Colonization Simulation 2015

Yesterday my classes worked on developing indigenous cultures on the continents I placed them.  You see, I split my room up into 4 sections; each section represented a continent.  Three of the continents were large, spacious, and had untold natural resources.

The fourth was smaller, but no less proud.

Groups were tasked with developing flags, chants and songs, changing their style of dress, and coming up with other ways that could symbolize their particular cultures.

It was a fun day, yesterday.

Then came today: exploration, conquest, colonization, disease, defeat and shame.

The small continent with few natural resources had the opportunity to explore the other continents.  The people of the other continents decided whether they wanted to fight, or work with those who were invading their land.

If you're reading this at home, discuss what happened, and what it symbolized.

If you weren't at school today, tell what you think happened.  When you come back, find out if you were right or not.

When you're done discussing it, write a few sentences about your discussion, and have the adult you read the blog with sign the paper.

Here are some pictures:

First, a map of the world:

This next one is a close up of Saia.

I call this one "Negotiations."

And perhaps my favorite, "To the victor go the spoils."

Decolonization and WWI

Welcome back to the extra credit blog.

Today we finished discussing decolonization, and started looking at World War I.  Listen, WWI isn't really in our standards, but WWII is - and if we're to pretend like we understand anything about WWII, it's probably a good idea to have some background knowledge on WWI, right?

First though, for bellwork I asked students to draw pictures of the cause and effect sequence I gave yesterday.  I thought I'd post Steve's, because it was very good:

He really captured what I was going for.  You know what, I'm going to break that down into its parts:

Seriously, I'm often impressed by how much can be accomplished in very little time.  I gave between 5-10 minutes for this.  Students had to come up with what to draw, and get it down on paper.  My stick figures are pathetic.


We also discussed what happened when the European nations left the places they'd colonized.  They had made nations out of warring people groups.  While the Europeans were there taking the natural resources, they were able to maintain order by force.  However, once they left there was only chaos.  I likened it to siblings who don't get along.  For instance, I would occasionally argue with my brother.  One day my mom went out to buy a gallon of milk.  We fought.  He ended up breaking the plate-glass window in our back door...  While my parents were around to maintain order, we didn't fight.  But when they left, the power structure was a bit more precarious.

Finally, I introduced World War I.  Man...  I wrote so much already though.  I don't want to bore you.  If you were in class, you should be able to tell your parents a little bit about WWI.  If you can't, at least tell them about the arm-wrestling match, and why more and more people kept joining.

If you want the extra credit, you should have read and discussed the blog with an adult.  To prove you did this, write two sentences telling about the discussion you had.  Focus on the arm-wrestling part since I didn't write about that.  Have the parent or adult you discussed it with sign the paper.  Turn it in tomorrow.