New challenges

Hi everyone,

It's good to see students taking responsibility for their own learning. Right now, students have split into two groups after some deep class discussion. About half the students are working on independent projects that deepen their understanding about an aspect of the Middle Ages - something they wanted to learn about or explore a little more. Some students are working alone, and some are working in small groups. I look forward to project presentations on Friday the 21st! Students will be evaluating their own work in consultation with me. On that same Friday, we'll also wrap up with a little Middle Ages Christmas party. Traditional Christmas music and treats will be in order.

The other half of the students are doing a mini-unit on feudal Japan. They have been given a list of vocabulary and concepts that someone who has a solid, general understanding of feudal Japanese culture would know. Using that sheet, the students are reading their textbook and other resources and watching films to discover more about the topic. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we'll be discussing how we want to evaluate the learning from the unit.

When we return from the holidays, we'll be working on a Renaissance project. It will culminate in a Renaissance fair and we will also do two lessons around career planning, to meet the Ministry of Education requirements in the area of Career and Health for grade 8.
More information will be coming about the Renaissance project over the holidays and on the first day we return.

Keep up the good work!

Medieval City Projects complete

I have to say how impressed I was today with the presentations on Medieval Cities! Each group's style was unique and had its own strengths and weaknesses. Overall, though, the quality was better than I've seen from presentations given by students in grade 10. I'll mark the bias work and the individual written work over the weekend, but every group was able to earn 3 out of 4 on the rubric - meeting or exceeding standards in three different categories of evaluation. Students were also thoughtful and reflective in assessing their own work and the work of the other groups. I'm really looking forward to the projects we will do on the Renaissance after the Christmas holidays!

Next week we'll begin working on Knights, Castles and the code of chivalry, and we'll take one more look at the impact of the plague (Black Death) on medieval society in Europe before we wrap up our studies on the Middle Ages. There is no homework this weekend except to finish up any uncompleted work from Term 1 and any incomplete work from the start of Term 2.

Have a good weekend!

Bias and Controversial Issues

Today we are looking at page 180/181 in our handout (Assessing positions on a controversial issue.)  Child labour was a fact of everyday life in the Middle Ages, but is less common today in North America. In other parts of the world, it is more common. Points to remember:
Bias  means "preference". Every writer considers what to leave in and what to leave out when writing about a topic. Good writers try to be fair and unbiased, however, controversial topics sometimes require a writer to take a certain point of view to make a point.

When reading about controversial topics (like Child Labour or politics or laws or religion) remember to:

1. Consider the source
     a. Who wrote it?
     b. Why was the material written?

2. Watch for biased language
    a. What is the language like?
    b. Does the writing show preference?

3. Recognize fact versus opinion
 

In preparation for tomorrow's class - please check out the Medieval City Webquest!

Late Middle Ages

Economics of the Middle Ages Lesson

Today we tried out a new piece of technology in an app called Notability. I'm hoping the link above will work as I was recording the audio of the lesson I was teaching while giving examples of how to do flow charts showing different economic systems.

Homework tonight is to read pages 149-152 about trade and the development of towns, in preparation for finishing the last flow chart in class tomorrow.  We've begun our 4th unit, focusing on the late Middle Ages. The finished title page from our last unit (added images) will be due on Friday and the start of the new title page will be due at the same time (title words and frame only).

Report cards will be coming out soon,  so please make sure you're all caught up. I'll be giving my marks and comments to the office on Tuesday, November 13th in the morning.

Overview & Review Time - High Middle Ages

Dance of Death - Nuremberg: Google Image search

Death, Halloween and the Middle Ages: a lot of our Halloween ideas come from the Middle Ages - skeletons from the times of plague, a gruesome afterlife for sinners, spirits walking the earth (Celtic traditions carried on in Christianity), witches (Celtic wise women) and of course the day Halloween coming from the phrase All Hallow's Eve (the day before the Christian holy day of All Saints (or All Hallows) when the people who have died are remembered and prayed for. Christians took over this holiday from the Irish Gaelic festival of Samhain.

Homework for the next while:
   Check over Overview handout given today in class (I'll scan and have a link to it in Jupiter grades for students who were absent.) Start work on writing definitions for important terms in your own words, particularly for the phrases you don't know/remember.

Major assignment: One pager biography which will be used for Jeopardy: Medieval Style game.

Choose one famous Medieval person from the following list. You will make a one page computer document that has one cited image of your person and five important facts about that person. These facts and images will be used to create a Jeopardy game we will play during the week of Nov. 5-9. Spelling & citations will be very important. Due date: November 2 (Friday morning, first class!)

