• No Current events- 5/15 due to Shavuot; current event due on May 22 and May 29.

•Have notebook in “turn in” order–last notebook check coming soon!  Remember it is a test grade!

•Will have one more current event test; keep your notes in order.

•Returning to the completion of your Egypt project now that the test is over…do a great job and evidence all that creativity!

•Be sure to finish and turn in all your assigned chapter 5 activities–section 1 assessment p. 87, section 2 assessment p. 92, and chapter 5 assessment p. 93 due May 21.

•Special evaluative activity for chapter 5–coming soon; another creativity opportunity!

•There will be a Phillip of Macedonia/Alexander the Great quiz soon–be sure to look over packets!

•Next draft of Athens/Sparta essay due this Friday–5/17.  Many of you should be approaching your final draft ready for posting on blog.

•Keep notebook in order for final notebook check soon.

•There will be one more current event test before end of term.

•Be sure you have completed and turned in chapter 13 section 1 assessment–p. 210, section 2 assessment–p. 214, section 3 assessment–p. 216, and chapter 13 assessment p. 217–be sure to do all parts thoroughly…

Keep up your efforts; last term grades are always important!

•Next draft of Columbus essay due 5/17; final draft due shortly thereafter.

•Completing the Revolutionary War and formation of our new country.

•Be ready for final notebook check and current event test during the next few weeks.

•Be sure you have completed and turned in ch. 29 assessment (and any of the section reviews you choose to do for extra credit) ASAP.

•Upcoming “world countries test” will be during last few weeks…

• Presidential term accomplishments being presented.

•  Current events–standard form on Wednesday, April 24, Wednesday, May 1, and Wednesday, May 8.  Please develop your summaries with detailed, complex sentences and ideas, and do your best proofreading.

•Next draft of your Columbus essay due on Thursday, May 2.  I suggest meeting with me one on one to go over the comments/suggestions I gave you on your first draft.  Show me the writers you have developed into over the last three years!

•There will be many packets to digest for homework, followed by quizzes in these three weeks–Prep for taking charge of your own learning and practice for high school 101!

•Current events in our regular form will be on Wednesday, April 24, Wednesday, May 1, and Wednesday, May 8.  Continue to concentrate on selecting world-wide articles, writing using more complex sentences for flow and detail, and carefully proofreading your summaries.

•Study prep for your upcoming major Greece test has been in progress; take home your notes and study info and go over each night what we reviewed in class that day.  If you study as we go, you will be well-prepared.  Don’t wait until the last minute.  There is too much to cover to do well studying at the last minute.  TEST IS ON TUESDAY, APRIL 30–do your best!

•EdJewcon is on April 29 and 30th.

•Third draft of Athens/Sparta essay will be due on May 9.  For some of you this may be your final draft and will then be posted on your blog with links and images.

•Our ancient Rome unit will begin right after our Greece test…

•We will have current events on Wednesday, April 24th; Wednesday, May 1; and  Wednesday, May 8 in our usual style, but we should be trying to find events from around the world.  We will locate our current events on google maps and write about them a bit more; I am so thrilled at how far you have come in your summaries.  Please be detailed, try to use compound/complex sentences, and continue your great proofreading.

•Egypt test prep is in progress; keep studying everything we go over in class the night after we discuss it using your discussion notes and study guide.  EGYPT TEST-THURSDAY, APRIL 25.

•We are also working on our partner projects–everything from temples to war scenes to burial sites.  Can’t wait to see them completed!

•The next few topics will vary from a quick overview of ancient China, India, and the other short-lived warrior empires; then ancient Greece will be introduced, during which we will not only study the many, many advancements of the Greek city-states in all areas of culture, and also do a detailed study of its mythology  and literature including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey!  Really cool unit that will go into next year!

•EdJewcon will be on April 29.

