Homework for September 30 "get my passport and I'm gonna go there,"

Over the weekend, your assignment is to read the selections from The Analects that are linked here. They are all about how to have a good government. Choose one of the selections (they are all short selections) that you think would be useful to members of the US government. Post your choice on your blog and then explain why you think it would be useful to modern American politicians. (You can talk about the presidential candidates as well as already elected officials. The entire Analects is linked here, along with the original Chinese characters; scroll through it to get a sense of the breadth and depth of Confucianism.

You also need to complete the first participation self-survey, linked here. This is designed for you to tell me how you think you are doing in the class as far as discussions go. I will look over your response and agree or disagree with you to let you know how I'm seeing you in class. Then we can debate whose reality is accurate...Enjoy the weekend!

Homework for September 29: "Off to China, 'cause I got a show there,"

We finished up with Alexander the Great's empire and its impact today in class.  For tomorrow, read pages 181-189 in the textbook, which will introduce you to the three schools of thought that arise in Classical China: Confucianism; Daoism; and Legalism.  You are to take written notes on the reading, which I will check for a homework grade tomorrow.  The style of notes you take is up to you, as is whether or not you take them electronically or on paper.

Homework for September 28, Alexander the Great style...

For tonight, compose a blog post (using your blogger accounts, not Posterous!) in which you take a position on the use of "the Great" after Alexander of Macedon's name.  Is this an honorific that he deserves? Why or why not?  Remember you are trying to convince the reader of your position, so use evidence to support yourself!  We'll talk about his death tomorrow and go over the aftermath, which may or may not change your minds...

Homework for Tuesday, September 27

For tonight, read the selections from Plutarch and Arrian linked here.  We will finish In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great tomorrow and talk briefly about Alexander's legacy.

The Posterous Thematic Timeline Project Foundational Era will be due on Wednesday of next week. That's October 5th to you and me. So have your images and paragraphs posted to your class' Posterous group by the end of the day October 5th. Don't forget you can't duplicate images, and once the region has its pictures posted, the region is closed!

Yes, it is really Monday, Sept 26

Today we solved the nature of reality and proved that I mostly exist.

For homework, please read pages 166-168 and 240-245 in the textbook.  This will cover Alexander the Great and the collapse of his empire.

The quiz tomorrow will be 10 multiple choice questions drawn equally from chapters 7 and 10 (Persia and Greece).  They will be from both the book and from class conversations, the Greek philosophers will be included, and the reading for tonight will NOT be on the quiz.

Homework for September 23

Happy Friday! Over the weekend, you should finish reading Chapter 10; that will cover the Greek Philosophers (among other things). There will be a quiz on Tuesday that will cover Persia and Greece, NOT including Alexander the Great. We'll talk about him starting on Tuesday, and I'll tell you more about the quiz on Monday.

Period 2, please email me (whitten@bpsk12.org) the name of your blog that you created today and the url for the blog so I can follow you and we can start our conversations.

Lastly, click on the link here to get to a selection from Plato's The Republic. It is one of the more famous/notorious sections of this book called "The Allegory of the Cave." It is a dialog that takes place between Socrates and his students, and the subject of it is human awareness of reality. What is real? How do you know? You may need to read this a couple of times--though the underlying concept is fairly simple, it isn't presented as such! We will discuss this in class on Monday with the help of a few scenes from The Matrix...

Have a good weekend!

September 22 Homework

Greece is the word!  Today we took a look at early, early Greek civilization.  For tomorrow, read pages 239-249 in the textbook.  It looks like we will have a quiz on Tuesday of next week that will cover Persia and Greece...

Period One, it looks like Posterous may not be able to communicate with the @bps121.org email. Take a look in your junk mail file on the bps121.org, and see if the email was labeled spam...if it was, then you should be able to confirm the account. But if it is not there, then try this: Go back into your Posterous account, click on Edit Profile, and then Account. You should have the option to add another email (and possibly remove the old one...) which should allow you to confirm the Posterous account via your regular non-school email, and then see the Thematic Timeline Space...I hope...Periods 2 and 4, you get to find out about this later...

For the Parents on Back To School night

Congratulations! You made it to the class blog. This is where I post homework for the students so they can always know what is due and when it is due. Feel free to scroll around to get a sense of what types of assignments are given in this class. Feel free also to visit the blog anytime you want to get a sense of what is happening in this class.

You aren't done yet, though. Now you will need to click this link to view the course expectations.

September 21 homework and re-post of homework form

OK, so I think I've figured it out.  The web address for the google form for the video questions is: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dGh2b1Y0VVpGcHZnU2FsWW00aGRxLUE6MQ.  You should be able to cut and paste that into your browser and it will direct you there.  Please try it and answer the questions as best you can--I'm mostly interested in knowing that this technology works, not whether or not you can describe Cyrus' tomb...

We are jumping ahead in the book to talk about Greece, so read pages 231-239 in the textbook.  stop at the Persian Conflict section, and we will discuss this in class.

Remember to send your parents to Back To School night with either your iPad or a smart phone with a scanning app.  They will need to access Scan (or whatever the QR code scanner app you have installed.)

