Social Studies Gets Eclipsed

I told my students on Friday that social studies is a lot.

It's where you are: geography.

It's when you are: history.

It's who you are: anthropology, cultural studies, religious studies, humanities... history...

It's where you will be, and who you will be.

It's not really what you are.  That's science you're thinking of.  Yeah.  You're thinking of science.

But on Monday August 21st, 2017, science will eclipse social studies.

So, I'm sure students will be focused on the sun.  But on Friday we started in on the earth.  I had the students draw a map of what they thought the world looked like from memory.  Then, we looked at political and physical maps, and they had a chance to draw it again while looking off one of those.

Physical Map: Shows land forms such as mountains, plains, rivers, deserts, etc...

Political Map: Shows man-made  human designated boundaries.

And we gave a bad definition for continents, and then watched this video explaining why the definition was bad.

I see the lessons in that video show up from time to time.  For instance, I was on Facebook last night and saw a fight break out between several trolls over whether or not Columbus discovered America.

Those people need to watch the video.  That's the cause of the confusion, and the reason for the fight.  It seemed like the majority of people on the thread had no idea that much of the world calls North and South America together, "America."

So, welcome to the blog.  Here's how it works.  If one of my students reads this blog with an adult, and they discuss it, the student can get extra credit.  They have to get a scrap of paper and write a few sentences explaining 1: that they read it, 2: who they read it with, and 3: a point or two they discussed.  If they have the adult sign the paper, they can turn it in for 5 points extra credit.  BAM!  That easy.

I'm looking forward to a great school year.

*EDIT*

Also, there's this:

And this: Scale of the Universe.