Another part of my culture is having dual citizenship, due to my mom being born and raised in the United Kingdom.
Dear students,
Today, we got back to work on our new unit of culture. We learned a little bit more about the "iceberg" model for it. I also made sure that everyone had their geography packets graded and back, so you know what to improve on. Here's what happened today:
Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 16: I can explain how culture both reflects and shapes society.
Soundtrack: "American Woman" by Lenny Kravitz. Selected for today because we were talking more about American culture. Lyrics here.
AGENDA 10/15/14:
News Brief – Jordan
Grades
Cornell Notes
The Nacirema
Homework: Read the blog. Check your grade in Student VUE and improve it, if possible. Next news brief: Vlas.
News Brief: Jordan brought in an article about this story to talk about for the news brief today: BBCNews.com - Iraq: Shia militias 'killing Sunnis in reprisal attacks'. We continued to talk about the situation with ISIS in the Middle East. Thanks, Jordan! Vlas was randomly drawn (eventually!) as the next news brief.
Today, I also introduced another way that we might add to the news brief, which are the short VICE News daily "Beyond the Headlines" videos. Here is the one I showed in class for today:
Hopefully this was interesting to everyone - I know that some other Global Studies teachers in the building use it to start class, so I might do the same from time to time.
Grades: I wanted to make sure to explain how I assigned grades for the Geography unit and packet. I wrote comments on your self-reflection papers, which I would appreciate you reading, because they certainly took a lot of time. Also, grades are now posted in the room (by student ID number) as well. You should always know exactly what you have and how to improve it! I will definitely accept revised work, so please do it correctly and thoroughly, and get it to me as fast as possible so we all don't have to stress even more about it. It's still early - you have time, but don't dig yourself a huge hole right now. Let me know how I can help!
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. We will look at these together next class! 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. Last class, the National Geographic slides that we went through were all surface level culture. I want everyone to start thinking about DEEP culture - what is ingrained in us and we do not even think about.
The Nacirema: Along with this, at the end of class, I read this famous article to everyone, as most students sat perplexed about what the heck was going on. Spoiler alert at the end!
We were able to just get to the list of items like our own culture at the end. Next class, we will continue with this and then write a little bit about the Nacirema using similar language. This is usually a pretty fun assignment, once you think of an aspect of our culture to use! See you next class!
Take care of yourself today Mr Fritz! Celebrate a wonderful life lived.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Maddy! It is definitely going to be another difficult day. I really appreciate your care and support! :-)
Delete