Week Twelve - Continuing the study of the Holocaust

This Week

On Monday and Tuesday we finished up our unit on the Armenian genocide. Students gained an understanding of how and why it happened and we began to see how the 8 Stages of Genocide were at work in the Ottoman Empire and (later) in Turkey as the genocide against the Armenians unfolded.

On Wednesday, we began our unit on the Holocaust. Students explored the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's website while taking an accompanying quiz over the materials contained therein. This quiz and other quizzes during this unit are formative assessments and are designed to ensure that students are reading and comprehending the material and are always revisable. Please advise students to revise if they receive a low grade on a quiz. A number of the questions asked them to analyze maps, which is a key skill for the upcoming Ohio Graduation Tests, which they will be taking this spring.

On Thursday students read about the killing centers that operated during the Holocaust and on Friday they analyzed the role of race and eugenics as examples of symbolization in the Holocaust.

Upcoming Week

Next week, students will be working on a project whereby they will analyzing the lives of families living in pre-WWII Europe. The goal is for students to compare and contrast their lives with the lives of Jewish families living in parts of Europe that were affected by Nazi takeover and the Holocaust. Students may be asking you to help them find photos of your family in similar situations. Any help you can give them in accomplishing this task would be a great way for you to talk with them about what they're learning. For a great example from one of my previous students, check out Vidur's Prezi.

Check out Vidur's Prezi here to get an idea of the kind of research students will be doing.

Students will be presenting these in class next Thursday and Friday and all Prezi assignments will be graded then.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who volunteered to join us on the field trip to the USAF Museum on Tuesday, November 25th! We have enough chaperones for the field trip now and will be leaving school at 9:30 and coming back from the museum at 1:25, so the trip will take place entirely during the school day.

Just to clarify a few things - students only need to pay for a lunch if a) they are buying a lunch from the cafe and b) they are not on free/reduced lunch. If they did order a box lunch but are on free or reduced lunch, they should pay whatever they normally pay for a school lunch (either nothing or the reduced lunch price). If you still have not turned in your money but need to pay, I will still be accepting lunch money past today's due date. Hope this clears up any confusion.

Have a great weekend and Happy Halloween!

~ Mr. Grieve

Week Eleven - Beginning the study of conflict and genocide

This Week

On Monday most students presented their creative projects for the greatest achievements of the 20th century. Many of the presentations were very engaging and presented the information in a creative way. Special shout-outs go to Maddie and Starr for their creative writing pieces, which were very well-written. Nice work!

This week we also began our next unit on the study of conflicts and genocides of the 20th century. This is obviously a difficult topic, so I would ask that you please communicate with your son or daughter at home and ask them how they're processing the subject matter and alert me of any issues or concerns I should know about. We study the 8 Stages of Genocide as a way to systematically study the process of how and why genocides happen. If you're interested in learning more about this framework for understanding genocide, please click here for a PDF of the 8 Stages of Genocide and discuss this subject with your son or daughter. Right now we are in the middle of studying the Armenian Genocide.

One video we started in class on Tuesday (but didn't have time to watch as much of it as I would have liked) was the reproduction of Stanley Milgram's classic experiments on obedience. We discussed how these experiments helped show that genocide can happen anywhere and be carried out by people everywhere in the world if it is not stopped in its early stages. You can watch more about these experiments below:

 

Upcoming Week

Next week we will be continuing our study of the Armenian Genocide and then moving on to studying the Holocaust. Students are creating Prezis that track their journey through understanding genocide from a societal perspective as well as its legal evolution over the course of the 20th century, so you can ask them to show you their Prezis at home, which they should be working on this weekend (if they did not finish the assignment today in class).

We will also have our second Western European countries quiz, which students can practice for here. 

Since this is a new unit, we also have a new Conflict and Genocide Assignments Tracker.

Things to put on the calendar

Field trip to the USAF Museum is on Tuesday, November 25th. Students who are on free or reduced lunch will pay whatever they normally pay (or do not pay) for a boxed lunch. Others should pay $4.75. Please turn in this money by next Friday, October 31st. I'm still looking for about 3 parents chaperone volunteers, so if you're interested please email me at arch.grieve@wright.edu.

Have a great weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Ten - Finishing up Societies in Transition

This Week

This week students are working on their "creative projects," whereby students research an area of innovation or an invention that changed society, travel, communication, or the economy over the course of the 20th century in a significant way. Students were given the following resource (greatestachievements.org) to help inform the projects, but the method for presenting their information was left up to them. It could be a podcast, a poem, a video, a creative writing piece, or any other creative means they can think of. Students have been working on this every day this week and will present to the rest of the class on Monday, so ask them to show you what they've worked on this weekend!

