Showing posts with label modern america. Show all posts
Showing posts with label modern america. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2014

Modern America, Day 4 - Class Recap

In the movie we watched part of today, Forrest Gump goes to Vietnam. This is a picture of me in Vietnam in 2011!

Hi everyone,

A random A day (with no corresponding B day afterwards) before finals, today. In fact, I get the pleasure of seeing you all tomorrow for our final! This is the finals schedule, if you missed it. Hopefully, you are here in the hopes of studying up. Here's the class recap for today:

 Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey and Cedric Gervais. Selected because it will soon be summer break (which is great), but I will also be sad not to see everyone all the time! Lyrics here.

 AGENDA 6/9/14:
News Brief
Finals Questions
Movie Choice

Homework: Review notes and PowerPoints for your final tomorrow. Read the blog! Last news brief: Brianne.

News Brief: Nadia chose this story as her news brief today: CNN.com - Sheriff's office: Las Vegas couple saw police as oppressors. It seems like every day, we could have a story about a different shooting. I also mentioned the former Westview student who was killed as a part of a school shooting at Seattle Pacific University last week. Tragic.

Finals Questions: I am just going to copy and paste the previous section here, because it has all of the information you will need to study for the final (except for the 9/11 stuff, which is on the blog as well). The final will be 50 multiple choice questions along with one short essay prompt (that you will not be able to prepare for). Here is the Jeopardy PowerPoint again to review, if you want:


There are obviously questions on the final that are not on the review, and the review does not have the answers. If you want to study so that you know the information, most of the material (some of it will be from the day on 9/11 we did - see below for that) for the final will come from the following PowerPoints:







Again, lots to review for tomorrow!

Movie Choice: The choice was between Apollo 13 (which has to do with technology and the Space Race) or Forrest Gump (which gives a broad overview of many major events in American History). Both classes chose Forrest Gump, so we watched that until the end of class, as I made comments about how it related to what we learned this year. Thanks for your focus during this!

See you tomorrow, for our very last class this year together!
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Thursday, June 5, 2014

Modern America, Day 3 - Class Recap

Today, we played a game of Jeopardy in class. This weekend is the championships of another kind of game: the French Open. This is a picture I took in Paris at the French Open last year, when Rafael Nadal won.

Dear class,

Welcome to your last weekend of the 2013-14 school year at Westview! We had a much shorter class than usual today, due to the Senior assembly. I had a lot of fun playing Jeopardy review with everyone, though! Here's the class recap for today:

 Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark" by Fall Out Boy. Selected because it is pump up song for playing Jeopardy and because of nuclear fallout. Lyrics here.

 AGENDA 6/5/14:
News Brief
Jeopardy Review
Study Time

Homework: Review notes for upcoming in class final. Read the blog! Next news brief: Nadia.

News Brief: Riley chose this article to bring in and talk about with the class: CNN.com - Midwest braces for more storms after 4,300 cars pounded by hail. We also talked about the recent horrifying stabbing in Wisconsin, which was apparently related to the "Slenderman" creation online.

Jeopardy Review: This is definitely my favorite way to prepare for an upcoming test. Again, the first four categories contain questions that will actually be on the semester final. The final will be 50 multiple choice questions along with one short essay prompt (that you will not be able to prepare for). Here is the PowerPoint again to review, if you want:


There are obviously questions on the final that are not on the review, and the review does not have the answers. If you want to study so that you know the information, most of the material (some of it will be from the day on 9/11 we did - see below for that) for the final will come from the following PowerPoints:







Phew! There you have it! Lots to review for next week. On Monday, I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, and then we will probably watch part of a movie.

Study Time: The rest of time in class (there was not a lot, due to the short schedule) was given as study time. 

See you next week! Our last week together this year!
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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Modern America, Day 2 - Class Recap


This is part of N591UA, which operate United Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, and was hijacked for possible use against the White House. Instead, a passenger revolt forced down the plane into a field in Pennsylvania. A part of my 9/11 story is that I once flew on that exact same plane, from Portland to Chicago in 1996. Check out my FlightMemory map of lifetime flights.

Hello wonderful students,

Today, I tried to do as much as I could with explaining the current "War on Terror" that United States has been involved with. It was the last real day of new content - next class will be a study day, combined with playing Jeopardy to review some of the main points of the semester. Here's the class recap for today:

 Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. Selected because we discussed the events of September 11th, 2001 today in class. Lyrics (which some may argue directly relate to the War on Terror) here.

 AGENDA 6/3/14:
News Brief
Fall of the Wall
9/11
Afghanistan/The F Word

Homework: Review notes for upcoming in class final. Read the blog! Next news brief: Riley.

News Brief: Raquel needs to email me or post a comment on the blog her news article. Thanks!

