Revisiting "What is Where, Why There, Why Care" exercise with an image from 1974 Inferencing with the Critical Thinking Consortium, Lynne Truss video on commas, and a trailer for the film "Welcome"

This photo came across my Facebook page from a friend.  The photo has a date of 1974.  If you look at it through a geographic lens, the landscape of downtown Toronto has changed so much over the past 42 years in such a dramatic fashion.

Close to 10 years ago, I attended a workshop hosted by The Critical Thinking Consortium (http://tc2.ca/).  There goals, taken from their website:

Our goals are to foster in learners:

• enhanced abilities and inclinations to think effectively;
• deeper understanding of the curriculum;
• increased engagement in the world;
• greater willingness to act in thoughtful, ethically responsible ways.  

http://tc2.ca/vision.php

Last week, in Geography, we looked at a photo from a What in the World activity and then the students had to look at the details (from facial expressions to objects in the photo) to create a bit of a back story.

 

Lynne Truss video to help with the understanding of how commas work:



To support our understanding  of how these things work -- and by no means is this final -- we will have a small, creative assignment:

 

For example, rule number 13 (which is not a part of the assignment) states that "commas are used to separate the day from the year in dates.  If I was trying to find this example "in the world," it might come from the newspaper.

For each of the rules, it would be pieced together, as a whole, in a collage.  The rules are coming from the Writers Express workbook.  We walked through the rules together and the students have a copy of the rules for their binder.

 As the Geography portion of the year comes to an end, we will be taking a look at a French film that mirrors some of the ideas we explored in the Passport assignment.  Bilal, the main character in the film, Welcome, is Kurdish Iraqi and wants to make the journey to England to visit his long, long love.  At some point, on his journey in France, he is placed in a Refugee camp near Calais.  This is across the channel from Dover, England.  The rest, will unfold as we watch the film.  For those who can't see it, here is the trailer:

  The location of these two geographic points in the film is in this screenshot:

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Calais,+France/@50.9518646,1.7989165,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x47dc3f75d7f1e363:0xacbed9e08cd279f4

Last week I formally introduced the idea of the Book Talk/Readers Theatre/Diorama project.  We will not begin presenting them for another month.  At this point, everyone should be reading their novels.  I am going to hand out this sheet and have it be due in 3 weeks or less:

With this being a small part of the assignment, it will keep this at the front of their minds, ideally.  The due date for this, and other work, is posted on the Homework board, in the class.

homework

February 2 Health Project spoof video presentations

Book Talk planning sheet (due February 19)

Comma collage (due February 4)

agendas are being signed