Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Philosophy of Government, Day 1 - Class Recap


The ball of yarn that we used in class today for the Class Unity Activity! Thanks for participating in this!

Dear class,

I enjoyed getting to know you all a bit better today! We had a productive time with the yarn activity and learning more about the philosophy of government. Here's what happened in class today:

Learning Targets Addressed: 
Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 4: I can explain how different ideological movements and philosophies shape politics.

Soundtrack: "Comin' From Where I'm From" by Anthony Hamilton. Because today, we talked about where we are from and how we got to be at Westview, via our family background. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 9/16/15:
News Brief - Kaytie
Citizenship Scores
Class Unity Activity
Philosophy

Homework: Read the blog and post a comment (if you have not already). Emma has the next news brief.

News Brief: Kaytie had the news brief today and did not have a specific article to share yet, but did talk about how the United States is trying to combat Climate Change. Here's an article about that: NYTimes.com - U.S. and Chinese Climate Change Negotiators to Meet in Los Angeles. Certainly a big ongoing story impacting our government and society! Thanks Kaytie.

Emma was randomly selected to do the next news brief.

Citizenship Scores: We actually did this in reverse order from the agenda, but I went through the answers to the citizenship pre-assessment we did in class last time, and found out our overall winner was Amogh, followed closely by Reilly. Neither wanted the prize, so that will be held for future use. We also had a fire drill and nominated (if students wanted to) for Homecoming.

Class Unity Activity: I always love this, for many reasons. One, because I love hearing about how everyone came to be in our classroom. Two, because of how the yarn connects us all. Three, because it helps the class (and me) learn names and a little about each other! Thank you for participating in this. It can get lengthy, I know, but I value it so much more than just lecturing for that time. Also, it was cool to have Dr. Franco join us at the end, as well! :-)

Philosophy: I wanted to start looking at some of the philosophers of government during the Enlightenment period. Here's the PowerPoint we went through (we only did slides 6-8 today - just focus on those for now):


Again, please review and be responsible for knowing the basics of what Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu thought about government.

Crash Course Government: After the PowerPoint, we watched this video (which had a LOT of concepts, I know) as another introduction to Government:


This was what we ended class with, as there were only three minutes after it. Thanks for your focus and effort today, with lots of stuff going on! See you on Friday!

1 comment:

  1. I had fun with the yarn ball activity and it was fun to get to know all my classmates a little more:)

    ReplyDelete

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