Monday and Friday of next week, please remember to bring a donation for the Food bank! We want to beat the grade 12's in this cross grade challenge!! I'll provide a snack style breakfast both days. Yogurt, granola bars, hot chocolate - no bacon or quiches :)
Report cards will be coming out at the end of November, so we are in the final stretch of Term 1. Please make sure that you are all caught up on assignments and can demonstrate skills and understanding of over-arching questions.

We're starting to really dig into life in the middle and late middle ages. By now, you have read at least 5-10 pages of the book you signed out. (I hope you remembered to bring it home.) and you are going to be reading a fair amount and completing questions and creating a comparison organizer to look at the three types of medieval courts. (page 59 #1 in the yellow box). I promised you a video tutorial on how to create a chart using a text document program. I've used Open Office in the video, but you can use Word, if that's what you have at home. If you've got a new version of Word that saves documents as a ".docx", please do a "Save As" and save it as an older version of Word, so the file extension will be ".doc" instead. Our system here doesn't seem to like "docx" and I have a lot of trouble opening them in Open Office.
*Parents - our school system uses open source software because it's free. Open Office is free to download and is as good an Office suite type program as Microsoft's product. Please consider downloading it, as your teen will be using it at school for the next few years.

Here's the video tutorial. It's a .swf (Flash) format, so please make sure you have Shockwave Flash on your computer, so you can watch it.

Make a chart tutorial ss8

Homework:  #4 & #7 on p. 54 (started in class & demonstration given)

                     Read pages 54-56 & complete #1 in Activities on p. 56

                     Read pages 56-59. Complete #1 (Comparison Organizer) & #3 & #5 Activities p.59

Have a great weekend!

Term two has begun and we are starting Unit 2. Today, everyone was assigned the title page and all that needs to be done is block lettering for "High Middle Ages" and a 2.5 cm border around the page (letters and border coloured, please).  We'll add in images as we go through the unit.

http://wikimedia/Edward_der_Bekenner.jpg

Tomorrow, we will be acting out scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry which, as a primary source, chronicled the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and saw William the Conqueror take the throne of England. This covers two of the prescribed learning outcomes in Social Studies 8:

•     interpret and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources
• plan, revise and deliver an oral presentation

Things we're looking forward to:

•    building a trebuchet?  (We need parent help for this one!!!)
•    Medieval fair at end of Term 2. Costumes, food, games in celebration of all we've learned!

Wednesday, Sept 26th

We've watched two videos on world religions so far - Judaism and Christianity. Tomorrow we will watch the final video which will be on Islam. We'll create a Venn diagram comparing the similarities and differences of the the three main world religions.
Please make sure that you are keeping your binder organized. If you don't use dividers, you might want to consider using dividers for each unit to keep each unit separate.

The big question we'll be addressing in the next few days:  what was the impact of Christianity in the early middle ages? Tomorrow is Day 3, so I'll see you in the class before long break!

By Emesik (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Minarets - towers from which Muslim
people are called to prayer.

Geography Unit 1- Done!

What a great day for geocaching as a wrap up to our first unit- Geography!
Thanks to Mrs. Read & Mr. Blackmore for bringing their GPS units and helping us find treasure here at school.  Almost everyone handed their map project in on time and I'll be taking photos of the maps and posting them as a slide presentation over the weekend. Check back on Sunday evening. If you finished the Europe Map worksheets, you have no homework!!

Monday is the start of Unit 2: The Three Main Religions
We will be looking at what the core beliefs and customs of these religions are and how the early relationships between these faiths impacted not only the Middle Ages (that will be the main focus), but continue to impact the world today. It's amazing to think that the poor relationship between Christianity and Islam, that started in the Middle Ages, continues to haunt our world today. The news from the Middle East about the riots and attacks on American embassies because of an anti-Islamic video is evidence that ignorance continues to cause problems between faith groups.

We're also going to look at what everyday life was like as Europe changed from being ruled by the Roman empire to a time of changing borders, tribes and rulers.

Enjoy your weekend & I'll see you in last class on Monday! Don't forget Monday is photo day - look your best!

Map of Ancient Pisa: Photo from Wikimedia - Public Domain

Maps, Maps & More Maps!

Your map project will be due on Friday morning, first thing before we go geocaching!  I look forward to seeing your maps of cities, villages, countries, ski hills, malls and/or schools. I'll ask you tomorrow which location you've decided to create a map for.

