Natural Barriers II

We had shortened classes today because of the writing prompt: "Instant Riches."

Yesterday we discussed natural barriers a little bit.  It's interesting to me because most of the class was actually dominated by a discussion of Islam and reading The Hunger Games, yet when I wrote the blog I only really discussed natural barriers.  (That's not that interesting, you say...)  What I mean is, I spent the majority of yesterday's blog discussing something that was discussed for maybe... 10 minutes.  I just figure, we do SO much in class it'd bore you all half-to-death (or closer) to get my full lesson in text form.  Or maybe it wouldn't bore you, but who has time to read all that?

So, today we went more in depth on the whole "natural barrier" thing.  Students had to circle four of China's natural barriers, and one (I bet you can guess what it is) of China's man-made barriers.  Then they went to the board and showed us where those barriers were.  (You'll notice this ties in much nicer with the actual standard: 7.3.10: Describe the limitations that climate and land forms place on land or people in regions of Africa, Asia and the Southwest Pacific.  China, being in Asia... Panem, of course, is in a fictional dystopic North America... 

Last year I emailed a website and received permission to use a map I found online.  I'm not sure if that includes posting it to my blog, so I emailed them again this year.  If they ask me to take it down, I will... but I can't imagine them doing that.  They seemed so nice.  *EDIT: They emailed and said I could post it on here.  Thanks worldatlas.com.*END EDIT*  Anyway, here is what it looked like when the students finished showing the natural barriers:

The map came from THIS website.  It wouldn't hurt to check them out.  In case you want to see this map without all the writing on it, you can find it HERE.

Officially, we're still studying religions, but everything overlaps so much, it made sense to do this now.  Tomorrow, back to Islam.


If you want extra credit, discuss the following questions with an adult: How did you do on the writing prompt?  What did you write about?  So, natural barriers, huh?  Those are pretty crazy.  That's not a question.  I know... ummm... can you make it into one?  Some question about China and natural barriers, and how it affects the people and surrounding cultures.  BAM!  In order to get the extra credit points, write the following phrase on a scrap of paper: If I get murdered in the city, don't go revenging in my name.  One person dead from such is plenty, no need to go get locked away.  Adults, by signing the paper, you're saying that you really did discuss those ummm... "questions" with whoever's in my class.  ...I realize they're not all questions today... sorry about that.  : )