Upcoming Week

Next week is parent-teacher conferences. If you would like to meet and talk about your son or daughter or are concerned about your student's performance and would like to schedule a meeting, please use the pick-a-time website that the school is using for scheduling conferences. I'm always happy to meet with you if you'd like to discuss your son or daughter's performance or learn more about what goes on in the class, or would just like to walk through their grades in more depth. I also like having the students be a part of the conference as well, so please know that they are welcome to join us if you would like.

I also want to note that next week we are starting our Conflict and Genocides of the 20th Century unit. If you would like to learn more about what we study, I would encourage you to check out the video and description about this unit on our website (click here) and learn more about what we focus on in order to get an idea of the content we will be covering. In an age of ISIS, intractable conflict in Syria, regime changes in the Middle East and other flare-ups around the world, now it is more important than ever to study the conflicts and genocides of the past in order to ensure that we know how to stop those that are happening in the present. Specifically, we will cover the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, the Bosnian Genocide, the conflict in Kashmir, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. This unit will go into 3rd quarter and most likely we will finish sending letters to our Members of Congress and creating posters about certain conflicts sometime in January or February. Posters will most likely be on display at the Wright State Educational Resource Center sometime next year, so look for a post about them early next year!

Lastly, we will have a great opportunity to visit the US Air Force Museum on November 25th. I'm looking for a few chaperones to help me with this trip, so if you are interested, please email me at arch.grieve@wright.edu and let me know whether or not you would be available during school hours. You would be assigned a group of 10 students and would travel with them throughout the museum during their scavenger hunt. It's a big place and involves a lot of walking, so please make sure you're ready to walk if you would like to come! It's always a good trip and one of the reason we go is that students have the opportunity to hear from a Holocaust survivor, which is unfortunately an increasingly rare opportunity. They will also be led on a tour of the Holocaust Exhibit. This is a powerful and moving experience for the students and it is great that we have such a powerful exhibit right here in Dayton.

Learn more about the exhibit here: USAF Museum website

I look forward to seeing many of you next week!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Nine - End of the Quarter!

This Week

We began this week with a mini-unit on a society that changed a lot in the 20th Century by looking at Berlin and briefly reviewing the Cold War, which students learned about last year in US History. Students watched a video that talked about the Berlin Wall both from a historic standpoint and an engineering one, which you can view here. Students also spent time reflecting on their work and their growth as learners this first quarter in order to prepare for their portfolios throughout the year. You can read more about the changes to portfolios this year by checking out the student responsibilities portion of the DRSS Portfolio Handbook, or by watching the video below. I would encourage your son or daughter to work on this throughout the year so they don't fall behind or feel pinched for time at the end of the year. You can also watch the following video on new portfolio requirements if they get confused about what they need to do to showcase their learning.

Finally, we kicked off our unit on transportation on Thursday, which is the final part of our Societies in Transition unit. Students traced the journey of Wilbur Wright through the following primary source document of his September 13, 1900 diary entry. In it he describes his journey to Kitty Hawk, NC, to test out their glider. Students then researched how to travel the same route today and compared the ease of travel 114 years later with the much longer journey that he took.

Grades should be completed and at this point will not be changing for 1st quarter. You can check your son's or daughter's grades on ProgressBook. The class average was high this quarter and students appear to have taken my advice not to have missing assignments, as there have been relatively few this year. Consequently, the class average was high at 90.6%. Great work!

Upcoming Week

 

Next week students will be continuing their look at transportation and inventions/innovations of the 20th century and working on creative projects that demonstrate the importance of a particular engineering achievement of the 20th century.

Have a great long weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Eight

This Week

Students this week finished up the movie Invictus, wrote an essay on racial reconciliation, and participated in a simulation whereby they re-enacted the 1986 Coca-Cola Shareholders Meeting. For more on the roles they played, you can find the simulation at http://southafricanhistorysimulation.wikispaces.com/. It was a fun experience that allowed students to see how individual, institutional, national, and international decisions interact with one another. Students also got to research primary documents through this activity, and one I'd encourage you to read is the 1986 LA Times article describing what actually happened at the shareholder meeting the students re-enacted.

