I am sure that Westview's spring sports are all worth checking out. Add to that two Game Sevens in the NHL, the Lakers-Rockets and Celtics-Magic series in the NBA (both Game Sixes), and Major League Baseball, all tonight. Wow. It is a great time to be a sports fan!
Tomorrow, I will be playing hoops during second lunch in the gym. Come sign up on the sheet in N116 if you want to play! I am excited about it!
With that, I think I will sign off! I hope everyone is doing well! Have a wonderful weekend! Keep in touch and keep working hard on everything we are doing!
