On to Country Spotlights

With region posters going up in the halls, it is time to move onto our country spotlight posters.  Students researched the geography, demography and government of a selected country.  We used CIA World Factbook and the library's subscription to World Book Online (username: wautoma password: hornets) to gather our facts. Then using Microsoft Word, we created posters of our country!  After they are graded and revised, the country posters will be added to the Region Close-Ups learning hotspots around school. Check back soon to see some photos of our work or come on into school and check them out!

Region Close-Ups: Country Spotlights

Southern Europe...Oceania...Middle East...Central Africa...Where!!??!!

Students have spent the month of December working on getting to know world regions and the countries within them. Small groups were assigned a region and the task of creating a "Learning Hotspot"- a large, wall size poster that included their region's name, a map of the region, a world inset map to show where the region is located and some important facts about the region. Check out some of them below.

Life Made Easier!

That's right, I have a technology tool to make your life easier!  Last week in class I introduced the students to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and personal pages in igoogle and My Yahoo!  RSS feeds are great because rather than having to go out onto the web to find news headlines and recent blog entries, they bring all you want right to you! Watch "RSS Feeds in Plain English" below to get a better idea.

After we learned about what RSS feeds can do for us, we had to learn where to "hook" them up to.  I showed students how igoogle and My Yahoo! pages allow you to customize your homepage and can have RSS feeds show up. So, every time you log on to the internet, you could have everything you want to know from CNN news to ESPN to the 8th grade social studies blog, right in front of you!  Ask your student to show you what we explored.

Google Reader is another option for organizing RSS feeds. I am not real familiar with it, but the video below can explain it some more.




 I did express to students that any sites they did not have accounts for needed to be discussed with parents or guardians first.   For internet safety's sake, parents and guardians should always know what accounts their student has out on the internet.

Higher Education

It has been an exciting week already, and it is only Tuesday! After today almost all of the students will have been on a college campus. Students visited UW-Oshkosh and Lawrence University in Appleton and heard a presentation from representatives from Fox Valley Technical College. These trips and presentations have really given the students something to think about. We also watched a video on living on minimum wage and made our first "budget".

All of this information will be used to help them determine what career to choose when making their career movie to share later in the year.

We learned about a website http://collegeboard.com that allows you to research colleges and universities around the nation. It has information on admissions, cost, educatioanl support, athletics and much more. Check it out with your student!

Population Pyramids

We have begun our work with the graphs called population pyramids. These graphs divide a population by age and gender to show the make up of a population. Students made one of the world's population. Our next steps are to write thinking questions using the world's population pyramid. Ask to see your students pyramid and questions!

If you'd like to look at some pyramids yourself visit this site:

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/informationGateway.php

How Many?

We have begun our study of world population growth. Students were shocked to learn there are 6.7 billion people on Earth. Check out this population clock to see how fast the world is growing...http://opr.princeton.edu/popclock/ .

We will be using the thinking skills of cause and effect to study population growth. Also, we will interpret demographic data and population pyramids. A simulation on world population growth went well and made clear to the students the concept behind the term "population explosion".

This week we will watch a video entitiled "The Population Paradox" that shows some of our population trends in action. Go to the link and check out some of the other resources on world population growth.

Welcome to the 8th grade social studies blog!

This will be a tool I use throughout the year to communicate with students and parents. Weekly, I will update the blog with a new entry about what we are studying, resources that might be helpful or a website that relates to what we are doing. I will also try to introduce some Web 2.0 tools and help students and parents become more comfortable with technology and what it can do for us.


Don't let 21st Century Technology lingo scare you off!

Blog, Wiki, RSS, oh my! While they may seem intimidating if you've never heard of them, Web 2.0 tools can actually make life easier and more interesting. Commoncraft is a company who makes videos "in plain English". You may have seen some similar on commercials or in an email forward. If Web 2.0 is new to you, I suggest you go to the Commoncraft Videos link below and search for their videos on Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networking, podcasting and anything else you want to know about! 

Commoncraft Videos