Today students also had an opportunity to hear from our first guest speaker for the year, Dr. Jennifer Subban, a Wright State University Urban Affairs professor originally from South Africa who is also a parent of a DRSS graduate and current student. She came to speak to the students about South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, specifically about the progress and shortcomings since the end of apartheid. As someone who grew up under apartheid and continues to travel back to South Africa to take WSU students on service learning opportunities, she has a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experiences to share. We only wish we had more time with her! Thank you very much Dr. Subban for coming to speak to the students.

Thanks so much to Dr. Subban for coming to speak to all of the students today!

Finally, students all got to go to the Scholastic Book Fair today. Thanks to the parents who volunteered to help with this.

Students browsing in the Scholastic Book Fair room

Upcoming Week

It's hard to believe, but there are only four more days in this quarter! Next week we finish the quarter, and it seems to be going faster than normal. Our Societies in Transition unit may end up spilling over a bit into next quarter, but there will be no more major projects due before the end of the grading period.

I'd encourage you to check ProgressBook and look at this unit's assignment tracker to see where your son or daughter could still have a chance to improve their grade. If there's nothing left that they can turn in, a conversation may be necessary to see what strategies they may need to implement at school or at home in order to improve their grades next quarter. As a benchmark, the average class grade right now for all 93 students in my class is a 90.3% (A). The single greatest reason for any grades that are below this mark is failure to complete assignments, so please stress this to your son or daughter for next quarter. First quarter often serves as a wake-up call for many of our students who go on to improve their grades over the remainder of the school year.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please email me at arch.grieve@wright.edu.

Have a great weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Seven

This Week

I can't believe I'm writing "Week 7" in the headline, but it really is! This week students continued watching Invictus, a movie about the South African rugby team that helped bring the country of South Africa together after the fall of apartheid. Through this movie, students are able to understand on an emotional level what elements of racial tension existed in South Africa and how Mandela used sports to help bring about racial reconciliation in the newly fashioned "Rainbow Nation." Students also analyzed the Bill of Rights sections of the United States Constitution and South African Constitution in order to see how the prior shared experiences of both nations and the passage of time helped to inform the documents they created to govern their new nations.


Students also went on a trip Thursday to our parent institution, Wright State University, where they were able to talk with current students, visit the colleges within WSU, and just see the campus. It was a fun visit and students had a great time learning about my alma mater. If any of them want to know more about what it's like to go to WSU from an alum and current student, I am always happy to share my experiences with them!

Here are some photos from the trip -

Students got to go on a campus tour, during which they saw many of the colleges, the student rec center, and the dorms.

Students heard from a panel of current WSU students about what college life is like.

Students visiting the science labs, where Board President Dr. David Goldstein works.

Upcoming Week

Students will be reading a book in Sierra Leone entitled A Long Way Gone in Language Arts. Ms. Reid has asked me to post her letter to parents on my blog, which you can READ HERE.

Students will also be continuing our study of South Africa and next week they will take part in the new role-play activity I have for them to do. It should be a fun week.

Lastly, because I forgot to tell students early enough what this week's geo quiz would be, I did not have them do a geo quiz this week. Next Friday, however, they will be taking the geo quiz on the countries of Southern Africa, so they should use THIS QUIZ to study for it.

Have a great weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Six

This Week

This week we began our study of South Africa as students were exposed to an overview of South African history, followed by group research on topics related to the system of apartheid and how black South Africans fought back against (and ultimately overcame) the apartheid regime. Students also took their last Geography Quiz on South America, and next week we will begin looking at Southern African countries. 

Students will be working tomorrow during the Plan E day on their Who I Am pages. You can now find them on our DRSS 10th Grade website here.

Upcoming Week

Students can study for the upcoming test, which will cover South African countries identified in this quiz - http://lizardpoint.com/geography/africa-southern-quiz.php.

Additionally, next week we will continue our study of South Africa by preparing for simulations whereby students will role-play people from one of four groups - a member on the Board of Directors for Coca-Cola in the 1980s, an activist seeking to change Coke's role in South Africa, an investor pushing for adoption of the "Sullivan Principles," and another investor urging the company to stay the course. We will also be viewing the movie Invictus, which chronicles the efforts made by Nelson Mandela to bring his country together after the end of apartheid through sports. Students will be writing a short essay about racial reconciliation in South Africa after viewing the movie in segments throughout the week.

Next week it might be fun to study the poem that resonated so deeply with Nelson Mandela and inspired the movie title and talk about it with your son or daughter. The text is printed for you here:

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul. 

Hope you have a great weekend, and don't forget about Plan E tomorrow!

~Mr. Grieve