March 21-25

Students completed In-Class Work #2 (Ancient Egypt) and scores were 
quite solid.  It was then on to Current Events, which had students 
grapple with the question of "when is it OK for militaries to invade 
other countries" in the context of the current humanitarian 
intervention in Libya. To stretch students' appreciation of the 
difficult issues that unfortunately remain part of our world, the 
teacher raised rhetorical questions (such as "is violence ever OK," 
and "should you try to save 1000 people if you know 50 will be killed 
accidentally.") Several students wrestled intently with the challenge, 
and in doing so made it a worthwhile activity for themselves. The 
teacher noted that there was indeed no "right" answer to such 
questions while stressing that this reality made posing the questions 
no less valid.

Following Current Events classes addressed some reading/study 
methodology. The teacher posed the question of "what clues help us to 
find the most important information in a textbook?" The class 
identified several answers, the three key ones being:

              - people, places, and things related to the subtitle;

              - words in bold; and

              - topic sentences.

The teacher then gave students a sheet with each Lesson 1, Chapter 3 
subtitle followed by an appropriate number of bullets. Students were 
instructed to try to identify the key points for the Chapter 3 
Introduction (p.29) and The Sumerians (p. 30), which the teacher will 
review. Students seemed to appreciate this activity--which the teacher 
plans to do regularly--and hopefully will develop the habit of writing 
study "bullets" for each subtitle (or if not, will develop/refine a 
similar note-taking strategy that works best for them).