Rainy Friday afternoon grading ...

While feverishly grading my Unit 1 test essays, trying to get them finished by next week sometime, I was stopped in my tracks by this amazing Sigur Ros song that popped up on shuffle. Here it is in video form, quite possibly one of the most beautiful audio and video recorded.

Detention update...

Happily, all of my students showed up for detention. At detention, I took one of my biggest trouble students aside and told her she could be getting straight a's, that there is no excuse for her to misbehave, and that I need her help to keep control of the class so we can learn. Today, she screamed at my class to quiet down when I was trying to get their attention after working in groups. It was hilarious. I don't know if that was a response to what I said but I'll take the help any day.

The Constable grows a pair...

... gave out 10 detentions today. Two came after school today.  When If the rest don't show tomorrow then calls home to each of them.

Up to my neck in grading....

I vaguely remember several warnings on how much stuff I collected to be graded, but I didn't really realize what they were talking about until now.  Since the beginning of the year, I've probably collected about 20 different writings/homework from my classes.  That is almost 3200 things that I have to "grade", which has now become a swamp of papers that I don't have the time to get to.  

My solution is to employ a simple grading system for drill type BCR's where I just give a quick check, check plus, or check minus - which get a score of 2-5 points.  That is helping me move through papers and get some grades down so that I can have something to show my students.  

I've already started grading the tests too, my wife has helped with the multiple choice - I made a master grader by punching out holes so she just lays the sheet down and marks the wrong answers and adds them up.  So far the results are all over the board, which shows to me that the test wasn't too easy, and I'm pretty certain it wasn't too hard.  I've yet to get into the essays to know whether the students could explain domestication, the differences between hunter-gatherers and early farmers, and why civilization developed in the Fertile Crescent rather than in Papua New Guinea.

The nice thing about mindless grading of drills and various essays - I can listen to Michael Medved.

Giving my first test....

So today was my first test.  It went well on the delivery side of it.  We'll see how it goes when I get the scores tallied up.  From what I saw, the smart kids were done in about half the time of what was recommended to me that I allot for them to take the test.  I have a feeling like some kids are going to just get a straight up 100%, but that is just my guess.  

I ended up making 3 different versions, which I copied simultaneously so they were already premixed ready for me to distribute to students.  I also created three variants on the essays, just to avoid some later period students getting off easy because their friends told them all the essay topics.  

The best part by far was the peace and quiet that dominated today.  My students were well-behaved and every class period was so quiet.  When students were done, I told them they could just rest their heads - and they did.  I had to wake them up to collect their tests.  It was like nap-time in preschool.

I have so much stuff to grade right now I don't know how I'm going to get it all done within the week.  I've meant to grade during my planning period, but sometimes I just tend to fall into some sort of mindless state as my brian processes the millions of data inputs that fly at me every second in my classroom.  I think that as I build more stamina in teaching, I'll be able to just file away the day and get to work on what has to get done.  That is one of the only ways to be able to leave work at a decent time and have a life outside of the classroom.

Writing my first test...

Tonight I finished up my 1st test. It is a slightly strange unit - but aren't all units titled Introductions to History. That is pretty much a license to teach whatever you want, and I taught stuff I wanted to and didn't want to. But I have to say, at least I have taught some stuff. My students will hopefully understand the fundamental role in farming in providing a surplus of food that enabled people to focus on other tasks, like learning how to shave their bodies. Here is the study guide:

Study Guide Unit 1

Vocabulary: 

fact 

opinion 

artifact 

evidence 

famine 

epidemic

bias 

generalization 

primary source 

secondary source 

social class 

domestication

chronology 

primate 

hominid 

nomads

surplus 

job specialization

raw materials

“cargo” 

theory 

natural resources 

geographic luck 

east-west axis

civilization 

institution

scribes

Bronze Age

ziggurat

cuneiform

Geography: Be able to find these places on a map.

Africa, Papua New Guinea, Europe, Middle East, Asia, “Eurasia”

Key Concepts:

Understand the few key ways in which Australopithecines were different from chimpanzees. What was the most significant way in which Australopithecines & Homo habilis began to more resemble modern humans? 

Homo erectus - they migrated down to Southern Africa and out of Africa throughout Asia all the way to China and Indonesia. Understand how Homo erectus began to more resemble modern humans in regards to diet, the use of tools and the craftsmanship to make them, and the relationship between these advancements and their larger brain size. 

Neanderthals - Know the approximate time frame that Neanderthals lived, that they lived at the same time as modern homo sapiens, but are not our direct descendants. Understand how Neanderthals were similar yet different from modern humans physically. Also, you should know the significance of their burial rituals and customs.

Homo sapiens sapiens - these are modern humans. Cro-magnons were one group that lived around Europe. They were the ones with the cave art. Know about this art - what it depicted, and what it might have meant. Most important - technologically, what skills enabled Homo sapiens to migrate throughout the world and populate every continent? 

Know about the hunter-gatherer (nomadic) lifestyle - how they found food, why they had to migrate, why they had small families, what factors prompted hunter-gatherers to first experiment with agriculture. (Mini ice age made it more difficult to find food.)

Know what domestication means. How did domestication change the nature of plants and animals? How did early farming villages and communities develop? How did people have the ability to work on things other than finding food?

The first farming communities all developed around the approximate time in history and around large rivers - why? How did farming create new needs for technology? What were some of the first technological advances? (tools to help farm, writing to record agriculture patterns etc.) 

What were the effects of the Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution? Why would it be considered a “revolution”?

Guns Germs & Steel - know who Dr. Jared Diamond was, what Yali’s question was, and what Dr. Diamond did to answer Yali’s question (a.k.a. to discover the “roots of inequality”?) What did Yali mean by the term “cargo”?

Understand the concept of “geographical luck”. The geographical factors are the raw materials (crops and animals) that nature provides a certain location. Dr. Diamond contends the Fertile Crescent is extremely “lucky” - why? Papua New Guinea was not geographically lucky - why? (They had difficult crops that provided little nutrition, no animals to work the land so they had to do all the work themselves.)

Dr. Diamond argues that the crops, animals, technology, and overall advantage spread from the Fertile Crescent on an “east-west axis” along the latitudinal lines. Why was it harder for these advantages to spread on a north-south axis? 

The concept of food surplus is of central importance to this entire unit of study. How did farmers get a food surplus, and what did it enable them to do? How did food surplus lead to the development of tools? How did the development of tools lead to cities?

What are the components to a civilization? (advanced cities, specialized workers, complex institutions, record keeping, advanced technology)

Why were governments necessary? How did trade develop? What are the agricultural roots of civilization?

Liars: Sailing to Byzantium

I've always had a mild historic romantic notion for the Byzantine empire because of the time I spent in Eastern Europe in the land of aggressively nationalistic Orthodox chauvinists. Lately, I've been coming back to this track over and over.