Fall of the Wall: This was left over from last class. I wanted to explain how the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Iron Curtain and Communism in Europe, and how the United States helped bring it down. Specifically, we noted that President Ronald Reagan asked the USSR to "tear down this wall!" Here's the video we watched in class:


At the same time as the wall was being torn down, the Soviet Union was collapsing - late 1989 into 1990. Those factors also contributed to the First Gulf War, with Iraq, which we talked about later on.

9/11: To start this section, I asked students to do a free write for about 5 minutes on the following questions:

What do you know about September 11th, 2001? What have you heard about it? Do you remember anything? What have you learned before, in class, or from parents?

After the free write time, we shared responses as a class and I told my story about September 11th. I was starting my Sophomore year at Wilson High School in Portland. It was definitely a day I will remember for the rest of my life. To drive home the point as to what the day was like, I showed this video in class, which was a timeline of the day:


From there, I moved on to discussing how September 11th, 2001 came about.

Afghanistan/The F Word: Some of this material was from my Global Studies class I taught last year a long term sub, so I apologize if this was the second time around for a few students in class. I thought it was important to look at the conflict from a United States perspective. Here's the PowerPoint presentation I went through:


I wanted students to take general notes about what led to September 11th and how the First Gulf War between the United States and Iraq helped influence it. We are still currently involved in a war in Afghanistan - it is now America's longest war. Over 2,200 American soldiers have died as a part of it.

The "F" word that we talked about in class was FEAR. To start to look at how fear played a role after September 11th, I showed a couple of videos:


This is United States Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the United Nations about the "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. government thought was in Iraq. It turned out that there were not any such weapons.


This video contains a montage of President George W. Bush and many of the key figures in his government repeating words in speeches that sounded pretty scary.

The last bit to class was another free write. This time, it was about fear in our lives. 

The prompt was: write about a time in which you experienced fear and how you felt. 

After writing and sharing in partners, I asked for volunteers to share with the class. It is nice to be able to look back on scary moments in life and laugh, or just be thankful that we escaped out of it. It was also good to hear about how fear makes us feel - anxious, wanting to do anything to escape, and not wanting to experience it again.

I wanted to make the connection between the fear much of America felt after 9/11. In fact, one of the ways that the government might have helped keep people fearful (or ready) is by making a threat level color coded system.:


In the entire history of the threat level system (which ended under President Obama), the threat level never went below Elevated - meaning we were supposed to be at "significant risk of terrorist attacks," constantly. I ended class by asking that you think about what that might do to people who could be afraid of another terrorist attack.

Whew. With that, the rest of the semester will be review. I tried to pack as much as I could in! Let me know if I can answer any more questions - I really appreciated them all today in class! See you next time!
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Friday, May 30, 2014

Modern America, Day 1 - Class Recap

The outside of the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. I mean, I'm a history teacher - I couldn't resist going to look at the building myself when I first visited the city in 2010!

Dear class,

Second to last weekend of the year! Today was another one day deep dive into a topic in the last century of American history - Watergate! What a super interesting piece of our history, at least to me! Here's the class recap:

 Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Waterfalls" by TLC. Selected because today we learned all about the Watergate scandal in class. Lyrics here.

 AGENDA 5/30/14:
News Brief
Watergate PowerPoint
The Final Report
Fall of the Wall

Homework: All late/make up/missing work (aside from Cold War newspaper) due by 11:59 PM tonight (Friday, May 30). My email is luke_fritz@beaverton.k12.or.us if you need it. Have a wonderful weekend! Read the blog! Next news brief: Raquel

News Brief: No news brief today, because Nolan was not in class at the start of the period.

Watergate PowerPoint: To start talking about Watergate, I asked the class about what a "scandal" was and gave some examples of scandals. Many scandals have names that end in -gate, due to this scandal! Next, I went through a PowerPoint. I tried to go fast on this, because there are a bunch of slides and I really just want students to get the main points of what happened for the upcoming multiple choice final. Here is the presentation again if you missed class or wanted to read through it at your own pace:


Some of the main points not covered by the documentary we watched were about President Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigning due to unrelated corruption charges. This also went more into depth about how President Gerald Ford got to be President without ever being elected to the Executive Branch, and the pardon he gave President Nixon.

The Final Report: After the PowerPoint, I showed a National Geographic documentary on what happening in the Watergate scandal. These were the questions to answer in class:


Here is the video we watched in class:


Again, I find the entire story so interesting! This was a President of the United States, who had to resign, because he was connected to all of these crimes! I hope everyone understood the importance of this, especially in connection to what we were learning about the Cold War and the Vietnam War as a part of it. The result was really deep dissatisfaction and distrust about the U.S. government.

Fall of the Wall: We did not get to this in class. Next time! Quite a lot to pack in: I want to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall, along with our modern "War on Terror," too. Looking forward to these last few days of teaching you! Have a great weekend and come back ready for one last full week of the school year!
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