Traveling from county to county with my father in the very diverse little state of West Virginia, the state where I grew up, has provided a many-layered, cherished series of memories and a base for learning.  As the state director of vocational education/school superintendent, Daddy was regularly on the road visiting the county seats and meeting with school boards, and he took my mother, sister, and me around the state often when school did not interfere.  My father, in particular, was an incredibly curious individual…and he was fascinated by everything!  I can’t tell you how many times the car was stopped suddenly where the winding mountain roads were carved out of a hillside, so he could show us a folded or faulted line of sedimentary rocks…”Look at how the Appalachians were uplifted here,” he’d exclaim, and I never forgot that far more interesting real-life laboratory he’d shown me when I later took university geology courses.  We examined the New River Gorge–where a bridge now provides an extraordinary fall for bungee jumpers, the Lost River where a river suddenly disappears underground only to reappear miles later, a wide variety of water falls and caverns at Seneca Rocks/Blackwater Falls, and tasted the nose-crinkling water while staying at the magnificent Greenbrier Hotel at White Sulphur Springs, and even got down on our hands and knees in glens along the road to smell and look at sassafras plants and taste teaberry stems from which the gum is made. I memorized the names of the counties and county seats in alphabetical order as we traveled–and can still say them –and learned to recognize trees as we collected leaf specimens to make a scrapbook–

Mother did her part, too…she was the musician/artist side of the family and as we logged the miles our family, sang…Old slave spirituals, folk songs of the Appalachias, patriotic songs from all the wars, and of course whatever was popular at the time…I can still hear my father’s bass and mother’s soprano…and know many, many of the Young People’s Songbook historical and Native American selections mother taught her classes…songs I fear that are mostly lost to posterity. And when we stopped for lunches along the road…not at MacDonald’s because they were just getting started in a few cities and we were often miles even from towns…with picnics from a cooler …the sketch pads came out after we ate and we drew our surroundings.  It is no wonder that my sister became an extremely talented art major and I have always loved to draw and paint for my own pleasure.

I will, in a future blog, discuss what these trips that began in West Virginia and then expanded to the U.S. when Dad accepted a similar job in Washington, D.C. , did to form my social conscience as I witnessed first-hand soot-enncrusted mining towns, rural farmers-both very wealthy and those living hand to mouth, and collapsing huts serving as homes for dozens in a family in isolated valleys–people whose dignity and loving concern for their neighbors existed in the midst of  great need and deprivation. I will also talk about how each area allowed for an American history lesson–battlefields, and what immigrants settled what region as the frontiers moved west.

But for now I’ve been thinking….Today most of us do our traveling by planes, cruise ships, and…on the occasion that we take a road trip by car, we move at 80+ miles per hour on the Interstates…so we do not see what remains of our country– its people, history, and nature-up close and personal–but I want to recommend considering how to incorporate a bit of this into your lives and the lives of your children.  My family and I went to the resorts, theme parks, and vacation spots here and abroad, too…but today, the little down to earth moments as my family and I stopped and looked around, are the ones that still resonate in my formative being…maybe on upcoming vacations you could move outside the boundaries–if, when, and where it’s still safe– and introduce your kids to nature and other aspects of life. I know several of my students who absorb the details about the countries/bodies of water over which they fly…and seem to love it!  Try it and see if your child will become a geographer/naturalist/history buff/or some specialized fact memorizer, too.  If you can’t always go onto the back roads anymore, you can still learn about the geology, geographical forms, plants, and history of the places you visit…

•Current events will be regular form this week and next–Wednesday, March 13, and 20,  2013; we will take an in-class current events test using open notes within these weeks.

•Your map test–on eastern Africa and given on Friday, March 1, has been returned.  It should be corrected and signed ASAP. Great job, gang…your next test on the other land areas and bodies of water  of eastern Africa will be on Friday, March 15.

•Notebook check is in progress; look for the most recent check evaluation to come home for signing by the end of the next two weeks.

•We are well into our study of ancient Egypt, learning about their planning for an afterlife via mummifying, worshiping many gods and goddesses, and the building of incredible tombs and temples…a great and fascinating unit.  Currently researching information about individually assigned pharaohs, discussing hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, and the 3 major eras of ancient Egyptian history.

•Current events will be regular form  for the next two weeks– Wednesday, March 13, and 20th, 2013. An open notes current event test will also be given within the next two weeks.

•The map test on Asia, taken on  Friday, March 1, has been returned; it should have been corrected for both spelling and errors and then signed and returned by now.

•I have informed everyone of any make-up assignments…current events and section/chapter assessments assigned by the subs for me–please get these in promptly.

•We are completing the final Persian War battles–Thermopylae and Salamis–then moving on to a brief overview of the Peloponnesian War and the takeover of Greece by Phillip of Macedonia and his son, Alexander the Great before Passover break.  Rome is beginning promptly thereafter.

•The compare and contrast essay on Athens vs Sparta has been discussed, assigned, and posted on the middle school master calendar…March 21…and will be a test grade.