February 28, 2008

Cate Ziegler - how are you?

I just wanted to update you on a couple of things. I hope it didn't make you all nervous down there when the blog started to change a little bit. I needed to create some things for studying for the First Americans Test as well as for some days I was out of town.

We started a new unit on the Great Age of Exploration. Last Monday, students chose one of the more well-known explorers to use for our upcoming Social Gathering (scheduled for next week). Let me know when you are ready and I will let you choose an explorer. The students answered some questions and other things for their explorer. The questions are located below in the blog entry for that day. Once again, let me know when you are ready and I will help you with this.

Tuesday the students read an article about a Chinese sea-captain that historians are starting to call the Chinese Columbus. I want you to read this article and I will fax one down. Or, have you already seen it?

Wednesday I returned and started the unit in earnest. I began by showing the students the very well known oddysey of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado - we discussed his story and I explained why we are doing this unit. Basically, without the Great Age of Exploration there never will be a United States of America. Then we talked about who really discovered America. We had a discussion about Columbus, Zheng He (that Chinese Sea-Captain), the Vikings, and other possibilities through out history. For example - Roman coins were found in an Indian mound in Texas. The mound dated to about 800 A.D. How did those coins get there?

Thursday, today, there was a lot I had to share with the students today. We discussed the homework assignment - Europe in the 15th Century - from the history book. I used a power point and some video to help me with the lesson. I will send these on in an email to Jemi soon.

Okay, let me know if you have any questions.