Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their week off. It was kind of like we had Fall Break this year with the freezing rain day.
We are jumping right into our study of World Religions this week. We are going to start by watching the excellent PBS documentary on the Buddha. We will follow this up by studying Hinduism and Buddhism and their impacts on India. We will briefly touch on Taoism and Confucianism before moving into Western Religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I am hoping to finish all of this before the end of the semester so we can focus 2nd semester on Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Buddha documentary is quite long so it will probably take most of the week to finish. We won't have a WONDERful Wednesday assignment this week.
0 Comments
We spent the early part of the week presenting our Ancient Cities to the class. The students did a great job and I loved seeing all the creativity and thought that went into the cities.
We have moved on to our "test" on Mesopotamia. The student's task is to create their own alphabet. Just like the Ancient Phoenicians did. They then have to write me a paragraph using their new alphabet. We had some fun looking at other alphabets in class this week for ideas. After tests are done we are going to start up on World Religions after thanksgiving. We will start with Indian (Hindu and Buddhism) and move to China (Confucianism and Taoism) before moving back towards "Western" religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This is one of my favorite units of the year and it always leads to great discussions in class. It's Mesopotamian Cities week. I am running late on this post because I was at a conference in Seattle this week and with the day off yesterday.... I am just now getting back into the routine.
Student have been successfully (more or less) working on their designs for Mesopotamian cities this week and making their posters. I am impressed with what I have seen from 1st period this morning and I can't wait to see with 4th and 5th periods came up with! This project was initially supposed to be due tomorrow, Friday the 13th. (Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!) but the students wanted another day to put the finishing touches on their projects. So, the posters will be presented Monday the 16th. I am attaching the expectations for the project as well as the grading rubric so everyone will have an idea of what is expected. I hope everyone enjoyed their day off yesterday to honor our veterans. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. It has been a crazy two weeks at the Fischer household but things are settling down now and I am back to the blog this week.
We continued our discussions and readings from last week on Mesopotamia today and we went over and read some mythology and had some great discussions. We have one more Mesopotamia section in the book to read and answer questions for so we will probably finish those up Thursday or Friday. Next week I will be at a conference in Seattle on the 9th and 10th so that those will be good days for the students to design their cities. That project will be introduced on Friday of this week and will probably be due the following Thursday. The students all did really well on their Mesopotamian map assessments last week! Grades look really fantastic overall for 1st quarter! I am really enjoying my students this year. Great kids all around. |
AuthorThis is the official blog for Room 113 at Desert Hills Middle School. Archives
February 2017
Categories |