Homework September 20

For tonight, you get to watch a movie and then answer some questions about it! (yes, yes, stop applauding, wait until you see it...)

The movie to watch is entitled Engineering an Empire: Persia and it can be found on YouTube here. There are 5 parts to the video, and it will take about 35-40 minutes to watch it all.

The questions to answer are in a Google Form, and that is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dGh2b1Y0VVpGcHZnU2FsWW00aGRxLUE6MQ.   You do not need complete sentences, etc. in your answers, just quick and simple is all I'm looking for.

Homework September 19

For homework tonight, read the Classical Era essay on pages 156-57. (The pages are not numbered for reasons I do not understand...) Then begin the chapter about Persia on pages 159-164, then read pages 168-172.  I recommend taking written notes on the readings, but will not be checking them this time.  We will be skipping over the Persian war with Greece and Alexander the Great and returning to discuss them later.

For Back To School Night, students whose parents come with an iPad will get an extra 5 points on the next quiz.  They will need to use the scanning app, so train them well!

Sept. 16 homework

OK, I think I have this figured out so it should post this afternoon! Today we talked about the formation of language and explored some of early China. Our last stop in the Foundational period will be Mesoamerica and Oceania, so skim over all of Chapter 6 to refresh your memories.

We will review the essays on Monday, and talk about how to write them to the College Boards specifications. So second period, and anyone else who picked them up, bring them to class on Monday so we can work on them!

Lastly, for those who were absent, some alert students picked up on a mistake in the scoring sheets for the test, so please get me your score sheets to I can revise your marks if you have the correct answer. It gets you one point....but still, it's one point more than you had, right?

Enjoy the weekend and the onset of fall temperatures...

September 15 homework

Today we went over some commonalities in the formation of religions in the Foundational period, and took a look at the Rig Veda. For tomorrow, review pages 118 (Society and Family in Ancient China) through 127, which will give you some insight into the structures of Chinese society.

Homework 9/14/11

Apologies for the late posting; my earlier post didn't take for reasons I'm not sure of... In any event, please read pages 93-99, then skim pages 101-104. Do pay attention to the section on the blending of Aryan and Dravidian religions, though, as that is important to the construction of what later becomes Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.

September 13 Homework

Today in class we discussed ancient Mesopotamia through Hammurabi's Code. The long block also got to look at the Epic of Gilgamesh in summary form. You should look over the summary of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as it is the basis of all of our stories that revolve around a "Hero", whether it is Beowulf, Hercules, Superman or Harry Potter...it also lets you know what the Mesopotamians thought was entertainment...

For homework to night, review pages 60-61 (Africa, Climate Change and Development of Agriculture), and skim pages 69-83. You want to pay closer attention to the sections: Early Writing, Organized Religion and read everything to do with the Bantu Migration. Sadly the College Board doesn't think mummies and pyramids are very cool, so we won't be taking the time to talk about ancient Egypt...

Homework 9/12/11

Today we were discussing the advent of agriculture and its impact on human organization. For tonight, review the following pages in Chapter 2, to refresh your memory about Mesopotamia and the Indo-European migration: Pages 36-48 and 51-55. In those pages, focus most of your attention on the sections labeled: The Course of Empire; The Emergence of Stratified Patricarchal Society; Cuneiform; Hebrews; Israelites and Jews; and all of the Indo-European sections.

Compare and Contrast Essay

For tomorrow (that's Friday, September 9th to you and me), you will be writing a compare and contrast essay in class.  You may write in pen or pencil, and I will provide you with lined paper.  This essay will draw from the contents of chapters 1-6.  The essay must have a thesis statement, must deal with both comparisons and contrasts, and must provide evidence to support the contentions you make.  The essay will be scored with the College Board's score guide.  The link to this guide is here.  Please note that in order to attain the final two points in the expanded core section of the score guide you must have earned the first seven!  For this essay you may not use your book, or notes of any kind.

Essays in this course will be drawn from the 5 themes of the course which are:
1. Patterns and impacts of interaction between humans and the environment (demography and disease, migration, patterns of settlement, technology).
2.  Development and interaction of cultures (religions, belief systems, philosophies and ideologies, science and technology, the arts and architecture).
3. State-building, expansion and conflict (political structures and forms of governance, empires, nations and nationalism, revolts and revolutions, regional, trans-regional and global structures and organizations).
4. Creation, expansion, and interaction of economic systems (agricultural and pastoral production, trade and commerce, labor systems, industrialization, capitalism and socialism).
5. Development and transformation of social structures (gender roles and relations, family and kinship, racial and ethnic constructions, social and economic classes).

First test for APWH

For the test tomorrow, you will have 70 multiple choice questions drawn from chapters 1-6. The questions will not be evenly drawn from the chapters. Each question will have 5 possible answers, and you don't want to leave any blank; narrow down the choices and guess if you have to. You will have the duration of the period to answer as many questions as you can in that time period, so get there as quickly as you can to maximize your time. You will need a number two pencil!