About symbols for maps: Your symbols could be for building types, physical or man-made features, size of cities, and any number of things. The idea is that the map will be a view from above. Don't forget scale - a hugely important feature on any map.

One of the maps you may have looked at today was an elevation map. If not, here is an example of an elevation map (sometimes called a topographical map). Look closely at the colour chart. Each color represents a certain height above sea level. Red is 5000 metres above sea level. Most of BC is yellows, so how high above sea level is that? How high are the purple sections? What level is Kamloops approximately?
Why would an elevation map or topographical map be useful? Who might use it? Is there a business or industry that needs this kind of information? Do satellites gather this kind of information and how do they do it? See if you can find answers to some of these questions!

Week 1 Done!

It's hard to believe that the first week of grade 8 is over already! Congratulations on finding your way around and getting such a good start to the year. I really enjoyed playing "Get to know ya!" Bingo today. On Monday, we'll work on the criteria and rubric for Title Pages and we'll learn a little bit about how GPS units work, as well as look at the project for Tuesday and Wednesday. There is no formal homework this weekend, but I would recommend looking at your binder and making sure it's tidy and organized. If you left it here at school, let's organize first thing on Monday morning! (Before you come to class.) Enjoy the lovely weather and I'll see you on Monday!

Textbooks, Tsunami trash & maps - oh my!

Thanks for a great start to the course, everyone! It's early evening and I'm enjoying reading your responses to the survey, so far. Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) you will get your textbook, we're going to look at a current event that demonstrates how mapping helps communities prepare for problems, today and how even though communities are oceans apart, we're still connected. The big question - why should we care about a big pile of tsunami debris from Japan?

Course introduction

Gode Dai! (Hello in Middle English)

Welcome to my Socials 8 Blog! There will be useful information and course related assignments posted here, as well as links to our class wiki, surveys, videos and other things we create together. On the first day of class you will receive a course outline. This introduction is a short version of the key information you received then. It should be in the front of your course binder. The focus of Social Studies in grade 8 is on World Civilizations from approximately 500 C.E. to 1600 C.E.  In European history this covers the time period from the fall of Roman Civilization to the start of the Reformation. We will also explore Chinese civilization, Arabian Civilization and Indian Civilization in these time periods.

You can expect to learn how to debate (or argue) in a formal way, more mapping skills (including looking at GPS), and more research skills. These are all things you will use for the rest of your life - very practical stuff!
You'll also learn some problem solving strategies, how to work in groups successfully, organization strategies and some skills to analyze information so that you aren't fooled by bogus websites, news stories or gossip.

You are going to write, create, talk, take photos, make presentations and present to your classmates and the world!

We're going to look at big questions.

• Why do civilizations end?
• What drives exploration?
• What happens when civilizations end?
• How did different civilizations before ours contribute to ours today?
• What lessons can we learn from past civilizations? 
• Are we headed for the end of our civilization sometime soon?

I expect you to be on time (in your seat before the bell goes) with all the things you'll need (pencil, pen, coloured pencils or markers, eraser, lined & unlined paper & textbook). I expect you to be respectful listeners for both me and your classmates. I expect you to complete homework assignments (which I'll try to keep manageable and minimal). In return, I will do my best to ensure that I provide learning experiences which are engaging and meaningful, to involve you in the assessment process and to be fair, and to communicate clearly (with you and your parents/guardians).

You will have opportunities to have input into class assessments, but you will also be responsible for doing your best. You earn your grade, I don't give it to you.

Evaluation:  Your work will be evaluated in the following way:

     Assignments, minor projects, quizzes, discussion participation                            50%
     Major projects, tests                                                                                        50%
 Accountability: There will not be re-tests. If you miss a test or an assignment deadline, you will be given an alternate (probably harder) assignment to assess your learning. You may be required to stay in during break/lunch to complete missing work.  The more work you miss, or don't finish, the harder it is to learn and demonstrate what you've learned. Several missed assignments means a phone call to parents and possibly Academic Intervention. If your parents choose to have a vacation during the semester, you will be responsible for catching up on what you've missed. I do not give out assignments or tests in advance, in order to be fair to everyone in the evaluation process.

If you have any questions outside of class time, you can find me in the library, email me at cmcvittie@sd73.bc.ca, or leave comments on the blog. I will have regular online tutoring/"office" hours during the week, but will announce those in mid-September, once my own children and family have settled into their school routines and I'll know what time and which evenings will work best for me (and them).

NOW,  check out your first assignment:  Take this Google Docs survey about yourself

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