Welcome!

Welcome to the blog!

For some of you, this is your first time here.  If you're bored, surfing the web on your phone at conferences while waiting for your social studies teacher to finish up with the parent in front you you, I encourage you to look around the site a little bit.  Look at previous posts.

For those of you who have been here for a while, you know how it works: students in my class may read and discuss blog posts with an adult and earn extra credit for it.  This will reinforce what we're learning, keep parents up to date, and get students some extra credit as well.

In class, Mr. Helmuth is finishing up teaching about Mesopotamia and Egypt.  They discussed the ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.  You know that old saying, "you can't take it with you?"  It seems as if the Egyptians didn't believe that.  So, one of the questions Mr. Helmuth asked his students was, if you could take 5 things with you to an afterlife, what would they be?  He had them write a paragraph explaining why the students made the decisions they did.

Another thing he had them do was write in Cuneiform.  He gave each student some play-doh and a stylus, and put a phonetic translation of the Cuneiform alphabet on the SMART board.  He then had the students write.  Obviously, it was a different form of clay, and no doubt the styli that the Sumerians used were more appropriate for the writing the scribes did, students were still able to get an idea of writing in clay.

If you came to the blog today and want extra credit - or want your kid to get extra credit, students have to read it and discuss it with an adult.  Students, tell them how class went.  What did you say you're taking with you?  How did the writing in clay go?  Does Mr. Habecker need to buy new play-doh?  What language to the Egyptians use?

Then, when you're done discussing, find a scrap of paper.  Nothing new.  Just a scrap.  The inside of a junk mail envelope.  Anything.  Have the student write down two sentences from the discussion.  Sign the paper.  That is meant to be proof that you read and discussed the blog together.  I'm trusting that if you made it this far, you also took the 5 minutes and discussed it.

Make sure that the student's name, date and hour is on it as well.  Then turn it in tomorrow.  No!  WAIT!  TURN IT IN AFTER BREAK!!!  WOO HOO!!!!  FALL BREAK!!!!

Have a good one.